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TODD
For a moment the hospital room faded from sight and was replaced by a different room entirely.
Helen lay quiet in her bed; not the hospital bed, but a room of yellow wallpaper with tiny rosebuds, and a small wrought iron metal bed frame. From her grey hair and the way her skin had begun to resemble crumpled paper, Todd knew that this scene was decades from now. He glanced up and saw another woman there, middle aged with fine lines around her eyes that turned up at the corners from years of laughter and smiling. She was holding the elderly woman’s hand as she took her last rattling breath in. The tears began to fall from the younger woman’s eyes, landing softly on the floral bedspread.
“I’ll see you later Mama,” she said. “I’ll see you.”
Helen was gone. But before the vision ended, the younger woman looked up, and straight into Todd’s eyes, her blonde hair streaked with bits of grey, and gave a small, tenuous smile. As though she could see him. As though he were somehow really there.
The vision ended as abruptly as they always did, and Todd was thrust back into the hospital room with Margery and Helen, just as Sylvie was saying something about the doctor coming to give test results in a few minutes.
“I can give you both some privacy,” Todd said, backing out the door awkwardly before Margery’s voice stopped him in his tracks.
“Wait Todd! Don’t go.” She looked at him with those clear blue eyes. She’d tossed her hair into a messy top knot that morning, and she was wearing that bedazzled TENNESEE shirt they’d bought that first day together again, and Todd couldn’t help but smile. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
“I’ll be right back. I promise.” Before she could make him reconsider once again, he left the room and walked down to the nearest coffee kiosk. He needed a moment to breathe, to collect himself, to process what he’d just seen. The kiosk was only down the hall and around the corner past the nurses station, but it was far enough for Todd to breathe more deeply than he had since that first time he’d looked into Margery’s eyes and seen her untimely murder.
I did it. He thought. I actually did it. Gran always said the visions didn’t show a future that was always certain, but the probabilities of possibilities. She always said she gave the gift to me because I had more imagination than Mom…but I never imagined this. All these years, I never imagined I could actually change things.
He kept turning the thoughts around and around in his mind as he fumbled with the paper cups at the coffee kiosk and filled one for Margery, being sure to add a healthy dose of creamer. Then he filled another waxed paper cup of his own to the brim with black, steaming hospital coffee which he seriously doubted was very good. But he needed the caffeine hit. He’d hardly slept since the hospital had called Margery three days ago, and his eyes felt gritty like they always did when he pushed himself too hard to deliver a shipment ahead of schedule. Todd held the cup lightly in his calloused hand for a moment before taking a sip. Yep. Tastes like dirt. But he kept drinking as the thoughts repeated over and over in his head.
I did it. I really did it.
A few minutes later, Todd approached Helen’s hospital room door with a lightness in his steps that he hadn’t experienced in his entire adult life, but before he could step over the threshold, he heard Margery’s previously serene voice raised in a fever pitch.
“What do you mean the cancer might be back?”
Another quieter male voice spoke, but Todd was too stunned to hear it.
“You’ve been running all these tests, for DAYS in here, and you don’t know for sure?”
More garbled low speaking. Todd leaned closer to try to hear without being seen, but the man didn’t seem capable of speaking above a near whisper. Margery heard him well enough though.
“Yes, you’d better go and look at your numbers again, and come back when you know what the hell you’re talking about!” Margery was practically shouting, and Todd’s palms turned to ice beneath the hot cups of coffee in his hands. He waited at the door for the short, balding man in a white coat to shuffle his way out the door.
“Excuse me,” he said, his eyes shifting to his feet as he walked past Todd and down the hall. Then Todd stepped back into the room.
His heart collapsed in his chest when he saw Margery’s shoulders shaking with sobs as she leaned over her mother’s lap. The anger she’d shown just a moment before had blown itself out, and now, this woman who had suddenly come to mean everything to him was crying. He knew what she was afraid of. It was a fear that haunted his every step, his every glance into a stranger’s eyes: she was afraid that death was just around the corner. And only Todd could tell her any different.
Helen stroked Margery’s hair absently as he entered the room, but said nothing, her lips pressed tightly together. Todd saw in her face the determined look of a mother who had spent her life working herself to the bone to give her child everything. Though he’d only just met her, Todd could see that Helen was a fighter—and she wasn’t about to stop now. So that’s where Margery gets it from.
“Margery?” Todd called to her and she lifted her head slowly to look at him. Her face was pale and drawn as it had been on the drive, and her eyes held both deep sorrow and unrelenting anger. “Can I talk to you for a minute…out in the hall?” He gave an apologetic smile to Helen, whose lips tipped up in gratitude and understanding.
“Go. Go. I’m not going anywhere darling.” Helen brushed a stray tear from Margery’s cheek and then wiped at her own eyes. Margery sniffed, but slowly rose to her feet and approached the door. When she was in reach, Todd brushed a comforting hand down her arm and took hold of her elbow, gently guiding her to a short row of uncomfortable plastic chairs a little ways down the hall. He handed her the cup of coffee that he’d loaded with cream, and they sat.
“Margery, there’s something I need to tell you.” Margery sipped from her coffee and stared at him, her eyes almost vacant, as though she were too tired to make facial expressions anymore.
“I’m not sure now is the best time for more bad news,” she said, staring at the stray splash of coffee on the white plastic lid of her cup as though it held all the certainties of the uncertain universe.
“Well, it’s not bad news exactly. It’s sort of good actually.”
“What do you mean by ‘sort of good?’” She raised her brows at him incredulously, and Todd wished he could lean forward and kiss the pucker in the middle of her forehead that came with the motion, but he knew this was not the moment for that. He breathed out a long sigh and began again.
“I’m sorry Margie, I started this all wrong. I need to tell you something, but it might seem totally unbelievable, so you'll need to just…I don’t know…do what they say in the theatre world and…suspend your disbelief for a minute.” Margery pursed her lips considering, then took a deep breath.
“Okay,” she said, “Consider my disbelief temporarily suspended.” She took another sip of her coffee. This is it.
“Your Mom doesn’t have cancer. Or…or if she does, she doesn’t die from it at least. In fact she doesn’t die for a long, long time.” He said the words softly, like a secret. Like a sweet nothing. Like the only gift he had to give this woman he cared so much about. He’d never once told someone what he saw in his visions before, not since the day he’d first received the gift and his grandmother had asked him quietly, “do I have to wait long?” And the young Todd had shaken his head. For most, knowing how the end would come would cause more terror than comfort. But his Gran had lived her whole life with this same gift—seeing death in the eyes of every stranger, before ever getting to know them in life. She knew there were good and bad ways to die. And hers was a as good a way as any.
MARGERY
Margery’s head was spinning with the words Todd had just said.
“What?” Margery’s question sounded less quizzical and more exclamatory. What the hell is he talking about? How could he possibly know that she doesn’t die…or know when she’s going to die?
“She doesn’t die. I mean she dies eventually—we all do—but not yet, and not from this. She lives to be an old, grey woman, a couple decades more at least I’d guess…and you’re with her when she goes, and she’s peaceful and held, and loved. It’s…it’s the most beautiful ending one could hope for in a world where death exists.” Margery saw a sheen of unshed tears welling in his eyes—and she couldn’t tell if they were tears for the horror of all he’d seen, or if they were somehow for the beauty of the moment her mother would go to glory, with Margery there to hold her hand.
She needed to say something. But all she could come up with was “Todd…you’re freaking me out. How could you possibly know any of that?” She was staring at him hard now, as though he were a puzzle she didn’t remember buying, and certainly didn’t remember dumping out.
“I’m not just a trucker Margery. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.” Margery felt all the blood draining from her face. He must be crazy. He’s lost his mind from too many road fumes and truck stop snacks. Her mouth moved like a fish out of water, gasping for a breath she’d never get to take, but Todd continued.
“When I was eight, before my Gran passed away, she gave me this…gift. At least, she always called it a gift. But I never saw it that way until I met you. And that night…the night we met—I was so angry at what I’d seen, and I did something a little bit crazy because after all these years of seeing what I see, and feeling cursed by it, I thought; What if? What if I could change things?”
“Change what Todd?” Margery’s voice sounded small and tinny in her own ears.
“The Future.” Todd’s eyes were on hers now, and something burned in their dark blue depths. Something like anger, and hope.
“You can see the future?” She covered her mouth with a hand, as though she could keep the insanity of the words she was speaking from escaping out into the world, the real world she’d always known, and becoming real.
“I see what my Gran called ‘the probabilities of possibilities.’ And It’s not like a sure thing, but the long and the short of it is, the first time I look into someone’s eyes…” his gaze flicked up to hers beneath his dark lashes, “I see the moment of their death.”
Margery was stunned into silence then, imagining what it would be like to see death in the eyes of every stranger. Despite his charm and the obvious love of Betsy and Mike, Todd had always seemed to turn inward when they were around new people. He shifted uneasily on his feet, and avoided eye contact often, especially with those he didn’t know. All of a sudden it made sense; his preference for restaurants and hole in the wall places where he knew the owners, or had at least previously been before. His love of life on the road. His seeming inability to maintain any kind of romantic relationship. His lack of close friendships with anyone other than those he spoke to on the radio. As though she were watching a tragic movie, she imagined what Todd’s life must have been like all these years before they met— the weight of unavoidable death constantly pressing down on his flannel covered shoulders. Then with a start, something occurred to her.
“But Todd… you looked into my eyes,” she said at last.
“I know.” He said. “I hadn’t planned on it. I noticed you when I first came in to the bar that night, and you were so radiant and happy and I knew that I did not want to see what happened next. But then you slipped and fell, and before I knew it I was there, holding you, watching as…” he tore his eyes away from hers, his throat bobbing with emotion. “Watching as the light and laughter left your eyes. And I couldn’t do it any more Margery.”
“Couldn’t do what Todd?” She stared at the side of his face, the shadows of each hair on his unshaved face thrown into stark relief by the godless fluorescence of the hospital lighting. Somewhere, she heard a heart monitor beeping. Down the hall a doctor being paged. A nurse walked by in puppy love scrubs, placing updated charts next to patient rooms. A 16-year-old boy rolled by in a wheel chair. Todd studiously avoided their gazes, even as he finally lifted his eyes to Margery’s once more. When he finally spoke, there was an edge of rage and desperation in his tone that Margery had never heard before.
“I couldn’t just stand by and let him kill you.”
TODD
Margery was looking at him like he’d grown a second head. Or horns. Or maybe both.
“Oh my God Todd…what are you saying?” Her eyes were wide with horror and shock.
“You don’t want to hear it Margery.”
“Like HELL I don’t,” she spat.
“It’s not good to hear the things I see Margie. Trust me on this.”
“Trust ME when I tell you, that you have kept enough secrets from me Todd Mackewain and now it’s time to come all the way clean, or not at all.” The fear had turned to a dangerous live wire, and her eyes seemed to dance with a dangerous spark. The whole truth it is then.
“Fine.” He bit out, his anger getting the upper hand on the good judgment that was still screaming at him to keep his mouth shut. “Do you really want to know what I saw when I looked into your eyes that night?”
“Yes, I really do.” Her face was red with agitation.
“I saw you in your wedding dress, a necklace of bruises around your neck, and the light fading from your eyes as a pool of blood seeped out from beneath your hair. And I saw…” he paused for a moment, trying to catch his breath at the memories. “And I saw a man’s hands. His hands. With a brand new wedding band on that left hand ring finger. And I knew,” he paused again, “I knew that if I didn’t do something crazy, something against all the rules, that by the end of the following day you’d be dead. You were a stranger to me, but you had so much laughter in your eyes, and the thought of that being snuffed out was…it was unbearable.” He looked up into Margery’s eyes, and saw the truth of his words beginning to sink in their blue depths.
“Sean was…Sean would have killed me on our wedding night?” She barely got the words past her lips, “But WHY?”
“I don’t know that. The visions only show me glimpses. Snippets of what the future is currently shaping up to be. The trajectory is set by so many factors that I am not privy to. But the long story short is that that night…I broke all the rules I’ve lived my whole life by, and for this moment right here…” he turned towards Margery and ran his hand on the inside of her wrist, feeling her strong pulse with his fingertips, “I’d do it again.”
“Do what, exactly Todd? What rules did you break? Why is helping someone against the rules?”
“I never knew if it was exactly, but Betsy and Mike…now don’t think less of them alright? But you know they practically raised me after my Gran passed, and they’ve always been a little more old school about the future. Like ‘you have no business mucking about with fate.’ When I was 10 I had this friend…and when we first met I saw he was going to get hit by a car one day while crossing the school’s crosswalk. So every day that year I stuck by him like glue. I walked with him across the cross walk every day to and from school, and sure enough, the day that car came out of nowhere I was able to yank him back.”
Margery’s mouth opened in an O as she spoke in hushed awe, “That’s amazing Todd! You could do so much…”
“That’s not the end of the story Margery.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“He died in a car crash two years later.”
“Oh….oh God…”Margery said under her breath.
“Betsy and Mike…you know they’re good people, but they took that as confirmation that I shouldn’t be trying to change things. I should be messing with fate, or the divine order, or the universe…whatever you want to call it. What happens is meant to happen, they said. It was for the best to leave well enough alone. But they never had to live under the weight of seeing what I see…of knowing what I know.”
“That must have been awful.” Todd saw the sincere grief in her eyes, and he hoped that maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t actually about to lose the one good thing he had going in his life. But she’d told him to come clean, and it was time that he did.
“You asked me for the whole truth Margery, and I’m going to give it to you. If that’s what you want.”
“Of course that’s what I want Todd. Honesty is the foundation of any trusting relationship.” She smiled gently at him, as if she were teasing him. But he knew she wasn’t. It was only to soften the bite of her words. The threat of what would happen to them if he continued keeping secrets to himself.
“Do you remember the morning you woke up in the cab of my truck?”
“How could I forget it? The night before—half of it seems to have packed it’s bags and taken off for good, but that morning…” she trailed off, “I remember.”
“Do you remember how you asked me if I had kidnapped you.” He peered up into her face. His fingers still idly traced the pulse point in her wrist.
“Yes…”
“And I told you, that you told me to ‘just drive.’” He turned her palm face up and began tracing the lines there.
“Yes…because I was having second thoughts. Seems I was smarter than Sean gave me credit for,” she smiled at him, but Todd’s hands stilled as her cupped her hands between his own.
“Margery, I lied.”
“What?”
“I lied. You didn’t tell me to just drive. You weren’t having second thoughts, at least, not enough that you’d tell a complete stranger to take you with him out of town.”
“Todd, what are you saying?”
“I’m saying that I committed a wrong in order to make one thing right. That night we drove out of Brewton…I did kidnap you. All you said before you passed out was that you needed a ride home. Nothing about second thoughts. You didn’t tell me to drive. I made the decision to leave town with you all by myself. But you were drunk, and I’d seen what I’d seen in your eyes so I took the chance that you would believe me.” His voice was rising in desperation now, and his throat felt like it was closing as he remembered what he’d seen when he first looked into Margery’s eyes. “I just had to get you away.” But just as these final words, this final raw confession left his lips, Margery pulled her hand away from his.
“You…you kidnapped me?”
“Margery…”
“Not telling me about the gift is one thing, that’s your story to tell and your story alone. But now I find out that you kidnapped me, and then lied about it?”
“Margery, until you my life was either desperate loneliness, or witnessing death after death in the eyes of strangers. But then I met you and in a moment, everything changed. I couldn’t just let him kill you, that much was clear. But it wasn’t until we started heading North that I realized, that maybe I wasn’t only here for you…maybe, you were here for me too. Maybe I didn’t have to live a life of lonely existence just driving place to place, avoiding any close connection with people, because nothing hurts worse than loving someone and…” he trailed off.
“And what Todd?"Her voice was tight and tense, but he plowed ahead anyway.
“and knowing you’re about to lose them.”
MARGERY
Betrayal burned like raw acid in her throat. She stared down at her coffee cup and tried to digest it all.
The gift.
The lie.
The hope that her mother would live.
The truth that she’d been living in a fantasy with a man she barely knew, and now, could no longer trust.
She didn’t know how to be in this moment. She could barely remember how to breathe. She needed space. And time. It was all too much. Much too much.
“Todd, I think you should go.”
“Sure, sure. I understand you need time to process.” He scrubbed a hand down his face. “I can go and grab you guys some lunch while I’m out, do you want something from…”
“No Todd.” Margery held up a hand in final resolution, her body making decisions for her while her mind continued to reel. “As hungry as I am, I don’t think even the most orgasmic burger in the world could make this better right now.” Her face was set like a flint, but her eyes were heavy with betrayal and hurt.
“What…” He sat there, looking stunned. His brow furrowing in a way she’d often found adorable, but which now made her see red. “What are you saying?”
“I’m telling you to go Todd. Just go. Just drive. Go make Francine the happiest truck dispatcher in the world and pick her up some of those chicken wings you were pointing out 20 minutes ago. I don’t care. You need to…” her face burned in the way that told her it was going blotchy and red in patches, and her eyes began to sting.
“Francine’s out at headquarters in Ohio…Margery…”
“I don’t want to hear it Todd! You have visions. You have a gift. You’re the harbinger of death, but you saved my life. I’m grateful to you for all you’ve done but…” she took a shaky breath, tucking her free hand beneath her armpit, and trying to keep the cup of coffee in her hand from betraying how she’d begun to shake. “But we’ve been living a fantasy. A romantic roadtrip adventure, and it was all based on a lie. A lie you told me. Can’t you see, we can’t go on like this?” It felt like her heart was tearing in two to say the words, but they had to be said. She’d lived with one morally grey man before. What good was it to trade him in for another?
“Okay,” Todd said, slowly coming to a stand. “I understand. But can I just say one last thing Margery?”
“One. Last. Thing,” she said, her voice torn between wobbling with tears and a vacant hollowness that bounced off her bones.
“I’m sorry that I lied to you, but after seeing you with your mom today…” he trailed off. “If I had to choose: your life, or your love…I’d choose your life every time. You’re a star Margery. The damn brightest light in the dark that I’ve ever seen. And the world is a much better place with you in it. Trust me. I’ve seen the alternative.”
With that, Todd turned from where she sat in the hallway and beneath the flickering lights of the hospital fluorescents, Margery watched as the man she loved walk away.
Margery and Todd’s story will continue in Part Eight! If you haven’t already, Subscribe to get next week’s post sent straight to your inbox!
My heart! 💔
Does Margery have a plan to stay away from Sean, though? He’s been lurking around the edges of the story…
Grace, you're killing me here! 🤪 This is a gripping story and I can't wait to see what happens next.