overwhelmed the words aren’t taking shape. It’s like all my synapses have fired at once, and I can’t form a single coherent thought. Everything is sensory—the warmth of his arm across the back of my neck, the smell of pine and oak, the sound of birds and bugs, the light refracting off the scales of a salmon when it jumps out of the water, the taste of the drying tears that have tracked to my lips.
I have so much to say, so of course I say nothing. It’s not as if I’m scared, or as if I’m unsure of what I want to say. I want to tell him everything. I want to go through it all, day by day since I last saw him, leaving nothing out, so he can know the minutes and the hours he has missed. I want to tell him about Mom and how strong she really is. I want to tell him about Nina and how she might be the only one who understands why I missed him as much as I did. I want to tell him about Mary and how she kept us all together. I want to tell him about Christie and her betrayal. About our best friend Abe, who asked me to look away. About anyone and everyone he’s ever known.
But most of all, I want to tell him about Cal. I want to tell him about the man I love and the man I hate. I want to feel rage, I want to clench my fists and hurt something. I want my father to see just how much I hate the angel Calliel for taking from me what was rightfully mine, the consequences be damned. Fuck Michael and his beliefs about faith and sacrifice. Fuck Cal and his decisions. Fuck God and his games.
So much to say. I say nothing.
“How are you, Benji?” my father finally asks, his voice light and happy. It’s such a ridiculous question I can’t help but laugh out loud. And even though he may not understand, my father starts to laugh just the same. Such a big fucking sound. “Okay,” he says, chuckling. “That might not have been the best way to start.”
I grin at him, my anger temporarily forgotten. “It was the only way to start. I’m okay, Dad. You?”
He smiles faintly before looking back out at the river almost longingly. I don’t quite get the look, but I ignore it for now. “I’m better now,” he says softly. “Better than I have been in a long while. It’s been quiet here, since the others left.”
I feel a chill at his words. “What others?” I ask, looking around. There’s no one else in sight, and it doesn’t seem like anyone else is watching us.
He shrugs. “Just some people came and went,” he says. “I only talked to one of them. He was a… an odd man and he wanted me to go with him, but I couldn’t. I don’t think he understood, but I had to stay here. So he left.”
“Why here? Why didn’t you just leave?”
“I tried,” Big Eddie says, squeezing my shoulder. “I tried to walk home, but….”
Tears well in my eyes yet again, and I brush them away. “You couldn’t make it?”
He nods. “Every time I started walking down the road, I would get tired. I would need to sit down to rest, and before I knew it, I’d be asleep. And every time I woke up, I’d be right here again. I tried everything. I tried running. I tried sleeping before I left so I wouldn’t be tired. I tried cutting through the forest. I tried going the other way. It didn’t matter. I’d make it maybe half a mile, right before mile marker seventy-seven changed to seventy-six or seventy-eight, and then I’d have to stop.”
“What about the river?” I ask. “Did you try crossing the river?”
He tenses immediately, and I want to take the words back, though I don’t know why. “No,” he whispers, unable to look at me. “I never crossed the river. That’s what he wanted me to do, and I just couldn’t.”
“Who?”
“He called himself the River Crosser. He took the others across the river in this little boat, but I couldn’t go. I just couldn’t.”
Through the fog and haze, I hear the Strange Men, both light and dark, whispering in my head about crossing. I can’t quite remember what they said. It’s lost, at least for now, as the haze swallows it again. But that’s