The English Descendants

27

Eddie's first relationship is an accident. She falls in step with a young man on the way out of her college chemistry class and feels obligated to strike up a conversation. He asks her to coffee. Within a few months, she is spending nights at his apartment. But things take a turn for the worse. He is controlling, he does not like when she disappears back home for the weekend without telling him, and he discourages the little gear-turned inventions that she often wants to bring over to show him. There is always an excuse. A friend's kitten. The project he has on every coffee table. The holiday decorating he never gets around to doing. Then he shoves her. Later, he slaps her.

Thomas does not like what he sees. He asks Eddie often if she is all right and she always tells him she is, that she can handle herself. That it is none of his business. But he cannot help himself. He watches. Rose causes far less worry. She rarely dates and when she does, she dates women. The ones she has dated have never wanted to control her. Thomas wonders if it has something to do with the area she studies. Perhaps fewer troublesome individuals populate the library sciences.

He always tells Eddie that he will respect her mind, her decision to stay, even if it hurts to watch. And she thanks him, even though she knows she is making a terrible decision. But when she misses a period, her boyfriend's rage is far greater than it ever has been and he punches her in the stomach before tossing her against a wall. He storms out of the apartment. Eddie pries herself from the floor, shuddering. Cool hands steady her.

"Slowly, dear girl."

"What the fuck just happened?"

"You know as well as I."

"But over a pregnancy test? I don't even have it yet."

"And what will happen if you are?"

She sighs, "He'll kill me."

"Gather your things. Leave, Eddie. Please, I beg of you. I cannot herald another young death."

"Yeah. I think I have to, don't I?"

"Have to what?" her boyfriend asks as he returns to the apartment.

She shrinks against the wall as she notices there is a gun in his hand, "Oh god, don't."

"Tell me what you have to do."

"Get the hell out of here."

"No, bitch, you're never leaving."

While Thomas knows this particular person probably cannot see him, or is not willing to see him, and he is not supposed to intervene in death, he once again finds himself desperately unwilling to merely observe. He remembers the feeling of the Japanese soldier passing through him, live grenade in hand, as her boyfriend raises his weapon. Thomas gathers all the ghostly strength he can muster to slam the hand holding the gun to the ground. Eddie grabs her bag and runs out of the apartment.

Surprised that he could do anything at all, Thomas wills himself seen and prays to whatever in the universe makes a person ready to see the dead to allow him just one moment. Eddie's boyfriend stares in horror as Thomas fades into view, glaring at him. He says nothing, just glowers, attempting to be as frightening as a dead man could be.

"What the fuck are you?" Thomas steps closer. "Get back!" He raises his gun. Thomas disappears.

Eddie hasn't stopped running and she does not stop until she is safely in her dorm room, every lock on the door fastened tight. She calls the police and tells them everything. And then she tosses herself onto her bed and cries. Thomas finds her. He stays even when the officers come to speak to her, invisible beside her, a hand on her back. And he is there all through the night until her room-mate returns.