His hands frame my face for another moment. “Tell me that means nothing to you,” Brian says, “and I’ll let you go.”
But I can’t.
He leaves me alone on the porch, where I sit for an hour, or maybe a lifetime.
—
WHENWIN’S OBITUARYis printed in the newspaper, I read it twice. It is a pale imitation of the friend I knew, but words are like that. They never quite capture what you need them to, the way a panoramic photo of a mountain range somehow misses the vibrance and the grandeur.
I take out the pair of scissors we keep in the kitchen drawer with all the other bits and pieces that don’t fit, and cleanly snip the column of text.
I put this into an envelope and write down a name and an address in Richmond upon Thames. I do not write down my own return address. I add stamps and slip this into the mailbox.
I find Brian reading the paper with a big hole in the middle. Somehow, this feels fitting. As if everyone will have to imagine the singular story that once fit into that space.
—
WHEN YOU LOSEsomeone you love, there is a tear in the fabric of the universe. It’s the scar you feel for, the flaw you can’t stop seeing. It’s the tender place that won’t bear weight. It’s a void.
But the universe tends toward Ma’at, toward order, so even though there’s a rip, it gets camouflaged. The edges overlap, and after time, you might even forget that this is the spot where something went missing, the spot where—if you push—you’ll fall through. And then there’s a scent or a thought or a heartbeat and suddenly it’s clear as day: the light behind that ragged tear, so blinding that you cannot imagine how you ever mistakenly believed it had woven itself back together.
On the fourth day after I arrive home, I attend Win’s funeral. There is red velvet cake and sidecars crafted with excellent cognac. It is held at night, because there are fireworks. People wear a rainbow of colors, and take turns telling stories about her. Wyatt comes with me to the funeral, holding tight to my hand and passing me a handkerchief when I tear up.
Win will haunt me, even if it’s not in the way she thinks. When you lose someone, you see them everywhere in a hundred different ways. I will think of her when I go to an art museum, or a dog park. On a blank canvas. When I eat a buttermilk biscuit.
The sky is bruised. Purple in the center, blue at the edges, an unaccountably pretty record of damage. I watch the injury spread, staining the whole sky. Win’s friends and relatives sit on blankets, waiting for the fireworks. Wyatt and I lie down to watch them. I tuck myself beneath his shoulder and pretend that those shooting stars never fall; that they become a whole new constellation with Win at its center.
Gradually, everyone disperses. I give Felix a strong hug and tell him I will check in on him in a few days. But instead of leaving, I shake out the blanket again, and sit down.
Wyatt settles beside me. “Making a wish?”
I reach for his hand. “Looking for the Big Dipper.”
I scout out the star in the middle of its handle. Along with a second star in the Little Dipper, it revolves around due north. Because they never set, these undying stars were a perfect metaphor for the afterlife of an Ancient Egyptian soul. Just as the deceased wanted to be integrated into the solar cycle with Re, he also wanted to join the circumpolar stars.
“Those Who Do Not Know Destruction,” Wyatt murmurs, using the Ancient Egyptian term for those stars. “That’s what we are.”
“I want to believe that.”
“I want the fifteen years I didn’t have with you,” he says.
“Only fifteen? Then what?”
“Then I’ll renegotiate.” I turn to find him looking at me, sober. “How long?”
I know what he is asking. How long will we be here, in this limbo?
“It’s only been a few days,” I hedge. “I just need…I need to catch my breath.”
He rubs his thumb over the back of my hand. “I know. But I lost fifteen years. And then I almost lost forever. I spent so much time thinking that you’d disappeared off the face of the earth that I can’t let you walk away again, and if that makes me a bastard, so be it. You and I, we’re still young. There are plenty of Egyptologists who don’t strike the motherlode until they’re ancient and doddering. There’s a lot we missed out on, Olive. But there’s somuchahead of us.”
It is easier to dream about the future with him than it is to untangle the messy knot of the present. Maybe that is what’s so appealing: the simplicity. The effortlessness.
“I don’t want to leave Meret,” I say.
“Then don’t.”
“I can’t take her away from Brian.”
