When Mark first woke, he did not know where he was.
Sunlight pierced his eyelids; soft cotton pressed against his cheek. A net of smells hung in the air: Food, thick and sweet. Coffee. And a softer smell, too, familiar. Feminine.
He was still in the old house. Sleeping on Chloe’s denim jacket.
No. No he wasn’t. He remembered: He had called Chloe, last night. She had come for him; she had found him in Brendan’s old room. He remembered that. Then she had brought him here with her. He was in her apartment.
Mark tried to open his eyes, but the light was too bright; he groaned. What he saw of the room was a painful brown blur. Then he heard footsteps. He was caught in a loop: Footsteps approaching, footsteps, leaving. Fuzz and echo.
Brendan had visited him last night. He hadn’t dreamed this. He was real.
Chloe’s voice—close, tender—said, “Are you awake?”
Mark risked cracking his eyes again, shading them against the sun. Chloe was sitting in an easy chair beside the couch, bent forward, smiling at him.
“Your glasses are on the coffee table,” she said.
He fumbled for them, fit them to his face. The room came into focus, as did Chloe. She was wearing jeans, a sweatshirt, thick white socks on her feet. Her smile—happy, sly—suggested he was, at the moment, comically unkempt. He tried to smile back, but his stomach bore down on itself.
“How do you feel?” she asked.
“Sick.”
“You were pretty drunk when I found you.”
“I’m sorry.” He drew the quilt under which he’d slept around his shoulders. “What did I tell you last night?”
Chloe sat with her back straight as a schoolgirl’s. “You weren’t making a whole lot of sense. But… you said Brendan visited you?”
“He did. Just like you said.” Again, he was struck by the fact of it: It was true. “Chloe. I’m sorry—”
“Don’t be. God.” Chloe was grinning. She reached out and pried one of his hands from the quilt. Her fingers were cold, strong.
“I’m sorry I didn’t wait for you,” he said. “I needed to go by myself.”
She shook her head. “You broke in.”
“Connie keeps a key under Winnie-the-Pooh.”
Chloe’s smile, now, was glorious: conspiratorial, proud. She squeezed his hand, then released it. “I can’t believe you.”
“I had to know.” Feeling surged in him, and he said again, “I’m sorry, I’m—”
“Hush,” she said, and pressed his hand. “Do you think you can drink some coffee? I’ve got a new pot on.”
He nodded.
“Water and aspirin first,” she said, with such humor and care they might have been sitting again on the edge of the bed in her college apartment, bedraggled and cold, debating who was going to have to fetch breakfast.
Chloe stood and walked through an archway to his left: the kitchen. He swung his legs off the couch. They were bare. And so—he saw, as the quilt fell away—was the rest of him. He glanced around in a panic before spotting his clothes in a neatly folded pile on the coffee table. Chloe had stripped him and washed his clothes. And, since he wasn’t covered in his own filth, she might have washed his body, too.
Chloe returned with a plastic cup of water. He pulled the quilt across his lap.
She ducked her eyes. “You threw up on yourself. Out on the sidewalk.”
How much did he have to apologize for? Everything. “I’m so sorry.”
She waved a hand toward his body. “Old news.”
His face warmed, but he drank some of the water. Then Chloe handed him two aspirin, and he swallowed them, locking his jaws. His head pounded and he sank into the cushions.
Chloe went back to the kitchen, and Mark now allowed himself his first good look around the apartment. Her living room was tiny, lit only by a window just behind his shoulders. The easy chair where Chloe had sat was in the corner, under a reading lamp. The couch faced a small television. An archway to the left of the television opened into a hallway. The ceilings were high and the floors were dark, glossy hardwood; the walls were all painted a creamy white.
She lived in such a small place. The townhouse was much, much nicer.
The same townhouse to which Allison was returning today.
Chloe returned bearing a coffee mug. “Careful,” she said, and closed his fingers around it with her own, as though he were blind.
She sat down on the easy chair, knees pressed together. She smiled, but he could see she was exhausted. She would be: She’d driven an hour in the middle of the night to rescue him.
“It’s true,” he said.
Chloe pressed her lips together and nodded.
“It was like you said,” he told her. “I felt him. Heard him.”
She touched his arm. He was remembering as he spoke. Mark had been crying—apologizing—and Brendan had come to him, had filled him up like a lungful of warm air, and then—
And then Mark had stood, and Brendan had run. His footsteps had pattered down the stairs.
“Chloe,” he said, but the rest of it—the beautiful, gorgeous mystery of it—could not be put to words. The world had changed; he could not see a single part of it as it had been. Brendan was real; Chloe was here, with him; for the first time in years they knew each other’s hearts. He didn’t have to pretend. Brendan had come back.
Chloe gave him her hand. He took it and clutched it to his chest and cried like a child.
After a while Chloe stood and walked down the hall; he heard her washing her face. She returned with a wad of tissues and pressed them into his hand.
He blew his nose, then asked her: “So what now?”
“You really mean it?” she asked. “You really want to do this?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Let me make some calls,” she said. Her voice was gentle, thick with her own tears, as warm as his hollow of the couch. “I have some errands to run, too. You rest here, and I’ll get us some dinner—you’ll need food in you soon.” She straightened. “I mean, if you stay. For dinner.”
“Dinner?”
She said, “Yeah. You were out awhile. It’s four.”
He sat up. “Jesus Christ.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Allie,” he said.
Chloe said, “But you told me—you said last night that Allison’s in Toledo—?”
Mark had no memory of saying any of this. “Last night she was. She’s home now.”
Chloe watched him carefully.
“I’ll call her. We… I’ve still got to tell her about what’s been happening.” His head squeezed down on itself like a damp fist. “I haven’t been very honest with her about all this.”
“Oh,” Chloe said. “Well, if… if you have to go home, I can drive you back to your car. Whenever you need to.”
“Where’s my phone?”
“In your coat.” Chloe walked down the hall and opened a closet door, then returned and handed it to him.
He opened it. Seven messages: Three from Lewis, and four from Allie.
Chloe was watching him, as though he were a machine that had suddenly begun to clank and emit smoke. “I’ll be okay,” he told her, though he was sure this was a lie. “If you need to go.”
Chloe said, “You can call me if you need me back. Or, I can stay. I—”
“Chloe. What happened, happened. I’ll still help. Whatever it takes.”
She seemed about to say something else, but stopped herself. She reached out and touched his cheek, her eyes pained and guilty, before walking down the hallway and putting on her coat.
Even after Chloe was gone, Mark couldn’t bring himself to call Allie, just yet. The damage was done; he might as well experience the blow when he was fully alert. He picked up his clean clothing and found Chloe’s bathroom; he winced at the bright slap of the fluorescent light against the black-and-white checkerboard tile.
The bathroom was small. Half its space was given over to an enormous claw-foot tub; Chloe’s soaps and lotions were arrayed on a little tile window ledge above it. Her sink and mirror were both sparkling clean, though the sink was stained with spots of rust. He lifted the toilet lid and pissed out burning orange poison. Then he washed his hands, ran hot water through his hair, pressed it down to his skull.
Only then did he look at himself in the mirror. His skin was sallow, his eyes sunken like a plague victim’s. His cheeks were stubbled, grimy; his eyes were bloodshot. He thought about borrowing one of Chloe’s razors. When they were married, he would have.
But they weren’t marred. He was engaged to Allison Daniel.
Maybe she’d already given up on him; maybe, right now, she was crying onto the shoulder of one of her friends. Or maybe she was driving to Lew’s, to grill him about Mark’s whereabouts. Maybe she was trying to find Chloe’s address—or driving by this apartment, craning her neck to spot his car.
Allie, he’d say, you don’t understand. Everything’s different now.
Mark took a quick shower, then dressed, grateful for the clean clothing, amazed that Chloe was still using the same detergents and dryer sheets she’d used when they were married, by their familiar enveloping smell. He looked in the mirror again. How strange, that when his eyes were open he was Allie’s fiancé—but when they were closed, he could imagine himself, once again, as Chloe’s husband.
Back in the living room he called Lewis.
“Jesus!” Lew said immediately. “I’ve been waiting all goddamned day. Are you all right?”
“Hung over. But I’m okay.”
“Where are you?”
“I’ll tell you,” Mark said, “but first you have to tell me if you’ve talked to Allie.”
“No. She’s left me a bunch of messages, but I figured I’d better talk to you first.”
Thank you, thank you.
“I was with you,” Mark said. “On the couch, all night.”
“Fuck,” Lew said. “You’re at Chloe’s, aren’t you?”
“It’s not what you think,” Mark told him. “I went to the old house last night. And—Lew, it’s all true. Brendan’s there.”
The words sounded amazing—thrilling—even now.
Lew waited a long time before saying, “You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“What happened?”
“I’ll tell you soon. It’s—it’s not like you guessed. This was a happy thing. It’s okay.”
“Mark—”
“I’m fine, I promise.”
After a long while Lew said, “Okay, sure. But what are you going to tell Allison?”
“I don’t know. But she can’t know I was here. Nothing happened, but—”
“Mark.”
“Just back me up on this, Lew. Please.”
“One condition.”
“Name it.”
“You get your ass over here. Stay here with me. For real this time.”
This request made sense, of course. Chloe’s apartment was no place for him to be for long. “Sure,” he said.
“Give me the address. I’ll pick you up.”
“Not yet. Soon. Chloe and I have things to talk over first.”
“You can do that over the phone.”
“I can barely stand,” Mark said. “I’ll call you as soon as she gets back.”
Lew’s silence, then, made Mark wonder whether he’d believed anything he’d said, after all.
It wasn’t until they’d hung up that he realized: Whatever else they’d discussed, both of them had assumed he wouldn’t be going home to Allison tonight.
The sun had nearly set. Mark turned on a lamp in the living room, and then another in the kitchen. The kitchen was small, but neat, with yellow-painted walls and white enamel appliances that must have been fifty years old. A window over the stove looked out at a snarl of branches. A door, painted a glossy red, opened upon a small wooden balcony barely big enough for a squat gas grill and a chaise longue blanketed in iced-over snow. Over the balcony rail he could see only rooftops, trees, and beyond them a rising hillside: a wave of brown leafless branches whose crest was lost to the dusk.
He had just finished setting a new pot of coffee to brew when his phone rang. Allison’s name appeared on the screen.
The sky outside was dark enough that he felt like an astronaut in a tiny tumbling capsule. He swallowed hard and answered.
“So you’re alive,” Allie said.
“Just barely.”
He waited, imagining the dozens of replies Allison might be considering. None of them was friendly.
Her voice was a pinprick. “Tell me where you are.”
“I stayed at Lew’s last night.”
“Where are you now?”
“Allie.” He stood and walked into the living room. “Something’s happened.”
She was quiet.
“I haven’t been totally honest with you,” he said. “And I’m sorry. But I guess I just have to say it. I’ve been to the old house. Brendan…” He stopped in front of a photo hung on the wall: Brendan as a fat, happy baby, sitting in his zigzag Charlie Brown shirt, showing his toothless mouth. “Connie Pelham was right. He’s there, in the house.”
Allison waited so long to reply that he wondered whether their call had been dropped. “Oh, Mark.”
“I know it’s hard to believe. But it’s me, saying this. Please bel—”
“Are you with Chloe?”
Just below the picture of Brendan as a baby was one of him as a toddler at Sam’s house. Brendan sat beside Sam at the picnic table on the back patio; Sam’s fingers were draped across the crown of Brendan’s head like the arms of a starfish, and Brendan was sticking out his tongue at the camera. At Mark, who’d taken the picture.
“She convinced me to go see,” he said. “I went last night.”
Allie didn’t say anything.
“I have to help him,” he said. “He’s—Allie, what this means—”
“Okay. Okay. But why aren’t you home?”
“I’ll come home soon,” he said. “But Chloe and I have to talk some more. We have to come up with a plan.” He could only hear himself now as Allie must: crazed, lost. “Honey, I know we were supposed to talk, but—”
She was silent.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said. “But I have to take care of this. Right now.”
Allie said, “I need you here. I told you that. And you’re not here.”
“Allie, I felt him—”
She sobbed, then, into the phone.
He would never forgive himself for this. He would not deserve to be forgiven.
“I’ll come back soon. But right now—”
“You can’t. I get it. Jesus, Mark. You have no idea how much trouble—”
“What?”
“Nothing.” He could hear it in her voice: She’d given up on him; she was done. “You don’t need me, that’s great. I’ll go back to Darly’s tomorrow and be out of your hair.” She was crying harder, now. “Just don’t fucking come home tonight.”
Then she hung up.
Chloe returned half an hour later. “Sorry I took so long,” she said, bustling down the hallway, bearing paper sacks. He stood in the doorway to the kitchen and watched her set groceries on the counter: chicken breasts, pasta, olive oil.
“You look better,” she said, when she finally turned to him.
“I’m all right.”
“I’m going to make us some pasta. Can you handle that?”
He told her he could. While Chloe set out a skillet and cutting boards and knives, he poured them both some of the coffee he’d brewed.
Chloe was scrubbing her hands at the sink. “Did you make your calls?” Her tone chatty, offhanded.
“I just got off the phone with Allison.”
Chloe didn’t look up. “And?”
“It was bad.”
She dried her hands. Her eyes were soft, sad.
“I did what I did,” he told her. “I’ll live with the consequences.”
She leaned against the counter, her hands folded in front of her. “I don’t get to tell you anything about Allison,” she said. “I wouldn’t dare. But I do want to say I’m—I’m grateful. That you went and saw. I know it wasn’t easy.” She looked right into him. “I couldn’t do this alone anymore. I just couldn’t.”
He wanted badly to put his arms around her. For weeks Chloe had known what he now knew. Could he have held on as long as she did? Could he have written her a letter as kind? What he’d put her through—
He could only begin to understand what she must have suffered. Allison, as much as he loved her, as much as he deserved her anger—well, Allie could not.
“Can I help with dinner?” he asked.
“No, just sit. It feels good to make dinner for someone other than me.”
So he sat with his coffee at the kitchen table and watched Chloe cook for him, take care of him. Thank him, with every movement of her hands.
Mark thought about calling Lew back, but didn’t. Chloe hadn’t yet asked him where he was staying, tonight.
The kitchen filled with good smells. While she cooked, Chloe hummed: a song he ought to have known, but couldn’t place. A happy little tune.
They ate on the couch, side by side. The food was wonderful; smelling it cook, his appetite had returned, and now he wolfed it down. Chloe turned on the news—as fastidious as she was, she loved to eat while staring at the talking heads. A silver-haired newscaster talked ominously about the upcoming elections—Hillary Clinton had won Nevada, but, shockingly, Obama was probably going to toast her in South Carolina. Meanwhile the real estate market was more of a disaster than before.
When the news was over Chloe took the empty plates into the kitchen. Then she came and sat back down, her feet tucked beneath her—and she still did this, too: She picked up one of the throw pillows and hugged it between her knees and chest and looked at him over the top of it.
She said, “So I called Trudy Weill when I was out.”
It took him a moment to remember the name: Trudy Weill, the medium.
“She wants to meet you,” Chloe said. “We can drive up and see her tomorrow, if we want. So I guess I need to know if—”
“I can do that,” he said. Made himself say.
“She’s up in Michigan. It’ll take a few hours, each way.”
“I’m in. Whatever Brendan needs.”
She let out a breath. “Okay. I don’t know what happens after that—we’ll have to see what Trudy says. But I think we should both go over to the house as soon as we can. The Pelhams are back in it for the week. I think maybe it would be a good idea if we all sat down—you and me and Connie and Jacob. Cleared the air.”
Agreeing to see the medium had been easier, but Mark nodded—because Connie had been telling him the truth, hadn’t she? And he’d been awful to her. “So what do we tell them? That I broke in?”
“No.” Chloe squeezed the pillow. “I just went over there and cleaned up a little. There wasn’t any sign of you. A little spilled booze.” She shrugged. “I’ll tell them we went over together.” He heard no judgment, and was—again—deeply, shudderingly grateful. “Maybe we can go tomorrow? After we get back?”
“Sure.” By tomorrow night he could make himself be ready. Then he had to say it. “Chloe, about the booze—”
She waved him away.
“I’m not like that,” he said. “I mean, I still drink a little. But I thought—one time before, when I was drunk, I thought I heard him. I figured maybe—”
“Stop.” She was still staring at him. “Jesus, I’m on enough antidepressants to sedate a bull. I take pills to help me sleep. What can I say?”
He nodded, close to tears again.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “It really doesn’t.”
He said, “I felt last night like he forgave me. Like that was what he wanted to tell me.”
Chloe’s eyes welled up. “I’m so glad.”
“I don’t know if I deserve it—”
“Stop that.” She wiped at her eyes with the heel of her hand. “We’ve been over that, Mark.” She took his hand, squeezed it. Looked right at him.
Don’t, he thought.
“Chloe, thanks for doing all this—”
She untucked a foot and kicked softly at his knee. “Of course.”
“—But I should really go.”
Chloe’s throat worked. “You’re going home?”
“I’m not sure I’m welcome at home. Lew offered to put me up.”
“Does he…?”
“Most of it. He’s been a good friend.”
She said, “You know you’re welcome to take the couch again.”
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea.” He added, “Given how much trouble I’m in.”
Chloe kept watching him. “Mark, I trust you. Us. And Lew’s all the way across town.”
An odd thing to say, wasn’t it? And anyway, it wouldn’t be Chloe’s trust he was endangering.
But she was right—Lew’s apartment was half an hour away. Chloe would have to drop him off at his car, parked by the old house. It would need scraping, and maybe even a jump; the Volvo didn’t much like the deep cold. And Mark was still tired to his bones.
And this, too: Chloe knew what he had seen, what he had felt. He didn’t want to have to explain any of this to Lewis. He didn’t want Lew’s questions. What he was sure would be Lew’s doubt.
“Allie can never know,” he said.
Chloe nodded solemnly, like a child sworn to a secret.
He retreated to the bathroom while Chloe put new bedding on the couch. He’d meant to brush his teeth with his finger, but on the sink he found a toothbrush, still in its box. He opened the medicine cabinet and found toothpaste. While he brushed his teeth he read the labels on the pill bottles arrayed above the toothpaste and swabs. Nexium. Ambien. Xanax. Heartburn, insomnia, anxiety: Chloe, these days, was a woman after his own heart.
When he left the bathroom, Chloe’s bedroom door, just down the hall from the bathroom, was cracked open. He saw a jumble of clothing on the same low dresser they had once shared. A stack of books on her bedside table. The barest glimpse of the wide, white bed where she slept alone.
In the living room Chloe sat in her easy chair, her eyes turned toward the news.
“World still there?” he asked.
“Such as it is.” She stood up. “I’d better crash.”
“Goodnight,” he said. “And thanks. Thanks for everything.”
Chloe reached out to him and opened her arms. He’d told himself not to hug her goodnight, but now he went to her anyway. Chloe rubbed his shoulders. He slid his hand down her bare upper arm, to her elbow—thrilled at the touch of her bare skin, frightened at how close her bones were, now, to the surface.
“I’ll see you in the morning. If you need anything—”
And then she touched his arm, right at the elbow, and ran her fingers down to his wrist. He thought for a moment she might take his hand, lead him away; if she did, he was sure he would follow.
But she withdrew her hand. “Goodnight, Mark,” she said, then went alone to her too-big bed.
He lay down on the couch, pulled the covers to his chin, and closed his eyes. In the place of his earlier headache was a gentle giddiness. The empty space, after a twisted ankle. The absence of a very particular pain. He hadn’t felt like this in a long while.
He reminded himself: He didn’t deserve to. He didn’t deserve any good feeling. He was doing what was necessary, yes, but he wasn’t doing it as he should. Allison, after all, certainly wasn’t happy, wherever she was. And he’d forgotten to call Lewis back; Lew had to be worried about him, too.
He reached for his phone and sent Lew a quick text: Am fine, I promise. Don’t worry. Then he turned off the phone before Lew could text him back.
He wished he could send Allie some kind of promise that mattered.
But he couldn’t. She hadn’t believed him, on the phone—not a word of what he’d said had touched her. He had much to answer for, yes, but she hadn’t even tried to listen to him. Allie knew how skeptical he had been. No matter how much reason he’d given her to distrust him, she could at least have listened to him explain.
They’d learned something about each other, hadn’t they? For all the love they shared, they’d handled their first crisis—and it was a doozy—as poorly as any couple could. Mark was at fault, but when he’d finally told her what was going on—when he’d given her the truth—Allison had been furious, had told him not to come home, had hung up the phone.
They did need to talk. Maybe they would make it through that talk as a couple. But—and he thought this with deep sadness—they probably wouldn’t. Too much had happened. Brendan had come back. No aspect of Mark’s life would ever be the same again.
He turned now to the memory of Brendan’s room. He had been saving it. So much of what had happened last night was patchy, eroded—but when he opened himself, as he did now, he could still feel the core of it: the surge of understanding, of love, that had overtaken him when his son had come.
Brendan still loved him. Brendan still needed him.
Mark had turned away from him for too long. Not just after Brendan’s death, but before it, too. But now Mark could help him. Brendan had forgiven him, and Mark would repay him for that, a hundredfold.
Brendan’s presence. His love. His laughter. His very scent.
Mark shuddered, remembering. Tears ran down his face into the cushions of the couch.
No matter how much it hurt them both, Allie would have to understand the same truth that Mark had just learned so painfully: No other love in his life, no matter how much he’d wanted it, sought it, tended it—no matter what promises he’d made—could ever be as strong as this one.