She had come to him. He’d opened his arms.
I found you, he thought. I found you.
Mark told her, that night, the only truth left in his mind: I’m happy. Right now, I’m happy.
She laughed to hear it. She moved her hand. Her body. She took him in and laughed again at the sound he made, held by her. She rocked gently beneath him.
What about now? she said.
Later, while she slept, Mark lay awake, curved forward, his belly pressed to Chloe’s back, his face pressed to her still-damp hair.
Is this what you wanted? When you called us?
He imagined Brendan running through the dark, empty halls of the house. Laughing.
Because I wanted it, too.
Chloe stirred, murmured, kissed his thumb. Arched herself into the curve of him.
Mark could not say it enough:
Thank you. Thank you for this. Thank you.
They showered together, close and quiet under the hot spray.
Mark worked shampoo into Chloe’s hair and wondered if, when Trudy Weill entered the old house, she wouldn’t lift her face into the air, pause, and then say, This house is empty of spirits.
Brendan got what he wanted, she’d say. Now he’s gone.
He and Chloe left the apartment only once that following day, to buy Mark some new clothes. Neither of them suggested a trip to the townhouse, and Mark spent the entire time at Kohl’s nervous, jumpy, looking too hard at every stranger’s approach—as though Allison might appear, or Lew, to point and shout at him. Chloe seemed to have no such fears; she seemed to enjoy dressing him, holding up shirt after shirt to his chest.
Smiling at him in the mirror, as though seeing him anew each time.
Tugging his hand. Leading him into the dressing rooms.
Quick, she said, inside a stall.
You’re nuts.
Her eyes on his. Her mouth. Her fingers on the buckle of his belt.
So tell me to stop, she whispered.
Once, in college, she’d pulled him into a dark corner in the stairwell of the library. Now, she’d said. Right now. When they’d finished she’d folded her panties into a neat square and tucked them into the breast pocket of his shirt.
He didn’t tell her to stop.
Later, on the way to the checkout counter, Mark’s heart still heaving, they passed a display selling phone chargers. Chloe’s fingers were laced loosely in his.
They kept walking.
Can I ask you something? Chloe said that night, as they lay beside each other in her bed.
Sure.
What happens now? With you and Allison?
He’d been waiting for the question, considering it in every quiet moment. I don’t know, he said.
Once again he was trying to weasel out of his responsibilities. He said, I know what you’re asking.
Do you?
He said, This isn’t some fling, is it? You want to know if—if we’re together again.
Her entire body softened. Yes, she said.
Mark kissed her forehead, her salty lips. Chloe rubbed her thumb across his stubbled cheeks. When we… when we help Brendan. What happens then? To us?
He wanted to say: We’ll run off to an island together. We’ll live in a grass hut by the ocean. We’ll make love in hammocks and wade in the surf until we’re old and gray. I’ll paint landscapes that tourists will buy, and you’ll teach the local kids fractions with shells, and we’ll read bad novels to each other and at night we’ll go listen to calypso and the natives will laugh at the crazy old gringos who love each other so much.
He said, I haven’t let myself think about this in a long time.
Can we think about it now?
I have things to take care of first, he said. With Allie.
Chloe said, She’s not here now. And look at us.
He knew what Chloe wanted: for him to offer her himself and the moon. He was only hesitating because he would have to hurt Allie to do it. But he’d already hurt her, hadn’t he? Allison knew what he was up to, here. She’d known for longer than he had.
I want us to stay together, he said to her. Can we do that?
She pulled him close. Yes, she said. Oh, yes.
She said, Mark, I can’t lose you again.
Late, late in the night, when Chloe slept, while a new storm—the third in as many days—blew snow against the bedroom window, Mark at last worked on the homework Trudy had given them. She’d asked each of them to bring to the house an item—a talisman—that reminded them of Brendan. She wanted them to retrieve a memory.
The talisman was easy enough. When the sun was up, he would go to the townhouse. There he could retrieve the pictures he’d drawn of Brendan on his birthday. He felt a thrill: He could show them to Chloe. They would please her. For the first time since college, he would show her something he’d made, lines he’d drawn that meant something.
And this was only one of the hundred realizations he’d had, these past days: that, all along, he had been drawing those pictures for her.
The memory was harder. He had to pick only one? He lay boneless beneath Chloe’s arm, sorting through them.
Brendan, playing chess. Brendan dog-paddling in the community pool, straining his neck to keep his chin out of the water. Brendan at three or four—when he’d started developing his sense of humor, and had begun laughing dementedly at anything Mark made to sound like a joke.
The first joke he’d told that had ever floored Mark: Knock-knock!
Who’s there?
Interrupting cow.
Interrupt—
Moo!
And of course there were the early memories: The day of Brendan’s birth. Brendan sleeping in his bassinet, or in Mark’s or Chloe’s arms. His first crooked infant smile. The nub of his first tooth. Rubbing his twisted ankle. Stomping up the stairs—
No. Something loving, safe.
Then he had it.
The summer before he died, Mark and Chloe had taken Brendan on a hike, an hour south of Columbus in Hocking Hills State Park. There they’d descended carefully into the cool limestone channels, the big overhanging caves like moist, toothless mouths. Mark had lifted Brendan again and again so he could read the informative plaques the park service posted in front of old landslides and swamps of orange mud. At one bend in the gully a thin rope of cold water fell from an overhang fifty feet above, splashing into a marsh just off the trail. Mark had held on to Brendan’s belt and leaned him back—while Brendan winced and shrieked and laughed—until at last the water struck him in the forehead.
Later they walked part of a trail that followed the upper edge of a deep box canyon. The thick creepers, locust trees, and tall grass enclosing the trail gave way, now and again, to flat plates of gray rock jutting out over the canyon. There were no fences; a hiker could walk right up to the edge of a hundred-foot drop into the canopy below.
Of course Brendan wanted to see; of course Mark walked with him to the edge and put a hand on his shoulder. Mark felt Brendan tremble as he peered out into space.
This is scary, Brendan whispered.
Mark squeezed his shoulder. Yeah, he said. Come on, now.
As Brendan turned to go, he slipped on a handful of gravel; he lurched backward, pinwheeled his arms. The drop yawned behind them. Chloe, who had remained on the trail, cried Mark’s name.
Mark’s arm shot out; he caught a fistful of Brendan’s shirt. Then he sat down, hard, and gathered Brendan to him. Brendan wept, and Mark wanted to—he’d jammed his tailbone badly—but instead he held Brendan close to him and whispered, I’ve got you.
They stopped at a Buffalo Wild Wings on the way home. Brendan had, by then, overcome his terror, had turned into a chatterbox. He explained to the teenage girl who took their order what had happened: My dad saved my life!
Even if it was true, Mark didn’t want to dwell on it. Better to sit and eat a sandwich and watch his son, alive and well, plow chicken fingers into ketchup.
The shakes came over him that night, after Brendan was asleep. Mark had never had them before. He poured himself a whiskey and showed Chloe, who was reading on the other end of the couch, his trembling fingers.
Chloe smiled. Kissed them.
Later Mark crept into Brendan’s room and gently lowered himself onto the bed, curling to fit Brendan and his pillow inside the shelter of his body. Brendan stirred. Shh, Mark said, and put his arm over his waist. It’s just your dad.
He lay awake for a long time. He listened to Brendan’s breathing, his sleeping gasps and whispers. He was dreaming. Mark imagined him—wanted to imagine him—unafraid. Ready for anything. Brave, even. Adventuring.
Safe, in the company of his father.