Only Saints

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It will never feel the same again.

The words hiss under my skin as I drag myself up the porch to the screen door. Beyond there is nothing but darkness, the flicker of a candle, the scrape of ribbon over skin and velvet on a speaker's throat. Out here, out in the storm as it rolls in, lightning licks off my skin and leaves me lit up in ways that I could only imagine before. I sweep the orange ribbon off the porch and wrap it around my hand once more, and the glow of the porch light redirects to my focus.

When I walk through the screen door, I am glowing like an angel.

Be not afraid.

Or do. I am a destroyer, aren't I?

The Sebring ladies are the first ones to look up at me. My mother is the last, and when her eyes meet mine she does not see what I see. I can see myself reflected in her—a boy, perhaps, still young and sitting at his grandmother's elbow. A boy with soaked clothes and hair hanging lank and wet around his face.

She stands from Old Mère's recliner. Neither of us break the concentration of the spell. She only holds her hand out. When I take it, she pulls me back to my old room and starts digging through my suitcase for a dry outfit, finally throwing the old graphic tee and a pair of jeans onto the bed.

In the minute it takes me to change, she's disappeared and come back with a brush in her hands. She sits me on the edge of the bed and starts brushing my hair from the ends. It's calming, sitting with her here in the silence, watching the creek water drip from my skin and hair onto the sheets and floor. I leave a puddle everywhere I have been.

I am leaving marks.

It's all I've ever wanted, isn't it?

Finally, I break the silence between us: "I'm sorry. I know what you meant."

She hits my hand with the back of the hairbrush. "No," she says, "you don't."

I blink. "I don't?"

Why is it a question? Don't you trust your mother?

Don't you want to be a good son?

Her arms wrap around my shoulders. She presses her cheek into my hair and pulls me into a hug tight enough that my chest aches with the pressure. Or maybe not with the pressure. It's hard to tell what pain comes from my ribs and what comes from my heart, from the twisting of regret and shame deep inside me.

"I'm sorry," she echoes me. Her breath sinks warm into my shirt. "I should have put up more of a fight."

"Dad was always going to—"

"Not," she says, "your father."

"Oh."

My mother lets go of me. The brush drags through my hair again. I flinch when it strikes my scalp, but the bristles aren't hard. They don't scratch at me. They won't open me up.

"They were always going to love you." Her voice is lower than the clouds outside. I nearly can't hear her over the spellweaving in the other room.

Drew. Where is he? How is he taking this all?

Fuck. There's so much I have to do.

The orange ribbon around my hand has stopped glowing. The light has returned to the porch. There goes my angelic power.

Be afraid, Paul.

Be very afraid.

"What do you mean?" I ask, even though I'm not sure I want to know. I ask, even though I know the answer will cut away at the feeble stability I've built for myself in the hour I spent letting the river wash me clean.