A choice she knew he would never have made about her.
*
HER.
She’s here. Is she? He doesn’t know what’s real anymore.
He has words he knows, words he’s collected as important, but he doesn’t know their meaning. Coma. Brace. Halo. Brain damage. They are there, seen but not seen, like pictures in another room, glimpsed through rippled glass.
Sometimes he knows who he is and where he is. Sometimes, for seconds, he knows he has been in a coma and come out of it; he knows he can’t move because they strap him down. He knows he can’t move his head because they’ve drilled screws into his skull and caged him. He knows he sits like this all day, propped up, a monster in a brace, his leg jutting out in front of him, pain constantly chewing on him. He knows that people cry when they see him.
Sometimes he hears things. Sees shapes. People. Voices. Light. He tries to catch them, concentrate, but it’s all moths and bramble.
Her.
She’s here now, isn’t she? Who is she?
The one he waits for.
“Wecouldhavedoneit, Matthew.”
Matthew.
He is Matthew, right? Is Her talking to him?
“Youdon’tknowwhoIam…”
He tries to turn, to wrench free so he can see Her instead of the ceiling, which seems to roll back and forth above him.
He screams for Her, cries, tries to remember the words he needs, but there’s nothing there to be found. Frustration rises up, makes even the pain go away.
He can’t move. He’s a bread—no, that’s not the right thing—tied down, strapped tight. Bound.
Someone else now. A different voice.
He feels it all slipping away. He stills, unable to remember even a minute ago.
Her.
What does that mean?
He quits fighting, stares up at the woman in the orange outfit, listens to her soothing voice.
His eyes close. His last thought is Her. Don’t leave, but he doesn’t even know what it means.
He hears footsteps. Running.
It is like the beating of his heart. There and then gone.
TWENTY-FIVE
Falling snow turned Homer into a blurred landscape of muted colors and washed-out skies. The few people out and about were either seeing the world through dirty windshields or looking up at it with tucked-in chins. No one noticed a girl in a huge parka, hood up, scarf wrapped around the lower half of her face, trudging downhill.
Leni’s face hurt like hell, her nose throbbed, but none of it was the worst of her pain. At Airport Road, the snow let up a little. She turned and headed to the airfield. At the door to the airfield office, she paused and pulled her turtleneck up over her torn lip.
The office was small and constructed of wood and corrugated metal with a sharply slanted roof. It looked like an oversized chicken coop. Behind it, she saw a small plane out on the airstrip, revving its engine. The sign for Glass Lake Aviation was missing two letters, so the sign read: ASS LAKE AVIATION. It had been that way for as long as Leni could remember. The owner said he’d fixed it once and that was plenty. Supposedly schoolkids stole the letters for fun.
Inside, the place looked unfinished, too: a floor made of mismatched peel-and-stick linoleum tiles, a plywood counter, a small display of brochures for tourists, a bathroom behind a broken door. A stack of boxes stood by the back door—supplies recently delivered or soon to be shipped.
Mama sat in a white plastic chair, with a scarf coiled around the lower half of her face and a hat covering her blond hair. Leni sat down beside her in a floral overstuffed recliner that some cat had clawed to ribbons.
In front of them, a Formica coffee table was littered with magazines.
Leni was tired of crying, of feeling this grief that kept opening and closing inside of her, but even so, she felt tears sting her eyes.
Mama put her cigarette out in the empty Coke can on the table in front of her. Smoke sizzled up, wafted into nothingness. She leaned back, sighing.
“How was he?” Mama asked.
“The same.” Leni leaned against her mama, needing the solid warmth of her body. She reached into her pocket and felt something sharp.
The present Mr. Walker had given her from Matthew. In all that had happened, she’d forgotten about it. She pulled it out, stared down at the small, thin gift, wrapped in newsprint, upon which Matthew had written: HAPPY BIRTHDAY LENI!
Her eighteenth birthday had gone by almost unnoticed this year, but Matthew had been planning for it. Maybe he’d had an idea about how to celebrate it.
She peeled the newsprint back, folded it carefully into something she would save. （He’d touched it while thinking of her.） Inside, she found a slim white box. Inside of that, a piece of yellowed, ripped-edge newsprint carefully folded.