The Mystery of Grace

The Mystery of Grace

On the Day of the Dead, the Solona Music Hall is jumping. That's where Altagracia Quintero meets John Burns, just two weeks too late. Altagracia – her friends call her Grace – has a tattoo of Nuestra Señora de Altagracia on her shoulder, she's got a Ford Motor Company tattoo running down her leg, and she has grease worked so deep into her hands that it'll never wash out. Grace works at Sanchez Motorworks, customizing hot rods. Finding the line in a classic car is her calling. Now Grace has to find the line in her own life. A few blocks around the Alverson Arms is all her world -- from the little grocery store where she buys beans, tamales, and cigarettes ("cigarettes can kill you," they tell her, but she smokes them anyway) to the record shop, to the library where Henry, a black man confined to a wheelchair, researches the mystery of life in death – but she's got unfinished business keeping her close to home. Grace loves John, and John loves her, and that would be wonderful, except that John, like Grace, has unfinished business – he's haunted by the childhood death of his younger brother. He's never stopped feeling responsible. Like Grace in her way, John is an artist, and before their relationship can find its resolution, the two of them will have to teach each other about life and love, about hot rods and Elvis Presley, and about why it's necessary to let some things go. "De Lint is a romantic; he believes in the great things, faith, hope, and charity (especially if love is included in that last), but he also believes in the power of magic--or at least the magic of fiction--to open our eyes to a larger world."--"Edmonton"" Journal ""Charles de Lint is the modern master of urban fantasy. Folktale, myth, fairy tale, dreams, urban legend--all of it adds up to pure magic in de Lint's vivid, original world. No one does it better." -- Alice Hoffman Charles de Lint  and his wife, the artist MaryAnn Harris, live in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. His evocative novels, including Moonheart, Forests of the Heart, and The Onion Girl, have earned him a devoted following and critical acclaim as a master of contemporary magical fiction in the manner of storytellers like John Crowley, Jonathan Carroll, Alice Hoffman, Ray Bradbury, and Isabel Allende. The Mystery of Grace By de Lint, Charles Tor Books Copyright © 2010 de Lint, Charles All right reserved. ISBN: 9780765317575 She woke up when he got out of bed. As she lay there, listening to him pee, it occurred to her that she’d actually been sleeping. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a real sleep. She stretched languorously, appreciating the pull on her muscles and how the sheets slid across her skin. When the toilet flushed, she sat up to watch him return to bed, but he didn’t climb back in. Instead, he sat at the end, pulling up his feet to sit cross-legged on the comforter. "I killed my brother," he said. "You what?" He lifted a hand. "Oh, I don’t mean literally. I killed him by neglect." She leaned back against the headboard, pulling the sheets up over her breasts. A moment ago, she’d been comfortable with her nudity. Now she felt uneasy and goose bumps marched up her arms. She realized that for all their earlier intimacy, this was still a stranger’s room. He was still a stranger, and she wasn’t sure she liked the turn the evening had suddenly taken. No, scratch "evening." Make that late, late night. Almost morning. If she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a real sleep, she really couldn’t remember the last time she’d gone home from a club with a stranger. But he’d seemed so nice. He still seemed nice. Except right at this moment she didn’t trust that he actually was what he seemed. "Why are you telling me this?" she asked. "I don’t know. It’s the anniversary of his death—he’s always on my mind at Halloween. And I find that any time I’m really, really happy, I think of him and how it’s one more thing he’ll never get to experience." "That’s messed up." "No kidding." "You’re still not saying why you’re telling me this." He shrugged. Those dark brown eyes of his settled their gaze on hers and she found it hard not to melt into their warmth. "I know we’ve just met," he said, "but I felt this real connection with you, right from the first moment." She smiled, and relaxed a little. "You don’t need a pickup line anymore," she said. "I’m already in your bed." He smiled back. "I know. I guess I just wanted to share an... I don’t know... intimacy with you." She let the sheets fall and scooted over the bed until she was sitting right in front of him, cross-legged as well, their knees bumping. She took his hands. "Tell me what happened," she said. It wasn’t a long story, but it was long enough. His bedroom windows faced west, so neither of them saw the dawn pinking the city’s skyline. She wanted to tell him what happened wasn’t really his fault, but she knew that wasn’t the way this kind of guilt worked. Intellectually, he already knew