I walked toward the shore and knelt beside her, my fingers grazing the fine hairs at her temple. Even from across the clearing, I could feel the stagnant water in Mickey’s lungs, cold and deep. I could feel where her bones had been growing, the sudden cease in her cells, called off the job. There was so much goodness in there. An antidote to everything I, or Cal, or any of the nameless, faceless people across my conveyor belt had ever done. A balm for the burned and battered parts of the earth, roughed up by the rest of us. She carried it inside her—not because she was someone extraordinarily special, besides that she was good—and inside her, it would die.

I stood up and swallowed, looking away. I waved my hand, and Silas lunged back into action.

“Make me a deal,” he said, not missing a beat. “Dad used to talk about you. I know you can do it. Give me back my daughter, and I’ll give you anything you want.” His voice was the bottom of a waterfall, all rocks with no rest.

To make a deal with him meant a Complete Set. It meant finally, finally, accomplishing my one and only goal. It meant getting a one-way ticket back to Earth, to do it all over again. Which meant keeping my promise to Cal, finding her before she crossed the same threshold Ruth faced now. Validating her trust in me and ending her story the way she wanted. Saving the souls of the boys her father took, and hers as well. It meant saving mine.

But it also meant the eradication of all of them. Of Evan, of Silas. Even if I brought her back right now, it meant eradicating Mickey. For if I went back, if I completed my plan, none of them would ever exist. I would, which meant I wouldn’t make my deal, which meant my daughter wouldn’t make hers. She would die from the cancer inside her, instead of me. Therefore, the rest of them, my daughter’s kin from a life well and fully lived, would be gone too. I could have other children, produce other heirs. Perhaps they, too, would be good. There was plenty of good in the world; there were plenty of people with the same goodness inside of them. There would just never again be Mickey.

But as I watched Lily slam the dirt with her fists, it occurred to me that maybe never was better than gone.

“Please,” Silas said. “Bring her back.”

I looked at Mickey once more, or the sodden casing that used to hold her, and put my hand on my tablet.

At the end of the day, I am what I am.

“Sign here,” I said.

AFTER

PEYOTE