Beautiful Redemption
Page 16

I thought about the fairgrounds.
I thought about the cigarette butts and the old weeds and the hard dirt with the imprints of long-gone carnival booths and trailer hitches.
Nothing happened.
I tried again. Still nothing.
I wasn’t sure how your average Sheer did it. Which left me ten kinds of stuck. I almost gave up and walked, figuring if I could make it out to Route 9, I could hitch a ride on the back of an unsuspecting pickup truck.
Just when it seemed impossible, I thought about Amma. I thought about wanting to get inside my house so badly I could taste it, like a whole plate of Amma’s pot roast. I thought about how much I missed her, how I wanted to hug her, take a good scolding, and untie her apron strings, like I had my entire life.
The minute those thoughts formed clearly in my mind, my feet started to buzz. I looked down, but I couldn’t see them. I felt like a seltzer tablet someone had dropped into a glass of water, like everything around me was starting to bubble and fizz.
Then I was gone.
I found myself standing in the tunnel, right across from the Temporis Porta. The ancient door looked as forbidding to me in death as it had in life, and I was happy to leave it behind as I made my way through the tunnel and toward Wate’s Landing. I knew where I was going, even in the dark.
I ran the whole way home.
I kept running until I shoved my way through the pantry door, up the stairs, and into the kitchen. Once I got past the problem of the salt and the charms, the walls didn’t seem like a big deal—or feel like much of one either.
It was like walking in front of one of the Sisters’ endless slide shows, where you step in front of the projector during the hundredth photo of the cruise ship, and suddenly you look down and the ship is cruising right over you. That’s what a wall felt like. Just a projection, as unreal as a photograph from someone else’s trip to the Bahamas.
Amma didn’t look up as I approached. The floorboards didn’t squeak for the first time ever, and I thought about all the times I would’ve appreciated that—when I was trying to sneak out of that kitchen or my house, out from beneath Amma’s watchful eye. It required a miracle, and even then it usually didn’t work.
I could have used a few Sheer skills back when I was alive. Now I would give anything for someone to know I was actually here. Funny how things work out like that. Like they say, I guess you really do have to be careful what you wish for.
Then I stopped in my tracks. Actually, the smells coming from the oven stopped me.
Because the kitchen smelled like Heaven, or the way Heaven should smell—since I was thinking about it a lot more these days. The two greatest smells on earth. Pulled pork with Carolina Gold, that was one of them. I’d know Amma’s famous golden mustard barbeque sauce anywhere, not to mention the slow-cooked pork that gave up and fell to pieces at the first touch of a fork.
The other smell was chocolate. Not just chocolate, but the densest, darkest chocolate around, which meant the inside of Amma’s Tunnel of Fudge cake, my favorite of all her desserts. The one she never made for any contest or fair or family in need—just for me, on my birthday or when I got a good report card or had a rotten day.
It was my cake, like lemon meringue was Uncle Abner’s pie.
I sank into the nearest chair at the kitchen table, my head in my hands. The cake wasn’t for me to eat. It was for her to give, an offering. Something to take out to Greenbrier and leave on my grave.
The thought of that Tunnel of Fudge cake laid out on the fresh dirt by the little wooden cross made me want to throw up.
I was worse than dead.
I was one of the Greats, but a whole lot less great.
The egg timer went off, and Amma pushed back her chair, spearing the charm bag with her needle one last time and letting it drop to the table.
“Don’t want your cake to dry out now, do we, Ethan Wate?” Amma yanked open the oven door, and a blast of heat and chocolate shot out. She stuck her quilted mitts in so far I worried she was going to catch fire herself. Then she yanked out the cake with a sigh, almost hurling it onto the burner.
“Best let it cool a bit. Don’t want my boy burnin’ his mouth.”
Lucille smelled the food and came wandering into the kitchen. She leaped onto the table, just like always, getting the best vantage point possible.
When she saw me sitting there, she let out a horrible howl. Her eyes caught me in a fixed glare, as if I’d done something deeply and personally offensive.
Come on, Lucille. You and me, we go way back.
Amma looked at Lucille. “What’s that, old girl? You got somethin’ to say?”
Lucille yowled again. She was ratting me out to Amma. At first I thought she was just trying to be difficult. Then I realized she was doing me a favor.
Amma was listening. More than listening—she was scowling and looking around the room. “Who’s there?”
I looked back at Lucille and smiled, reaching out to scratch her on the top of her head. She twitched beneath my hand.
Amma swept the kitchen with her eagle eye. “Don’t you be comin’ in my house. Don’t need you spirits comin’ around. There’s nothin’ here left to take. Just a lot a broken-down old ladies and broken hearts.” She reached slowly toward the jar sitting on the counter and took hold of the One-Eyed Menace.
There it was. Her death-defying, all-powerful wooden spoon of justice. The hole in the middle looked even more like an all-seeing eye tonight. And I had no doubt it could see, maybe as well as Amma. In this state—wherever I was—I could see plain as day that the thing was strangely powerful. Like the salt, it practically glowed, leaving a trail of light where she waved it in the air. I guess things of power came in all shapes and sizes. And when it came to the One-Eyed Menace, I’d be the last one to doubt anything it could do.