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“I... remember Maryland.” He pauses. “And what you told me when you sent me off.”

She nods slowly. “Then you must remember not calling.”

“I do.”

“I never stopped believing you’d call.”

But he never called. By the time he resolved to do so, it was too late. He feels the kind of guilt he guesses one might feel

if one’s mother said the same. “So you knew all these things when we met.”

“Not all. Not Persephone, for instance. And there were things I didn’t know until I saw you in person. I can see people’s

pasts. Sometimes their futures. It rolls off them like waves.”

“Do you see only painful futures, the way I see only painful pasts?”

“You see the kinds of past moments that you listened to when you were alive, when you had your ear pressed against that wall.

You see the moments we feel like outsiders. Unwanted. Invisible. Vulnerable. Like ghosts. Knowing that other people struggled,

too, helped to make them less intimidating, and it still does.”

There’s truth in that. He realizes now how much he needed to raise a barrier between himself and everyone else, even Mabel, in the end; anything to circumvent that symbiotic relationship to pain that defines so many relationships, either giving or receiving it.

But he sees after death the world’s sorrows and losses and innumerable tragedies for what they are: a part of living.

Mabel reaches forward and John starts when he feels the weight of her hand at his shoulder. He thought he’d never feel the

sensation of being touched again, and something in his chest constricts, then lightens.

“Life,” she says. “Equal parts joy and pain, maybe a smidge more joy if you’re lucky. Shaken, not stirred. Best to avoid the

rocks. My seeing people’s futures? I think it’s something about me not having ever been dropped into the timeline. You were

born into time, so you’re still part of it, in a sense. But though I’m a part of this world, I’m apart from it, too—that’s

why I can do this”—she rubs his shoulder before letting go—“and I think that’s why you saw me in the Ocean of Memories in

your time and I was able to see you from the water back in the time I was in, in what felt like a dream. We saw each other

at once, but it was a moment—”

“ Across space and time ,” John finishes. “I remember.” He’s reminded of something else. “There’s a room in the House, the Indigo Room, that’s painted

entirely in indigo. It’s tranquil and brought me a lot of peace, especially after intruders, and—” He takes a step forward

and leans slightly in toward Mabel. Inhales. Apple and vanilla. He smiles. “It was your room.”

“It was,” she says, smiling in return. “The Genesis Room. I loved that room.”

He thinks of the way her scent lingers there. “It’s still yours, I think.” And then he frowns. “You sending me away...

You can’t imagine how it made me feel.”

Mabel looks pained. “I know. And I’m so, so sorry, John.

I didn’t want you to think I’d just given you up.

And I always wanted to tell you—I should’ve apologized, and I wanted to, but I didn’t know how without telling you the truth.

And I didn’t want to tell you the truth because I thought somehow it might give you ideas—I don’t know.

Thing is, I caught a glimpse of your future, but it was too fuzzy to understand completely.

I just saw your panicked face and a screaming woman and a howling little girl and I didn’t know what you’d done or how you’d done it, I just knew you hurt somebody bad.

The road you were already heading down, isolating yourself from people.

.. I didn’t know if sending you to that alternative school was a chance to nip it in the bud.

So I sent you to school and afterwards you moved to London and we didn’t talk after that.

And the thing is, I don’t know if me having that vision of your future and sending you to that school set you on the path of going to London and getting that job and putting you in Corpus Christi in the first place. ”

“So you knew I was connected to that city.”

“I knew you died on an airplane departing Corpus Christi International. That’s all I ever found out. Back then I only figured

it was the job that had sent you there. They were so mysterious about your death. But when you called me and said you and

Persephone and Ruben were in Corpus Christi... well, I figured it had to mean something. And it did. You found what you

needed to find. And really, it was because Persephone found what she needed to find.”

“But what did we find? For me, a terrible, shameful memory. For Persephone, a trauma. You know Parker’s in jail now. And Ruben

has a broken arm. And Persephone nearly died!”

“People ask the same question about life. The point is going through it.”

“And why are you still talking in that Southern accent? You aren’t even Southern.”

“Do you know how many accents, dialects, and languages I’ve got filed away up here? Anyway, John, you needed to know . And you needed to face it, to finally confront what you’d run away from. Even after death, you hid from the truth. But once

one question slipped into your mind, the facade began to come apart. And that’s what questions do, don’t they? They begin

the unraveling.”

John thinks of the crumpled red hood of his BMW, of his mobile, of the debris floating just under his favorite window of the

Grey House. A yellow life jacket, mini bottles of alcohol, a metal pushcart, dress shoes and stiff-collared shirts and crushed

laptops...

Of course. He closes his eyes. Of course:

Remnants of destroyed luggage.

A huge wave engulfs the rocks at the base of the boulders. Mabel’s feet are soaked.

“John, you left that Grey House—”

“I was forced out.”

“Were you?”

“He was reaching for me, nearly got hold of me—”

“But he didn’t. He was reaching for you and then you were out.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying you were terrified. So terrified that you broke away.”

“You’re saying,” he says flatly, “I broke out of the place I wanted to be in in the first place.”

“Broke away .”

He doesn’t understand the distinction and feels himself growing impatient but does his best to tamp it. Mabel said impatience

was his typical reaction to their dynamic, and even at this point, he’d like to try not to repeat old cycles. “What do you

think the Grey Man wants with me?”

“If he wanted to end you, I think he could’ve.”

John scoffs.

“He didn’t end you, and you broke away. But I think you were on your way out before that moment. Maybe it’s why the Grey Man

showed up in the first place.”

She isn’t making sense. “The Grey Man showed up when those—” John was on the verge of saying that the Grey Man appeared upon

the arrival of the intruders, but he remembers now that the first time he’d seen the fog, the intruders hadn’t yet entered.

The first time the fog appeared, he’d just seen the crushed red hood of the BMW and his mobile floating in the ocean. He’d

just seen Mabel in the waves.

“You found Persephone in Los Angeles, of all the places you could’ve gone,” she says.

“We just happened to meet,” he whispers unconvincingly, because even there, in the Grey House, he must’ve felt her presence,

felt the weight of some unpaid debt that worked as a sort of metaphysical navigation system.

“There are no real coincidences. When you met her—if you think about it, it’s not surprising the Grey Man would show up when you started talking to, literally , your past mistake. You and Persephone were bound—meant—to meet.”

He blinks. “God? You think he orchestrated that?”

“I don’t profess to know all the mysteries of the universe. But you wouldn’t have found what you’d come for if you hadn’t

accompanied her. And maybe her brother wouldn’t have asked her to come help if she weren’t dating John the Saint aka John

the Truth aka John Moneybags.” Mabel shrugs. “Point is, lives intersect in ways we can only begin to imagine. That any man

can be an island—you tried that for a long time. It’s an illusion.”

The House was an island. An island of brick and wood and glass surrounded by an Ocean of Memories.

Coming back was never just about Persephone. “Mabel.” His voice hitches and he takes a great breath. (Persephone’s right:

it is a funny habit.) “I... meant to call, those years ago. But I waited. For far too long. I waited until it was too late,

and I’m so sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too, for my part in it.” She gives him a soft smile. “But we’ve gotten what most never have. A second chance.”

They stare quietly across the horizon.

“I guess I’m done with my... journey?”

“If you think you’ve finished, maybe you have.”

“And what about you?”

Mabel takes a breath and exhales slowly. She smiles a little, but it is a sad smile. “I always thought I was waiting for something.

For someone, maybe.”

“Who?”

“Someone who’d stick around.”

A distant seagull missile dives for the ocean surface. It shoots back into the air, its beak empty. “I’m sorry, Mabel.”

“Thank you. But don’t be. Much. I don’t think that was my assignment, anyway.”

“Assignment?”

“In the figurative sense. I think,” she says, “I was supposed to be doing this thing solo.” Now her tiny smile is conspiratorial. “With special company for just a little while.”

He feels for her a rush of what can only be called a deep, abiding love.

But there is something left undone, the thing he felt when he was last with Ruben and Persephone, when they were speaking

about Ruben’s arm. “The orphanage. I don’t want to go, but I have a feeling I’m supposed to return somehow, to stand where

it once stood.”

“So you do want to go?”

“I...” John looks at her suspiciously. “Hold on. Is this that place of mind, place of emotion thing you mentioned?”

“Put it this way,” Mabel says, “If you haven’t reached it in a few seconds, you’ll just be standing here confused.”

“And if I’m ready?”

Mabel smiles, pleased, as if she’s been waiting for him to say this all along.

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