I had lived inside that part for three years.
Police had shown me photographs of the wreckage. A city in Italy. We were there on vacation. Sarah had driven out that night to visit a friend. That’s what she told me.
The guardrail torn open. Her purse found against a rock. One shoe. Enough blood in the car for the detective to stop using hopeful language.
Sarah had driven out that night to visit a friend.
But no body.
That was the part I had built prayers around until the prayers became useless.
“I woke up in a hospital,” Sarah said. “I didn’t know who I was.”
“I couldn’t speak properly. I couldn’t remember names. I didn’t remember Lily.” She stared at me. “I didn’t remember you.”
“I didn’t know who I was.”
Her hand went to her cheek.
The burn scar.
I kept my eyes on it.
“Convenient,” I muttered.
“It sounds that way.”
I kept my eyes on it.
She kept talking.
“The hospital found Marcus through company records. His name was listed on the Italian expansion documents.”
“He flew here.”
“Yes.”
“He found you alive.”
“Yes.”
“And I buried an empty coffin.”
Her hands folded together.
“I did not know that then.”
“He found you alive.”
“When did you know?”
She did not answer quickly enough.
The sea moved below us, hitting stone again and again.
“When did you know, Sarah?”
“Months later.”
“When did you know?”
I sat then, not because I wanted to, but because standing gave my body too many ways to betray me.
“And after the months?”
Sarah looked past me toward the closed terrace doors.
A child laughed somewhere downstairs.
She did not look toward the sound.
Marcus did.
I noticed that too.
“And after the months?”
“After the months,” she said, “I booked a flight.”
“When?”
“September.”
“You disappeared in March.”
“I know.”
“Then you came home in September.”
Her eyes stayed on the table.
“No.”
I waited.
“You disappeared in March.”
She swallowed once.
“I canceled it.”
“Why?”
She touched the rim of the espresso cup she had brought upstairs but never drank.
“I saw the article.”
“I canceled it.”
Marcus looked at her.
She ignored him.
“The one about the memorial. The photo of you holding Lily by the casket. You looked…”
“Careful,” I whispered.
She nodded. “You looked like someone who had learned how to stand because falling would hurt the baby.”
I remembered that day.
She ignored him.
Lily had slept through most of the service with her cheek pressed to my jacket. Every person who hugged me had said she was a blessing.
No one knew what to say when a blessing cried for a mother who could not answer.
“I thought if I walked in then,” Sarah said, “I would break what you had built around the loss.”
A laugh came out of me.
“What I built?”
“You survived, Harry.”
“What I built?”
“I ate standing over the sink because Lily screamed whenever I put her down.”
Sarah’s hand closed around nothing.
“I know.”
“You do not know.”
“I watched videos Marcus found online,” she said. “Your sister posted some. Birthdays. Christmas. Lily walking.”
I turned to Marcus.
“You let her watch instead of sending her home?”
“You do not know.”
His jaw moved.
“Every time.”
“Every time what?”
“Every time she said she would go tomorrow.”
The word sat there.
Tomorrow.
I looked back at Sarah.
Her face had gone very still.
“Every time she said she would go tomorrow.”
“The first tomorrow was because I could not walk without help,” she said. “The next, because I was still forgetting my words. Then came the days my face looked different from the burn scars. And finally, because Lily’s first birthday had passed.”
She pulled her sleeve over her wrist though the day was warm.
“Every missed day made the next one harder.”
“That is not an answer.”
“No.”
“Every missed day made the next one harder.”
“That is cowardice.”
She nodded. “Yes.”
I had wanted Sarah to defend herself.
Some part of me needed her to make it easier to hate her.
She refused me that comfort.
“That is cowardice.”
Marcus finally spoke.
“You can blame me for keeping quiet.”
I did not look away from Sarah.
“I already do.” I turned then. “But not for what you think.”
“I already do.”
“I told her to go home, Harry,” Marcus said. “At first kindly. Later badly. We fought about it in hospitals, rented rooms, airport parking lots. I bought tickets she did not use.”
“Heroic.”
“No.”
His face did not harden.
