When Rebecca emerged from the bath, she curled up on the sheets and reached for Daniel with tender despair. Her sister’s death left her wanting to engage in the act that brought life. They lay awake afterward. She talked about Sandy as if recounting a story she’d heard long ago, not one she’d lived through. She’d forgotten about Taj, the club, everything. They held each other and whispered comforting things, and for a moment they were on the bluff in Santa Monica again, sitting side by side on a throne, the sea a glittering kingdom at their feet.
In the early morning, Daniel rose and peered through the drapes while Rebecca slept. On the dew-silvered lawn he saw a ruined flower bed. This was what she had done last night before telling him the news. She had turned over the soil, tearing up the new buds meant for next spring. Kneeling, the gardener, who had been there from Sayed’s time, was picking at the earth with a small shovel as he repaired the flower garden. Daniel returned to bed and wrapped her in his arms.
While she slept, the awful truth dawned on him. He couldn’t go with her to LA for the funeral. The destruction of the Gulzar field was coming, and the tale he’d spun to make it happen was so fragile.
Over the years, he’d thought about what would happen if Sandy died. He’d wondered if she’d be alone, how old she would be. In his sorrowful imaginings, the details changed, but one thing never did. He was always at his wife’s side. He was holding her hand tightly during the service, and he would take care of everything, all the logistics that reduced tragic events to a collection of tedious moments—the paperwork and phone calls and schedules and dotted lines. He had never imagined that he wouldn’t be there. How had it come to this?
When Rebecca woke up, he told her he loved her, and she said she loved him, too. They stared at each other, trying to remember what people said after that. When she told him to please find a flight for the next day, he told her he couldn’t go. It just wasn’t possible.
“I can’t believe it, but it’s the way it is,” he said. It was true. “The way things are, there’s no one else. There’s so much hanging in the balance right now. If there was any way I could go, I would.” He was falling over himself as she watched him quietly. He promised he would do everything he could from here. He asked her to please believe him. “I’ve been through this in my mind over and over. I just can’t abandon this.”
She pushed up on an elbow and continued to watch him, then she closed her eyes and breathed deeply. “What are you actually saying?”
“There are too many things happening here, Becca. Serious things.”
“I’m sorry, serious things?”
“If I don’t go, innocent people could get hurt. People could die.” He tried to make it sound like this was a normal concern of his job.
“What are you talking about? Somebody’s already dead. My sister.”
“If I told you . . .” He let the sentence trail off.
Slowly, she said, “If you told me, then maybe I would understand.”
He took her hand, but she pushed it away. It wasn’t a forceful gesture, but it suggested exhaustion and resignation.
“Becca, please trust me. I wish things were different.” He said what he found so difficult to say, and what he almost resented having to say because he thought it was obvious. “You’re the most important thing in my life.” A warm numbness came over him when he said it, a kind of relief painting over everything else he had felt. “You know that.”
When she didn’t respond, he added, “Please believe me.”
She rolled away from him. “Don’t worry. When I see my mom in the hospital, I’ll explain that the day she’s burying her daughter wasn’t convenient for you.” After a while, she cried. Not tears of grief for Sandy or that terrible night three months ago or the crash. These tears were for her and Daniel. She told him to leave.
“I just need to be alone.”
Downstairs, he sat in the dimly lit living room. His eyes fell on an ornament, an intricately carved mahogany fox. In one of its flanks was a tiny dent, too small for most people to see. It grew in his vision until the ornament itself disappeared, and all that was left was the flaw in the shape of the fox.