Eventually, I got up off the floor. I went upstairs and washed the shame from my face. When I climbed into Billy’s bed, my father’s bed, I couldn’t sleep. My brain returned to Bridge to Terabithia, to Lee, to the rest of Billy’s quest I still hadn’t completed. The last time I saw Lee he’d called Mom and she’d whisked me away from Prospero Books. Did he know that was the end of my relationship with Billy? Did he feel guilty? I’d told Malcolm he was the only one who could have encouraged Billy to reconnect with me, but he wasn’t. Lee could have, too. He could have prevented Billy from disappearing in the first place.
I searched the internet again for Lee, using every word I associated with him: bookstore, manager, books, reading, Silver Lake, Nancy Drew, coffee, literature, recommendations. I’d never asked him enough about himself to know anything about his personal life. I didn’t know if he was married. I didn’t even realize he was gay until I located a two-hundred-word piece in LA Weekly. Neighborhood says goodbye to beloved bookstore manager. The article was from 2001. It explained that Lee and his partner, Paul, were relocating to Santa Barbara.
* * *
It was a perfect Southern California morning as I drove to Santa Barbara. Clear blue skies, air salty from the ocean. In Malibu, surfers rode the modest waves that bordered Highway 1. I had telephone numbers and addresses for nine Lee Williamses listed in Santa Barbara County. One was Thomas Lee. Another Joseph Lee. I didn’t know if Lee was his first name, and besides, nine wasn’t that many. My plan was simple: I’d visit each one until I found the Lee I was looking for. I could have called before I left, but I just needed to go. I needed the fresh air, the drive, the distance from Malcolm and our fight. The distance from Mom and our fight, too.
The traffic lights grew sparser along the highway until they disappeared. Mansions clung to the bluffs, threatening to collapse onto the open road below. By seven-thirty, Malcolm would have arrived at the store. When I didn’t surface downstairs, would he brave the steps to the second floor? Would he knock on my door? And when he realized I wasn’t there, would he think I’d left for good? I checked my phone. No texts. No missed calls. Then I remembered. Malcolm didn’t have my telephone number. I knew the way his breath tasted and the feel of his chest against mine but I didn’t even know his area code.
I started to call the store, then dialed Joanie instead. When her voice mail picked up, all the stories I hadn’t told her collected in my throat. It was too much for a voice mail, too much for the few hours she had before her next performance. After I hung up, I still needed to talk, to not be alone. I scrolled down to Jay’s number, and almost hit Send. We hadn’t spoken in a month. He would have been patient if I told him what was going on—but as soon as I thought it, I wasn’t so sure. Besides, the person I really wanted to talk to was Mom. I put my phone away, and kept driving, toward Santa Barbara and the nine Lees that lived there.
The first Lee Williams was a Realtor, holding an open house near the old mission. A Spanish Revival with a layout like a maze, making you lose all sense of direction until you magically returned to the front door. Lee was in the back. She was statuesque with long red hair.
I called Lee Williams the attorney next. He was the right gender at least. His tone was hostile when I explained that I was trying to locate Lee Williams, the bookseller. “I don’t have time for whatever shenanigan this is,” he said as he hung up.
That left seven Lee Williamses. Lee Williams the dentist had immigrated to the US in the ’80s. He had a subtle yet distinct accent. The Lee I knew had a banal accent, one I’d assumed was Midwestern even if, at twelve, I hadn’t known what a Midwestern accent sounded like.
The next five Lees were equally dead ends. Lee Williams the plumber was African American. His son, Lee Williams, Jr., was the high school’s star quarterback. Joseph Lee Williams the car mechanic was too young. Thomas Lee Williams the retired police officer too old. Lee Williams the sommelier was the right age, gender and race, but when I stopped into his restaurant, he was too tall and skinny.
The last Lee Williams on my list remained a ghost. When I tried the number I’d found in the white pages, it had been disconnected. I looked up his partner, Paul, instead and eventually discovered a picture of them dancing at a charity ball for an LGBTQ organization, headquartered in downtown Santa Barbara.
The organization’s offices were on the other side of the 101 from the main strip of downtown. I passed Micheltorena Street, turning on Figueroa, street names I recognized from Los Angeles. Of course they were historical figures, not simply street names. General Figueroa. General Micheltorena. As I walked toward the organization, I thought about how, if I’d taught in Los Angeles or Santa Barbara, I could have printed maps of the city, allowing my students to discover the historic names of streets, using the city itself as a gateway into Alta California and eventually the Mexican American War. Remnants of California’s Mexican legacy were scattered across the region like clues in a scavenger hunt. Remnants of the Revolution and the Early Republic were scattered across Philadelphia like clues in a scavenger hunt, too, only I’d never thought to teach the city’s history that way.
The organization’s offices were housed in a beige one-story building between a tattoo parlor and a dollar store. The man behind the front desk smirked when I asked if he knew Lee. “We don’t normally give out our members’ information,” he said with feigned sweetness.
“Can you call him? He was friends with my uncle. My uncle died recently.”
The receptionist cast me the expression of someone who had known many people who died but not so many that he’d grown immune to it. He told me he’d check with his supervisor.
While I waited for him to return, I looked at the picture of Lee and Paul on my phone. Their eyes locked as they danced, like they only needed each other. Mom and Dad danced like that. Billy and Evelyn had probably danced that way, too.
I couldn’t look at that photograph anymore, so I browsed Prospero Books’ website instead. Malcolm had uploaded the special offers of the day, signed first editions of Jesus’ Son and The Virgin Suicides. His noir blog featured several neo-noir titles that in his estimation weren’t entirely worthy of loathing. Photographs rotated at the bottom of the homepage. One of Charlie’s most recent book club, a mommy-and-me reading of Oliver Twist. Charlie was dressed the same as the boys sitting on their mothers’ laps, news cap and vest, a large print edition of the book opened between them. In another photograph, Lucia and four pale girls held crochet hooks toward the camera, balls of colorful yarn cradled in their laps. At the top of the homepage, I tapped the Gala tab. There was a link to purchase tickets, a description of the event, a list of items for sale at the silent auction and of the entertainment. Malcolm had added a new name for musical entertainment, a band called Raw Cow Hide, whose sound he described as a modern-day Velvet Underground. I didn’t know he’d found a replacement for Lucia’s DJ friend. He was making decisions without me, as if I was already gone.
I hit the About Us tab, expecting to find details on Malcolm, Lucia and Charlie, possibly Billy, not me. Beneath a lengthy description of Prospero Books, complete with Malcolm’s explanations of the balance between new and used copies, titles you couldn’t find in any big-box store, there was a photo of the four of us from the Fourth of July, empty beer bottles and tequila safely out of view. Malcolm’s arms were around Lucia and me. Charlie sat on the opposite side of Lucia, petting her hand. Beneath the photograph Malcolm had written, The Prospero Family.
“You’re in luck,” the receptionist said when he returned. He handed me an address. “He’s home now. He said he’d be delighted to see you.”
* * *
Lee lived in an apartment complex near City College where Paul taught statistics.
“Don’t let him fool you,” Lee said as he let me into their apartment. “Statistics is completely dull.”
“Hush,” Paul said from the kitchen. “It’s a language like any other. You just don’t know how to speak it.”
Lee winked at me. His belly had ballooned since I’d last seen him, and his legs had slimmed to skin and bones. Traces of the man I remembered lingered on his face. He still had bushy eyebrows, now completely white. Full cheeks, now spotted with rosacea.
“Look at you,” he marveled. “I can’t believe you’re here. How long has it been?” He knew how long it had been. We both did. “You’re all grown up. You look—” I waited for him to tell me I looked so much like my mother. “I see so much of Billy in you,” he said, reaching for my hand.
Paul brought in a tray with a pitcher of lemonade and a plate of cookies.
“I don’t drink anymore,” Lee told me. He took a sip of lemonade and sighed. “It’s not a cold beer, but it’s satisfying in its own way.” Paul teasingly slapped his leg, making light of what must have been a longer, more painful story.
Paul said he had exams to grade and left us alone in the living room.
“Are you working?” I asked Lee.
“Volunteering,” he said. “When we moved up here, I thought about working at another bookstore, maybe even opening my own shop. It would never have been Prospero Books. I knew I wouldn’t be happy here if I tried to recreate the life I’d left.”
“Why’d you move?”
“Paul’s mom was sick. He wanted to be close to her. I didn’t want to leave, but let me give you some advice. There are three things in life that matter—your partner, your job, your place. One of those three has to be number one. The other two have to come second. For me it was Paul. I loved LA. I loved Prospero Books. But Paul was numero uno.”
“What about family? Where does family fit in?” I asked.
Lee’s eyes shifted upward as he contemplated the role of family. “I don’t know. I was never close with my family. Maybe it should be a list of four—love, job, place, family?”
“Or maybe family is part of place?”
“That sounds right. And for Paul, family and place were numero uno because he was coming back to care for his mom. I never begrudged him that. It didn’t mean he loved me any less. In love, job and place, one partner picks love and the other picks something else that shapes their life together.”
I tried to decide which would matter the most to me. I had a boyfriend who might be an ex, another man whom I’d kissed and then called a fucking liar. I had two jobs. They mattered to me in different ways. I had two places; I didn’t know which one I preferred. The same went for family.
“You were working at Prospero Books until you left LA?” I reached for a cookie, then remembered the cookie I’d had the last time I saw Lee, how I’d broken it into smaller and smaller pieces, unable to take a bite. I put the cookie back on the tray.
“I told Paul we couldn’t leave until I figured out a plan. Billy was always in and out, and he didn’t know the first thing about running the store. It was a tough time. Paul was here. I was there. I owed it to Evelyn not to abandon Prospero Books. Plus, it was my home. Just because I picked love didn’t mean I stopped caring about place.”
“You owed it to Evelyn? You were friends with her?” No wonder I’d never noticed a closeness between Lee and Billy.
Lee returned his empty glass to the table and settled into his chair. “Evelyn and I both worked at a bookstore in Pasadena. It was a small store, sold mostly political books. I was there for five years or so before she started. She was kind and beautiful and that fooled everyone.”
The store was home to communists, anarchists, to anyone with a taste for rebellion. Evelyn wasn’t a rebel. She was a reader. Lee was a reader, too. They first bonded over their love of The Tempest. Evelyn loved Miranda, her purity, her willingness to trust and to love. Lee loved Ariel and Caliban, their desire to be free. When Evelyn started working at the bookstore in Pasadena in the late ’70s, it didn’t carry The Tempest. It didn’t carry any Shakespeare. No copies of Jane Eyre. Nothing by Jane Austen, Henry James, Virginia Woolf, Nathaniel Hawthorne. None of Updike’s Rabbit novels. There was a small political fiction section that carried Catch-22, 1984, Fahrenheit 451 and Dr. Zhivago. Not All Quiet on the Western Front or A Farewell to Arms. The Feminine Mystique, not The Bell Jar. Those distinctions bothered Evelyn. What was war without love? What were cautionary tales without stories that celebrated life? What was a movement without the struggles of the individual? Evelyn saw more truth in Emma Bovary, Anna Karenina, Edna Pontellier and her awakening than in any of the pamphlets and manifestos the store stocked regularly. Lee agreed that the store needed books not overtly political. He thought the activists could learn a thing or two from the rhythms of Flaubert, Tolstoy, Chopin. What mattered to Lee was language. All those beautiful sentences he could never write. There was an art to appreciation. Lee excelled in the art of appreciation.
Evelyn always feigned ignorance to her effect on people. When she met your eye, you felt as though she really saw you. And she remembered everyone. Greeted them by name and asked them questions about their families, their pets, their jobs, questions that may have seemed generic or insincere coming from someone else. In return, they wanted nothing more than to please her. Lee wasn’t immune to it, either. Every time she walked into the bookstore, a softness spread through his chest. A flurry like a crush.
Evelyn started with The Master and Margarita. She handed her dog-eared copy to the owner of the leftist bookshop as though she was handing him part of herself.
I think you’ll like this. She smiled, turning Bulgakov into a secret between them. And what self-proclaimed communist wouldn’t benefit from reading Bulgakov’s critique of Stalinist Russia, its allegory of good and evil? Then she gave the owner her copy of Graham Greene’s The Quiet American, then Atlas Shrugged, The Grapes of Wrath, Orlando, The Bluest Eye, until he gave her a corner of the store and told her to stock it as she saw fit.
Readings are a good idea. She twisted her emerald earring, batting her eyes at him as though the idea had been his, and it wasn’t long before she had a reading series, wasn’t long before the activists were also readers of literature.
“And that was Evelyn. She was a healer. She was generous. And she was unfathomably generous with me.”
Lee didn’t remember how it started. They spent hours in the store arguing about books they’d recently read, Midnight’s Children and The World According to Garp. They always loved the same books for different reasons. Lee praised Jenny Fields and her individualism while Evelyn condemned Irving’s patriarchal, so-called feminism. They had heated arguments about whether Mr. Rochester was a sociopath, Lee insisting that he’d been forced into an impossible marriage and Evelyn outraged that Lee would defend a man who locked his wife in the attic. Lee didn’t believe half of what he said, but he liked how Evelyn’s face grew red when she was exasperated. On one work, however, they always agreed. The Tempest was the perfect play. Prospero the perfect protagonist.
“I said something like, if we owned a bookstore we should name it after Prospero, and then that became a joke. If we owned a bookstore, we’d have an entire section devoted to literary criticism, with not one book of politics. If we owned a bookstore we’d have Romeo and Juliet appreciation day. We’d have a party in honor of literature’s great lovers, and finally Evelyn said, ‘Well, why don’t we? Why don’t we have our own bookstore?’”
For most people the answer would have been obvious—capital. Evelyn had a trust, modest by trust standards, but a trust nonetheless.
Well, why don’t we? Evelyn said with that glint in her eye, and how could Lee possibly refuse her?
She deferred to him on almost everything. He’d been in books longer than she had. He understood which storefronts were too big, which were too small, how far down Sunset Boulevard the growing gentry of Silver Lake would be willing to venture. On one thing she was adamant. The walls had to be bright, almost blindingly green. She also insisted on the divisions between literary, historical and artist biographies, essays from memoirs. A table for first-time authors by the register.
“I wish she’d had more time there,” he said. “We weren’t open a year when it happened.” Lee disappeared inside himself, appearing tortured by something he found there, something he could never forget. I’d thought Billy was using Jess to describe his own loss, but it was Lee’s suffering, his connection to Terabithia, that Billy wanted me to understand.
“You found her?” I guessed.
“I’ve never told anyone what happened that day.” Lee crossed and uncrossed his legs. “Paul was with me, and Billy never wanted to talk about it. It wasn’t something I could ever tell anyone else. When Vince called this morning and said you were looking for me, I knew I was going to tell you. I knew I wanted to.”
“It means a lot to me. I know it must be difficult. It means a lot that you’d return to all of that.”
“I never left it,” he said. “Looking back, it was reckless. Evelyn was over eight months pregnant. They never should have been there.” Evelyn had insisted. They’d been up to the cabin the last three New Year’s Eves, since they’d bought the place, and Evelyn wanted it to be their tradition. She’d never had traditions growing up.
I waited for him to tell me it wasn’t true. I wasn’t the baby. Some small part of me still hoped I could restore my family unit as it had always been.
“It was the last trip they’d be able to make before the baby—before you—arrived,” Lee said. He didn’t try to deny my origins. I didn’t try to make him. “And once you were here, they needed to do a lot to the house before it was safe.”
Lee studied me, trying to gauge my reaction. I remained perfectly still, seemingly calm, even though my body thudded with every heartbeat and I was worried I might start seeing double again. But I could breathe, so I breathed, in and out, steady, serene. I nodded to him to continue, that I could handle the details that would come next. And I could handle them. I needed to. This was the moment Billy had guided me to. The truth of my birth. The night of my mother’s death.
“For starters,” Lee continued, “the house needed a new roof.” The roof leaked and was caving in. The vents were corroded and needed replacing. It’s like the opening credits for a horror film, Paul had said the first time they saw the cabin, a comment he would regret for years to come. But the house’s shabbiness was its charm. Pale blue paint chipping off the wood, a post missing from the porch railing. No television. No stereo system. Only a telephone, installed at Lee’s insistence when he’d been unable to reach Evelyn after there had been a mix-up at the bank, and he couldn’t proceed without her signature.
“Evelyn had been after Billy for months to fix the roof. Billy was pretty handy and he saw that house as his Sistine Chapel.”
Billy had promised to repair the roof in the summer. Then he’d been busy at the lab. By the time things slowed down, the snow had arrived, and they would have to wait until the following summer to replace the roof.
Look at it, Evelyn said, pointing to the part where it curved downward. A pile of snow and it could snap.
If anything it will slowly leak. It’s not going to buckle all at once, Billy reasoned.
And what about that? she said, pointing to a vent on the roof. What if there’s lead? Or if a squirrel crawls into the house?
Then it will bite us and we’ll go rabid. Billy nibbled her neck. She giggled, allowing herself to embody the moment, the happy couple about to be parents, her fears merely a new mother’s nerves, evidence that she was ready for the baby and all that came with it.
Think about it in terms of probability, Billy told her. Statistically, the likelihood of a roof caving in is less probable than getting in a car crash or getting mauled by a bear. Heck, it’s less probable than getting mauled by a bear in a place called Big Bear. And Evelyn loved how he reasoned, how he removed the emotion and relied on logic. But that’s the thing about probability, however unlikely. There’s always a chance.
Lee and Paul were planning on coming up the afternoon of the twenty-ninth, after Lee closed Prospero Books for the holiday. A few customers had lingered and one of the employees had had trouble with the credit card processing machine. By the time Lee got through to the credit card company, the snow falling on Big Bear had thickened.
You’d better wait until morning, Evelyn said when Lee called to tell her they were finally getting on the road. It’s a whiteout here.
Paul wanted to be on the first ski lift up the mountain, so the next morning he dragged a bleary-eyed Lee out of their apartment and into the car. They were already on the 210 when the sun’s rays pierced the San Gabriel Mountains.
“For weeks after, I tried to imagine what we could have done differently,” Lee said, “If we’d gotten there earlier that morning. If I’d insisted we have a party at Prospero Books instead of the cabin. But if we’d gotten there the night before—then we’d all be dead.”
Lee stared at the ski mountain as Paul steered the car along the road that hugged the lake. At seven, the mountain was still closed. The ski trails were blank canvases, the trees separating them covered in milky white. Small dots of dark green foliage pierced through the snow, like specks of paint splattered across the hillside.
They turned off North Shore Road, into Fawnskin where the houses were small and old. Lee couldn’t remember the address, so they tried the first street, looking for the wind chimes that hung on the porch. Lee had bought them for Evelyn as a housewarming gift.
You didn’t think it might help to bring the address, Paul said. He was already wearing his snow pants. They made a swishing sound as his foot pressed and released the clutch.
It’s part of the adventure.
Ski mountain sounds more adventurous to me.
They turned onto the next block. Lee knew it wasn’t particularly efficient to drive around until they stumbled upon the house. Still, he liked searching for Evelyn’s house and eventually finding it. It felt charmingly small town.
No chimes on the second street, so Paul turned at the end onto the next block.
This is completely ridiculous, Paul said.
Lee rested his hand on the back of Paul’s neck. The mountain isn’t even open yet. Just humor me.
Paul continued to weave in and out of the neighborhood, not finding humor in any of it.
Wait. Here. Lee pointed to a house three doors down from where Paul slid to a stop. The snow buried the broken banister and hid the old shingled roof, but Lee spotted them just as they passed. Patinaed copper and mahogany. The wind chimes.
Paul parked, and they followed the path toward the house. It hadn’t been shoveled, and their calves disappeared into the snow. Lee laughed as he almost fell, kicking a bit of snow at Paul, who pretended to be annoyed. They knocked on the door. When no one answered, they knocked again. The house didn’t have a doorbell. Lee figured Billy and Evelyn were probably in the kitchen preparing breakfast and couldn’t hear the door. He carefully cracked the door open.
Evelyn? When no one answered, he stepped in. Paul followed. Garlic and burned toast lingered in the air. The floorboards creaked under their weight. Lee found the light switch next to the door.
“First thing I saw were Billy’s socked feet dangling off the couch.”
Billy’s legs were crossed at the ankles, and when Lee saw them hanging like that, he knew something was wrong.
Bill? Lee shook Billy. He was lying facedown on the couch, seemingly asleep. Billy. He continued to shake him. Evelyn? Ev?
Paul rushed over and pushed Lee aside.
Billy, he said, grabbing Billy’s shoulders. Is he drunk? Paul leaned in to smell his breath and shook his head. He’s breathing.
What’s wrong with him?
I don’t know. Paul shook Billy, breathed into his mouth, shook him some more. Lee ran upstairs.
Evelyn, he called.
Evelyn, he screamed.
The bedroom door was shut. He hesitated for a moment, then pushed it open.
Evelyn was in bed, sleeping. Two pillows rested behind her head. Her long blond hair fell around her shoulders. She looked peaceful, beautiful. Too peaceful. Too beautiful. Lee shook her shoulders, softly at first, then violently. Evelyn’s eyes remained closed. Lee felt woozy like his head had been hit with a hammer.
Paul, he shouted. Come quick.
Paul ran into the room.
She won’t wake up, either.
Paul checked her pulse.
Let’s get her out of here. Paul lifted Evelyn off the bed. Her head and feet dangled in his arms, her stomach an enormous beach ball between his hands. Go call 9-1-1. Now.
Lee sprinted into the kitchen, found the rotary phone on the wall.
This is taking too long, Lee called to Paul as he waited for the operator. He could hear Paul careening down the stairs, one foot at a time, his steps heavy with the weight of Evelyn’s pregnant body. Hello?...There’s something wrong. They won’t wake up...What?...I don’t know...Yes, they’re breathing...No, I don’t know what’s happened...The address? I don’t know. We just got here...I don’t know the address. Paul rushed into the kitchen and searched a drawer. He handed Lee a piece of mail and Lee read the address to the operator. He hung up. They’re on their way.
In the living room, Paul had seated Evelyn next to Billy on the couch. Billy was contorted at an awkward angle. It seemed painful. If it was, Billy couldn’t feel it. Evelyn was seated upright. Her head had fallen back like she was drugged. Lee’s head was pounding now. He massaged his temples. The throbbing didn’t go away.
We should get them out of the house, Paul said.
Lee found their jackets in the closet. He leaned against the doorframe, dizzier, out of breath. He willed himself to focus. He threw their coats to Paul. Focus.
Lee sprinted outside. The air stung his lungs and cheeks. He thought he might fall he was so dizzy. He fumbled with the keys as he tried to unlock the door. Focus. Why had Paul even locked the car, anyway? Lee got into the car and turned over the ignition. He cranked the heat on full blast and rushed back to the house to help Paul.
Move, Paul shouted as he wobbled with Evelyn in his arms. Jesus, Lee, get out of the way. The door. Get the car door.
Lee rushed back to the car and opened the door, helping Paul put Evelyn inside.
I’m sorry, Paul said once Evelyn was safely in the car. He stroked the side of Lee’s face.
Never mind. Let’s go get Bill.
Lee followed Paul to the front steps. Wait here, Paul instructed. I don’t want you going back inside the house.
What’s wrong with the house?
I don’t know. Paul covered his mouth with his sleeve as he swooped back in, but there was nothing to protect himself from. Burned toast and garlic. That was it. No odorous gas. Nothing obviously poisonous.
When the ambulance arrived, the EMTs asked a few questions that Lee didn’t remember answering. They strapped Evelyn and Billy to gurneys and intubated them.
Do you know what’s wrong with them? Lee asked the EMT who was checking his vitals.
They’ll do tests at the hospital. The doctors will be able to tell you what’s happened.
Lee felt nauseous and didn’t refuse when an EMT placed a mask over his face. He remembered the EMT’s hands were cold and surprisingly brittle. Paul insisted he was fine, then threw up all over the white snow.
At the hospital, Lee and Paul were rushed in one direction, Billy and Evelyn in the other. Lee and Paul sat in a sterile room, confined to plastic chairs by oxygen tanks. The mask was claustrophobic. All Lee could hear was the inhalation and exhalation of his steadying breath. He looked over at Paul, who blinked at him with watery eyes. He reached over to take Paul’s hand, and they sat like that, hand in hand, staring at each other until the doctors returned.
Lee learned the term carboxyhaemoglobin from the doctors. Their faces were grave when they said that Evelyn’s and Billy’s carboxyhaemoglobin levels were astronomical. Lee didn’t know what that meant but he understood that it was bad. And then they used a term he did understand.
Carbon monoxide.
“They didn’t have a detector?” I asked Lee.
“I don’t think they were even on the market yet.”
“So how did it happen, the carbon monoxide?”
“I never got an exact story. It had something to do with a clogged vent on the roof from all the snow.”
“You never got an exact story?”
“At the hospital, the doctors told us that Evelyn was in surgery. Billy was stabilizing. We weren’t family, so they didn’t tell us anything else. The police asked us some questions, then the doctors told us to go home and get some sleep. We checked into a motel nearby. In the morning your parents were there.”
Lee spotted Suzy and her husband—“David,” I told him. Lee had only met him that one time in the hospital and couldn’t remember his name—in the waiting room. Suzy was leaning against David’s shoulder, crying.
Is that Bill’s sister? Paul asked Lee. Don’t you want to sit with her? When Lee hesitated, Paul said, Go sit with her.
Lee wasn’t sure Suzy would recognize him. Whenever she came into the bookstore, she said hello as though she was trying to remember who he was, even though he was one of three employees at Prospero Books and had been friends with Evelyn for years. When he sat beside her, Suzy immediately said, Lee, and hugged him.
“That’s how I knew. If it had been Billy, she wouldn’t have hugged me. That’s how I knew it was Evelyn.”
The baby’s in NICU, but Evelyn—Suzy was unable to finish her sentence and Lee clasped her hand, indicating that he understood.
Lee sat beside Suzy, holding her right hand. David held her left hand. When the doctors told Suzy she could see the child, she thanked Lee for coming.
Miranda, Lee told Suzy. Evelyn was going to name her Miranda.
Suzy nodded. Lee couldn’t tell if she knew the reference. He watched as she followed the doctors farther into the hospital. As she disappeared, a quote from The Tempest appeared to him. Thy mother was a piece of virtue. It was the single reference to Miranda’s mother, a figure otherwise absent from the play, absent from Miranda’s life, absent from her memory.