“Dad! Dad!” Joy looks at Justin with desperation in her eyes. “What’s the matter with Charlie?”
Charlie’s hands are shaking.
Justin looks at him, and seems to freeze.
“Don’t wake up feeling bad!” Joy grabs Charlie. “Don’t wake up feeling bad! Stay with me and I’ll make you feel better!”
“Charlie, you’ve had a really bad dream,” Suzy begins, but Justin finally steps in.
“Charlie, get your mother back!”
Charlie shakes his head and now his entire body’s shaking.
“Don’t wake up feeling bad!” Joy begs him.
“You’ve had a bad dream!” Suzy says softly.
“Get your mother!” Justin says. “Just get her back!”
Charlie is shaking. It almost looks as if he’s convulsing.
“Charlie,” Justin grabs him. “Charlie!” He puts his hands under Charlie’s armpits, raises him and hugs him.
Charlie spreads his arms and hugs him back.
“It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay,” Justin says. Charlie’s convulsions are slowing down. “It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.”
Everybody’s breathing easier now.
“I want my dad back!” Charlie cries. “I want him back!”
Joy immediately cries as well. “I’m sorry! He was going to kill me!”
“No!” Charlie, no longer crying, says without looking at any of us. “I want my real dad back! He would never let this happen to me in school! Never!”
And now there’s silence, as Justin, Suzy, and I exhale simultaneously, and Joy stops crying.
“Oh, my,” Suzy says, approaching him. “How awful it is to be without a father. How awful it is to know that things are worse.”
“We would never have moved out of the Rez!” Charlie tells her.
“I understand,” Suzy says. “You must miss him so much.”
Charlie cries again. “And I can’t see him in my dreams, either!”
“I’m sorry!” Joy says. “He was going to kill me! And I wasn’t the one who–”
Charlie disappears.
His home disappears, and before we fall, Justin creates a sidewalk underneath us.
He looks at Joy. “Joy, it wasn’t your fault,” he tells her. “You would be dead. All of us, including Charlie, want you alive more than we want the dream of someone’s ghost.”
“Yeah?”
Justin gives Joy his hand. “One hundred percent. Let’s go home.
—Told by Grampa Walt