The toes of my Chucks hung over the white metal edge, a town sleeping hundreds of feet below me. The tiny houses and tiny cars looked like toys, and it was easy to imagine them dusted with glitter under the tree with the rest of my mother’s Christmas town.

But they weren’t toys.

I knew this view.

You don’t forget the last thing you see before you die. Trust me.

I was standing on top of the Summerville water tower, veins of cracked white paint spreading out from under my sneakers. The curve of a black heart drawn in Sharpie caught my eye.

Was it possible? Could I really be home?

I didn’t know until I saw her.

The fronts of her black orthopedic shoes were lined up perfectly with my Chucks.

Amma was wearing her black Sunday dress with the tiny violets scattered all over it, and a wide-brimmed black hat. Her white gloves gripped the handles of her patent-leather pocketbook.

Our eyes met for a split second, and she smiled—relief spreading across her features in a way that was impossible to describe. It was almost peaceful, a word that I would never use to describe Amma.

That’s when I realized something was wrong. The kind of wrong you can’t stop or change or fix.

I reached for her at the exact same moment she stepped off the edge, into the blue-black sky.

“Amma!” I reached for her, the way I used to reach for Lena in my dreams when she was the one falling. But I couldn’t catch Amma.

And she didn’t fall.

The sky split open like the universe was tearing, or like someone had finally picked that hole in it. Amma turned her face toward it, tears running down her cheeks even as she smiled at me.

The sky held her up, as though Amma was worthy of standing on it, until a hand reached out from the center of the tear and the blinking stars. It was a hand I recognized—the one that had offered me his crow so I could cross from one world to another.

Now Uncle Abner was offering that hand to Amma.

His face blurred in the darkness next to Sulla, Ivy, and Delilah. Amma’s other family. Twyla’s face smiled down at me, charms tied into her long braids. Amma’s Caster family was waiting for her.

But I didn’t care.

I couldn’t lose her.

“Amma! Don’t leave me!” I shouted.

Her lips didn’t move, but I heard her voice, as sure as if she was standing next to me. “I could never leave you, Ethan Wate. I’ll always be watchin’. Make me proud.”

My heart felt like it was collapsing in on itself, shattering into pieces so small I might never find them. I dropped to my knees and looked up into the heavens, screaming louder than I ever thought possible. “Why?”

It was Amma who answered. She was farther away now, stepping into the sliver of sky that opened just for her. “A woman’s only as good as her word.” Another one of Amma’s riddles.

The last one.

She touched her fingers to her lips and reached them out to me as the universe swallowed her up. Her words echoed across the sky, as if she had spoken them aloud.

“And everyone said I couldn’t change the cards.…”

The cards.

She was talking about the spread that predicted my death so many months ago. The spread she had bargained with the bokor to change. The one she swore she’d do anything to change.

She’d done it.

Defied the universe and fate and everything she believed in. For me.

Amma was trading her life for mine, protecting the Order by offering one life for another. That was the deal she had made with the bokor. I understood now.

I watched the sky knit itself back together one stitch at a time.

But it didn’t look the same. I could still see the invisible seams where the world had torn itself in half to take her. And I would always know they were there, even if no one else could see them.

Like torn edges of my heart.

CHAPTER 36

Translation

As I sat on the cold metal in the darkness, part of me wondered if I imagined the whole thing. I knew I didn’t. I could still see those stitches in the sky, no matter how dark it was.

Still, I didn’t move.

If I left, it would be real.

If I left, she would be gone.

I don’t know how long I sat there trying to make sense of everything, but the sun came up, and I was still sitting in the same spot. No matter how many times I tried to work it out, I kept getting stuck.

I had this old Bible story in my head, playing over and over, like a bad song from the radio. I’m probably getting it wrong, but I remember it like this: There was this city of people who were so righteous, they got picked right up off the earth and taken to Heaven. Just like that.

They didn’t even die.

They got to skip dying, the way you pass Go and head directly to Jail if you pull the wrong card in Monopoly.

Translated—that’s the name for what happened to them. I remember because Link was in my Sunday school class, and he said teleported, then transported, and finally transportated.

We were supposed to act real jealous about it, like those people were so lucky to get plucked up and taken into the Lap o’ the Lord.

Like it was a place or something.

I remember coming home and asking my mom about it, because that’s how creeped out I was. I don’t remember what she said, but I decided right then and there that the goal wasn’t to be good. It was to be just good enough.

I didn’t want to risk getting translated, or even teleported.

I wasn’t looking to go live in the Lap o’ the Lord. I was more excited about Little League.