My name is Garrett Becker and I should be dead. I thought I was dead, believed it with all my unbeating heart. I remember the plunge, the involuntary scream that came from my throat the moment the fence yielded to my Chevy. I remember the drop and then a jarring opposition, the cold wind streaking over my skin. I was flying through the air, I was straining for something to hold on to. The fence was still humming when I grabbed it. The links bit my fingers and buzzed through my bones. The ring Misty gave me snagged one of the wires. When I opened my eyes, the world was still except for that truck, falling like a feather from a robin’s nest after the cat has pounced. And I was no longer inside of it.
I can’t explain what separated me from my physical body and threw me out of that pit. Until now I thought it was mercy, an opportunity to tell my children the truth: I had an affair with Sara Rochester, and when their mother found out she went crazy. That’s why she took her own life, because of me. It’s my fault, and I’m sorry, I’m so very sorry.
But now I wonder: If a man can’t even tell when he is dead, how can he know what else is not true?
Truth might sometimes be in the eye of the beholder—I’m undecided about that—but not on these two points: number one, I am Marina and Dylan’s father, and number two, Sara Rochester is not their mother.
“Why do we lie to the children?” she asked me.
“To protect them,” I answered.
How terrible it is that they need protection from us.