How to Save a Life (11 page)

She squeezes his hand and looks first at me and then at Logan. “It’s time for us to go,” she says.

My heart drops. “Go?” I ask.

But Logan is nodding, like he was expecting the news. “Did the tree tell you?”

Katelyn nods. “Yes. But we knew it was coming.”

“I don’t understand,” I say, trying not to sound as panicked as I feel. “Both of you? The tree wants both of you to go at the same time?”

“Remember,” Logan says softly, “the tree’s all about helping you to finish the things that will make your life feel more complete.”

“But—” I say helplessly.

“We made peace a long time ago with the fact that we had to leave our families,” Frankie says. “And we both plan to spend the rest of our lives making sure they know how much we love them.”

“But the thing we both worried we’d never have a chance to do was to fall in love,” Katelyn says.

“And to be loved in return,” Frankie says, glancing at Katelyn.

“And we found it,” she concludes.

“But the tree doesn’t let you keep living forever. It’s about putting a period on the sentence, not about extending the paragraph,” Frankie says.

“So how did the tree tell you?” I’m still trying to wrap my head around all of this, including the mechanics of it.

“When we went down last night to ask it for one day more, we both heard it whispering,” Katelyn says. “It was saying, ‘You know love. You’ve found it. Now, you must let go.’ ”

“It said we had one more today,” Frankie says. “It’s time to begin saying our good-byes. We were lucky to get this extra time, you know? And when you find what you’ve been looking for, there’s a sort of peace that settles over you.”

“We’re ready,” Katelyn says.

Logan reaches over and squeezes my hand. “So what this means is that for the remainder of
our
todays, we’re supposed to avoid Katelyn and Frankie, and they’re supposed to avoid us. Today is their last repetition. They’ll still be here in our world, but they won’t be active players in it. We won’t see them again until we stop repeating today too.”

I can feel my eyes filling with tears. I’m not ready. “Isn’t there any way to ask for more time?”

All three kids shake their heads. “The tree knows, Jill,” Logan says. “It gives you exactly as much time as you need.”

Katelyn steps forward and hugs me tightly. “Thanks for everything. We weren’t sure at first about you joining us, but I’m so glad you did. It was awesome to keep repeating today with you.”

Frankie hugs me next, as Katelyn goes to hug Logan and whisper something in his ear. “Jill, thanks for everything you did for us,” Frankie says. “Especially that day in Miami.”

“I’m going to miss the two of you so much,” I say through my tears.

“Don’t worry. You’ll see us again soon.” Frankie pulls away, gives Logan a hug good-bye, and then steps back to Katelyn’s side and takes her hand.

I’m crying too hard to reply, and after a moment, Katelyn lets go of Frankie’s hand and gives me one more hug. “It’s really going to be okay,” she whispers. “I promise. Just keep listening to your heart.”

They walk out of the room, turning around to wave once. I turn back to Logan and am surprised to see him smiling.

“They’re going to be okay,” he says. “It’s proof that the tree works.”

“You’re not going to leave me too, are you, Logan?” I ask him. Maybe it’s silly, but I’ve come to rely on him most of all.

“I’m not going anywhere. You and I are in this together.”

But that afternoon, as Logan and I head back upstairs from visiting the tree, my heart feels heavy. I’ve grown to love all three kids, and life without two of them just won’t be the same.

A
S
I
SUSPECTED, the next day feels strange and empty without Frankie and Katelyn. As Logan warned, I have to be conscious not to drop by their hospital rooms, because interacting with them when I’m not supposed to could throw off the balance of things.

As I head down in the morning to ask the tree for one more day, I spot Jamie across the lobby, but I avoid him, because I’m already feeling heartbroken about Frankie and Katelyn; I can’t handle my feelings for him too.

“Please tell me you got laid last night,” Sheila says as I reemerge onto the eighth floor and head toward the nursing station. I sigh as the teary grandmother in the corner looks up, as usual, with a sour expression on her face.

“Why?” I ask this morning, joining Sheila at the desk.

“What?”

“Why do you hope I got laid last night?” I’m short-tempered and taking it out on her, but being asked this almost every repetition of today is starting to wear on me.

“Well, because you’re lonely,” she says, lowering her voice.

“Sleeping with someone random isn’t going to help that. In fact, I think it would make it worse.”

She stares at me. “But it would be a chance to be close to someone.”

“No, it wouldn’t. It would be a physical thing, and my hormones would go all crazy and give me weird attachment issues, but it wouldn’t really mean anything.”

I’m surprised to see Sheila’s eyes fill with tears. “Well, it would be nice to be wanted, okay? You can’t tell me it wouldn’t.”

“Sheila? Is everything okay?”

And then, right in front of me, her whole façade crumbles, and she begins to cry. “I can’t . . . I don’t know . . . How could he . . . ?” Sheila’s voice trails off into hiccupping sobs.

“Sheila, what’s wrong?” I pull her into a hug until her tears slow.

“Darrell left me last week,” she finally manages.

“What?”

“We’ve been married thirteen years, Jill. And he just wakes up and decides he’s done?”

“Sheila! Why didn’t you tell me?”

She sniffles. “Because I’ve been sitting here giving you love advice for years. I figured you’d think I was a fraud.”

I refrain from mentioning that the “love advice” she’s referring to has really just been a constant stream of questions about when I’m getting laid, which hasn’t exactly been helpful. “Sheila, just because your marriage has hit a bump in the road doesn’t make you a fraud for giving me advice, okay? But what happened?”

“I have no idea.” She sniffles some more and then adds, “He said I don’t let him in anymore, okay? But I don’t know what he’s talking about. I’m an open book.”

“So are you talking divorce?”

“Not yet.” She wipes her eyes. “He just said he needs a break. That he wants me to think about things. But he’s walking out, isn’t he? He’s walking out because he doesn’t want me anymore.”

“I doubt that’s the case.”

She sighs. “Look at me. I’ve put on thirty pounds in the last decade. I’ve got gray hair that wasn’t there before. I’m old and stubborn. No wonder he doesn’t want to be with me.”

I sigh. The pain in her eyes is so raw that it’s hurting me. It’s then that I realize I can do something about this, though. I can pay Darrell a visit today and demand to know the truth, and neither he nor Sheila will remember any of it when they wake up in the morning. “I’m going to fix this for you, okay, Sheila?”

She snorts. “Fix it? How?”

“I don’t know yet. But trust me. We’re going to get to the bottom of this.” It gives me one more thing to do before I go.

10

O
N THE WAY
out of the hospital a few minutes later, I’m so caught up in thinking about Sheila and Darrell that I forget my own lack of a love life for a moment—until I collide with Jamie beside the tree.

“Oh, geez, I’m so sorry!” he says, grabbing my arm to steady me. “Are you okay?”

I meet his green eyes for a moment and then look away. “Totally my fault,” I say.

“No, I’m sure it was mine. I get distracted sometimes.”

I feel like telling him that I know that about him, that this isn’t the first time we’ve run into each other, but he’s still holding my arm, and the heat of his skin against mine is making me a little dizzy. He seems to notice that we’re still touching at the same moment, and he pulls quickly away.

“Sorry,” he says, looking flustered. “Have we met before?”

“Um, no.” I hate lying, but the real explanation would be a thousand times more complicated.

“But I’m sure we have.” His forehead creases. “Jill, right?”

I stare at him. “Right. But how did you know that?”

“I—I don’t know.”

I force a smile, but my heart is racing.
There’s a part of him that remembers me. What does this mean?

“Well.” He just stares at me for another moment, until things begin to feel awkward between us. “I hope we meet again, Jill.”

“So do I, Jamie.”

“You
do
know me.”

“Yes. But I think maybe it’s best for you if I stay away in the future.” I hurry away before he can say another word.

In my car, I turn the engine on and sit there for a minute without moving. So Logan was right about the cumulative nature of relationships. Jamie knows me, even though each new today is technically a day on which we haven’t yet met. But does that also mean that there’s a piece of him that cares for me and that will be hurt when I’m gone? I can’t do that to someone who has already lost a child. Sure, I want to fall in love, but not at the expense of someone else’s well-being. It’s just not fair.

After a while, I back out of my spot and leave the garage, heading toward Rijs, the Dutch restaurant where Sheila’s husband, Darrell, has worked as a bartender for as long as I’ve known her. It takes me fifteen minutes to get there and another five to find a parking spot. I walk in just past eleven and find him standing behind the bar stocking glasses.

He squints at me. “Jill?” he asks, like he can’t quite believe it.

“Hey, Darrell.” I sit down at the bar.

“We’re not open for another fifteen minutes,” he says.

“I know. I was hoping to catch you before you had any customers.”

His jaw twitches. “You want something to drink?”

“I’m okay.”

He pours me a glass of water anyhow and joins me on the outer side of the bar. “What is it?” he asks as he sits down on a bar stool. “Sheila’s okay, isn’t she?”

“She’s heartbroken, Darrell,” I say. There’s no reason to beat around the bush; he won’t remember any of this when he wakes up.

“I didn’t mean to hurt her. You have to know that. I just—I couldn’t deal anymore.”

“Deal with what?”

“Jill, I’m really not sure it’s my place to be discussing this with you.”

“Look, Sheila doesn’t know I’m here. And I don’t ever intend to tell her. But I want to help fix this. If there’s any part of you that wants to get back together with her, you have to tell me the truth so I can do something about it.”

He gives me a strange look and then taps his fingers on the bar a few times. “Of course I want to get back together with her.”

“Then what’s the problem? Because she wants that too, as far as I can tell.”

He looks at me suspiciously for a moment before sighing heavily. He appears to deflate. “Look, it’s just that she’s always picking at me. I mean, you know Sheila. She’s always up in everyone’s business. But with me, it’s different. This might sound lame to you, but it’s like I haven’t been able to do anything right in the last five years. She second-guesses everything. I make a bologna sandwich and cut it into quarters, and she tells me I should have cut it in half. I make the bed, and she tells me the pillows are in the wrong order. I try to make love to her, and she tells me I’m going too fast or too slow, and that’s before we even get started. So lately, I haven’t even bothered. There are a million other examples like that.”

“So you left her? Because she criticizes you sometimes?”

“No. I moved out for the time being to get my bearings because I honestly can’t remember the last time I did something right in her book. That’s not an exaggeration. She doesn’t have a single nice word to say to me, and the only conclusion I can logically draw at this point is that she just doesn’t love me anymore.”

“That’s not true,” I say immediately. “Not at all. Sheila just broke down crying at work because you’d left.”

He raises his eyebrows. “Sheila?
My
Sheila? She actually
cried
?”

“Yes. Believe me, you got through to her.”

He shakes his head. “You know, I’d like to believe that. But I know her. She’s just going to slip right back into all her old patterns if I come back.”

“But what if she doesn’t? What if she can change?”

“People don’t change, Jill.”

“Maybe that’s true. But they can change their behavior. And what we’re talking about here is the way Sheila is acting, not the way she’s feeling.”

He considers this for a long time. “I’d be willing to try again. I love her, Jill, I do. I just don’t know that things can be any different.”

“I understand,” I tell him. “But I’m going to fix this. You’ll see. It will all be okay.”

I give him a hug and leave, feeling like a bit of a traitor to Sheila for talking to Darrell behind her back but hoping that on the next today, I can use what I learned to help.

I
SPEND THE next morning with Logan, playing Scrabble and talking about Sheila.

“I just feel a little funny about interfering,” I tell him as he completes the word
shazam
on the board. I high-five him, even though his twenty-point word means that I’m now losing.

“I don’t think it’s interfering, exactly,” he says. “I think the tree forbids us from using the repeated day for personal gain. Like you can’t watch the lottery numbers one night and then play the Powerball with those numbers the next today, because that wouldn’t be fair. But isn’t helping others a good use of this magical thing we’re stuck in?”

I shrug. “I keep thinking about time travel movies and how you’re not allowed to change things that have happened in the past, because it throws off the whole balance of the universe.”

“But we’re not traveling back in time here. We’re just repeating today over and over. And I think that part of being a good person is learning what we can and using that knowledge to help other people. Don’t you think?”

I think about it for a moment and nod, then I use the
a
in
shazam
to make the word
okay
. “I’m still going to ask the tree.”

“Just remember that the biggest thing that matters when you’re helping other people is to do everything you figure out on the last today. Like if you help Sheila get back together with her husband today, just remember you’ll have to do it again on the last today, or it gets erased. So today’s just kind of like a trial run, almost.”

“Right.”

Logan lays down more letters, creating the word
zorillas
. He grins at me. “I’m so beating you.”

I narrow my eyes. “
Zorillas
isn’t even a word.”

“It is too. They’re skunk-like mammals from southern Africa.”

I google it on my phone and realize he’s right. “How the heck did you know that?”

He shrugs. “Frankie used his spare time to read. Me? I look up words in the dictionary. Makes me unbeatable in Scrabble.”

“Man, have I been wasting my todays.” I grin at him.

He laughs. “Hey, I’ll be dead before I’m eleven. I might as well be good at something.”

That sobers me. “Logan—” I begin.

He looks down for a minute. “It’s okay.” He doesn’t elaborate, but after a moment, he adds, “Although I always thought it would be cool to be a teenager, you know? There’s something about turning thirteen that sounds so much more grown-up than ten.”

“But didn’t you say you’ve been repeating for years?”

He nods.

“So you’re already thirteen, when you think about it that way.”

He laughs. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. Still, it would have been cool in real life.”

L
ATER THAT MORNING, after leaving an anonymous bouquet of flowers for Sheila at the nursing station in hopes of cheering her up, I head down to the bench to talk to Merel. He emerges from the hospital, sits down beside me, and as usual, asks me for the time.

“Can I ask you something?” I say after telling him that it’s a few minutes before noon.

“Of course, young lady.”

“You’ve been married for a long time, right?”

He smiles. “Seventy years.”

I nod. “I have a friend who’s going through a bit of a rough patch in her marriage right now. I think she and her husband have just grown apart, and they both love each other, but they don’t know how to fix things.”

“Ah. Yes. Unfortunately, this isn’t uncommon in relationships. Think of a marriage like the body you live in. Over the course of your life, your body grows and changes, not always for the better, but you learn to adapt and to live with it, right?”

I nod.

“Marriage is like that too. When you promise someone forever, as long as it’s the right person and you’ve married for the right reasons, you’re built to grow and change, just like you’re built to inhabit the body you live in. So will there be rough patches? Of course. Like how babies scream and cry as their teeth are coming in: it hurts, but in the end, they’re better for it. Or look at me: I’m not the same as I was seventy years ago, but these lines on my face, they mean I’ve laughed and cried and lived. These arms of mine aren’t as strong as they used to be, but they’re still strong enough to hold on to the woman I love, and that’s all I need. What I’m trying to say is that in marriage, just like with your very own body, you have to learn to let go of the past as things transform and change. You have to embrace what you’ve become and strive to be the best version of it.”

I smile. “How do you know all that?”

He chuckles. “Lots of living, my dear. Lots of living.”

My heart aches for a moment for all the living I won’t get to do. But as Merel has pointed out, we have to adapt to what life has given us. “With my friend and her husband, I think they’ve both done things to hurt the other person. It sounds like maybe my friend has taken her husband for granted.”

Merel nods. “That’s common too. But the only way to fix it is to be honest.”

“What do you mean?”

“If she’s done wrong, she needs to face up to it. She needs to be honest with herself first, and then she needs to be honest with him about what she’s done and about her hopes for moving forward. Honesty is at the root of love, you see. Some people think it’s all about chemistry or physical attraction or maybe even the way you match up on paper. And those things are important, but they fade over the years. Love is always rooted in truth, and you must feed it with honesty to keep it thriving.”