Chapter Six: Saoirse decides to go back (pages 11-15)

Song for this part: "Life On Mars," David Bowie:

“Mom! It doesn’t work that way!” yelled Stephanie, but Saoirse didn’t listen; this daughter would of course try to stop her from this; she was the daughter Saoirse had created for herself here, a daughter who what Saoirse wanted in a daughter.

Just as she began to run, Saoirse also wondered why Stephanie persisted being the daughter who wanted to keep her in the After instead of becoming the daughter who wanted to help her get out of the After, but Saoirse had no time to ponder it because she was already at the edge of the roof and then off of it, her momentum carrying her forward in an arc, out out out over the porch and the sidewalk, a glimpse of Ansel and Chuck and Stephanie and Austin and William Howard Taft below her and then into the trees, crashing through the branches until she landed in the neighbors’ yard, on her feet, slumping to the ground and standing up to brush herself off, only to realize there was nothing to brush off. And, no part of her was hurt or scratched. She had landed on the ground with the same impact she would expect from stepping out of a car.

The neighbors were looking at her from their front porch.

“Hello,” the woman said, the one whose name Saoirse always blanked on at first. She fumbled again for it, here in the After, even, until it came to her: Cheryl. Saoirse lodged the name in her head as she stepped out of the bushes and wondered if there was something significant or profound in the fact that even in the After she was not great at remembering people’s names. Probably not, she decided.

“How are you doing?” Saoirse asked, mere moments before realizing that was a dumb question; they were doing okay; it was the After, she knew, so they had to be doing okay, even better than okay. They should be doing perfectly, shouldn’t they?

Or should they?

Is it essential to my happiness that Cheryl and her husband…she momentarily could not think of his name, either, then had it… Tom be happy, too? She wondered. They’re not really here, after all. She had to assume that Cheryl and Tom were not really here at all because of how unlikely it was that she, her whole family, and her neighbors would die, and then that they would all want exactly the same thing, that thing being to go on living in their little cul de sac with all their same neighbors – albeit now their neighbors occasionally took running leaps off of rooftops that would never need repairing.

That all raced through her mind as Tom said “Fine; we’re fine. How are you?” and a rustle in the brush behind her caused her to look over her shoulder as she answered.

“I’m fine. How else could I be?” she asked, as Ansel came through the bushes.

Cheryl and Tom looked puzzled. Saoirse moved away from Ansel, closer to them.

“What do you mean?” asked Cheryl, not unkindly; she was, Saoirse, saw, genuinely confused.

“So you don’t know?”

“Don’t know what? Has there been some trouble?” asked Cheryl. She looked at Tom, then back to Ansel and Saoirse.

“They don’t know,” said Saoirse, looking to Ansel. There was more rustling behind them.

“Know what?” asked Ansel.

Saoirse was beginning to feel that everybody simply talked in questions. She turned back to Cheryl and Tom.

“Don’t you find it the slightest bit weird that I came flying down off the roof and into your bushes?” They looked at her and then at her house next door.

“I guess I didn’t realize that you’d jumped off the roof,” Tom said. “If that’s what you did. I just thought you’d stumbled in here or something. I didn’t hear anything or see you come flying down. I was reading.”

“I wasn’t looking either,” Cheryl said, “But I heard you come down. I heard the branches and things. I looked up and you were coming down. I thought maybe you’d fallen from the tree. Why were you jumping off your roof?”

Stephanie and Chuck had come up the driveway.

“I was… trying something.” Saoirse looked hard at them. She walked up to Cheryl and looked into her eyes.

“Saoirse, you’re acting very strangely,” Cheryl said. “Did you hit something? Should we take you to the doctor?”

“It’s okay,” said Ansel, walking up behind Saoirse and taking her elbow. Saoirse pulled it away from him and put her hands on Cheryl’s cheeks, holding them between the palms of her hands.

“What’re you doing?” asked Cheryl, her voice slightly muffled because she could not open her mouth all the way.

“Is everything perfect for you?” asked Saoirse.

“What?” Cheryl asked. Saoirse put her hands down.

“I asked is everything perfect for you?” She said again.

Cheryl looked at Tom.

“Maybe we’d better go inside,” said Tom.

“Is there an inside?” asked Saoirse, looking suddenly at their house. “Can I see it?”

Tom looked at Ansel.

“I’m trying,” Ansel said.

Saoirse looked at him, then, sharply. “Trying what?”

“Honey, let’s go back.”

“No.” Saoirse said it firmly but not angrily. She looked back at her house. “William Howard Taft!” she called. She saw that Tom and Cheryl seemed concerned.

“Saoirse,” Cheryl said.

“Do you mean, well, no, you don’t,” said Tom. He stopped talking as William Howard Taft pushed through the bushes. “That’s William Howard Taft,” he said then. Saoirse watched Tom carefully, trying to gauge how this would go, but not just that: trying to see how she wanted it to go and how she thought it would go and see if there would be a difference. “Aren’t you?” asked Tom.

“I am,” said William Howard Taft.

“But you died a long time ago,” said Tom.

“I did. That’s why I’m here.”

Tom looked at Saoirse, Ansel, the others, and back to William Howard Taft. “Here?”

Saiorse looked at William Howard Taft, too, and the large man said “This is the After. It’s where we go when we die.”

Tom looked back at Cheryl.

“Are we dead?”
“No,” Cheryl said.

“No,” Saoirse said, and they looked at her.

“I don’t remember dying,” Tom said.

“That’s because you didn’t die,” Saoirse said. “You didn’t die at all. You’re here because I created you here. This is my After, not yours, not anyone else’s. Everything in this… world… is here because I want it to be here, even if I don’t think I want it to be here, and even if I myself don’t want to be here,” she paused and looked at Tom. “You don’t remember dying,” she said to him.

“No,” said Tom. “But you said—“

“Never mind what I said.” Saoirse turned to Stephanie. “Do you remember dying?”

Stephanie shook her head.

Saoirse looked at Austin, who held Stephanie’s hand. “Do you? Sweetie? Do you remember anything about dying?”
Austin shook his head. He opened his mouth, and said “No,” and looked curious and a little scared. She knelt down. She took his cheeks in her hands. “It’s okay, honey.”

She looked at Ansel, and said “But you do. You do remember dying.”

Ansel said “Yes. A little bit.”

He was tearing up, again.

Saoirse stood still and thought. She didn’t think about the After. Instead, she tried hard to think about what her life had been like. She tried to remember tasting something. She tried to remember feeling things. She tried to picture the way a stocking cap felt scratchy on her head in the winter, when she pulled it on and it pressed down onto her hair and matted her hair to her head, the smushy feeling her head had with the hair all tucked up against it, then the staticky, light feeling when she took the hat off and her hair floated up at first, needing to be patted down and combed and re-set, needing to have the energy drained from it; she’d always pictured static electricity as pent-up energy, the energy of hair and feet that were cooped up in hats and slippers, looking to escape, as though her body was full of two-year-olds who were impatient to get out of the car at the park. She could remember those things, could almost feel them, but could not remember dying.

“I didn’t die,” she said, finally. “I didn’t die.”

She turned to Ansel and hugged him. “You did,” she said.

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Chapter Six: Saoirse decides to go back (pages 6-10)

Song for this part: "God's Highway," Tobias Froberg:

They stepped outside the door and Saoirse closed her eyes at the exact moment they did so, feeling William Howard Taft take her hand and pull her ever so slightly forward.

Her right foot stepped onto the front porch and then her left foot did, too.

She felt William Howard Taft holding her hand.

After a few seconds of just standing she opened her eyes. She was still on the front porch of the house, holding William Howard Taft’s hand, and with her left hand slightly outstretched, expectantly. She was leaning forward slightly. Just inside the door, Ansel was holding Chuck and looking at her. Stephanie peered over his shoulder.

She felt a little foolish.

“What happened?” she asked.

“What do you mean?” William Howard Taft asked.

“We didn’t go anywhere.”

“Quite.”

Saoirse tried to quell her impatience with that.

“Weren’t you going to take me somewhere?”

“I thought you were going to take me somewhere.”

“But I don’t know where we’re supposed to be going.”

“Yes, you do,” said William Howard Taft. “We’re supposed to be going home.”

“Maybe you are home,” Ansel said behind them.

Saoirse looked back at him, then at William Howard Taft.

“Is there any way to be sure whether they’re dead or alive?” she asked him. She guessed that William Howard Taft knew what she meant as he shook his head.

She looked back at Ansel and the children and wondered what if I make it out of here and go back home and they’re all dead? The fact that they’re here with me means that I want them here with me to be happy, right? So if I go back home that means I won’t be happy? Unless they’re also there, too?

But what she said was “How do I work the traveling part?”

“I don’t know,” admitted William Howard Taft.

“Well, how do you do it?”

“I don’t know that, either,” he said.

“You don’t know how you got us to my house from that forest?”

“No.” WIliam Howard Taft spoke thoughtfully. “These things always seem random to me. The way they did with you. When you first traveled, that is. The traveling happens and you end up someplace you needed or wanted to be. That is how I got into the forest: I was sitting and pondering how you had moved us from the beach to that ocean and the building with the stores, the mall, and I ended up in the forest. Then, when I wanted to talk to you again… what are you doing?”

He stopped because Saoirse had climbed up onto the rail that skirted the porch, a cast-iron railing that in her life was rusted and needed painting and was loose and rickety, but here in the After was perfectly maintained; she would have to spend even a second, it seemed, reminding Ansel that this year they were going to definitely fix up the porch.

In seconds she was gripping the edge of the gutter.

“Help me,” she said.

Ansel came outside and said “What on earth..” but he stopped as William Howard Taft, delicately for such a big man, cupped his hands lifted Saoirse onto the roof.

The house was a split-level house; she was on the lower roof now, looking down at them from a height of only about 3 feet above Ansel’s head. But her brain did not measure the height from her feet to Ansel’s head; it measured from her eyes to the porch, and she felt a little dizzy as she looked down. She shook it off, secure in the knowledge that nothing was going to happen here that could hurt her -- unless I want to be hurt? She wondered. The thought was shelved; she did not want to be hurt. She then wondered, as she grabbed the side of the brick chimney, whether she could want to be hurt. What do masochists do in the After? She thought as she began using the brick chimney to get on the upper roof.

“Saoirse,” Ansel called, “Stop!”

She didn’t stop.

She clutched at the edge of the bricks and felt their gritty sides below her fingers. The sharp edges did not cut her; she did not fear that they would. I should just wish myself up the chimney, she thought, but she knew by now that the After did not work that way. It’s not a genie, she thought to herself, propping her knee on a small indentation in the chimney that formed almost a step, and reaching up to grab the gutter at the upper edge of the house. It’s not a genie, but I can maybe make it work to do what I want consciously. She reached her other hand up and dangled from the gutter, feet flailing.

“Saoirse,” Ansel said again.

“Mom, come on down,” said Stephanie.

They’re worried about me, she thought. But are they worried that I’ll fall? Or that I’ll go away? She did a chin-up and flopped her left arm onto the roof, splaying out her hands. She rocked her legs back and forth and swung her left leg up, hooking her foot onto the gutter. Clenching her legs, she rolled over and pulled up and she was lying on her back on the rooftop, breathing hard and beginning to sweat and thinking: So things could still be hard to do in the After. I guess I wanted that to be hard to do.

She sat up and looked down over the edge; the distance was only double the height of the lower roof, but it seemed to increase her dizziness exponentially. She backed away from the edge and looked around the roof. All summer long, before the vacation, there had been an action figure up on the roof. Austin had thrown it there when he was mad at her for having to come in from the backyard for dinner. She had stood in the backyard, hands on her hips, and told him “Get over here and get inside.” Instead of getting inside, he had stood his ground and tried to grab his action figures and glared at her. She had come towards him, picking up some of his toys, little men with guns and robes and swords and horns on their heads, and carrying them as she got nearer him. “Give me that one, too,” she had said, demanding the final toy he’d been able to hold on to, but he had run around her and dodged her and ran towards the house and thrown the action figure onto the roof.

She’d left it there.

It wasn’t here now. The roof was clean. The small depression in the roof, the one Ansel had pointed out to her when they’d gotten up on the ladder, the dip in the shingles that meant an expensive repair would be needed, and probably before the winter, was gone, also.

She walked up to the peak of the roof and noted that they still had their satellite dish. Why would we need satellite television in the After? Shouldn’t we be able to watch any show we want? The satellite dish was there, she knew, because she wanted to get her television through a dish on the roof.

Saoirse was briefly chagrined to realize that her After, the existence in which she could have or be or do anything she wanted to have or be or do, included television. With all eternity ahead of her and a multitude of possibilities, her deepest desires included watching game shows in the afternoon.

She turned around. Ansel had continued calling after her. “Don’t worry,” she told him. “I’ll be fine.”

There was a silence, and then Ansel said “I know that.”

William Howard Taft’s voice drifted up. “What are you doing?”

“Forcing the issue,” she said.

“Forcing what issue?” he asked.

“If I can’t directly control the After, maybe I can indirectly control it,” she told him. “When you and I left before, I was bewildered and not thinking clearly. My subconscious took over, I think, and took us to those places while my conscious mind was overwhelmed. I need to do that again: overwhelm my conscious mind and let my subconscious mind take over.” She took a deep breath and finished: “That’s why I’m going to jump off the roof.”

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Chapter Six: Saoirse Decides To Go Back. (Pages 1-5)

Song for this part: "Satin In A Coffin," Modest Mouse

They walked to the door again, the front door. Ansel, behind her, said “I don’t want you to go, Saoirse. Honey.”

Sshe turned and looked back at him and said “That’s why I have to go.” When he just looked at her, confused, she went on. “It’s because you don’t want me to go that I need to leave. I don’t think you’re you, Ansel. I think you, real-Ansel, is back home in Life or is in his own, your own, After, and not here with me, because real Ansel would want me to be happy.” She pursed her lips and tried to decide how much of that she’d just made up. “You, I think, are just a version of Ansel I apparently wanted. An Ansel who, I don’t know, wants me around all the time.”

“I did want you around all the time.”

“That’s not the point,” Saoirse said, and then wondered what the point was and felt lost. “You didn’t… never mind. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“What?” asked Stephanie. “I don’t get it.”

Ansel turned and looked at her. “She’s talking about the time she almost left me,” he said.

Saoirse was only momentarily surprised that Ansel knew what she was getting at. Then she remembered that this Ansel, just a creation she was sure, an Ansel, would know everything that she knew. She knew again that she would never, ever be able to tell whether he was the Ansel or not because she could not figure out a test that wouldn’t depend on her own knowledge.

“She wanted to leave me to … I still don’t know,” Ansel said. He looked at Saoirse.

Saoirse remembered, and remembered her embarrassment over how headstrong she had been (was?) each time this came up in life. She said: “We had just graduated college. We had just married. We hadn’t had you, yet, Stephanie, or any of you. I was feeling not ready to settle down. I didn’t like, for a while there, being married. I was dissatisfied and I didn’t even know why. I just didn’t want to go to work and come home and eat dinner and watch TV and go out with friends who were also couples and then play racquetball on the weekends. I didn’t want that.

“But I didn’t know what I did want and so I didn’t say anything, for about two months. I just got more and more miserable and more and more depressed and couldn’t figure it out.

“One night it all came to a head and I was lying in bed and not sleeping and had to get up to go to work in the morning, and I just laid there watching the digital clock numbers click over, one at a time, counting down the time until I had to get up and go through it all again and I got more and more upset because at least sleep was one place where I wasn’t miserable and now I couldn’t even do that. I sat up in bed, really slowly because I didn’t want to wake Ansel up.”

Ansel took her hand, the one that wasn’t holding Chuck’s hand. “But you did wake me up. I woke up and I heard you get up and go sit at the foot of the bed.” He was looking at her as he talked. “I heard you sit down and I heard you scuff your feet and I heard you start to cry, muffled and quiet and sad.”

He pulled her in close and hugged her. “Remember what I said?”

“You asked me what was wrong, and I said…”

“You said you were going to leave me. You said I’m leaving you, Ansel. I’m not happy and I’m going to leave. And I didn’t even hesitate. I remember that.”

“You told me if that’s what you need to be happy then you have to do it.”

Ansel bit his lower lip. Just like Ansel always did. “I did.” He said. “I said that.”

“That’s why I have to go.” Saoirse said. “That’s part of it, anyway. You’re not you.” She looked at the rest of them. “I hope you understand.”

She wondered if the After would make them understand.

I've got a sinking feeling. (What? You know I like puns.)

In the next year or two, we'll probably sell our house and move to a smaller, newer one. Selling a house -- or living in one -- means having to make it appealing to people, and I've started looking for quick and not-too-expensive ways of upgrading our house to make it not just a quicker sell, but also nicer to live in while we're still there.

One easy and fast way: Upgrade the sinks. Have you taken a look at your sinks recently? They're probably awful, if you get right down to it: years of soapy buildup, toothpaste-y residue, nicks here and there, and general fading-ness have worn them down to where they're just... pleh.

For a lot less time and money than you'd think, you can replace a sink and improve the way the whole room looks. I know this for a fact, because I did it in our kitchen. And now I'll probably do the same thing in our bathrooms, especially because I can get new porcelain undermount sinks from MR Direct Sinks and Faucets, and they're way less expensive than the shabby junk found at big box stores.

This is the one I want to get for the upstairs bathroom:
Nice, isn't it? Fancy, like the kind of sink you'd find in, I don't know, the house of someone who didn't spend most of Saturday playing "Number Circus" with his twins instead of cleaning the bathroom like he was supposed to.

It's not just nice looking, either. It's true Vitreous China and fully insulated, and comes with all the hardware I'll need and a LIFETIME WARRANTY. I'm big on warranties, and here's why: If a company promises to fix a defect for the lifetime of the product, they're pretty sure they won't have to do that, meaning the product must be pretty good. And if it's not? I get a new one. Win-win.

That little sink is only $29, too, which is cheap enough that I could get a couple other porcelain sinks from them, like the rectangular undermount sink for the middle bathroom, and do all of the sinks in one weekend. They can even do same day shipping, if I want, so I could get the stuff here while I'm still interested in doing that work, and before the next round of "Number Circus."

Chapter Five: Taft Has Met Others Like Them.

Song for this part: "Myriad Harbour," The New Pornographers:

Five:

They were back in her house, her perfect house with no dust and no mess and the neighbors not annoying her.

Her family was not there. No Ansel, Stephanie, Chuck, or Austin.

They were sitting at the table.

“How did you do that?” she asked William Howard Taft, who was toying the centerpiece on the table, an arrangement of small glass bottles on a lazy susan that she had made years ago, selecting little interesting bottles from a crafts store, gluing the bottles to the rotating base and then filling them with powders and colored liquids and putting little stoppers in them. Apothecary Rotation, she’d called it when she showed to Ansel, who had applauded her for it and declared that it should be the centerpiece of the table. There it had sat for years and years and years. And here it was now. Had it been brought here? She decided not: the Rotation would still be in her house, now.

Or, she suddenly thought, thrown out by whoever got it when I… She stopped as William Howard Taft interrupted that train of thought. “I did not do it,” he said, spinning the centerpiece slowly, watching the liquids slosh a little.

Saoirse remembered that the liquids in the bottles had dried up some years before, and the powders had faded. Here they were full. “So I did it? I brought us here?”

“Yes.”

“How?”
“You wanted to be here, I assume. When I touched you, you wanted to be here.”

“That makes no sense. When I wanted to be there before, I had to start driving there, get on the highway…” but she trailed off because William Howard Taft was holding up a big hand.

“I do not make the rules here. I do not even understand, fully, how it works. I have been here a long time, yes, that’s true. A long time. Looking. But I do not yet fully understand how the After operates and I am not sure that anyone in the After does. Maybe after being here more than the near-century I have. Maybe several centuries. I do not know.”

“Haven’t you ever found someone like that and asked them, then?”

William Howard Taft shook his head. “I can’t,” he said, “because there is nobody who has been here that long, not that I can find, and I have been looking for a long time.”

Saoirse tried to parse this. She heard the car pull up and look out the window. Ansel waved at her from their car.

“Are you saying,” she began, thinking it through as she talked, “That you’ve been here about a hundred years and never found anyone who’s been here longer?”

“Yes. That is exactly what I am saying,” said William Howard Taft.

The car doors slammed outside. She heard footsteps on the gravel. She heard Chuck babbling.

“And does that mean… does that mean that over 100 years ago, nobody was, what, good enough to get here?”

William Howard Taft shook his head again.

“I do not believe that to be the case.”

“Did the After not exist more than a hundred years ago?”
The others were coming in the back door they’d gone out not too long ago. William Howard Taft sucked his moustache in a little, and whuffed a sigh out.

“As odd as it might seem, I had not considered that.” He tapped his fingers on the table. He tapped them rhythmically, the result being muted drumbeats from fingers so large that they caused the table to vibrate slightly and made the liquid in the centerpiece slosh slightly. “I do not think,” William Howard Taft said as the rest of the family came in and sat down, “That is the case. I think the After has always existed. That, certainly, is more simple than to assume that it came into existence 100 years ago, and Occam’s Razor dictates that I begin with that explanation.”

“Why is that simpler?” asked Saoirse. “Why is it simpler to assume it’s always been here? It might have come into existence because people believed in it. Or it was created by God 100 years ago as, I don’t know, as a purgatory or something. Maybe that’s it. Maybe this isn’t Heaven. Maybe it’s purgatory. That would explain…”

She paused as Ansel squeezed her shoulder. “Explain what, honey?” he said, quietly.

“Why I’m not happy.” Saoirse looked down at the table as she spoke.

William Howard Taft steepled his fingers.

“I’ve given that some thought,” he said. “But I do not think this is purgatory because everything is too perfect. Or as perfect as can be. For most people, at least. It is perfect for most people. It is perfect, for example, for your daughter. Or it was. It was until one of the not-perfects came along. Until you came along,” William Howard Taft put his hand down on the table, fingers curled up. He looked pointedly at Saoirse. “You are one of the people I look for in the After, one of the people I have been looking for for decades now. A not-perfect, I call them. Someone who is unhappy in the After despite the fact that everything in the After is perfect. I can sense people like you, now, I can track you, I can find things, and each person I meet is a clue, each person like you, a not-perfect that I meet gives me a little more of the puzzle. And then each of you figures it out before I do.”

“Figures out what?” Saoirse asked.

William Howard Taft said, first, “I must apologize to you.”

He looked at her, with sadder eyes than she could imagine him having. She, like many people, never thought of big men as having emotions like sadness. Big men were blustery and harumpphed and were brash and violent. Not sad. Big men did not sit at one’s kitchen table, or the afterworldly simulacrum of one’s kitchen table, and quiver their lips and look sad.

“I must apologize to you because I misled you. But I did so because I was afraid.

“I misled you when I told you, in the water, that I was here because you want me here. It is not that simple. I am here not just because you want me here but because I want you here.” He took a deep breath.

“You are in my After, and I am in yours. And so while I know of you because you want to know of me, I know of you because I want to know of you. I want to know of you, and everyone like you, because in my century here, I have run into many not-perfect people, and each of them has found a way to disappear. Sometimes quickly, sometimes not so quickly. In my century-plus of living in the After, I have learned much about how to affect my own After, learned much about how to control it and shape it, but I remain here, a century in, not perfect myself.

“I was, when I first arrived here, just like you: not happy. Not unhappy, because I do not think that is possible for long; but not happy, either. Not perfect. Dissatisfied. Searching for answers. But I did not know what to do about it. Certainly, I did not immediately begin to think, like you, about going home. In fact, very few of the not-perfect do think of that, or talk of that.

“I know that because over time, I searched out first one, then another, and so on, of the other not-perfect people. I have met just over a dozen, including you, now. Each of them has at some point, as I said, disappeared and I have never seen them again. That is what I thought you had done, in the ocean, there. I am relieved to have found you again, because I think you can help me. You can help me leave the After.”

Saoirse sat and absorbed William Howard Taft’s rambling. Ansel sat down next to her. He took her hand and looked from William Howard Taft to her.

“You really want to leave?” Ansel asked her.

Saoirse looked at him and nodded.

“Mom,” said Stephanie, but Ansel held up his hand.

“Why?” he asked.

“You heard him,” Saoirse said. “I’m not happy.”

They all absorbed that for a minute, and Saoirse broke the silence by saying to William Howard Taft “How can we leave?”

“That’s what I want to know,” the large, sad man said back to her. Saoirse reached out and pulled Chuck onto her lap, resting her chin on his hair, hair so clean and fine it felt shiny. She remembered for a brief instant doing that same thing on the plane but her mind stopped then and would go no further.

“Let’s think about this,” she said.

“No,” said William Howard Taft. Saoirse looked up from Chuck’s hair, surprised.

“No?”

“I don’t want to think about it. That’s the exact wrong way to go about it. I want to just do something. That’s what we were doing in the first place when I found you and you were right. It was getting us somewhere. Then you stopped to think about it and you left me.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that’s what you were doing, trying to get me to take us home?”

“Because I was afraid that you would, like all the others, simply go and disappear.”

“So you lied to me?”

“I apologized.”

“How can I trust you now?”

William Howard Taft looked down his nose at her.

“Nothing bad happens in the After. What could I be doing to harm you?’

“So you say, but how do I know that’s accurate?”

“How do you know anything? How can you take anything at face value? How can you be sure that anything that surrounds you is real or not real or partially real?” argued William Howard Taft. “You have already experienced a shift from one reality, that of life, to another, that of the After. So a better question would be how can you not take everything at face value? How can you doubt the only thing that you can trust, which is what you are hearing and seeing and experiencing right now?”

Saoirse tried to work her way through that.

“Besides, nothing bad has happened to you yet, has it?” William Howard Taft pointed out.

That was true. Still, she did not like that he had not answered her question.

But she also felt, deep down inside, that he was right. Nothing bad happened here. Nothing bad could happen here. So she could trust him or not trust him or go with him or not go with him and nothing bad could happen.

“What do we do?”

“Stop,” said Ansel, suddenly. Saoirse looked at him. “I don’t want you to do this,” he said to her, and held his hands out, palms up. One thumb touched the centerpiece.

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want to leave and if you manage to leave, I won’t have you here.”

Saoirse looked at him.

“Ansel, honey, if I leave, you won’t be here.”

“What?” Ansel asked.

Saoirse had what she meant all figured out and was about to talk. Then she was not going to answer, and she wondered: I can’t not tell him,can I? She looked out the window. She looked at William Howard Taft and then put her nose down to Chuck’s head again. She looked, finally, back up and met Ansel’s eyes. “You’re only here because I’m here. All of you. If I leave, my After won’t exist anymore and you will be gone.” She reached out a hand. “Or you will be wherever you are now and you will also no longer be part of my After.” She looked at Stephanie and Austin. “You, too.”

After a moment she added “I’m sorry.” Then she looked at William Howard Taft and said “Let’s go.”