Hitchers

I wanted to rush in and fill her with assurances that I still loved her, that I didn’t deserve her, that I never deserved her.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

She took a gasping breath, tried to get hold of herself. “I don’t understand. What happened?”

It had only been two years since I last saw Lorena, but when you reach into Deadland, two years becomes two hundred. The memory of love can last a lifetime, but actually loving someone who was dead—who is dead? That’s something else entirely.

“You died,” I said. “We had our chance, and we blew it. We let you get killed.”

She nodded slowly, wiped her cheek, the back of her hand coming away slick. “So are you saying if we can’t help what’s happening, you don’t want to be with me? You want a divorce?”

“We’re not married,” I said as gently as I could. I put my hand over hers. “You died, Lorena.”

She drew her hand away, set it on her lap. “I forget sometimes.” The rain got harder, pelting the windshield. I half-expected it to turn to hail. I watched it make tracks down the windshield.

It occurred to me that Summer was hearing all this. I’d momentarily forgotten. I wondered what she was thinking, whether she had feelings for me, and if I’d ever know.

“You always said you weren’t good enough for me, always insisted you loved me more than I loved you,” Lorena said. “But it wasn’t true; I always loved you more than you loved me.”

“Loved. Not love. Don’t you see? And I did love you, with all my heart.”

There was a pink envelope, the kind that held a greeting card, wedged between Lorena’s thigh and Summer’s purse. I hadn’t noticed it before. Now she slid it into the purse.

“What’s that?” I asked, though I already knew. Lorena was always giving me I Love You cards—the kind that show couples walking on the beach holding hands.

“Did you really love me once?” Lorena asked, ignoring my question.

Was it a mistake to admit I had? Did I have to pummel Lorena the way Mom and I had pummeled Grandpa before he finally lost his grip?

I imagined Lorena, blowing away in Deadland, alone with her thoughts, without even memories of someone who loved her for comfort.

I started to cry. I’d been doing my best, trying to stay strong, taking deep, slow breaths. But this was too much. This was Lorena, my wife. “Of course I did,” I said.

She pondered for a moment. “But then I died. And now you love her.”

Was that unfair? At that point I couldn’t say.

Eventually I stopped crying, and we sat frozen for a long time, both of us staring through the windshield. Grandma sat stiffly in the living room. Mom was nowhere to be seen. The rain let up, settling into a soft drizzle.

It must have been twenty minutes later when Lorena finally spoke.

“I don’t belong here,” she whispered. “My sister won’t talk to me. My own mother is terrified of me. My husband loves someone else. I’m dead to everyone.”

I sat there wishing Grandpa would come back and take my place so I wouldn’t have to endure the howling sadness tearing through me.

“I don’t belong here,” Lorena whispered again.

The trembling in her hands stopped, then started again, then stopped. She covered her ears as if against the boom of some terrific explosion, then turned to me.

“I feel so strange. Like there’s a hole inside me.”

“Summer?”

She nodded.

“She’s gone,” I said. “That’s what you’re feeling.”

Summer’s face scrunched up and she started to cry. I leaned over to console her; she pressed her face into my shoulder and cried harder. I’d like to think a small part of her crying was sadness for Lorena, but I didn’t ask.

CHAPTER 43

What does a four-panel finale to a life’s work look like? It was harder than I thought, I realized, as I tapped my sharpened pencil on the desk.

I had gone through half a dozen ideas and discarded them all. Pay tribute to Thomas Darby, the strip’s creator? Even now I didn’t have it in me to do that. Not sincerely.

A note of explanation to my readers, who would be disappointed? My agent and the syndicate certainly were. Some sort of tribute to those readers? I couldn’t think of a way to do it without being wincingly schmaltzy.

The Bill Watterson route, where the characters move on, but on a happy, hopeful note? That in no way reflected the truth behind the strip, the emotional tug-of-war between my grandfather and me, both before his death and after.

I had mixed emotions about the strip. The success I’d found with it would likely always be the high point in my professional life. For better or worse, I would always be remembered for Wolfie, would always be connected to Toy Shop. At the same time, Grandpa had been right: I had no right to take it. I had violated a man’s dying wish, and I’d gotten caught. I was probably the first person in history who could honestly say that. But even if Grandpa had stayed dead, I had no right.

Chances were that I wouldn’t die in Aunt Julia’s living room, in which case I would never have the chance to tell Grandpa that Toy Shop had crossed over into Deadland, if a bit later than he’d wished. Hopefully Grandpa was finding it easier to let go of this world, and would be long gone by the time I crossed over in any case.

Toy Shop was crossing over into Deadland. The thought sparked an idea. What better ending for a strip that was so intimately tied to that world?

It was dark, but it felt right. Some hitchers were here to stay, and we were going to have to learn to live with them. We were also going to have to come to terms with Deadland. While the TV newscasters had been racing around asking the dead a series of disconnected stream-of-consciousness questions, Amy Harmon, a New York Times journalist, had focused on one issue: the nature of Deadland. Her meticulous account, “Where We Go When We Die,” had hit the newsstands and Internet yesterday, and caused a worldwide furor. Many were decrying it a pile of lies, but the shrillness and panic in the tone of these naysayers was telling. Even they seemed to understand that there was no stifling this new order. The uncertainty of life after death had always terrorized us, now it was replaced by a new terror—the certainty of it, of what it was.

What better way to cope with fear than to laugh at it?

I put up my materials, grabbed my keys, and headed out to the Maserati. It looked absurdly out of place in the parking lot of Summit Pointe, my new home in Decatur, just east of the city.

The Maserati leapt out of the parking space as soon as I touched the pedal. It occurred to me that Mick would look more natural in this sort of car than 1. I would have given it to him, if not for Lorena. There were yellow roses set on the dash. I wasn’t sure she could see them—I still wasn’t clear how closely things in the real world translated in Deadland—but I hoped she could.

From my new place it was only a ten-minute-drive to Summer’s apartment. The Maserati seemed even more absurd in her complex, surrounded by rusting Grand Marquises and trucks propped on blocks.

I rang the bell; inside I heard the pathetic buzzing thunk that reminded me the bell didn’t work. I rapped on the door.

Summer was wearing black jeans and a bright tie-dyed t-shirt sporting Elvis’s face.

“Hey,” she said, pushing the screen door open to let me in.

Suddenly I was nervous. Until now I’d always had a reason for calling.

She sat on the couch, propped one foot on the coffee table. “I’ve got to go to my new job in a half hour, but I’m glad you stopped by. I was going to call you. How are you?”