me
now
and
then
no
me
CHAPTER 35
A Crack in the Universe
The toes of my Chucks hung over the white metal edge, a town sleeping hundreds of feet below me. The tiny houses and tiny cars looked like toys, and it was easy to imagine them dusted with glitter under the tree with the rest of my mother’s Christmas town.
But they weren’t toys.
I knew this view.
You don’t forget the last thing you see before you die. Trust me.
I was standing on top of the Summerville water tower, veins of cracked white paint spreading out from under my sneakers. The curve of a black heart drawn in Sharpie caught my eye.
Was it possible? Could I really be home?
I didn’t know until I saw her.
The fronts of her black orthopedic shoes were lined up perfectly with my Chucks.
Amma was wearing her black Sunday dress with the tiny violets scattered all over it, and a wide-brimmed black hat. Her white gloves gripped the handles of her patent-leather pocketbook.
Our eyes met for a split second, and she smiled—relief spreading across her features in a way that was impossible to describe. It was almost peaceful, a word that I would never use to describe Amma.
That’s when I realized something was wrong. The kind of wrong you can’t stop or change or fix.
I reached for her at the exact same moment she stepped off the edge, into the blue-black sky.
“Amma!” I reached for her, the way I used to reach for Lena in my dreams when she was the one falling. But I couldn’t catch Amma.
And she didn’t fall.
The sky split open like the universe was tearing, or like someone had finally picked that hole in it. Amma turned her face toward it, tears running down her cheeks even as she smiled at me.
The sky held her up, as though Amma was worthy of standing on it, until a hand reached out from the center of the tear and the blinking stars. It was a hand I recognized—the one that had offered me his crow so I could cross from one world to another.
Now Uncle Abner was offering that hand to Amma.
His face blurred in the darkness next to Sulla, Ivy, and Delilah. Amma’s other family. Twyla’s face smiled down at me, charms tied into her long braids. Amma’s Caster family was waiting for her.
But I didn’t care.
I couldn’t lose her.
“Amma! Don’t leave me!” I shouted.
Her lips didn’t move, but I heard her voice, as sure as if she was standing next to me. “I could never leave you, Ethan Wate. I’ll always be watchin’. Make me proud.”