Lucie 

Saturday morning came and I was dreading it. I was dreading the decision I'd made; I was dreading the drizzly weather; I was dreading everything. With both my parents still asleep, I wanted to crawl back in my bed and forget all about this, but I couldn't, because the doorbell had already rung.

I had my purse slung over my shoulder, and was wearing a sweater underneath a pair of shortalls. I had not even tried with my hair; it was in a likely lopsided bun at the crown of my head. Yet, when I opened the door and Cian and Vinny looked at me, they didn't look in the least bit disgusted. In fact, Cian looked a bit flushed.

Cian, noticing the slight rain, drew the hood of his denim jacket up. He looked like something out of a fashion magazine: graphic t-shirt underneath a holed denim jacket, black pants and chucks. His hair, dampened by the small sprinkles of precipitation, hung in his eyes, which were the color of the bay on a moist morning like today. An ornate jeweled cross hung around his neck. "Ready?" he asked.

I craned my neck to see beyond him and Vinny. "Where's your car?"

He cracked a smile, and again I noticed the scar splitting his lip; it tickled curiosity in the back of my brain. Cian was strange to me. He was scarred, that much was evident, but somehow he was alluring at the same time.

I refused to say he was hot.

He just wasn't ugly.

"We came without one."

I arched an eyebrow. "Did you, like, fly, or something?"

To my surprise, Cian nodded. At the look on my face, he said, "What? I have wings for a reason. And, you know, Vinny just kind of appeared, if you know what I mean."

I glanced towards the dead boy. He smiled at me. As I brushed past them both, my car keys in my hand, I pointed at Vinny. "You still creep me out. Don't ever think you're not creeping me out."

"Fair enough," muttered Vinny, following after me. I unlocked my Subaru and slid in the driver's seat, sticking the key in the engine as Cian sat beside me and Vinny went in the back. Switching the radio on, I sighed, unable to comprehend why precisely I was doing this. For closure? To get away from the sleepiness of my house nowadays? For Dempsey?

"Lucille."

I froze, glancing sharply at Cian. In his hands was my wallet, driver's license in plain view. He studied it, squinting at my less than ideal picture and at the print beside it. Startled, I snatched it from him, and he looked up at me with a coy smile. "What?" he said gruffly.

"Don't call me Lucille," I said, revving the engine, and backing out of the driveway. I didn't look at him. "Just don't."

"Why not?"

"Because I said so," I remarked, leering at him. I turned the radio on, tuning it to a station I could at least tolerate. It was still relatively early, and the sun was low in the sky, casting pale light around the bay area. Street lights glided past us in red, yellow, and green blurs. Vinny was silent in the backseat. "It's enough that I'm actually in this car with both of you right now. Don't make me regret this more than I already do."

Cian flicked his hood back from his face, rolling the window up. "What are you so afraid of?"

I glanced sideways at him, but he wasn't looking at me. He was leaned against the old SUV's window, his cheek in his palm, face turned away from me. There was a cowlick of brown-gold hair at the crown of his head, and for some reason it irked me. My tone sounded both cautious and reticent: "What do you mean by that?"

"Don't be silly," Cian remarked, as I veered off the road and into the parking lot of the nearest coffee shop, the same one I went to on an almost daily basis. I parked the car and the radio shut off, leaving us in silence. "You've shoved Vinny and me away for the past week, and now we're here, yet you're still trying to run away. So, what, Lucie, are you so afraid of? The worst case scenario is that we confirm what you already thought, that Dempsey's really gone."

"Yeah, but I'm not stupid." My voice was sharp, and it held no room for lies. Cian knew that, too; I saw it in his eyes when he glimpsed me, the pallid sunlight in them making them appear a lighter blue than I remembered. The car's interior was dark; shadows danced across his face like evanescent flames. Still, Vinny said nothing. "You guys aren't here for Dempsey. You're more interested in why I can see Vinny, aren't you? I'm a threat to your little spirit world, or whatever. That's why you're here."

"Your brother is our priority."

"Stop lying to me."

"I have no reason to lie to you!" exclaimed Cian. He opened his mouth as if to say something else, but turned away from me again, getting out of the car with haste. He slammed the door shut after him, and in a huff, I followed. A glance at Vinny told me he was more than a little frightened.

Outside the car, Cian was leaned against the door, his elbows on the car's hood and his face in his hands. He shook his head. "I don't know what to say to you. I'm here to help you, and that's the only reason I'm here. Why would I lie? To protect you from something I don't want you to know?" he dropped the mask his hands created, staring at me. Taking a step back, he lifted his hands, mimicking surrender. "There's nothing I have to hide. Look. I'm all here. You know Vinny's dead. You know I'm an angel. You know everything. So why do you still stand here like I'm hiding something from you?"

"How did Vinny die?" I asked then, folding my arms. Cian's expression flickered from frustration to surprise, then to sorrow. I went on: "How did you become an angel, huh? You were human once, and Vinny was alive before this. Weren't you, Vinny?" I said, looking suddenly in his direction, as he'd appeared beside his brother. "So how did this happen? Don't lie. I don't know everything. In fact, I'm mostly damn ignorant. Fix that, Cian, fix it!"

Cian didn't look at me. Instead, he exhaled, looking towards the bay in the distance, then towards the coffee shop behind me. In the coolness of the morning, he shivered, everything here blue and gray and solemn.

I waited for a long time for him to say something, but when he did, his voice was barely there at all. "It was an accident," was all he said. "A dumb accident."

The emptiness of his tone startled me. "Cian?"

"It happened because of me," he said, then, finally, finally, lifted his eyes to mine. Something in them had changed. There was no mirth in them, no humor. They were the eyes of someone with a deep wound, someone still recovering, trying to patch themselves and everyone around them up. They were the eyes of someone who had been struggling for as long as they could remember. "Is that what you want me to say, huh? That I'm not perfect, and I know it? Do you want me to admit I'm still figuring things out? Fine. I admit it. I'm not the best caregiver, but I'm trying to help you out here, and you're biting my hand, Lucie, you're...you're gnawing it off."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't say that. Apologies are not cures," Cian remarked. He glanced at Vinny, and his hand lifted, wavering for a second near his kid brother's shoulder before he dropped it back to his side. Flicking his hood back up, he turned and started for the coffee shop. "I wish they were. It'd make a whole lot of things easier. Now let's just get this coffee and go, okay? I'll pay for it."

"Cian."

As he passed me, he shot me a dark look. "I'll talk about it when I'm ready to, and it isn't now. Leave it alone, Lucie."

He walked away from me, disappearing into the coffee shop. I hung my head, feeling like the worst person to ever walk the earth. How could I ask that so blatantly? I'd rubbed salt in that deep wound, forced him to remember something he likely wanted to forget about. It was all my fault.

Vinny was at my shoulder. "He's trying," he said to me, and when I glanced at him, his expression was mournful, eyes half shut. He repeated it, voice even softer than before, like a mere whisper of wind. "My God, he's trying."

As the rest of the car ride ensued, I grew more and more upset with myself for screwing things up. No one said anything, so we were all left sitting in one prolonged awkward silence, the only noises the whir of the car engine and the roar of the tires against the highway. Cian's latte sat untouched in the cupholder next to him, now probably more lukewarm than hot. In the seat next to me, he was a mere silhouette, something that was close yet far, tangible but not. His face was twisted with a subtle pain; I wondered what was going on in his head.

Then again, did I really want to know?

I decided to focus on the road, the painted yellow stripes zipping underneath me one by one. For a moment I was Dempsey, driving home that night, my RNB music cranked up to an all-time high, so that I heard nothing but the jarring flats and sharps, crescendos and decrescendos. I was washed in all the colors of the city, in all the noises created by the people around me. Everything was quick and everything was simple, and everything was as it should have been—

I woke up from my reverie, veering suddenly right, off the road. Cars honked and Cian cursed openly, jumping from his seat. The Subaru went off the asphalt and into the grass, bumping and rattling until I hit the brake, calming myself with a sigh. Everything that was moving seemed still all of a sudden. My grip on the steering wheel was white-knuckled.

It was silent again. Then: "Are you crazy, woman?"

I let go of the steering wheel and looked at Cian, whose cheeks were bright red and feverish, his expression livid. He was braced against the dashboard, arms trembling. "Look, I know you're constantly pissed at everything and everyone for no reason, but that does not mean you can go trying to kill people! There's these things called turn signals, and you turn them on and then nicely, nicely, pull over! The hell—ughhhh—heck is wrong with you!"

I considered yelling back at him for a moment, but remembered what had happened earlier at the coffee shop, and refrained. Instead, I just exhaled, letting my hair loose and watching the cars pass on the road next to us. Please let me be doing the right thing, Dempsey. Please.

"Everyone's okay, are they not?" I said, then turned to check in the back seat, which, to my surprise, was empty. Eyes a bit round, I glanced back at Cian. "Uh, where's Vinny?"

He looked at me, horrified. "You've got to be kidding me! You almost crash and then lose my little brother? I'm beginning to regret this—Vinny?"

Cian had gotten out of the car. He stood behind the open door, hand gripping the top of it. He was frozen, staring at something, soft breezes moving the strands of his gold-brown hair.

I took the key out of the engine and stood, shutting my door behind me and watching the ghost boy, who was standing before the wooden cross my family had put at Dempsey's crash site. The cross was slathered in a coat of white paint, and a picture of Dempsey wearing a birthday hat, the widest of grins on his face, was stapled to it. Flowers sat in front of it: red roses, orange tulips, a flower an indigo color as profound as the sky as the sun set. Vinny stood before it, head ducked, lips sealed.

"Vinny," Cian said, but his brother didn't reply to him. It was strange to watch, as if Vinny was locked in some sort of hypnosis, held there by the sorrow of another life lost, the life of someone he never even knew.

I wanted to say something, but I didn't know how.

"Did you make one of these for me, Cian?" Vinny asked all of a sudden. His back was still to us as he bent on his knees, crouching before the little memoriam. He peered into Dempsey's eyes, as if trying to know him, trying to understand him. "Did someone put up a picture of me somewhere, leave flowers? Or was I just gone? Who still thinks about me, besides you? Besides Mom and Dad?"

"Vinny," murmured Cian again, then stepped forward, standing beside his brother. He crouched, picking up a tulip and holding it to his nose; his fingers gripped it nimbly and carefully, as if he was afraid of breaking it. "I'm sure lots of people think about you."

"If they do, do they think about me for me, or just because I was another tragedy? 'Oh, he died so young. That's too bad,'" Vinny muttered. He cut a sideways glance at Cian, who was rubbing the petals of the tulip gently, not meeting his eyes.

I suddenly felt like an intruder, as if the moment wasn't something I was supposed to be witnessing. For the first time, I saw the gap between the two brothers: the gap between the living and the dead, the gap never closed. For the first time, I realized how hard it must be for the both of them to go on like this. There was still so much I didn't know.

"I don't want to be just another young tragedy, Cian," Vinny said, hugging his arms around himself, as if convincing himself he was real. "I don't want to be a picture someone frowns at but doesn't think about. I want to be like Dempsey; I want people to want to remember me, to build memorials and cry and feel something for me. But I just feel empty."

Cian set the tulip back down. "I cried for you. I remember you. Isn't that enough?"

"I don't know," murmured Vinny. "I..." He trailed off, glancing over his shoulder at me. I was still standing at the car door, watching. The look on Vinny's face startled me. It was pensive and introspective and mournful, like he was mourning the death of himself. I was stricken. When I thought of ghosts, I thought of vases suddenly knocked over and lights flickering on and off, but seeing one, knowing one, had changed that. Ghosts were once people, were still people, and like the rest of us, they were trying to find themselves.

I wanted to help.

"Hold on a second, Vinny," I said with a new resolve, and rummaged around in the Subaru's console until I found a roll of twine and a Swiss army knife, likely Dad's. Both boys shot me rather confused looks as I passed them, trudging into the nearby woods until I found two twigs. I snapped the ends off one to make it shorter, then I sat in the grass and bound the two together. Utilizing the Swiss army knife, I carved two letters into my makeshift cross: V.H.

I got up, going back to where the Horne brothers were standing. Cian watched me with a cocked head as I dug the longer twig into the ground, using all my strength to make sure it stuck. "What are you doing, Lucie?"

"Remembering," I answered, and when I was done, stood back up and dusted my hands off on my shortalls, not caring about the dirt they left behind on the denim. I glanced at Vinny. "How's that?"

He blinked at me, slowly, before his mouth opened up in a grin. "Thank you," he said to me, and I could tell in the breathlessness of his voice that he meant it.

"To Vincent Horne," said Cian with a rueful grin. "To Vinny."