“You disappeared in March.”
She swallowed once.
“I canceled it.”
“Why?”
She touched the rim of the espresso cup she had brought upstairs but never drank.
“I saw the article.”
“I canceled it.”
Marcus looked at her.
She ignored him.
“The one about the memorial. The photo of you holding Lily by the casket. You looked…”
“Careful,” I whispered.
She nodded. “You looked like someone who had learned how to stand because falling would hurt the baby.”
I remembered that day.
She ignored him.
Lily had slept through most of the service with her cheek pressed to my jacket. Every person who hugged me had said she was a blessing.
No one knew what to say when a blessing cried for a mother who could not answer.
“I thought if I walked in then,” Sarah said, “I would break what you had built around the loss.”
A laugh came out of me.
“What I built?”
“You survived, Harry.”
“What I built?”
“I ate standing over the sink because Lily screamed whenever I put her down.”
Sarah’s hand closed around nothing.
“I know.”
“You do not know.”
“I watched videos Marcus found online,” she said. “Your sister posted some. Birthdays. Christmas. Lily walking.”
I turned to Marcus.
“You let her watch instead of sending her home?”
“You do not know.”
His jaw moved.
“Every time.”
“Every time what?”
“Every time she said she would go tomorrow.”
The word sat there.
Tomorrow.
I looked back at Sarah.
Her face had gone very still.
“Every time she said she would go tomorrow.”
“The first tomorrow was because I could not walk without help,” she said. “The next, because I was still forgetting my words. Then came the days my face looked different from the burn scars. And finally, because Lily’s first birthday had passed.”
She pulled her sleeve over her wrist though the day was warm.
“Every missed day made the next one harder.”
“That is not an answer.”
“No.”
“Every missed day made the next one harder.”
“That is cowardice.”
She nodded. “Yes.”
I had wanted Sarah to defend herself.
Some part of me needed her to make it easier to hate her.
She refused me that comfort.
“That is cowardice.”
Marcus finally spoke.
“You can blame me for keeping quiet.”
I did not look away from Sarah.
“I already do.” I turned then. “But not for what you think.”
“I already do.”
“I told her to go home, Harry,” Marcus said. “At first kindly. Later badly. We fought about it in hospitals, rented rooms, airport parking lots. I bought tickets she did not use.”
“Heroic.”
“No.”
His face did not harden.
That bothered me.
“I told her to go home, Harry.”
“My wife died seven years ago,” he admitted. “Breast cancer. Near the end, she was afraid to let our son visit because she thought he would remember only the hospital bed. I told her she was wrong. I also remember how hard it was to make her believe me.”
Sarah stared at the yellow duck still in the diaper bag.
Marcus followed her gaze.
“When Sarah froze in crowds, the therapist taught me to have her hold something. A table edge. A cup. My hand if nothing else was close.”
“My wife died seven years ago.”
I looked at the café below.
At their hands.
At the image that had burned through me like betrayal.
The exact same gesture.
A different meaning.
That was worse in its own way.
Because I had judged it too easily.
That was worse in its own way.
Sarah reached toward the duck again.
This time I took it out first.
The yarn had faded. One button eye was loose. Lily had chewed the beak during teething and slept with it through two fevers. The left wing was crooked.
Sarah made a sound when she saw it.
Not a sob.
Smaller.
The sound of someone recognizing a room they no longer had keys to.
The yarn had faded.
“I knitted that before she was born,” she said.
“I know.”
“I meant to fix the wing.”
“You didn’t.”
Her fingers hovered over it.
I did not hand it to her.
Not yet.
“I meant to fix the wing.”
“Why didn’t you come home?” I asked.
Sarah looked at the duck instead of me.
“Because every morning I promised myself I would come home tomorrow.” Her finger touched the table near the toy. “Until tomorrow became three years.”
Nobody spoke after that.
Not for a long while.
The truth did not make a clean shape.
“Why didn’t you come home?”
She had not chosen Marcus.
She had not built a new life.