THOUGHT: Run away from home and live with Granddad.
Never a thought Mae took too seriously, but a thought nonetheless. Sometimes, when things at home were tense, she wondered how her grandfather, Reginald Borowski, would react if she showed up on his porch one day and asked to move in. She couldn't imagine he'd say no. Reg would do anything for his little Mae. His son, Mae's father, often said he indulged her too much, and it was probably the truth. The two had been thick as thieves for as long as Mae could remember.
Even after the Incident, Reg's love for Mae had never wavered, which only solidified her devotion towards him. He'd told more than one person off for referring to her as "Killer" in his presence, and he'd never made Mae feel like the Incident was all she was, even when the rest of the town seemed determined to.
After she was yanked off Andy Cullen, they were both rushed off to the hospital - Andy to get his injuries tended to, Mae to the psychiatric ward, because she still hadn't come out of her "episode" by the time help arrived. As she finally came back down to Earth, she'd found herself sitting in a hospital bed, her parents on either side. She couldn't bring herself to speak. Even when the doctor asked questions, she couldn't bring herself to speak.
She'd been silent for hours.
Then, finally, Granddad had arrived. Candy and Stan left the room, to give the two a little space (and, Mae later found out, talk to the doctor about what could possibly be "wrong" with her).
Granddad hadn't even tried to say anything. He just sat down next to her on the bed, and wrapped an arm around her shoulders.
And finally, as she crumbled in his arms, Mae finally found words again: "I'm sorry."
THOUGHT: I could become a doctor and fix this!
Mae sat next to his hospital bed, watching him, uncharacteristically silent. He was still unconscious, and hadn't stirred in the four hours since Mae and her mother arrived to join her father at the hospital. They didn't know how long he'd remain this way, or how long he'd have to stay in the hospital.
It had been an ordinary day, when her mother suddenly got a frantic call from her father. He'd gone over to see Reg at his house, but had called his wife from the hospital. Candy had then gone up to Mae's room, and said, "Mae, sweetie, you need to get in the car. We're going to the hospital."
And on the ride over, she'd dropped the bombshell: "Your grandfather had a stroke. A really bad one."
Mae was set to graduate high school soon, and then, she'd be off to college. The first Borowski to go. As of now, she was an undeclared major. A few people had suggested law or medicine degrees. "Always good money there," they said. Mae hadn't been too interested in either of those ideas until now. Now, as she sat, watching her beloved grandfather sleep, she made herself a promise.
If he's still here when I go off to college, I'll become a doctor. I'll find a cure for strokes. I'll learn all about them and study and research and work really hard until no one will ever have one ever again. And when I make the cure, Granddad will be the first one to get it.
This was almost enough to comfort her. Even as she thought it, she didn't really believe it, but it was nice to imagine.
Slowly, slowly, one of Reg's eyes open. The other remained closed, the left side of his face droopy, like he was melting. Candy gasped, reaching forward to press the "call nurse' button, while Mae scrambled to her feet. She went to stand next to her grandfather's bed, smiling widely in spite of the situation.
"Granddad!" she whispered. He was okay, he was alive! He'd be just fine. He'd be released soon, and then he'd be back in his own bed in his own house. "Granddad, can you hear me?"
He turned his huge eyes towards her, but the usual, mischievous spark that Mae had loved so much was gone. They were dead eyes. Hollow.
"Can you talk?" Mae asked cautiously. "It's okay if you can't. I can talk enough for the both of us. You're in the hospital, but you'll be okay, see? I was so worried!"
And then, as a nurse began to tend to him, Reginald said the words that shattered Mae's heart.
"Who... who're you?"
THOUGHT: If I show him some pictures of us, he'll remember.
Okay. So. Her own grandfather not remembering who she even was had been a bit of a hit. But it was okay. She could fix this.
Mae was over at the hospital whenever she was allowed. Although he hadn't a clue who she was, Reg didn't object to letting her sit by his bed. Though he barely seemed to know she was there - he just laid there, muttering to himself. Sometimes, Mae would catch a hint of what he was saying, and it always made her want to cry.
He was reciting the old ghost stories. The ones he used to read to her every night.
"They went looking for the gods," he whispered, "and died in lovely places."
He remembered the stories, but not her.
Mae knew it was stupid to take it personally, but it still cut her deep.
She sat next to his bed, her father next to her, with a shoebox full of pictures on her lap. She was leaning forward, trying to show him a picture of the two of them at last year's Longest Night.
"You and I walked around while Mom was doing churchy stuff," Mae said, pointing to him in the photo. "After awhile we climbed up on the church roof. We got shouted at for throwing snowballs at passerby, remember?"
"Mae, sweetie, I don't think he's in the mood," Stan said gently.
"This is going to work!" Mae insisted. "I know it." She reached for another picture. "This is me when I was in kindergarten. I was so cute back then..."
Reginald didn't even turn his head towards her.
Mae was beginning to get frustrated. "Granddad, look!" She tried to lean in closer. "Look at-"
"Mae." Now, her father's voice was firm. "Give him space, or leave."
Mae let out a huff, and slumped back in her chair. She was only trying to help.
It had been two weeks since the stroke, and Reginald wasn't recovering. He was getting worse, if anything. Before, even if he hadn't recognized his family, he'd still been able to converse with them, at least a little. Now, he barely acknowledged there was anyone in the room with him. Now, he never responded when someone else spoke to him.
The doctors had begun to prepare the Borowskis for the possibility that Reginald wouldn't make it.
Mae's parents seemed to have already resigned themselves to losing him, but Mae wouldn't give up. She'd visit every day, and sit with him every hour, until he finally got his senses back and could come home. She held his hand in hers, somehow feeling so much older than eighteen, watching him mutter to himself.
Suddenly, he sat up, staring out the window at the old trains, rattling to somewhere else.
"Granddad?" Mae said quietly, following his gaze.
He simply turned, wide-eyed, to face his son.
"This house is haunted," he said.
And died.
THOUGHT: He'll show up. He'll definitely show up.
Reginald had had a seat reserved for Mae's high school graduation, of course. He'd passed only two weeks before the ceremony. But Mae was certain he wouldn't let a little thing like dying stop him from coming to see his granddaughter get her high school diploma.
Maybe he'd be a ghost.
Maybe he'd be an angel.
Maybe this was all some sort of sick joke, and he wasn't really dead.
She wouldn't even be mad.
True, she hadn't gotten a chance to see him before the ceremony began, but she'd get her chance. She was sure of it. Bouncing up and down excitedly on her heels, Mae waited just offstage, watching all her classmates file out one-by-one as their names were called. Mae was fairly on in the alphabet, so, soon...
"Margaret Borowski," the teacher droned.
...There it was.
Mae started her short walk across the stage to get her diploma. The applause was, she noticed, significantly less enthusiastic for her as it was for everyone else. Gregg was clapping twice as hard as he had for anyone else, though, which was a plus.
As she got her diploma and her handshake from the principal, Mae glanced out at the small audience.
Her mother was crying and smiling at the same time.
Her father was snapping a picture.
Her grandfather...
The seat was empty.
He didn't come.
He was never going to come.
She was never going to see him again.
Mae felt like she'd been cut in half. She quickly ran offstage, but she didn't go to sit with the others who'd already gotten their diplomas. She slipped out the side door of the auditorium, not caring that people were watching. Not caring that this was yet another instance of Killer, ruining everything. Mae, still in her cap and gown, ran outside the school, sitting down on the front steps.
"Mae?"
She slowly lifted her head off her arms, and saw her father standing next to her.
"I... I was so sure he'd show up," Mae admitted, voice croaky.
"Oh, Kitten."
He sat down next to her, and hugged her as tight as he could. Normally, it would've felt like he was suffocating her, but today, Mae didn't mind.
THOUGHT: Murder.
It didn't make sense, Mae had decided. Her family didn't have a history of strokes. Reg was three whole years younger than the average age of people that had strokes. She'd done the research!
And all her research had told her that Reginald Borowski did not die of a stroke.
This wasn't God's will or nature or fate that had taken him away.
No. This was murder.
It seemed crazy. Everyone had liked her grandfather... or so she thought. But clearly, someone had been out to get him. Once the idea occurred to her, she felt stupid for not thinking of it before. People were saying he died "before his time," right? They had no clue how right they were.
He wasn't supposed to have died. It really hadn't been his time. He'd been murdered.
She'd tell her parents as soon as they got home. Then, they could start work on figuring out what had really happened to Granddad.
They'd be on the same page. She was sure of it.
THOUGHT: Poison?
Mae could tell from the look in his eyes that her father pitied her. Reginald Borowski had been dead and buried for a full three months, and yet, here she was, still entertaining this ridiculous notion. Except it wasn't ridiculous. And Mae would get everyone else to see that if it was the last thing she did.
"I'm telling you, Granddad didn't have a stroke!" she said. "I have a theory. Maybe if someone gave him poison that made it look like he had a stroke-"
"Mae, honey, we've been over this," Stan said, voice heavy. "Your grandfather had a stroke, and then he died. That's all that happened."
"No!" she insisted. "That's not right!"
"We brought you down to the morgue so the coroner could talk to you herself," he said. "Didn't she tell you she didn't find any traces of poison, or drugs, or anything else in his body?"
"But he didn't die 'til two weeks after the 'stroke,'" Mae said, putting a deliberate, sarcastic emphasis on the word. "The poison was out of his system before he died!"
"Mae, why would someone want to hurt your grandfather?"
"I don't know, but someone did. Someone killed him, and made it look like a natural death."
"The doctors examined him quite thoroughly, honey, and it was a stroke. It happens."
They'd had variations on this same conversation since Mae had first presented her theory to her parents. Neither of them believed her, not even slightly. Frankly, Mae had expected better from them.
"Dad, somebody killed him! This wasn't an 'it happens' thing," she said. "I already have a list of suspects-"
"Mae, you listen to me," Stan said, firmly, but gently. "I know you want this to make some kind of sense. I know you want there to be some reason your grandfather left us, someone you can blame. I... I think you think, deep down, that this'll be easier to get through if you can pin the blame on someone or something. But sometimes, it's nobody's fault. Sometimes, there is no reason. Sometimes... sometimes, people just die. This is one of those times. There's no big conspiracy, no mystery to solve - your grandfather had a stroke that killed him. It happens every day. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you'll actually be able to move on. He wouldn't want this. And trying to delude yourself into believing he was murdered won't help you. He's gone, Mae. Nothing you do or say can change that, and nothing you do or say will give us an adequate reason why."
Mae stood there, staring at her father, shocked. Her bottom lip trembled.
"...Come here, Mae," he said, trying to open his arms for a hug.
Mae didn't run to him. She went the opposite direction, out the front door, going towards the woods. She wanted to run further and further, get so lost in them that she'd never find her way back out. She didn't want to come back. Not ever. Not ever.
THOUGHT: He's gone.
Mae had cried, a little, at the funeral, but not like this. She'd never cried like this. As she sat on the forest floor, sobbing her eyes out, Mae felt all of her insides screaming at once.
She hated her father in that moment. Truly hated him. Hated him for dismissing her theories. For saying there was no reason Granddad was dead. For saying there was no one she could blame, no one she could punish for this.
Hated him for spelling out the truth.
No one had murdered him. Only God, if there was one.
Not only was her grandfather dead, he was dead for no reason.
Hot tears streamed down her face. Sitting in the dirt, blubbering and sniveling, Mae felt disgusting. She probably looked it, too. But she didn't care. No one was out here to see her, anyhow.
Until...
"Mae?"
She couldn't bring herself to look up at her father's voice, but somehow, he knew she'd heard him. She tried to catch her breath, tried to slow the tears as he sat down on the forest floor next to her.
"...I'm sorry, Mae," he said quietly. "I shouldn't have put it all quite like that. I just... your mom and I have been so worried."
Mae didn't reply. She just stared down at her lap.
Stan kept talking. "...You know, your granddad and I didn't always get along as well as we did when you were growing up."
That got her attention. She looked at him, curious but trying to hide it.
"We always loved each other," he said. "But we argued a lot. Disagreed a lot. Didn't speak much, if we could avoid it. I told him the need-to-know stuff, but that was it. Anything else, and we'd be at each other's throats again."
"...So what changed?" Mae asked quietly.
"...You came along."
"Nice try, Dad, but you can't make me feel any better."
"I'm serious," he said gently. "When you were born, your grandfather came by the hospital room with a huge teddy bear, a bouquet of pink balloons, and a book of ghost stories. He'd run out to get them as soon as I called him to say your mom was in labor."
Mae smiled. "I've seen that picture."
"He loved you the moment he saw you. I remember watching him hold you, seeing the way he talked to you and cradled you and looked at you, and thinking to myself, It would be a crime to keep those two apart. I realized that we couldn't carry on the way we had been if we wanted you to have both of us around as often as we'd have liked. And I think he realized that, too."
"So... things got... things got better?"
"Not right away. At first, we still argued. We still disagreed, all the way until he died. But we'd missed each other in all those years that things were rough. You coming along was the push we needed."
Mae sniffled, wiping her eyes on the back of her hand. "I want him to come home. I'd give up anything in the whole wide world if it meant he could come back."
"...He'd come back to you if he could, Kitten. I think he'd move Heaven and Hell to come back to you."
THOUGHT:He's gone. He'll never truly leave.
That night, he visited her in a dream.
Or maybe it was a memory.
She remembered the story he'd told her every Longest Night, even as she got too old for bedtime stories. The Lost Constellation.
She heard his voice echoing in her head, as she saw the story as she'd always imagined it. She felt the warmth of his arms, the safety of his presence surround her.
For the first time since he'd died, she'd felt at peace.
As she awoke slowly the next morning, Mae still felt... better. Maybe not okay. Maybe not happy. But better. It was as if he'd come to see her, one last time, to help her let go.
She made her way down the stairs for breakfast, and saw that stupid cuckoo clock. The one that always freaked Dad out. The one Granddad had given them.
And once she saw it, she knew she hadn't let go. And maybe never would. Because that dream hadn't been the last time she'd see, feel, or hear Reginald.
But somehow, that was okay.
She smiled at the clock, giving it a little nod, as if it really was her grandfather standing there. As if the old hunk of wood and gears could possibly be a match for the flesh and blood she missed.
Maybe she was nutty. A crazy, grieving girl unable to let go. But he'd once told her that he thought the dead had a way of remaining with the living.
Mae, for one, was happy to let him stay as long as he liked.
THOUGHT: Granddad would understand.
She went off to college, and college turned out to suck.
Mae was in serious danger of flunking out, but no matter what she did or tried, she couldn't force herself to leave her dorm. She barely slept, she barely ate. She'd been here three semesters and hadn't made a single friend.
The statue stood there. Pointing. Always pointing.
Mae wanted to evaporate into nothing, or collapse forever. Let her eyes close and never open them again.
She'd tried to go see the on-campus doctor, but had chickened out and run back to her dorm at the last possible second. She'd tried calling Dr. Hank to talk about her feelings, but had only been able to lie and claim it was all going great when he picked up. And she couldn't even bring herself to call Mom and Dad. What could she say? That sending her to college, the one gift they'd worked her entire life to give her, was only making her miserable?
That she was wasting away out here?
It was times like these she really missed Granddad. Maybe he wouldn't know what to say or do to help. But he'd listen. He wouldn't make her feel like a freak.
Even though that's what she was. A miserable, wretched, selfish freak that should just go ahead and die.
This couldn't go on.
She had to get out of this. If she didn't do something, she'd be trapped in this feeling forever.
THOUGHT: Come back to life, Granddad.
Mae had been home in Possum Springs for a couple days. Now that she was home, she was sure she'd made the right call by dropping out. In most ways, things were better.
But in others, they'd gotten a whole lot worse.
Although she didn't feel as empty and broken and scared as she had back at the college, Mae still felt a sense of melancholy as she wandered the streets of her dull, dying hometown. It was like the place was full of ghosts.
She smiled to herself. Living in a literal ghost town. Granddad would've liked that.
Mae kicked a stone, trying her best to force her mind off of him. It had been nearly two years, but she still wasn't used to him being gone. It was just like he'd said; people had a way of sticking with you forever. And everywhere she went, she could sense him. The diner where they'd shared so many meals. The hill where they'd gone stargazing. The old house in which he'd lived.
She missed him. So, so much. And she probably always would.
He'd died for no reason. No grand purpose. No elaborate conspiracy. He was just... gone.
But he'd left pieces of him in the world, in the form of a clock, an apple crate full of books, and every memory that was permanently part of Possum Springs now, because he'd been there. And a piece of him lived in Mae, too.
Just as a piece of her had died in him.
Maybe some would find that idea sad, but Mae didn't. He'd taken part of her to wherever it was he went, while she kept a part of him down here. It seemed a fair trade.
She just hoped that wherever he'd gone was better than here.