I hate that the answer is on the tip of my tongue. I hate that I know what to do.
“You go back to your life and I go back to mine.”
“That’s what you want?” he asks.
“That’s what needs to happen. We’ve ruined everything. Weruineverything.”
I say we, but I still meanI.
He just stares at me.
“What did Mel think was the reason I stopped visiting her?”
He brushes a hand over his face. “She said grief was hard to watch. That you couldn’t stand to be there for her when you’d just lost your best friend. And she wasn’t going to ask you to.”
I swallow.
God. Mel.
Always thinking the best of me.
“I have to tell her the truth about that night.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I want to,” I say, even though I feel sick at the thought. I’m about to lose one of the best people that ever happened to me—because people do happen, the way natural disasters happen and sickness happens and death happens. They collide for reasons outside of anyone’s control, and sometimes they love each other and there’s no rhyme or reason to it. They are not flesh and blood, not required to care in any way for each other, but they do. They become each other’s home.
I owe it to Mel, after everything, to tell her the truth about how her son died.
“You always had a hard time keeping things from her,” Luke muses, rubbing his jaw.
“I used to feel like she just looked at me and knew. That she looked at people and saw everything true about them,” I say. “But I think all that really happened was that I talked and she listened.”
We are silent a moment, and then Luke says, “When do you want to tell her? Naomi and Bobby are having her stay over at their place tonight. To get her out of her usual environment. She’s been going a little stir-crazy.”
“Is she well enough for that?” I ask, worried.
“I hope so.”
“Can I come over later? When she’s out?”
“Uh ... okay,” Luke says, and I can tell he’s confused.
“I won’t tell her then, obviously,” I say. “But there’s one last thing I want to do for her.”
Before I’m out of her life forever.
Before she never wants to see me again.
“Okay,” Luke says.
20
NOW
Now that I’min the Cohen house, my whole idea feels stupid and trite. I stand in the guest room that is now Mel’s room and survey the bare walls, the hospital bed, the closet that is almost empty.
“What do you need me to do?” Luke asks, standing in the doorway. It’s evening but still bright out, so light spills into the room.
