“Has she had these before?” he asks.
“Yes,” I tell him, though for how long I’m not sure.
“Are you all right?” he asks, and the question is so unexpected that I have to blink away a fresh bloom of tears.
“I should be,” I say, then, “but I’m not.”
He puts a hand on my arm, light as air. “It’s okay. You don’t have to be.”
I want to say something, anything, but the words pile up in my throat. In the space between us is all the unsaid, all the longing and confusion and grief I’ve been holding since the day I arrived.
Cassie watches from the kitchen table, her face pale, eyes darting between me and Nathan. She knows, somehow, what this means, what it will mean.
Sara finishes her soup and sets down the spoon. The tremor in her hands has lessened, but her face is drained, the skin around her mouth drawn taut. She wipes her lips and says, “You two—stop fussing. I’m not dead yet.”
We all laugh, too loudly, and the relief is its own kind of pain.
The rest of the day passes in sips of soup, doses of medication, the careful watching of each other. Nathan stays, refusing to be shooed away. He cleans up, fixes a leak inthe bathroom, distracts Cassie with stories about the ocean. I alternate between gratitude and irritation, the two emotions sparring in my chest until I’m exhausted.
In the afternoon, Sara insists on walking to the porch, and the three of us help her, supporting her weight in a lopsided, awkward procession. We settle her into a rocker, blankets tucked around her legs, and she closes her eyes, letting the breeze lift the stray wisps of her hair.
Nathan stands behind me, his hand hovering just above the small of my back. I don’t lean in, but I don’t pull away, either.
The sun slants low across the dunes, turning every blade of grass into a gold filament. Sara’s breath is slow, measured. Cassie sits at her feet, head bowed over a book, but she isn’t reading. She’s listening, waiting for any sign of trouble.
I watch the horizon, the way the light fractures and bends, and think about all the things I can’t say. That I’m scared. That I don’t know how to do this without breaking. That, for the first time in years, I want something so badly it feels like a fever under my skin.
Nathan’s hand finally finds its place. I let it stay.
The day bleeds out, the sky turning from blue to ash. Sara’s head tips forward, her breathing shallow but even. She’s asleep, or as close as she gets anymore.
Nathan turns to me, his eyes searching. I can see the question there, hovering on the edge.
I shake my head, just enough for him to see.
“Not now,” I whisper. “She needs us.”
He nods, understanding, and squeezes my hand once, then lets go.
I watch the last of the daylight fade, and suddenly, it feels like the world is holding its breath, waiting to see what will happen next.
Cassie looks up, her face an echo of my own, and I see the shape of the future.
We sit there, the three of us, braced against the coming night.
And in the hush that follows, I promise myself I won’t let go.
24
Diane
The day after Sara’s episode is a long, strange drift. Even the house seems to move slower, like it’s adjusting to the new terms of gravity. We keep a watchful eye on Sara, tiptoe past the threshold of her bedroom with offerings of tea and toast, but mostly she just sleeps, her face slack and unguarded, hair splayed in a gray corona across the pillow. It’s a shock, every time I see her like this, a reminder that the iron will she wears in public is just so much skin, so much fragile chemistry, waiting to fail.
Nathan spends most of the morning patching the fence and dragging storm debris to the curb. I watch him through the kitchen window as I clean up yesterday’s disaster. He’s wearing an old University of North Carolina T-shirt, hair damp from a quick rinse under the spigot. When he stoops to tie a bundle of branches, the muscles in his forearm bunch and release. I pretend not to notice. I pretend it doesn’t matter.
I pretend I’m not thinking about his hand on my back, the way his lips tasted the first time he kissed me, or how easily I could let myself fall into the shape of wanting him. Lust is easier to manage than grief, even at its most inconvenient moments.But Sara is upstairs, and I am twice exiled, by guilt and by the fact that there’s nothing worse than a woman who lets herself be selfish. The memory slinks off, into the nest of soap bubble I am cultivating in the sink.
Cassie is upstairs, in what’s now officially her “room” at Sara’s, hunched over a spiral notebook and drawing what looks like an anatomically correct pelican. Every so often, I hear her pencil snap, followed by a curse she’s learned from me and thinks I can’t hear. Rolo is nestled against her thigh, a solid, reassuring furry mass.