Chapter 18

He still hated the painting.

Jake stood in the hallway, looking at the red and blue abstract, the bright glare of color. He rubbed a finger over the bump of skin on one wrist, then the other. It was becoming a habit, the tracing of the scar tissue, as though the knobby skin and flesh were his very own rabbit’s foot.

He was the only one in the hallway except for a custodian, swirling his mop in a steady, monotonous swishing motion at the far end, and the occasional nurse. It was after visiting hours, but nobody seemed to care that he was here. He had signed in to the epidemiology lab three hours earlier. After his appointment, he had gone to the pharmacy and filled his prescription—extra-strength doxycycline—then hung out in the cafeteria, drinking black coffee through the dinner hour, until it was only he and an old man, eighty-five or ninety years old. The old man was staring at a newspaper, the sports section of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, but did not turn a page in the hour Jake was there with him.

Now Jake craned his head, listening for the beeping. He had things to say, and this visit was, if not something he had looked forward to, then at least something not as terrible as it had been before. Before, his thoughts had alternated between regret and the intense desire to end the beeping, to pick up a pillow and put an end to it, knowing he was too cowardly to do such a thing.

His phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it free and looked down at the text.

You okay?

It was Rachel. She was in Arlington, and would be for several more months as her government contract wound down. There seemed to be waning interest in promethium, at least on the surface; the exploratory team’s trespasses had made the national news in both the United States and Canada. The Canadian Parliament had responded quickly and decisively, banning all mineral exports to the U.S. and declaring an area of a thousand square kilometers around Resurrection Valley to be the newly formed Amiki National Refuge, off-limits to timber harvesting and mineral extraction. Rachel, although she had been cleared of any criminal wrongdoing, was told she would face stiff civil penalties and jail time if she attempted to enter Canada again in her lifetime. She had laughed a bit at the restriction, much to the chagrin of the Mountie telling her about it, a dark-haired man with a serious gray jacket and black tie, a guy who looked more like an undertaker than an officer of the law.

“That’s fine,” she had said. “I’ve seen enough of it.”

The Canadian forensics team had gone into Resurrection Valley, removing the drill rig and the rest of the materials they had left behind. Jake and Rachel waited for their report, expecting to hear something about the devastation—perhaps something about the corpses in the valley, or Billy’s or Weasel’s body in the forest—but whatever the forensics team found remained secret. Or perhaps, Jake thought, there was nothing there of interest anymore. Perhaps it had all decayed, gone back into the earth. He’d heard some rumors about payments to families of the deceased, large checks enclosed in cards expressing sincere condolences. It all seemed not to matter very much anymore to him, although he knew Jaimie’s and Greer’s families were demanding more answers.

I’m fine, he texted back. The phone was new, the technology a bit jarring. The world had moved along while he was in the woods. Going in to see her now.

He walked through the door. Deserae had lost weight since he’d last visited her, her face hollow and sunken. Her eyes were closed and the hair along her temples had started to turn gray. She was a year younger than Jake. He pushed a lock of hair back behind her ear and took her hand in his own. It was cool to the touch, unresponsive. He listened to the beeping, he looked at her face. He felt the lifeless weight of her hand in his own. He was thinking of one of their favorite lines in literature, back when they were young and in love and would read to each other. His tastes were different from hers, but she had liked this book, had imagined herself with cropped hair in the Spanish countryside behind enemy lines, or sometimes as the stout, fierce woman dealing with her traitorous husband—a husband who had deserted them and betrayed them, and then, in the darkest part of his retreat, returned. Deserae would recite variations of the lines to him, usually in jest, and he could hear the lines from For Whom the Bell Tolls, her voice still with him. It always would be, and not so long ago he thought that was a curse. Now it felt like, if not a blessing, then at least a comfort.

I believe thou art back.... I believe it. But, hombre, thou wert a long way gone.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and his voice seemed out of place in this room. “I went away, not just from you, but from everyone. Myself. I’ll try not to do it again.”

He held onto her hand, remembering again that first night they had met, the night of the swirling snowflakes in Rice Park. The way she drank her coffee, the way her eyes, so bright and dark, had watched him as he spoke, the sudden flash of her smile. That had been the first time he had seen her, and he closed his eyes now, feeling the tears coming down and making no effort to brush them away, just letting them course down his cheeks. It wasn’t fair. She should still be here, should still be flashing him that brilliant smile. Perhaps they would still be reading to each other, late at night, edging into middle age but still holding on to the best parts of their youth. Yet he had been lucky, so lucky, to have the time he had with her. That part had been more than fair; that part had been a blessing. A miracle, even. And miracles, like nightmares, were part of his life.

He sat with his head down, his palm warming her hand. After a while he heard footsteps behind and he turned, his eyes red, wiping at his cheeks with the sleeve of his shirt.

The nurse who stood in the doorway was an older white woman, plump, with a kind face. She held a scanner of some sort in one hand. “It’s okay,” she said in a quiet voice. “Take your time saying good-bye.”

Jake placed Deserae’s hand back on the bed, then leaned down and kissed her cheek. He straightened.

“Thank you,” he said. “I’m good.”

“You sure?”

He smiled at her and moved through the doorway. Jake Trueblood walked past the red and blue painting, nodding at it as he went. The light coming through the windows suggested it was late evening, not quite sunset. Yes, he was good, as good as he could be at this moment. He was also done with saying good-bye, at least for a while. Now it was time to say hello, and he knew exactly where he was going to start.