It was the longest silent spell Kristen and I had ever had, and when I woke on Sunday—her Monday, on to the next work week—without a text, I felt a strange push-pull: relief plus guilt, respite plus shame. I pictured Kristen in her own bedroom on the bottom of the world, realizing—accepting—that I couldn’t put her back together.
What’s more, I began to think we really might get away with what we’d done. There’d been nary a mention of a missing backpacker in the news. My nightmare was five thousand miles away on a desolate slash of mountain, and the only person who knew about it was almost twice as far from me, and the wall I’d been building between us was growing firm. Aaron and I were in a relationship now and I was putting the past behind me. I still loved Kristen, and maybe someday she’d forgive me, but I couldn’t count on it. Didn’t deserve it.
Because my strongest feeling, the one hanging like a dome over all the others, was an intense desire not to speak with, reach out to, or even think of Kristen. It would be one thing if we could freaking talk about what we needed to talk about. But she’d barred the topic from our phone calls, citing security concerns, and anyway, she didn’t seem to need me, she wasn’t crumbling like snow the way I was after Phnom Penh. In fact, she was acting like it never happened. I thought dully that I should try harder, be a better friend, but I was like a person standing at the shore of Lake Michigan at the New Year’s Day polar plunge. As much as I wanted to want it, I stayed rooted to the sand.
It was hard enough to keep up our friendship overseas; there was a seventeen-hour time difference, different schedules and seasons, lives of our own. Other friendships had ended—or at least taken a step back—over much, much less.
I brushed my teeth and pulled a comb through my hair. Acceptance was seeping into my lungs, little vapors. It had finally gotten through to Kristen that I wouldn’t bow out of my life in Milwaukee to backpack with her. Aaron texted right then, and I let the fantasy unwind: Maybe this time next year I’d be planning a getaway with him. Or even a solo trip—if the yoga teacher was correct, wasn’t it my duty as a human being with eyes and legs and a beat-beat-beating heart to experience things, to explore? All the hand-wringing about women tempting fate by going on adventures, how it was our responsibility to protect ourselves…wasn’t it simply a way to keep women’s lives small? To keep us cowering at home, controlled, contained? Perhaps I’d visit somewhere less exotic but just as incredible—a train voyage around central Europe, say, or a road trip to a national park out west.
I froze at the melodic chime of my front door. I glanced down the hallway at the light slanting in from the windows, and the doorbell rang again.
I slipped down the hall and pulled the door open a few inches, then went rigid. My ears crackled and shock whooshed through me. It was a blustery day and wind jolted between my front door and the world outside.
“Emily Donovan.” Kristen took the door in her hand and opened it the rest of the way. She smiled wide. “Surprise.”
CHAPTER 14
A dream—this had to be another dream, like the sunrise-on-Lake-Michigan one, defying the laws of physics, of linear time. Kristen was in Sydney this very minute, glaring at her annoying boss, buying autumnal vegetables, pulling sweaters from her closet for the impending winter. Her world was so unlike mine. She couldn’t be on my front porch in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
“I’ve missed you!” Her suitcase thumped to the concrete as she pulled me into a hug. I wrapped my arms around her too and was surprised to find her solid. The hug filled me with warmth and I squeezed our hearts together, breathed into her neck. Kristen is here.
“What are you…how are you here?” I said into her jacket.
She giggled. “How do you think? Sixteen-hour flight to L.A., four-hour flight to Chicago, bus to Milwaukee, Uber from the station.” She let me go and grabbed her bag. “So, needless to say, I’m exhausted. You gonna let me in?”
I opened my mouth and then closed it, instead giving my head an incredulous shake. I held the door wide and she pushed past me.
“You should see your face right now! Picture a compilation video of the world’s greatest surprise-party reactions. You’re like a GIF.” She squeezed my shoulder as she passed.
“Kristen, are you okay? Are you having flashbacks or anything? I’m so glad to see your face.” I gave her another hug, more urgently this time.
“Honestly, I’m doing great! Especially now that I’m reunited with my bestie.” She paused in the entryway. “Was this gallery wall up last time I was here?”
I stared at her: Does not compute. Was I still asleep? The last time Kristen was in town was…two Christmases ago? “I guess you haven’t seen it. Where are you staying?”
“I’ll stay at my grandparents’， don’t worry.” They lived in Brookfield, a suburb twenty minutes inland.
“Did you want to stay here?”
“Hmm, as tempting as your miniature sofa and leaky air mattress are…”
I followed her into the kitchen. “Well, let me know if you change your mind. I know your grandparents are…difficult.”
“Thanks! Yeah, we’ll see.” She helped herself to a glass of water.
“How long will you be in town?” I smiled and tried again: “How long do I get with you?”
“I’ll tell you the whole story once my brain turns on. Ugh, I’m so happy to be home. Spring is so nice here—after a real winter, not like Australia.”
I gawped at her for a moment. “I can’t believe it, Kristen! You’re like a mirage.” I wiped my palm across the air in front of me.
“I know.” She giggled. “And you probably have a ton going on and I don’t want you to clear your schedule for me or anything. I just really wanted to surprise you. There are so few genuine surprises in life these days, you know?”
I blinked at her. Was she serious? I considered two dead bodies quite surprising. The kind of shock that made me hope the rest of my days would unfold without my encountering the unexpected. Still, my chest gushed with how glad I was to see her.
“Real talk, Kristen. I was in a bad place after Cambodia last year. How are you doing?”
She gazed out the window. “I think I’m better at compartmentalizing than you. Since I went through some shit growing up.”
I nodded. Her parents, dead in a house fire—orphaning her like Bruce Wayne. Pity and guilt mingled and rose through my throat. “God, I’m so happy to see you, Kristen. All I’ve wanted this last week is to have you here, to be able to talk about everything you went through.”
“Aww, babe! Hey, do you have any coffee?”
“I can make some.” I stood and yanked a spoon from a drawer. Our rhythm was all off, Kristen batting away my attempts at real talk like a ninja. I pitched a few scoops of coffee into the machine. “I can’t believe you spent all that time on planes again just a week later. I’m not sure I ever want to travel again.”
“Well, sixteen-hour flights are the norm for me these days.”
I focused on clicking the carafe into place. My movements felt choreographed, like stage directions: She clatters around, making coffee. “You don’t have to be okay, you know,” I said. “What happened in Cambodia, it—it ripped me open, it left me confused and scared and raw. I couldn’t…well, I don’t have to tell you what a mess I was.”