I grab his wrist. Pull him next to me. I don’t want to cry.
Luke puts his arm around me. “You want to listen?” He says it very softly.
I want it more than anything. A tear rolls down my cheek. Then another. He lies back on the couch, his head against the pillows. He pulls me to him.
“But . . . Nora . . .”
“She doesn’t mind,” he says. “She understands.”
I wipe the tears from my face, but more follow. He’s doing this because he feels as though he owes me. I know that. I’m taking advantage of him, of the fact of his being alive. It’s not right. But I’m not a good enough person to pull away.
“It’s okay,” Luke whispers. “It’s okay, Cam.”
Will I ever be whole again? Will I ever be normal? I rest my head on his chest, and as he strokes my hair, I find it. The heartbeat. My daughter’s heartbeat.
I fall asleep listening to it, forgetting my troubles, marveling at its strength.
Three
It was my decision to donate Emily’s organs. It made Matt feel squeamish, I think, but I didn’t care. He owed it to me. It had been him, after all, who let Emily go to the fraternity party. As she lay in the hospital, slowly slipping out of even the artificial life the ventilator could provide, we agreed to donate her lenses, liver, kidneys, and heart.
I was told they all went to patients who needed them. But Luke, the heart recipient, was the only one to write me a letter. I wrote him back, and then we spoke on the phone. A friendship was born. Or, as Matt used to call it, an addiction.
Matt’s description may have been accurate, I don’t know. I do remember Luke’s and my first meeting—at the Applebee’s in Woodbury Commons, an enormous outlet complex off the New York Thruway, with a parking lot bigger than the entire town I live in. Luke chose the place, claiming it was a halfway point, though I knew from the map he had to travel a lot farther. I tried to tell him we could meet in the city, but he wouldn’t hear of it. “It’s the least I could . . .” he started. Then he stopped—embarrassed, I suppose, by his own indebtedness.
At any rate, we drank a couple of beers and talked about things I no longer remember. The weather, maybe? The news? What I do recall is the feel of the conversation—like a job interview you know you’ve aced, and you can’t wait to get past the formalities and go to work.
I could have watched him move and speak for hours, if only to marvel at the livingness of him, my daughter’s living, beating heart.
While we were waiting for his Uber to arrive, he asked if I wanted to listen to it and of course I said yes. The disparity in our heights made it easy, as though it had been planned. All I had to do was move closer and my ear was to his chest. When I put my arms around him, it was so satisfying, the final piece fitting into the jigsaw puzzle.
Maybe it was an addiction. Maybe it is.
When I wake up in the morning, my head is still resting on Luke’s chest and I realize I’ve been dreaming about my Emily. In the dream, we’ve been climbing a mountain. The air is thin and our breath is heavy, but we’re smiling, covered in sweat, both of our hearts beating so hard, it’s all we can hear. Almost there, Mom, Emily says. Soon we’ll be able to jump off together.
I spring away from Luke, my face flushing. “What time is it?”
“Huh?”
The sun’s pressing through the windows, and the door to Luke’s bedroom is open, Nora having left for work. I yank my phone from the nearby charger, power it up, and look at the screen. Eight a.m. My screen is striped with texts, three of them from women I used to know, mothers of Emily’s closest friends. Their names are Lisa, Denise, and Sylvie, and when I read their texts, it’s hard not to picture the three of them clustered around a cauldron.