What Happens In The Ending Of Good People: Stories From The Best Of Humanity?

Mom had one rule, and she never let it go: one good deed a day. When I was little, I saved my allowance for an entire year to buy a doll. Then some girl beside me whispered that she wanted one too, and Mom ripped it out of my arms. "Do one good deed a day. Give her the doll." Later, I barely made it into the best high school in the county. I didn't even get to be happy before Mom told me she'd already signed me up for trade school. "Do one good deed a day. The girl who just missed the cutoff is poor. Give her your spot." Later, at trade school, my roommates stole every cent I had for food and rent. I called Mom, sobbing. "Do one good deed every day. Giving them your money still counts as doing something good." Later, I got a part-time job and ended up sold as a bride to some family way out in the sticks. I texted Mom, begging her to save me. Her reply popped up a second later. [Marriage means sticking it out. Give them a healthy baby boy, and that should cover ten years of good deeds.]

My family and I have gone on a road trip. But when I help an old lady to her feet after she suffered from a fall in the rest stop, my wife, Cindy Ford, who has been chatting animatedly with me the whole time, scowls at me instantly. "I never knew you were this underhanded! Just the sight of you disgusts me! Get lost!" Even my eight-year-old daughter, Tessa Hayes, glares at me disdainfully. "I don't want someone like you as my dad!" With an ashen face, Cindy whisks Tessa into the car immediately. Just like that, they abandon me at the rest stop. What I don't expect is that my in-laws actually call me on the phone and insult me as a walking jinx after finding out about the incident. Now, they want Cindy to get a divorce with me as soon as possible. Furious, I return to my childhood home and dump all of my emotional load on my parents. But my parents, who have always doted on me, don't console me at all after they find out I've helped an old lady up. Instead, their expressions go stormy. "How on earth did we end up having a son like you? You should just die already!" My parents kick me out of the house right away. Dazed and disoriented, I end up getting struck and killed by an incoming truck. Even as I breathe my last, I never understand what I've done wrong. When I open my eyes again, I've returned to the day I help the old lady up to her feet.

When war broke out in Irestan, my fiancé, Everett Jones, caused a scene at the airport and refused to let the evacuation flight take off. He was determined to wait for his precious first love, Annie Scott, who had taken advantage of the chaos to loot a cosmetics counter for luxury goods. By then, the insurgent forces were already closing in. The shriek of explosions grew louder, drawing nearer by the second. With an entire plane full of people in mortal danger, I had no choice. I knocked Everett unconscious and dragged him aboard. After we returned home, far from the battlefield, we lived a period of quiet, comfortable happiness. I truly believed he had finally put that woman behind him. I was wrong. On our wedding day, he tied me up, drove me away, and deliberately crashed the car, killing me. As my life slipped away, I heard his twisted laughter. "Daniela, you're the one who killed my Annie. Because of you, she was killed by an insurgent missile. "She was just a young girl who liked to look pretty. What was so wrong with that? "This is what you owe her. I'm going to make you suffer far more than she ever did." When I opened my eyes again, I was back at the boarding gate, at the exact moment he blocked the plane. This time, I chose to grant his wish and let him stay behind with his beloved first love, together, forever.

In a world ravaged by global nuclear fallout, I struggled to survive alongside my fragile, sweet-faced best friend, dodging one radiation storm after another. The route to the Central Safety Zone was blocked—we had no choice but to use two detonators to blast open the tunnel. Otherwise, we would be caught in the storm, our bodies rotting away until we either dissolved into blood sludge or turned into zombies. … In my previous life, I had risked everything to secure those detonators, only for my best friend to hand them over to a complete stranger without hesitation. "They have elderly people and children on their side too," she said earnestly. "One detonator can save many lives. Iris, you can't be selfish." I was so furious my blood pressure nearly exploded, but with no other option, I went straight into a horde of zombies to steal backup detonators. I lost an arm in the process, drenched in blood and barely standing. Yet, she complained that I was covered in gore and had frightened the children. After finally regrouping with the main convoy, I rushed to deliver the formula for anti-radiation medicine to the research institute so that more people could be saved. But she accused me of stealing supplies and trying to flee, which led to my expulsion from the base, and death, my body rotting away under the radiation. When I opened my eyes again, there was still one hour left before the radiation storm hit. I looked down at the two detonators in my hand, then at my pitiful, tear-brimmed best friend—and I smiled. Since she loved being a good person so much, this time, I would let her be one to her heart's content.

Some moments you plan for while most of the good ones, you don’t. Sweet Surrender is a collection of stories about the moments right before everything changes. It’s a storm that leaves two strangers with nowhere to run, a work trip that blurs every line that was supposed to stay straight, a wedding where the wrong person says exactly the right thing. These aren’t stories about perfect people making perfect choices. They’re a little guarded, a little stubborn to the point that whoever finds themselves in situations that make resisting feel pointless and surrender feel like the smartest and easiest thing they’ve ever done. Come in and get comfortable. Don’t make plans for the rest of the evening.

On the day my father died, his seven most trusted men all met violent deaths within the same twenty-four hours. Hugh Castillo sacrificed his legs to butcher the gang and put me in power. “Taz, don’t be scared. Those monsters are gone. You’re finally free.” In the years he lay paralyzed, I tried over a thousand experimental drugs and prayed at every church across the country. I hunted down every possible remedy, praying for just one that would bring him back to his feet. When Hugh learned of this, he swallowed a bottle of pills one night to end his life. After he was revived, he smiled and wiped the tears from my face. “Taz, I don’t want to be a dead weight. You deserve a better life than this.” That night, we held each other and wept. We swore that from then on, no matter what, we would never leave each other behind. But seven years later, a sweet-looking girl showed up at my door with a thousand photos I was never meant to see. “Every month, while you were praying to God in churches, Huey was busy trying out new positions with me. “Ms. Sheargold, don’t you know that used goods like you kill a man’s desire? It was no wonder he’d rather play the cripple than touch you.” I looked through every single photo, then put them up for auction underground.