“He’s three years old.”
“Is he happy?”
“He asks why his mother lives in the photos.”
Sarah looked down.
Marcus turned to the water.
“He asks why his mother lives in the photos.”
For a moment, none of us belonged to the same world.
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Then I left the toy wrapped on the table.
“Start talking.”
Sarah looked at Marcus.
“He didn’t,” I said. “You.”
“I remember the rain,” she began. “The road. The tires skidding. I remember how the water came in through the window.”
“I remember the rain.”
I already knew that part.
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I’ve been living that part for three years.
The police had shown me photos of the wreckage of the accident. A city in Italy. We were there on vacation. Sarah had been driving out that night to visit a friend. That’s what he told me.
The destroyed safety barrier. His bag found by a rock. A shoe. So much blood in the car that the detective stopped speaking in a hopeful tone.
Sarah had been driving that night to visit a friend.
But there was no body.
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That was the part around which I had built my prayers until they stopped serving anything.
“I woke up in a hospital,” Sarah said. “I didn’t know who I was.”
“I couldn’t speak well. I didn’t remember the names. I didn’t remember Lily.” He stared at me. “I didn’t remember you.”
“I didn’t know who I was.”
He took his hand to his cheek.
The scar of the burn.
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I didn’t take my eyes off him.
“How convenient,” I murmured.
“That looks like it.”
I didn’t take my eyes off him.
She kept talking.
“The hospital located Marcus through the company records. His name appeared in the documents of expansion in Italy.”
“He came by plane here.”
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“Yes.”
“He found you alive.”
“Yes.”
“And I buried an empty coffin.”
He put his hands together.
“Then I didn’t know.”
“He found you alive.”
“When did you find out?”
He didn’t respond quickly enough.
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The sea was stirring beneath us, hitting the rock over and over again.
“When did you find out, Sarah?”
“Months later.”
“When did you find out?”
Then I sat down, not because I wanted to, but because standing gave my body too many opportunities to betray myself.
“And after those months?”
Sarah looked beyond me, toward the closed doors of the terrace.
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A child laughed somewhere on the ground floor.
She didn’t look where the sound was coming.
Marcus did.
I realized that too.
“And after those months?”
“After those months,” she said, “I booked a flight.”
“When?”
“In September.”
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“You left in March.”
“I know.”
“Then you came home in September.”
He didn’t look away from the table.
“No.”
I waited.
“You left in March.”
He swallowed saliva once.
“I canceled it.”
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“Why?”
He touched the edge of the cup of espresso that had been carried up but had never been taken.
“I saw the article.”
