I wish you were still here.
Ash.
Ruby sits down hard on the bed. Holds the phone away from her, brings it back to her chest. She sits a full five minutes like this before, heart hammering, fingers trembling, she begins to craft a reply.
You mustn’t think she’s the only one. I might be having a better time of it right now, but I too have moments where the past feels present, pulls me in. Here’s the thing. You don’t get off a plane or a bus and leave your old self behind. No amount of running or sudden realisation can rewire you like that. Not entirely, not the way those self-help books and daytime talk shows would have you think （I used to watch a lot of those with my best friend Tammy）。 The way I see it, damage gets packed in your suitcase, people stay on your skin. Some mornings I wake up with Mr Jackson right there behind my eyelids, as if he crept into my bed in the night. And sometimes—it happened yesterday—it is my mother who makes an appearance, the smell of powder and roses, that signature, skin-soft scent of hers inexplicably filling the room. I don’t like it when this happens. Like Ruby, my heart hammers and my fingers tremble. But, unlike Ruby, I do not respond. I wait for the hammering to slow, the trembling to cease, and I stay facing forward. My mother can visit. Mr Jackson, too, if he wants. I just never let them stay too long.
In the beginning, I disappeared on purpose. Extricated myself from a life I didn’t want, just like Ruby did. But unlike Ruby, I didn’t tell anyone where I went. Not even my best friend. I let Tammy think I had stayed right where she left me; I wanted to slip out of my old life unseen. And if certain people stayed on my skin, if they came along in my suitcase uninvited, at least they wouldn’t be able to cause any fresh wounds. That felt like a start, like I would have time to heal from all the ways they had hurt me.
I wanted to start over. I wanted to disappear.
But that’s not the same as being forgotten. To be clear, I never, ever wanted that.
FOUR
WE ARE EATING BREAKFAST ON DAY EIGHT WHEN NOAH offers me a job. The next in a series of unexpected gifts. Over the last few days, he has continued to leave mostly small, always useful items in my room, so that I will come home from exploring the city to find a silver water bottle or sports socks on the end of my bed. Whenever I emerge, holding the latest trinket he has left for me, he merely waves at the refrigerator door, where my collection of IOUs is growing.
‘I’m not a fan of delayed gratification,’ he said yesterday, when I protested the purple, puffy jacket that sat waiting for me on the dresser. Socks and water bottles were one thing, but the jacket felt extravagant, and I wasn’t sure I should accept it. ‘You’ll pay me back sometime,’ Noah said calmly, dismissing my concerns. ‘Until then, with all that walking you do, there’s no point in catching your death, Baby Joan.’
I read about crows, taffeta birds I used to call them when I was little, both afraid and fascinated by their crinkle of black feathers. Crows are known to randomly leave presents for people they like and trust; shiny, pretty things, and practical objects, too. It’s their way of communicating without words, and I’ve come to think of Noah’s gifts in this way. Even if I don’t fully understand what I have done to earn his trust so soon, or why he has decided to take me under his human wing.
（Death birds, my mother used to call them. Harbingers circling, waiting. We never did agree on her superstitions.）
And now the biggest surprise of all. The offer of money and independence. A job! Noah says I can be his assistant, helping him with the dogs. Noah is a dog walker, see. Up here on the Upper West Side. He used to have some other job, some suit and tie affair downtown, and it must have been important because he owns this place—barrelled windows, piano, chandelier—but he definitely prefers dogs to people these days. Plenty of dogs around here need walking, too. It’s not like they have their own yards to play in, and I’ve never seen one roaming the streets on its own, so it makes sense when Noah tells me he’s been thinking about introducing a home-care service to his business. It will mean people from the neighbourhood have a place to leave their fancy purebreds and cute old mutts when they go out of town on business trips, or spend their weekends in the Hamptons, which is a place rich people seem to go to a lot, though Noah tells me he hasn’t been there himself in years.
（Noah doesn’t appear to have any friends. If his phone rings, it’s only ever about a dog. And while there is a lot of expensive looking art on the walls of his apartment, I haven’t yet come across a single framed photograph. I didn’t bring any with me either, so I suppose it’s not so strange. Or if it is, we are only as strange as each other. No doubt there are people he sees behind his eyelids, too. People he consciously blinks away, but I figure it’s none of my business who they might be. He is kind to dogs, and to me, and that’s all I need to know about him for now.）