I tell myself I’m just checking. Making sure she’s safe. That she hasn’t come back to a place where someone might find her.
But that’s bullshit and I know it.
I’m here because I can’t stop myself. When the night gets late and the city gets quiet, I find myself craving proof that she exists out there, in the real world, not solely as a figment of my imagination. I have to confirm that I didn’t imagine the only good thing that ever happened to me.
But no matter how often I come, the windows stay dark.
An hour passes. Two. The dashboard clock reads 5:12 AM when I finally put the car in drive, and the sun is just beginning to rise over the lake.
She’s not coming back. She’s smart enough to stay gone, hidden from whatever monster I’ve become. And that’s good. That’s right.
She’s safer without me.
I repeat that like a prayer as I drive away, even as the emptiness in my chest threatens to crack my ribs open from the inside out.
Let me stay dead. Let her stay gone.
It’s safer this way.
For all of us.
4
ELIANA
cumin /'kyo?omin/: noun
1: an aromatic spice from the carrot family.
2: the smell of starting over in a place that still belongs to whoever came before you.
The apartment smells wrong.
Not bad, exactly. Just notmine. The previous tenant must have cooked with a lot of cumin, because it’s pretty much baked into the walls, along with the chemical tang of whatever nuclear-strength cleaner the landlord used to make the place “move-in ready.” His words, not mine, because I’d probably have called it “cockroach ready” instead.
But it’s ours. At least for now.
I’m sitting on the floor in what Yasmin has designated as “the den,” though it’s really just a corner of the main space with enough room for a futon and a wobbly coffee table. My fingers trace the edge of the cane propped against my knee. I’ve named it Excalibur, which Yasmin found hilarious.
“Okay,” Yasmin calls to me from somewhere near the kitchen area. “I put the mugs on the second shelf, left side. Plates are below them. Silverware’s in the drawer directly under the mugs.”
I nod and commit it all to memory. We’ve been doing this for weeks now as our new life takes on a kind of ugly but somewhat functional shape.
“And I labeled the spice rack with those puffy paint letters,” she continues. “So you can feel which is which. The salt has one dot, pepper has two, garlic powder has three.”
“Thanks.” I mean it, even though gratitude is in short supply these days.
She’s been so patient and so careful. Never once has she made me feel like I’m broken, even though we both know I am. When I knocked over a glass of water yesterday, she just cleaned it up and moved on. When I got turned around trying to find the bathroom in the middle of the night, she didn’t laugh or sigh; she just talked me through it in her sleep-rough voice until I found the door handle.
I don’t deserve her.
“The mobility instructor is coming at two,” Yasmin reminds me. “Helen, right?”
“Yeah.” I pick up Excalibur and extend it with a flick of the wrist. The segments lock into place with a series of click-click-clicks that I’ve come to associate with my new reality. “She wants me to practice the route to the corner store.”
“That’s good. You’re making progress, El.”
Progress.Sure. We could call it that. If progress means learning to fumble my way through a world that’s been reduced to soundsand textures and the humiliating tap of a white cane announcing my disability to everyone within earshot, then I’m the S.S. Progress herself, ship-shape and seaworthy.
