“Whenever you’re ready,” Essos responds. “I cleared my schedule to be available for this.”
My heart skips a beat as I stare into his eyes. I’m still holding him, my fingers digging into his suit. He won’t release me until I let him go first. I draw in a deep, shuddering breath, taking the leap before I chicken out again.
“I’m ready,” I whisper, closing my eyes.
Essos slides his hands down my arms and slips his fingers in the spaces between mine. He waits until my eyes reopen to make a second door appear.
Two people walk through it, and I wonder if they know what’s about to happen. Did Essos tell them we were going to meet? Are they prepared for this? Do they know I died? It doesn’t appear that they need to be told their purpose for being in this strange place. The woman rushes toward me but stops short when I flinch.
“Daphne.” She breathes my name like a prayer. She reaches out a shaky hand to tuck my hair behind my ears. She’s petite, shorter than me, but has the same green eyes that I do. With that one motion, I’m a kid again. I’m the same little girl with my hair in braided pigtails standing beside my grandmother’s grave, holding the hand of my social worker.
“Hi,” I manage to croak out, my mouth dry and throat raw. I squeeze Essos’s hand for all the strength he can lend me. He gives me a reassuring squeeze back.
“Can I hug you?” she asks, her voice thick with emotion, sensing, like any good mother, that this is overwhelming for me.
I nod, and she envelops me in a hug, holding me close to her. I release Essos’s hand after a moment and wrap my arms around her, rigid at first, before melting into her embrace.
As much as I don’t want to, I cry. I cry for the mother who never got to see her daughter grow up. I cry for five-year-old me, who didn’t understand what was happening when her grandma died, leaving her alone in the world. I cry for ten-year-old me, getting my period for the first time in gym class, needing the school nurse to explain that I was becoming a woman. I cry for fifteen-year-old me, when I lost my virginity to a boy who pushed too hard when I didn’t know how to say no. I cry for the missed milestones, the dances my parents never got to send me to, boyfriends they couldn’t interrogate, and for never getting grounded after missing curfew. I cry for my father, who never got daddy-daughter dances and never got to scream my name, embarrassing me at graduations.I cry because my dad never got to press on an imaginary brake pedal while teaching me how to drive or take me out for milkshakes after my heart was broken for the first time.
I cry for the life that was stolen from us and for this blessing of a second chance to know them. My mother is running her fingers through my hair, soothing me, murmuring that she loves me the way I imagine she would have if I had woken up from a nightmare. She tells me she loves me over and over again, and that she is so proud of the young woman I became.
I manage to pull myself together, slowly extracting myself from her only to find my father openly weeping behind her. He isn’t as cautious as she was. He just pulls me into his arms, crying into my hair. He pulls my mother in, too, so it’s the three of us huddled together, the way it was supposed to be.
This gets my tears started again. I never realized how safe I could feel, and I never want this moment to end. The tears continue, the three of us crying together, both of them fighting for control over who gets to hold me closest.
Once we are able to control ourselves, my father turns to Essos, holding out his hand. Essos gladly takes it and gives it a firm shake.
“I don’t think I can find sufficient words to thank you for giving me a second chance to hold my baby girl.”
“It is my pleasure, sir,” Essos responds with a smile. The man is a god, and yet he speaks to my father with deference. He gestures toward the table, and we four sit, Essos waiting to see where my parents chose before picking a seat for himself.
My mother sits next to me and my father directly across so they can both look at me as fully as possible while also being within touching distance.
“I was so relieved when you wound up with my mother, but when we could see her health was declining, we felt so helpless. We never expected you to be alone in the world.” My mother sniffs, holding back more tears. My father reaches across the table and grabs her hand. If she starts crying again, I know the waterworks will start for me all over again too. “I was just so glad we got to watch you grow up.”
“It’s not what we would have wanted for you, but it was like we were there for every moment. It was great getting to watch you graduate from fifth grade with your cute little song about moving up, all the way to getting into college.” My father clears his throat then takes a sip from the water glass in front of him.
“People get to see their loved ones in their afterlife?” I ask Essos.
Solemnly, he nods, squeezing my knee under the table. “It’s like watching TV—they can watch whenever, though intimate moments are never shared. They’re also able to watch highlights that they would have missed. I can’t tell you any more, though,” Essos warns, and I nod, grabbing his hand under the table and squeezing it.
Every question I wanted to ask vanishes from my mind. I just want to spend my time staring at my parents.
“Do you get to see Grandma?” I ask, thinking of the woman who raised me, even if it was only for a short time.
“Of course. She feels so bad for leaving you so abruptly. She just missed me too much, and her heart couldn’t take losing me and then my dad. When you’re a mom, you’ll understand that bond with your child. It’s not that she didn’t love you, it was just that it was a lot all at once.”
“I’m not sure—” I look to Essos. I’m not sure of a lot of things. Can I have children? More importantly, do I even want a child? I search Essos’s face, but he won’t meet my eye for a moment. When he finally does, I get a short flash, imagining him talking to my swollen belly, his hands rubbing circles on my bare skin as I lie in bed, laughing as it tickles.
Was that a memory, or something else? A vision put there by Essos? It felt nothing like the memories from Galen, where emotion was like a flash of heat, gone as soon as the memory ended. There is still lingering hope clinging to me, though it feels far away as the memory of it drifts, set loose in my mind as I muse on it. Essos cants his head, his brow furrowing before smoothing out, as if he’s asking me a question.
“You have time, ladybug. Plenty of time before making any sort of a decision,” my father says sternly with a pointed look at Essos.
I look sharply at Essos before turning my whole body toward my mother, taking her hands in mine. “I don’t know if you saw this or know this already…” I pause, unsure of how to continue. “But…I died.” My mother laughs, and it sounds like wind chimes tinkling in the breeze.
“We do know that, but the Afterworld is a magical place. I can’t wait to show you what’s in store for you. You’ll get to see it all soon enough.”
But she’s wrong. I probably won’t ever get to see it, because choosing Galen at the ball will mean severing ties with Essos, who has the power over my parents’ souls. I worry for a moment that he will retaliate against them or Cat.I don’t know if I could live with myself if I didn’t do everything I could to protect them from the fallout.