They Fed Me to the Dead, So I Woke Up Before the End novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The List

Reese goes to the mother she abandoned and leaves her stepfather a list of five dated predictions; Keaton shows up at the door and already knows Ray's name.

My mother opened the door with a dish towel over her shoulder and her reading glasses pushed up in her hair.

She looked at me for a long moment.

"Reese," she said.

I had a speech ready.

What came out was, "Mom, I'm so sorry."

I started crying on the welcome mat, and my mother, who had every right to shut the door, stepped out and held me.

She smelled of onions and the same hand cream she had used my whole life.

Behind her, a chair scraped.

Ray Pike filled the hallway in his Reds cap and his work socks.

"Two years," he said. "Not a call. Not a card. And now you cry on my porch."

"Ray," my mother said.

"No, Linda. She picked her side."

"I picked wrong," I said. "I'm not here to fight about it. I'm here because I need you to read something."

I pulled the folded page out of my jacket.

I had written it in the car at a red light, then again in a parking lot, because my hands wouldn't hold the pen.

Ray took it and read it standing in the doorway.

Thursday, September 24. A water main breaks on Far Hills Avenue and shuts it down by noon.

Sunday, September 27. The power goes out on your street at 6:10 p.m. and stays out five hours.

Wednesday, October 7. St. Anne's closes its morgue wing and tells the news it's a contamination issue.

Wednesday, October 14. The dead get up.

Under that I had written: Please buy food and water for four months. Please be ready to leave the city.

Ray read it twice.

Then he handed it back, very gently.

"Are you using, Reese?"

"No."

"Are you in some kind of trouble? Is it that boyfriend?"

"It's not drugs and it's not a cult," I said. "I know how it sounds. Hold on to the page. If the first two things happen, you'll know I'm telling the truth."

"And if they don't?"

"Then you can throw it out, and I'll never say another word."

He looked at my mother.

My mother looked at the page in my hand, and then she looked at my face, and something in hers gave.

"Come in," she said. "I'm making meatloaf. You're staying."

"Linda."

"She's staying, Ray."

The house was exactly the same.

The same plaid couch, the same Reds schedule on the fridge, the same coat hooks by the door.

My stepsister came down the stairs two at a time, fifteen years old and all elbows, and stopped on the bottom step.

"You're alive," she said.

"I'm alive."

"Mom said you moved to a different planet. Are you staying? Because your room's still the same. She dusts it on Sundays."

"I do not," my mother said, very fast, and turned back to the stove.

I went up and stood in the doorway of my old bedroom.

The posters were up.

The quilt was on the bed.

There was a card on the desk, still in its envelope, in Ray's blocky handwriting.

It said Reese, and under it, Happy birthday, kid.

I sat on the bed with it in my hands until my mother called me down.

We ate at the kitchen table.

Ray didn't speak to me, but he passed me the green beans without being asked, and I took that as a start.

I had my fork halfway to my mouth when the doorbell rang.

My stepsister got there first.

"It's some guy with flowers," she called. "He's really tall."

I knew who it was before I reached the hallway.

Keaton stood on the porch in a blue button-down with the sleeves buttoned at the wrist, holding a bouquet of yellow roses and smiling the warm smile that made strangers hand him things.

"Hey, babe," he said. "Bridget said you'd come out here. I thought I'd save you the drive and pick you up for dinner."

My mother had come up behind me.

"And you must be Mrs. Pike," Keaton said. "It's so good to finally meet you. These are for you."

"Linda, please," my mother said, and took the flowers.

His eyes went past her shoulder to the kitchen.

"Is that Ray in there? Hi, Ray!"

Ray lifted two fingers off the table and did not smile.

I stood very still.

I had told Keaton Ray's name, once, on a bad night two years ago.

I had never told him the street or the house number.

I had said Kettering and nothing more, and I had not said it today.

"You found it fast," I said.

"Maps," Keaton said, and laughed, and put his hand on the small of my back.

A map can't find one house in Kettering from the word Kettering.

I let him walk me down the steps to his van, and I smiled over my shoulder at my mother the whole way.

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