Hallowed: An Unearthly Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

be the strangest conversation any mother and daughter has ever had over milk and cookies. “How much more?”

    She shrugs. “I don’t know. We’re all different. Our purposes are all different.”

    “Which was it for you?”

    “For me . . .” She clears her throat delicately. “It was more than one event,” she admits.

    Not good enough.

    “Mom, come on,” I demand. “Don’t leave me in the dark.”

    Inexplicably, she smiles this tiny smile, like she finds me funny. “It’s going to be okay, Clara,” she says. “You’ll figure it out when you’re supposed to figure it out. I know that’s frustrating to hear. Believe me, I know.”

    I swallow the rising craziness that’s churning in my stomach. “How? How do you know?” She sighs. “Because my purpose lasted more than one hundred years.” My mouth drops open.

    One hundred years.

    “So . . . so you’re saying that it might not be over?”

    “I’m saying that your purpose is more complicated than simply completing a task.” I jump to my feet. I can’t keep sitting down for this. “You couldn’t have told me this, oh, I don’t know— before the fire?”

    “I can’t give you the answers, Clara, even if I know them,” she says. “If I did it might change the outcome. You just have to trust me when I say that you’ll get the answers when you need them.”

    And there’s the look again, the sadness. Like I’m disappointing her right this minute. But I also see something else in her luminous blue eyes: faith. She still has faith. That there’s some kind of plan for our lives, some kind of meaning, or direction, behind all of this. I sigh. I’ve never had her kind of faith, and I’m afraid I never will. But I find that even though I obviously have some issues with her, I do trust her. With my life. Not only because she’s my mother, but because when it really counted, she saved it.

    “Okay,” I say. “Fine. But I don’t have to like it.”

    She nods, smiles again, but the sadness doesn’t quite leave her face. “I don’t expect you to like it. You wouldn’t be my daughter if you did.”

    I should tell her, I think, about the dream. See if she thinks it’s important, if it’s more than a dream. If it’s a vision. Of my possibly continuing purpose.

    But right then Jeffrey comes through the door, and of course he hollers, “What’s for dinner?” since food is always the first thing on his mind. Mom calls back to him, starts bustling around preparing a meal for us, and I’m amazed at her ability to switch off like that, to make it feel like we’re any other kids coming home from our first day of school, no heavenly purposes set for us, no fallen angels hunting us, no bad dreams, and Mom is just like any other mother.

    After dinner I fly over to the Lazy Dog to see Tucker.

    He’s surprised when I tap on his window.

    “Hi there, handsome,” I tell him. “Can I come in?”

    “Absolutely,” he says, and kisses me, then quickly rolls across the bed to close the door. I crawl through the window and stand, looking around. I love his room. It’s warm and cozy, neat but not too neat, a plaid bedspread pulled haphazardly up over his sheets, piles of schoolbooks, comics, and rodeo magazines strewn about his desk, a pair of gym socks and a balled-up hoodie in the corner of the slightly dusty oak floor, his collection of cowboy hats set in a line across the top of his dresser along with some old green army men and a couple fishing lures. There’s a rusty horseshoe nailed over his closet door. It’s so boy .

    He turns to look at me, scratches at the back of his neck.

    “This isn’t going to become one of those creepy situations where you show up at all hours of the night to watch me sleep, is it?” he asks playfully.

    “Every moment I’m away from you, I die a little,” I say in return.

    “So that’s a yes, then.”

    “Are you complaining?” I ask, quirking an eyebrow at him.

    He grins. “Nope.