Sad Stories

The story ended oddly, with all the characters jumping into a previously unmentioned lake. Grey flipped back to the beginning, looking for a mention of water, a dock, unhappiness. He hadn’t been skimming: he’d understood the story at least enough to read it aloud to Catherine. Still, he just couldn’t fathom why the wedding party had leapt, weeping, into the water. And reading the story from the beginning again, he found no reference to swimming or the shore until the bitter end, and no pages stuck together. Perhaps he wasn’t meant to understand, in that way.

He leaned over the bar of her hospital bed and whispered, “Do you know why they went into the water?” If Catherine had been able to answer, she no doubt could’ve offered him a symbol, a twist, some insight that would have made the story come together in his mind. She had always paid closer attention than he did, to prose and to life. He brought books home from work so she’d read them, talk about them, let him use her ideas and connections to create theme displays for the bookstore chain he worked at. He read everything too, of course—he considered it part of his job—but she read better, deeper. She could live inside a story—sitting on the train beside the characters, eavesdropping on their conversations, understanding their tones and pauses, their lives and heartbreaks. And she’d come back filled with their insights and ideas, as excited as if she’d spent the time with friends. In those days she always returned to the real world. But now, Grey wasn’t sure she’d ever emerge from whatever other world she was lost in.

Now, Catherine was locked inside her own pain, and none of his questions about books or how she was feeling or if she wanted him to bring her another pillow elicited a response. Now, it was difficult to tell when Catherine paid attention and when she didn’t. The whole time he was reading the story to her, her gaze had been fixed on the glistening blank of the television screen. She didn’t turn toward him when he put his hand on her shoulder, which was still skinny but gaining some softness under the cotton sleeve. Or when he said, “Good night, Catherine.” He wanted not to be crushed by this, but he knew that sometimes she did react—there was no reason not to hope—and so every time she ignored his voice or the sound of her own name felt like a rejection. Sometimes she stared right at him, like she could see his scruffy beard and sleep-deprived eyes and hopefulness. Like she loved him. He wouldn’t stop longing for that connection, that gram of affection, until he knew for a fact it was impossible. For now, it wasn’t.

“Your mom will be here in the morning.” She kept watching the still TV as he walked out the door and didn’t move when he said, “I love you.”

Grey always looked over his shoulder on his way in and out of the hospital—for weeks reporters from the local papers or television stations had been showing up to ask him about his wife’s condition. The hospital had security staff, and although Grey rarely saw them, they somehow managed to keep journalists away from the interior corridors of the hospital, at least near Catherine’s room. But once he stepped outside, he was sometimes accosted in the parking lot. Today, as soon as he stepped off the sidewalk, a young woman in a snug violet coat approached him and asked briskly if she could ask him a few questions regarding his wife.

“She’s fine, thanks.” That was his usual answer. He never said, “No comment” because even to his own ears that sounded too much like a dodge when he truly just had nothing to say. But he always kept walking. The cops had advised him ages ago not to talk to reporters except in a formal press-conference environment. He strode on now and as usual the reporter followed him to his car. “Do you have any comment on the police activity at a house on the south edge of Turgrove County, where your wife may have been held?” She had more questions, about the house’s alleged owner and where that person might be, but when he opened the car door, she held up a small plain business card.

“If you ever want to talk, just call, day or night.”

Everyone he knew—his friends, Catherine’s mother, the staff at the hospital—seemed to assume he wouldn’t want to talk to the media, that he would find it an invasion of privacy. But it was very tempting to talk about the silence in Catherine’s room, her endless gaze on the TV whether it was on or off, the yellowing bruises on her arms, to tell it all to this warm-skinned and carefully eyelined young woman. It was her job to hear about the worst things, like the thick purple vines of cut on Catherine’s palms, like what was found in the basement of that little brick house out in Turgrove. It was her job to break down the hard stories in a way that people wouldn’t turn away from, a version that could be digested in a commercial break. If he told her, the young reporter probably wouldn’t even cry.

But instead he took the card for want of anything better to do and got into the car. Then he nodded and said, “I’m fine, thanks” as he pulled out, and away.

Grey meant to reread the previous evening’s short story at breakfast. Catherine used to finish the last page and then immediately go back to the first; she said every reading yielded another layer. But he must have left the book on Catherine’s bedside table, so he read the Art and Culture section of the newspaper instead. The wordy, gleeful book reviews made his head ache. There wasn’t one about the swimming wedding party book, but another sad-sounding book of stories was well praised. Perhaps he’d put together a Sad Stories table display.

He ate a chocolate-chip waffle and microwave bacon. Single-man food. For years, Catherine had made him breakfasts of granola with yogurt or steel-cut oatmeal. Since she’d been gone, Grey had grieved and prayed, thrown his toothbrush, her picture, himself at the walls, but he’d also marched down the frozen food aisle and bought McCain fries, polar bars, 10%-fruit drink—things that used to line his fridge-freezer when he lived alone. He was happy to have those things again, which was something he probably wasn’t supposed to feel.

He searched the books section of the paper for a mention of a happier short-story collection, or at least a simpler one. He read Catherine only short stories now, one per evening, filling in the otherwise long silent space between when her mother left for supper and the end of visiting hours with something slightly more intimate than television. While she was gone, he read poetry—a couple of books by the poet from Iria Catherine had been reading right before…before. He’d gotten them from the store a few weeks after she disappeared, when he’d still been in the crazy stage of sobbing and phoning the police over and over. By the time he could manage the calm to read anything, it was starting to be spring. Grey read with his back to the window, to block out the robins and chive shoots and snowdrops that Catherine had been waiting for all winter. He found himself drawn to the poems because not only were they something Catherine liked, they were like Catherine, so simple and matter of fact. A lot of the shorter ones were about waiting tables, reading books, things Catherine talked about all the time. And he could hear her voice reading them in his head. Catherine used to sprawl on the couch behind him while he played video games on mute, reading some of these same poems aloud to him, and he remembered the lilting up-notes of her voice when she was happy.

Once Catherine returned, he tried reading these to her, but the words were not as vibrant when he read them aloud in the hospital. They were diminished by the beige paint and the lack of windows and the hectic murmuring in the halls; by Catherine’s refusal to come out of her bubble of silence. Dr. Durnsville, the therapist, told Grey not to think of it that way, but he couldn’t help being frustrated. She was there but not there, present but under glass. He read her the poems he remembered she liked best, even though the words felt strange and cold in his mouth. He struggled to follow the meaning of the poems with her vacant gaze pointed away from him. Poems are so spare, what you build into the silences is as important as the words themselves—Catherine had taught him that. But he could tell she was building nothing in her silence, rendering every poem meaningless.

After a few evenings of this, he thought he would—they would—absorb stories better because they were more like whole worlds, had more to live inside, but it didn’t really work out like that. He was often exhausted and distracted, that could have been part of it, but he swore the stories shifted on the page, starting out as one thing before becoming another. He never knew where he stood, what to hope for, which characters were moving forward and why. The only reason he kept reading was his belief that, somewhere deep inside her mind, Catherine understood the stories. Maybe she was listening: her gaze flickered perhaps half a dozen times in the ten days she’d been back. The hope for more was enough to keep him going. That, and the silence when he stopped was too much to bear.

After breakfast, he phoned the hospital and reminded the duty-nurse that he wasn’t going to be in that morning. It was the first day he hadn’t gone in right after breakfast, but the nurse did not seem interested. Grey hated to leave Catherine alone, but her mother would be there by noon at the latest. Sue, he knew, would bring a portable DVD player and some of Catherine’s favourite movies from childhood—A Bug’s Life, The Little Mermaid, something about a dog that could play basketball. They each had their ways of trying to get through, their own burdensome sacks of nostalgia.

“Yes, Mr. Reindeer. If there’s anything, I have your cell number.” There were voices in the background, the hum of machines that over the past days should have become familiar.

“Well, I’ll be in later. Please tell her.”

“Of course, Mr. Reindeer. Be sure I will.”

He put a touch of force on the End button and stood staring at the phone a moment. Then he put on his sneakers and coat and went over to Evan and Angie’s.

—

Angie answered the door, her shiny hair pushed behind her ears, her slate-coloured suit sleek against her body except for the untucked blouse over her belly. Disloyal as it was, Grey found her glowing health, her frank and questioning gaze, were such a relief.

“Oh, Angie, you are so beautiful.”

“Hey, Grey.” She hugged him and in the pullback grazed his ear with her ChapSticky lips. “How’s it going?”

“You’re not working on a Saturday, are you?”

“Nah, a brunch thing, not work, just work people. It’s fun.”

“Well, not as much fun as we’re going to have.” This from Evan, from some other room.

“Eat a lot of brunch for me, okay?” Grey patted the curve of his own belly, thinking of how it might feel to touch Angie’s. The baby wasn’t yet big enough for anyone to feel a kick, but he was looking forward to when he could. Angie was one of the few women he knew wouldn’t mind if he asked.

“You know.” Angie leaned back against the closed door. “Since this is the first day you’ve had away from the hospital, shouldn’t you just relax? You guys don’t really have to do the Christmas shopping.”

Evan came into the room buttoning up his shirt, his hair wet to the scalp. “It’ll be fine, efficient, very male. Down the list: sweaters, books, toys, chafing dishes, eat at Manchu Wok.”

Angie picked up her gleaming leather briefcase—Grey had once seen her polish it. “I can do some of that, Ev. Especially since that’s actually not the list at all. Who is getting chafing dishes?”

“I was kidding.”

“Grey, you’ve had some year. You’d be excused if you didn’t get everyone stuff…”

“I do not want to be excused from Christmas.” Grey smiled and pointed vaguely at the tree he knew to be on the other side of the living room wall.

Angie went long-faced. “Oh, no, of course, no, I didn’t mean—”

Evan clapped one hand on Grey’s back and another, gentler, on Angie’s. “Go to work, Ang.”

“Brunch.”

“Go to brunch, Ang. We’re going to the mall, not the moon. Besides, everything’s returnable.”

—

On the highway toward Elk Ridge, the mall on the other side of town, Grey looked at Evan and Evan looked at the traffic, his head tipped back against the headrest, his knobby Adam’s apple casting a small shadow in the still-rising sun. They have been friends for a very long time, but Grey knew that over the past year he had become a hard man to talk to. Evan did better than most; he had more material to work from. He had every single morning in high school, the university parties, all the Halloweens, all the New Year’s Eves, both their weddings.

Throughout the long quiet months that Catherine was gone, so many people from work, the neighbourhood, his family had brought food and cried on his couch, but outside of Catherine’s mom, only Evan and Angie came and stayed. The first days and weeks, when sleep was impossible and the phone never stopped ringing, Evan and Grey had sat up nights playing an old version of Sonic the Hedgehog Evan had somehow managed to find a working console for. Grey was sometimes on the phone with the police or some relative, sometimes too angry or terrified to sit still or talk, but Ev kept showing up. And when he had a case that took him to Seoul for a week, that Friday night Angie was at the door with a Bundt cake. “You’ll have to teach me to play, okay?” Even though there would always come a moment where he would realize again that Catherine was gone and he didn’t know where and no one could find her, Grey had a few moments of normal life when Evan and Angie were there.

“How’s Cat? Did that blood pressure thing settle down?”

“Yeah, she’s good now.” Grey had been so worried when her blood pressure spiked, but once it was fine again he’d forgotten all about it and moved on to the next panic. “The doc didn’t know what that was about really. Just a fluke.”

“Well, I guess that’s still good, though. Any news about what they found when they dug up the yard? Seems like they should’ve found what they were going to find by now.”

“Yeah, yeah.” A red Corolla passed on the right, which startled Grey but not Evan. “Well, they told me, but it’s not like it’s on the news yet… ”

Evan sucked in a breath. “You don’t have to say. I mean, you can tell me whatever you want. I just—”

“I guess… ” Grey hiccupped and peered out the window at the scrolling industrial parks. “They’re pretty sure they found Donny Zimmerman. The high-school kid who disappeared the month before Cat. He hadn’t been—been dead that long.”

“Shit. His parents must be devastated. I can’t imagine.”

“I can.” Grey closed his eyes against the nausea. “The news isn’t official yet, so don’t talk about it to, you know, anyone.”

“Except Angie?”

“Oh, yeah, sure, except Angie.”

“Catherine must have known him, or seen him. God.”

Grey nodded, eyes still closed. “That’s the part I can’t imagine.” He concentrated on the sound of the tires on the road, which always reminded him of an endless exhaled breath. Finally he felt like he could open his eyes without vomiting all over his lap. When he did, Evan was gazing at him nervously. “Watch the road, Ev.”

“I know how to drive.”

Grey smiled weakly and said, “I see no evidence,” and Evan finally looked away.

After an appropriate amount of silence, if there was such a thing, Evan asked, “Got a list? Know what you’re getting everybody?”

“Sorta. You know the fluffy things that go on pillows?”

Evan shrugged so high he knocked the headrest. “What?”

“Like duvets for pillows?”

“Really? They sell these for money?”

“There’s these home-décor magazines in the waiting room at the hospital. Her mom was reading one, cooing over the—”

“Pillow duvets.”

“Right. So I’m gonna get her some. You got ideas?”

“I was thinking books, actually. For the other partners, now that I’m one too. It’s sort of classy, you know?”

“Lawyers read? Really?”

“Well, with work gifts, it is actually the thought that counts. That I thought that they’d read is enough.”

“Right.”

“Right. Actually, should we stop in?” Evan pointed ahead at the turquoise-roofed bookstore a few intersections ahead. “You can give me your professional advice.”

Grey closed his eyes again. “God, no. Going to work on a Saturday, no.”

Evan made a pfft sound. “You don’t actually work in that store. It won’t be arduous.” He got into the right lane, signalled.

There was not a lot of time, a few car lengths, before they’d have to turn for the bookstore. Grey tried to imagine what that girl would say to him in front of Evan. What she might repeat. Something about Catherine—something that would sound like a lie, as if Grey had been lying to strangers. He jabbed Evan’s arm with his elbow and said, “I work in all the stores in the chain at least sometimes. They know me there, there’d be…conversations.” He started to raise his hand to his mouth, realized Evan would recognize his anxious gesture, put it back in his lap.

Evan’s expression sobered. He nodded once and flicked off the signal. Grey flattened against the velour of the passenger seat, his heart a heavy echo in his ears.

He’d been in that store a week ago, testing the Christmas-wrap planogram and doing a surprise inspection. The staff were jumpy as he pointed out asymmetrical displays, incorrect shelving, outdated signs. He couldn’t actually fire anyone, just force them to do extra work; still, most store-level staff were bunny-scared of district-office types.

But not her. Sixteen or seventeen, bones still close to the surface. She’d been stomping down the centre aisle with a tower of dirty, festive coffee cups from the in-store café when Grey and the manager found a floor-plan problem. The theme tables—Creative Cookery, Historical Perspectives, and CanLit—were so close together that they blocked the most obvious path to the restrooms. The manager on duty, a young man with camp-counsellor eagerness, yelled, “Chrissy!”

She didn’t startle, or glance at them, just set the cups on the floor and plodded over. Grey was on the point of remarking, “Garbage in the aisle—really?” Then he looked at her face: her eyeliner had been wiped off just recently and not very well, streaks of black kohl fading toward her ears. Her eyes had red streaks, her nostrils were a translucent pink. The manager cocked his head, listening to something in his earpiece for several seconds before announcing, “Chrissy, I need to deal with a situation at cash. Please do whatever Mr. Reindeer says.” Leaving Grey to move tables with the teary teenager.

“If you could grab it, see, so—” As often as he had to do it, Grey never felt comfortable straining in his suit, clipboard clenched under his elbow. Grunting and heaving undermined his authority, what little he had.

Chrissy’s wrists were blue-veined and bony, but she hefted the table easily enough. They waddled, him forwards, her backwards, like an awkward Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, to the edge of the coffee shop, before plonking down the table just as his forearms were starting to wrench. “It’s all right here, um, Chrissy. But the Creative Cookery table shouldn’t have festive-wrap sets on it. Move them over to Gifts, okay?”

She stared at him, her eyes dark. “It’s crowded over there too. People are always tripping on the floor baskets.”

“Well, is there a rejig you could do to prevent future accidents?”

She thought about it, her gaze settling on the side of his face, but not for very long. “No.”

Grey exhaled. No one cared much about merchandising, the vitality of traffic flows, symmetrical displays. “Well, try. And fewer titles on the risers. More than eight, people stop seeing books and just see piles.” Grey stooped after some paper on the floor.

Chrissy was still staring, fidgeting with the hem of her vest. Suddenly: “Reindeer—I know that name. From the news. The woman who was killed? Catherine Reindeer?”

The piece of paper was a receipt for three guitar magazines: $18.97. Grey regarded Chrissy from knee height and for a moment he believed her, believed in some magical wireless from the hospital into this sad girl’s brain. Catherine was dead. He let the devastation he’d long feared and been waiting for finally come. He would have to give all her clothes away, her little tennis shoes, the closet would be empty on one side and he would be truly alone. He tipped backwards from his crouch to the floor, wrists dangling off his knees, gaze on the waist of her velvet skirt. Then reality slid back in.

“No.”

She flushed, wiping the hair out of her eyes. “I’m sorry. I read this thing in the newspaper—but I’m an idiot. I must have remembered wrong.”

Grey braced his hands on his knees and stood back up to face her. Standing seemed better, but he still wanted to weep. “No, no, that was her. Us. She’s my wife. But she didn’t die. She’s fine—really great, actually. It was all a misunderstanding.”

He could imagine it being true, Catherine truly really great, at home reading Nabokov while she waited for the kitchen floor to dry, picking at a bowl of kale chips. He could have that again, someday. Maybe. Despite the books he’d noticed out of order on the lower shelves behind Chrissy’s skinny ankles, despite the din of cash registers and cappuccino machines, he felt a shiver of joy to see the salesgirl’s stretched smile at this happy ending, no reservations, no doubts. She nodded and whispered, almost to herself, “Oh, oh, that’s really good.”

He blinked back from the daydream and told the girl she could go now, and Merry Christmas.

Chrissy shrugged shyly and leaned down to pick up the cups she’d left on the floor. He never found out what she’d been crying about, before.

The mall was wild with Christmas: bell-heavy music, glittery jewellery displays accessorized with fake snow, a wispy teenager sobbing into her cellphone, “But it’s only seventy bucks!” Evan’s eyes bugged; he worked constant overtime in a quiet office, and rarely went anywhere besides sombre cocktail lounges where everyone drank scotch. They stood frozen in front of the mall map, staring at all the capitalism.

Evan had once been caught shoplifting in this mall, at fifteen, when Grey hid a scented loofah lotion in his backpack at the Shoppers, then stood at a distance, laughing, as the slender cosmetics clerk chased Evan outside to reclaim it. What else was there to do, all those boring winter weekends of high school, but play pranks, shove each other into the fountain, smoke in the parking lot, eat mountains of popcorn chicken in the food court. It all seemed trivial at the time, but more than twenty years on, the memories seemed sepia-toned, even sweet.

Grey gave Evan a half-hearted punch in the shoulder. “On with it, then.” They started toward a store that looked like it might sell pillow duvets.

In the rows of linen softness, Evan asked, “How’s work going?”

“Oh, fine.” Grey was stroking something navy with a faint nap to it, like felt. “Well. Everyone wants to talk about Catherine. But it’s too weird with people who don’t even know her, you know?”

“I get that.” Evan tugged at a rolled-up tablecloth that unfurled rapidly and lacily, landing at his feet. “Shit.”

Together, they crouched to refurl the lace.

“I’ll get you the books. At discount, if they’re popular stuff. I just don’t want to do it today.”

“How popular?” Evan shoved the tablecloth back on the shelf, where it did not fit as neatly as before.

“Well, best-sellers, or Recommended Reads.”

Evan blinked. “Recommended Reads?”

“That’s, like, the sale branding.” Grey winced, then pointed and said, “I think I’m gonna get these. They’re called ‘shams,’ it says. Not pillow duvets.”

They each took a plastic case of blue shams and walked toward the snaking checkout line.

“As in, This book is a good read? That’s cute.”

“Yeah, it’s so we can get the, um, alliteration on the signage…signs.”

Evan fiddled with a bottle opener shaped like a duck. “Believe it or not, my sister’ll love this.”

They paid, went back into the mall, walked on.

“Do you read them? The Recommended Reads?”

“Sure.”

“They make you?”

“It’s recommended. Besides, what else do I have to do?”

“You doing okay, man? I mean, the mall is tough on a good day. You got the shammies—we could call it a day and go play Mario Kart.”

Grey kept walking; it seemed important to move at a fast clip, not to let anything weigh him down. “Shams, not shammies. And I’m good.”

Hustling to keep up, Evan clasped his shoulder. “That was some heavy shit you said in the car. You’re not ditching Christmas if you don’t shop. Just get everybody ten scratch tickets and take a nap.”

Grey stopped abruptly and leaned against the edge of a pink-and-gold lit fountain. “I can’t nap, I can’t sleep. I just want to have one normal day out of this fucking wreckage of a year. And you’re the most normal guy I know.”

Evan nodded slowly. “Aw, Grey, I never knew you felt that way.”

Grey rolled his eyes. “Please don’t hug me right now.”

“Right. Normal guys don’t hug.” He leaned back next to Grey, then bolted back up and patted the edge of the fountain where he had just been resting. “Grey, this is wet. You gotta up your standards.”

Slowly righting himself, Grey pointed at the gleaming jewellery display across the way. “For Angie, anything?”

Evan swung the shams gently. “We’re supposed to be saving for the house.”

“Sure. But a little something to say, hey, way to have my baby, right?” They walked on a few paces, past a woman carrying a toddler whose face had been painted to look like a CareBear. Grey would not be buying any gifts for Catherine at the mall—because how could he know what she wanted, and because he suspected she wanted nothing at all. It was suddenly important that Evan get Angie something perfect. “How about there?” He pointed at the window of Thyme Maternity, all the fat mannequins in sequined evening wear.

“Ah, too early. She doesn’t need anything but loose pants and an untucked top so far.”

“I say think ahead, buy the biggest nine-months muumuu. Tell her you can’t wait.”

Evan stared at the disco window display. “I can’t wait.” He clutched the bag, swallowed the jut of his Adam’s apple, nodded. “Okay. If you’re up for it. It’s a foreign land in there.”

“I don’t mind.” And despite the trickle of envy in the back of his skull, he didn’t.

—

They really did go to Manchu Wok, long into the afternoon when the worst of the food-court tide had ebbed. They still had to eat at a counter, looking at each other slantwise. The food was all nostalgia: deep-fried chicken curls in sugar sauce, broccoli beef gluey with cornstarch, sand-coloured fried rice.

In the carb-stuffed haze, Grey took out a receipt and a pen and said, “Well, tell me your list.”

Evan stared blankly. He had a grain of rice clinging to his upper lip.

“Book-wise.” Grey wiped his own mouth, then nodded at Evan.

Evan mirrored him and brushed off the rice. “Jeez, I really don’t know what’s out. That’s why I wanted you to tell me. Can you tell me?”

Grey shrugged. “I don’t know these people.”

“Grey, c’mon, I told you, it’s about perception. It’s about cred, not about what book is going to give them the most joy when they’re snowed in at O’Hare at 3 a.m. What are you reading?”

Grey opened the eggroll sauce and drizzled it onto his empty plate. “Book of short stories. I can read one story to Catherine in a night.”

“A Recommended Read?”

“No, no. Short stories mainly aren’t, you know.”

“Really? Why? Too short?”

“Too obscure, I guess. Too hard to finish and say, ‘That was about x, y, and z.’ ”

“But good? This book you’re—you guys are reading?”

“Well.” Grey pictured the splash of the bridesmaids jumping into the greenish lakewater, then the bride’s long train streaming behind her, catching leaves and minnows and flowers from her bouquet as she breast-stroked. Then he pictured Catherine’s still profile, her unseeing gaze—he couldn’t help but feel that if the story had been better, she would have turned toward his voice. “Not sure. I don’t read with quite my full attention.”

“And yet you know more about this shit than anyone I know.”

“I don’t. My job is spreadsheets, and ordering teenagers to move display tables.”

“Pick the books, Grey? Eight good books, no two the same, that’s it. It would really help me out.”

Grey nodded and, gathering their bags, they set out from the food court. The mall was no more crowded than earlier, but less organized, less polite. A woman in a thick orange cloak shoved past Evan, who grinned. “Ah, Christmas. Where to next?”

“Back to your place, to get my car. I can see Catherine before the nurses’ shift-change.”

Evan kept his gaze straight ahead, on Santa’s Crystal Palace. “I can go with you, and then take you back. I haven’t seen Cat in…only once since she’s been back. And that was weeks ago.”

“You don’t have to.” Grey sped up to hurry through the Body Shop’s fake-fruit aura.

“Of course not.” There was a snap in Evan’s voice. “I’d like to.” Gentler.

“All right.”

Grey saw the reporter slouched in her car as they pulled into the hospital lot, but she only glanced at Evan’s Volvo, then back down at her phone. Arriving in a car she wouldn’t recognize felt like a trick, and her bent head looked small and sad through the windshield. Had she been at the hospital all day? He knew about that kind of endless waiting. He raised a hand to point her out to Evan, but then put it down—he didn’t even know her name.

Inside, the hospital was bright and calm; someone had put green tinsel along the nurses’ station desk in Catherine’s section. As soon as he entered her room, Grey’s clenched shoulders eased a bit—nothing had changed, she hadn’t gone anywhere, she was still quietly watching the air in front of her face.

Grey said, “Hey, Catherine” from the doorway and then immediately felt self-conscious; he scurried to the side of her bed, touched her limp hand. Even after only a day away, he felt like he saw her more clearly: her hair had started growing back, covering some scars he might never know the reason for. Somehow, even on the intravenous diet, the hollows in her face had filled in a bit. But she wasn’t looking at anything. When her eyes lit on something, when she really saw and understood, they gained a flickering purpose, became a gaze you could feel on your face. Rare, but a dozen times since she’d returned, Grey had seen her watching him, her warm brown irises shifting to follow his movements in the room. He dropped everything in those moments, the book, the coffee, whatever trivial thing he’d been occupying himself with, and just told her he loved her, that he was waiting whenever she wanted to come back to their lives again, that he would do anything for her. Those were the moments she was most likely to hear him, and he tried to offer her as much as he could to keep her there with him, to prevent her gaze from drifting away again, though it always did.

Evan came confidently into the room, then stopped several paces from the foot of the bed.

Grey glanced quickly at Catherine. She was elsewhere today, not reacting to any sounds or movement in the room—her consciousness locked inside herself, or gone entirely, Grey couldn’t be sure.

He glanced back to his friend and saw the tears coating Evan’s eyes. “Ev, listen—”

“She’s getting beautiful again. She is.” A drop caught in his eyelash, then fell down along his cheek, into the glitter of stubble there.

Grey nodded and glanced away, giving Evan a moment. He saw the collection of stories was splayed open on the nightstand just as he’d left it. He was looking forward to reading more, even if he didn’t understand some of the stories, even if they seemed grim. They were still stories, with people and events moving forward—something to hold on to. He opened the book at random and started to read aloud, to Evan and Catherine and any medical staff that might come into the room, just in case anyone was listening.