The Irreversible Reckoning

  ***

  “I remember the log cabin.” That’s what I wanted to tell her. When she had asked me about it before, I had smiled, but I hadn’t said that I remembered. As you probably know, I remembered it very well. It was a pipe-dream, of course. I knew that. But I remembered how we had dreamed so shamelessly about it, how we had envisioned our new lives as being nothing but peaceful and eventless, calm and tranquil and short, full of love and life, to be over only when we were old and gray. Of course, when we found out that we were immortal, we thought, “All the better. More time in our log cabin. More time to live our peaceful and eventless life together, because we have no stake in this war, so we will not fight in it.”

  Everything had changed, but the dream hadn’t. Even when we were old and bitter on the inside, even though we were still young and fresh on the outside, that idealistic scenario of a log cabin in the woods, with smoke pouring from the chimney, a vegetable garden in the backyard, fruit trees in the woods, kids running around, me chopping wood, her harvesting plants (or maybe vice versa), it was all still there. It wasn’t just us and our children there anymore, though; when our second family was alive, we envisioned them there with us, and now that they were gone, I pictured John, Elijah, and whomever they loved there with us, and Alice pictured Lara there, but the base dream was still alive and well, growing and throbbing inside our bodies like an extra, infallible organ that pumped our blood faster and made our minds and hearts thrive. But it was also like an indestructible cancer, a tumor that grew and then shrunk and then grew again, and that tumor always hurt, even when it didn’t.

  “I remember the log cabin.” She knew I remembered it fondly and sadly, but I hadn’t said it. Alice was one who needed to hear things. A smile wouldn’t tell her all she needed to know. My smile hadn’t answered the question in the way either she or I wanted it to be answered. She knew I remembered it, but she wanted to hear me say it. It was becoming hazy to her, and she wanted me to remind her. So I wanted to tell her. After our fight the night before, she might not have cared to hear me mention our childish dreams, especially considering that they represented exactly the desires in me she viewed as being so cowardly—peace, isolation, a voluntary removal of ourselves from the war of Tyre versus Adam, Don versus whomever, us versus them—but it always brought a smile to her face when we talked about it, and it was the old smile, the one that made her cheeks turn to rosy plums and her blue eyes glow. Regardless of what the dream represented, or of its possible undertones, or the cowardly motivations, or whatever you want to call it, she loved to dream about it. Even when she feared that she would never be able to acclimate to that life—and that fear grew with each year that passed, with each year that she stormed around Pangaea, leading an army of elite super-soldiers, killing and capturing, and carrying the flag of the Red Anarchy, giving talks at schools to little girls and boys about how Don’s soldiers were the best in the world, how they would keep them safe, telling older girls and boys about why the Armed Forces was right for everyone, in some way, how they can use everyone, even the meek, the quiet, the shy, the scared—she still remembered the log cabin, and she wanted it.

  I thought. I hoped.

  “Our industry before was running the house, running the village, and sending out our best guys and gals only when we needed to. We were in the business of hiding and hoping, Quinn.” Don had told me all those days ago, “Now we’re in the business of war. Winning it, and winning it soon. That’s what the people want.”

  I ran to John’s before the sun came up, thinking that Alice would absolutely go to her second surrogate father’s house. When we had fought before, she always went next door to Brynna and James’s, and it was never to speak to Violet, her best friend, it was to hear the advice of her surrogate parents. They never got involved, meaning they had never taken sides. But they had listened, and they had helped us both resolve our trivial relationship issues, because I went to them, too. No one gave better advice than James and Brynna, sitting on their couch, her with her legs tucked up under her, her hand on his knee, his arm across the top of the couch, coming down to drape over her shoulders and rub her arm, both of their faces thoughtful, listening. John and Lara had taken up that mantle (which was funny, because Lara was Brynna’s mother, and though she said that she and Brynna were nothing alike, when you asked for advice from her, she sat in exactly the same pose as Brynna, and when she turned her face a certain way, I could see traces of her oldest daughter.) So if Alice was going to go anywhere, it would be to John’s first.

  But John wasn’t home. I banged on the door for five minutes until his neighbor, an elderly Pangaean man who ran the bookstore in town, came out, eyes half closed to block out the very soft, barely-there morning light, to tell me that John had shipped out an hour earlier.

  Shit.

  I ran to Eli’s, praying that she was there gathering up a few things, and while I was running, I was asking myself why I hadn’t asked the Pangaean bookstore owner (whose name I could not remember in that moment, despite how many times I had been in his store) if Alice had been with John. I banged on Eli’s door, thinking that if John had left, Eli probably had, too, but to my surprise, the door opened, revealing Elijah Olivier, looking worse than he had ever looked, probably in his entire life. His eyes were almost totally closed as he squinted in the light, and his hand was up, trying to use the bottle of some black liquid that was clutched in his hand to block out the sun. He was shirtless, in his boxers, his hair sticking up in so many different directions it almost looked like it was defying gravity, and the whole night before, the events leading up to mine and Alice’s supremely brutal blow-up, came rushing back to me. And I realized that I was a huge asshole.

  “Shit, man.” I said, forgetting completely why I had come there. “Shit, man, I am so sorry.”

  He turned and walked into the house, leaving the door open, and I followed him inside. In less than twelve hours, it had gone from the posh, stylish home of Elijah and Melinda, the semi-happily married couple, to the destroyed rubble heap of Elijah, the widower. Everything was flipped, papers had flown everywhere, glass was broken, and there was a huge heap of vomit on the leather sofa, which he thrust himself down beside like it wasn’t there. I was actually surprised he hadn’t sat right in it.

  “She’s dead, bro.” He murmured to me, so quietly that I barely heard him, “She’s dead. It took hours, man. Like, three hours. John couldn’t get any Elixir. No one could. We were all out. How does that happen?! Don always told them to keep that shit stocked. And we were out. I need to check the doctor’s logs. I need to see who used all the Elixir. If anyone used it. Because they didn’t, man. No one could have used that much Elixir. No way. They just made a run for it two weeks ago. Remember? Did that happen, Quinn? That happened, right?”

  “Eli…” I started to say, “I’m so sorry…”

  “I told John I wouldn’t go after Don. He didn’t want to leave me alone, but they gotta try to track those fuckers down, I told him. No one can track like he can. He had to go. I told him I wouldn’t go after Don, and he knows I can’t lie to him. I can’t lie to him, because he loves my mom, and my mom loves him, and when I lie to him, it’s like lying to her. Plus, I love him. I could lie to Daniel no problem, but not to John. I just can’t. I told him I wouldn’t go after Don, but I’m struggling right now, Quinn. I’m struggling to keep my promise, because I know he’s responsible for this. The Elixir is gone. The bomb went off, but he got away. Everyone on his Council is dead. A couple who agreed with him, almost everyone who disagreed, and now, I’ll bet you anything he’s filling up the Council with his people. All his people. I’ll bet you anything. But I barely care about that, because Mel is dead. Mel is gone. She’s dead, and I loved her so much, man…”

  The tears started coming down his cheeks, but his face didn’t change from the look it had worn since he had opened the door; his eyes were still squinting, his eyebrows were still furrowed, his lips were still turned down—a look of confu
sion. Or maybe it was a look of pain. I don’t know.

  “We fought, but I loved her. We fought, but it wasn’t ‘cuz we were mad. It was just to fight. Allie thought it was bad for us, bad for the relationship…”

  Funny coming from her, considering how we had both acted the night before, considering how we had been acting for a couple of years. That she thought she should give anyone relationship advice was sad and yet hilarious, because our relationship had been tying itself up more and more each year into a knot that was too tight and too mangled to ever be unraveled again.

  “…but I saw fighting that was bad for a relationship. When I was younger. I saw how my parents used to go at each other, and it was never like that. Mel and I always needled each other, from the first time she walked into the training facility and said we had better clean up when we were done, or she’d bar us from the premises, and I called her the Wicked Witch of the West End, and she called me a pompous little show-horse who wasn’t nearly as good-looking as I thought I was, and I was like, ‘Goddamn, I want to take this woman out for a drink,’ and she said she thought, ‘By the One God, I want this man to take me out for a drink,’ and we did drink, and…”

  He nodded off for a second, but when I took the bottle from his hands so I could smell it in an attempt to identify its contents, he jerked awake again, and took it back from me.

  “When Brynna and Violet and Penny died, I had just found my mom. I had to take care of her. We could grieve together. But she’s gone, and maybe she’s dead, and it would be worse if she’s not, wouldn’t it? God, what he did to her before…” He took a long pull from the bottle, and his arm dropped down almost by its own will after he had chugged a quarter of what was left inside. His fingers released, and the bottle clanged to the floor and rolled to disappear under the couch. “Don is responsible for this, and what if he’s responsible for the other siege? The one when Mom gave herself up? What if he’s responsible for Mel’s death and my mom getting taken again?”

  I opened my mouth to answer, and I was ready to tell him that he was creating an incriminating case against Don, and that was a dangerous thing to be doing. But if he and John were right, and Don had planned the bombing, if he had arranged the siege with the Old Spirits all those years ago, then we were in more trouble than I could possibly fathom right then. I wanted to tell myself that Eli’s grief was making him connect dots that weren’t really there, because an intricate and implausible conspiracy theory would give him someone close by to blame, not some faceless enemy that was spread all across the endless lands of Pangaea, but my gut told me that he was right. John had believed it. Eli believed it. Lara had known it. Brynna had known it. Don was not to be trusted, and he was finally making his move.

  “He bombs his own sermon. He makes sure ahead of time that there is no Elixir to heal the wounded.” Eli continued, “And all those years ago, he somehow leads the Old Spirits here so they can burn down half the village, and why? Because we were living peacefully by then? Because we had forgotten the war, and he wanted us back in it? Because people had been listening to my mom, because they had forgiven her, and he saw another Olivier woman coming in to take his throne? Probably, but there is more to it than that. The Old Spirits would kill him. They would come in here, and they would change our ways to their ways, right? So he wouldn’t align himself with them. He wouldn’t. Right?”

  There was that Olivier brain at work. I had seen it most strongly in Brynna, of course, but Violet, Lara, and Eli were known to start at the foot of the woods, so to speak, staring down hundreds of paths that all led into darkness, but promised light at the end. They would choose a path, run up it for a while, and they’d either double back, or they’d find a smaller path branching off the larger path, and they would run further, double back, and run further. Now, Brynna sped through the dark and treacherous forest in record time, and nine times out of ten, arrived at the correct conclusion. It took a little longer for the others, but as I sat watching Eli as he worked his way through the woods, I did what I had always done when I watched: I listened, and found myself won over by their reasoning. It was rare that after traversing the dark and treacherous woods, an Olivier arrived at the wrong conclusion, and as Eli talked, I found myself more and more convinced that he and I had some work to do.

  “I think you’re right.” I told him, and I reached out and slapped his face lightly when he began to doze off, “You hear me? I think you’re right.”

  “‘Course I’m right. Motherfucker. Don’t hit me ‘cuz I’m right. High-five or something that makes sense.”

  “I’ll high-five you when we figure this out. It will be one of those jumping high-fives, even though you’re way taller than me, so I’ll have to jump really high, and contrary to the old stereotype, not all black guys can jump really high.”

  He laughed at that so hysterically that in his drunkenness, he drooled. He wiped the drool away, and then he wiped the tears from his eyes.

  “Shit, man… Making me laugh already, and my wife’s not even cold yet. The fuck is wrong with you?”

  “I’m a good friend, clearly. Mel wouldn’t want you to…”

  He waved both hands sloppily, his eyes closed, his head shaking back and forth.

  “Not yet, man. I can’t start thinking about that yet. I’ve got this mission, right? I’ve got to solve the mystery, tie up all the loose ends, kill the dictator, save the world, right? Then I’ll think about what Mel would have wanted, and I’ll probably put a fucking bullet in my head.”

  “Don’t say that, Eli!”

  “I don’t mean it. I’m too much of a coward to put a bullet in my head, and Mel would be pissed if I did it while I still had you, John, and Allie to look after.”

  I had always thought Melinda hated us, because John was not exactly fond of her and Eli’s constant bickering, Allie thought she was an outright bitch, and I kind of did, too. But I found myself more than a little saddened by her death, and I was definitely more than a little saddened by the deaths of all those innocent people the night before, and I found myself totally convinced that Don was up to something, and it was up to Eli and me to figure out what.

  “You do have us. We need you. Christ, there’s not many members of our weird family left. We can’t afford to lose you, too. So here’s what we’re going to do: You’re going to take today to get drunk and grieve. Tonight, we’re going to go to the memorial service. Tonight, I might even get drunk with you. But tomorrow, we are going to start investigating this. We’re going to get to the bottom of it, and then, we’re either going to confront Don, or we’re going to have to just hate him for all the other stuff he’s done and because he’s an all-around disgusting excuse for a human being.”

  “Sounds good. I’m gonna puke now, so you might want to clear out.”

  “Gross. I’m out. Call me if you need me.”

  I left his house just as he made a truly awful wretching noise. The sound of splattering vomit followed me out onto the rocky street.