“While he was gone, Natalie stuck her head out of her room. Johnny made a mad dash for the stairs. And my father started walking down the hall toward my bedroom.”

The air currents again, shifting. Hot and cold. Light and dark. Swelling.

“Sheriff Wayne saved my life,” I said loudly. “He shot my father. He carried me from the carnage. Then he called for backup, never telling anyone what really brought him to the house that night. No point in harming his family with his dirty secret, now that my family was dead. As the officer in charge, he controlled the crime scene. That made it easy for him to write it up as a one-man rampage—my father killing most of his family before turning his gun on himself.

“Sheriff Wayne carried his guilt to his deathbed, where he finally confessed to his son. Is that what brought you to find me? Is that what convinced you I had to face my past, Andrew?”

I wondered if I’d see a spark of recognition in his eyes, a reaction to his name. But the swirling darkness around him remained impenetrable.

Evan’s voice crested inside the closet, summoning the final angel, calling for the light.

“You didn’t have to kill anyone,” I told Andrew. “Your father’s soul was freed the moment he confessed. He wasn’t trapped in the void between the interplanes. But my father was….”

Andrew snarled. Fresh rage as he understood what I’d finally figured out. He raised his knife.

And I curled my fingers around the handle of the gun I’d found in the master bath. From my father’s ashes dumped down a sewer, to his old service weapon taped to a toilet. In these last few seconds, it all started to make sense.

Andrew stormed down the hall.

And I had seen my father staring from his eyes.

My mother always smelled of oranges and ginger. She would feed me strawberry Popsicles on hot days, and stay up with me when I was sick. She loved the Sunday comics and used to pore over Vogue magazine, debating which expensive outfit she would one day love to buy.

Natalie liked to snack on fresh lemon slices sprinkled with sugar. She’d eat out the pulp, then curl the yellow peel over her teeth and smile at everyone. That last summer, she’d started using lemon juice to bleach out the freckles spattering across her nose. Though I never told her, I secretly loved her freckles and hoped every day to see some on my own face.