“Do you think being able to see you makes me crazy?”
“Philosophically speak—”
“Don’t make me actually put on Rick Astley.”
“Ha!” A laugh escapes from him. He shakes his head. Then he says, “Murph, you might be the only one out there who’s not crazy.”
The statement rolls over me like a wave of oxygen. I feel reassured, and my muscles untense for the first time in many hours. I inhale. “Thanks, man.”
“I just call ’em like I see ’em,” he says. “Keep going.”
“Can you see the stars?” I hadn’t planned to ask him that, but what my dad said earlier is nagging at me.
“You mean, like, have I gone to heaven? Been one with the celestial bodies?”
Now I laugh. I can never anticipate what’s going to come out of his mouth. “No, no, I mean, like, can you see the stars in the regular way. Like when you were alive. Did you look at the stars ever? Go stargazing? That whole thing?”
“Uh, okay. Yeah, sure, sometimes. The lake house was good for that.” The mention of the lake house makes us both quiet for a minute. “Why do you ask?”
The safest person to confide in is probably a dead person. Still, I hesitate. “’Cause I can’t see them, and I was just wondering what the big deal was.”
“You can’t see the stars?” His voice is mild, conversational, but I think I might hear a hint of concern underneath.
“Nope.”
“Huh. Well, they’re not really a big deal for me, honestly. I don’t know, there’s a lot of them? People like things thattwinkle?” He starts to pick up speed. “They’re these little points of light in the sky that look totally still, but you can also sort of feel them moving. Gets a person thinking, I guess.”
“Are you going to keep hanging out with me?”
“Even though you can’t see stars?”
“Even though you’re dead.”
“I suppose we’ll see.” The weight of the unknown hangs in the room, the awareness on both our parts that every word between us might be our last. It sparks something urgent in me.
“Okay, I only have one more question, but you might not like it.”
“Fire away.”
“Why didn’t you wear a life jacket in the boat?” Saying these words out loud is precarious; I don’t want him to feel like I’m blaming him for what happened. But I can’t help running through the events of that day over and over in my mind, wishing that something, anything, had happened differently to change the terrible result. It just doesn’t make sense that a couple of random details could create such a massively awful outcome.
He fills his cheeks with air, then blows it out with force. Finally, he says, “Because I’m a dipshit.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Well, then I’ll have to mull that one over.” He’s not ready to tell me, I guess. Maybe I’m not ready to hear it.
But a whole new set of questions begins to form in my head from his response.Where will you do this mulling? Where are you when you’re not with me? Are you even experiencing, I don’t know, linear time?
But I said that would be the last question, and I don’t want to scare him away again. Instead, I look through my phone for a musical choice that might pass muster with Mason. Funk would be good, but that’s not the vibe here in the late-night quiet. Ooh, here we go. It’s a throwback, but for Mason the older the better. The sound of Simon & Garfunkel has an immediate hypnotic effect.
Mason slides into the desk chair and slumps low, his legs kicked out in front of him, his signature winter flip-flops splaying out at the sides. I settle back into my nest, and we let the music fill up the room and the air between us.
At some point, I fall asleep. I wake up hours later, close to dawn, and Paul Simon is still singing, still soothing, even though I definitely did not put that song on repeat.
The day I’ve been waiting for has arrived. Unfortunately, the bump is not only still there, but it has also now decorated itself with a rainbow of colors. I spend an extra half hour in front of the bathroom mirror after dinner to get my hair to swoop over it, so now I’m not sure whether I’m more mock-worthy because I have a huge bump on my forehead or because I look like I think today’s Halloween and I’m going as a 1920s flapper.
The doorbell rings, and Richard is standing at my front door in his standard striped Oxford button-down, hands in his pockets. He’s framed by the setting sun behind him, making his skin look even more perfect than usual. His hair wings out around his ears for a completely adorable effect, and something about the way he always tilts his head to the side to look at me makes me shiver in the best way. He’s doing it now.
