Next Life, I’ll Find a Family That’s a Little Less Smart Chapter 09

Next Life, I’ll Find a Family That’s a Little Less Smart Chapter 09

Every month, without fail, my parents rode the Greyhound through the night to get back to the city I was buried in.

The cemetery at dusk. The last of the sunlight caught the edge of my headstone, turning it gold.

Dad wiped the dust from the stone with hands like sandpaper.

“Baby, I hauled pallets of cement today.”

He pulled a tiny outfit from inside his jacket and dressed the faded teddy bear propped against the stone.

“I saved up and got new clothes for your bear. What do you think? Do you like them?”

Mom was on her knees, pressing her forehead against the cold headstone.

“Baby, I was wrong.”

She cried without sound. The tears followed the lines in her face.

“Next life, I’ll give you everything. I’ll give you my whole heart. Okay?”

Other visitors stared as they passed. My parents didn’t notice.

They weren’t living anymore. They were just serving out a sentence of their own.

Earlier that week, the prison had called.

Silas and Beatrice had been approved for compassionate release on psychiatric grounds. They needed a family member to sign them out.

Dad hung up before the caller finished the sentence. Then he blocked the number.

“I only ever had one child.”

He said it to the headstone, like a vow.

“Those two can rot in there. I hope they never get out.”

I hovered above them, and for the first time, I felt light.

Whatever had been holding me here, the anger, the grief, the need to be seen, it was gone. It was time.

I drifted close. I wrapped myself around Dad’s bent shoulders. I ran my fingers through Mom’s white hair one last time.

Dad went still. He looked over his shoulder, at nothing.

“Evelyn, did you feel that? Just now. Like someone was holding me.”

Mom’s dead eyes came alive. She looked everywhere.

“Baby!”

“She’s here. She came back! Baby, where are you?”

I stood right in front of them. They were laughing and sobbing at the same time, reaching for air.

“Dad. Mom. I forgive you.”

I said it softly.

“But I don’t want to love you anymore.”

The moment the words left me, my form began to break apart, dissolving into light, rising.

They felt it. The finality.

They fell to the ground, arms reaching toward the sky where the light was fading, and the sound they made could have split the earth.

The last thread of me came undone in the wind.

In the empty cemetery, the wind howled across the cold marble, carrying a sound like weeping.

The geniuses were gone. And so was I.

All that was left were two people who would spend the rest of their lives paying for what they let happen.

“If there’s a next life, I’ll find a family that’s a little less brilliant.”

“Goodbye.”

…

Time eventually ran out for both of them. During a rare winter storm on the coast near Pelican Bay.

Mom was sitting by the door, the bloodstained scarf pressed to her chest. The snow had covered her. She was frozen solid.

Even in death, her eyes were fixed on my photograph.

That same day, Dad’s heart gave out on the docks. He fell.

He lay in the mud, watching snowflakes drift down. And he smiled.

“Hazel, I’m coming. I’ll carry you on my shoulders, just like when you were little.”

…

Somewhere else, another life, another world, a world that smelled like home.

A baby’s cry rang out in an ordinary delivery room.

A young couple held their newborn daughter, gentle and terrified and full of love.

“She’s so small. What if she doesn’t grow up to be some brilliant prodigy?”

“Who cares about being a genius?”

“As long as she’s healthy and happy, she can be completely average. She’s ours.”

A warm breeze drifted through the open window, carrying the scent of flowers.

This time, I finally had a home.