THE POWER OF THREE (13 page)

             
“And why did you have a knife in the bathtub with you if you meant yourself no harm?”

             
I tried making up a lie, but it sounded lame to my own ears. I said the knife had just been there, on the tub edge, and I had opened it just before Grant came into the bathroom. He misinterpreted the whole scene, that’s all.

             
With Grant’s signature, the psychiatrist called for orderlies from the hospital to take me to the psychiatric ward. I protested weakly all the way. I knew the doctor had to do this if he thought I’d do myself harm, but I didn’t belong in lock up, stuck away in some padded cell.

             
It turned out it wasn’t a padded cell. I’d probably gotten that idea from the movies. It was a private room with everything stripped from it save a bed and sheets. There was a sink on the wall and a door leading to a toilet and shower. The soap bar looked new, but it was small as hotel soap. The door leading to the hall and freedom was locked. The window had a wire screen.

             
I saw nothing I could use to make a quick end of myself. This was antiseptic and empty, one version of Hell. I couldn’t stay here. Then I glanced overhead at a white boxed fluorescent light. I hauled the bed over to the center of the floor, stood on it, and took down the light cover, dropping it to the mattress. I clicked one of the fluorescent tubes out of the sockets and brought it down. Sitting on the side of the bed, holding the long white tube, I scanned the room for
cameras. I didn’t see any. They thought I was safe in here.

             
They were wrong.

             
#

             
I floated just above the bed in that beautiful black space where I had once gone to die. This time I would stay. I looked down at my arms and saw my bandaged wrists. I had cut them with the tube glass from the overhead light. I guess they had found me, but not in time. I wanted to shout it.
Not in time!

             
I shut my eyes, floating, moving away from the bed, the room, the hospital, the planet. It sat off in the universe, mixed with the other celestial worlds and stars and gas giants. I was not there.

             
I was here and content. No breath. No reason for it.
Only darkness.

             
“Mama?”

             
I heard his voice and my eyes opened. Brady was here too, I found him at last, my poor baby, my lost baby. I tried to raise myself to a sitting position, but I felt paralyzed on my back, floating in the dark with nothing beneath my body.

             
“Brady?”

             
He came into view. He floated just above me and to the left. He was ethereally beautiful. His skin glowed, his face shone, his gaze
was loving
. This was not the conjured child who wore the mantle of my guilt. This was my real child, the one dead, but not gone. “Oh, baby, you’re so beautiful.”

             
“You can’t stay here,” he said. “It’s not your time.”

             
“I
am
staying, I have to stay. I can’t go back to that life without you. I can’t live with it.”

             
“It was Eddie, Mama. He swung around in the chair. We didn’t know the wire was wrapping around it until it sparked. The wallpaper caught fire. We tried to put it out, but we couldn’t.”

             
I hadn’t known these details. It was still my fault, wasn’t it?

             
“It’s not, Mama.” He said this as if he had heard my thoughts. He was crying, tears spilling down his baby cheeks. “It’s nobody’s fault, Mama. It was just my time. I couldn’t stay in that world. I had to go. Some of us go away when we’re little. Some when we are big and grown and old.”

             
“You didn’t have to go! I could have saved you, I
should
have saved you!”

             
“No one could have saved me. I belong here.”

             
I began to fall, drifting at first, and then plunging. I fell away from Brady out of the darkness, calling to him as I had called in the belly of the fire, “BRADY, BRADY,
BRADY
!”

             
“Not your fault…” he
called,
his voice fading just as the dark grew light and I opened my eyes in the hospital bed.

             
How many times was I to die and come back? Grant sat in a chair near the bed, his head resting on his fist, and he was asleep. He had kept vigil, waiting for my return. I studied his face. For a young man he looked weathered and burdened. His shoulders were slumped, his legs splayed out before him. He had lost Brady and his one solace, his one tie to life, was that he had kept me. Now I had tried to leave him in a permanent way with an ultimate and final betrayal.

             
“Grant?”

             
He opened his eyes, lifting his head. I saw the love in his eyes, the sadness, and the forgiveness. He had known how I suffered and that I hadn’t been well. He had done all he could to make me happy. He wanted to start a new life and give me more children to love.

             
He came to the bed and put his big hands on my face, cupping it and lifting it to his kiss. “Baby,” he said in a whisper.

             
I let Brady go. I could do it now that I had seen he was all right, that he was whole and safe. I let the guilt monster go, having no need of it any longer. I had this life to live. I hadn’t any right to end it before it was my time, just as my little boy explained.

             
Years later, when I finally published novels, and spent most of my
days
storytelling and living in imaginary worlds, I often felt Brady somewhere nearby, just a breath away. I couldn’t see him, hear him, smell or touch him, but he was there.

             
He would always be there…waiting. Just as both science and religion claimed—nothing in
all the
universe was ever lost. The good molecules and atoms that made up my boy would go on forever.

             
And I knew this: One day we would all go with him.

             
THE END

             
Thank you for
reading. If you liked these stories, please leave a short review. Y
ou can find more stories and novels by Billie Sue
Mosiman
at her
Kindle Store
. Her blog is
The Peculiar Life of a Writer
.