Page 100 of Under Story

The silver hair at Eli’s temples is brown again. She can only see his true age in his gaze, which is fatigued but forthright.

“You know,” he says, “I used to think I had two selves. I don’t mean me and Eli Two—this was years ago, when Silas was little. There was the part of me that was a parent, and the part that was everything else.” Eli pauses the way he does while deciding how to say what he means. “Picture two light switches. I thought one had to be off when the other was on, so that the circuit didn’t overheat. But then I watched you in Antarctica. You were a scientist there, as much as anyone. And you were a parent, too. Yes,” he adds, seeing her confusion. “Silas was gone. You were a parent, still. And I thought: Maybe both switches can be on at the same time. Maybe there would just be—more light.”

Laurel joins him. A deep peace spreads through her. It is impossible to explain how much she has yearned for this kind of acknowledgment.

“Eli, you were right. You couldn’t have saved me. I had to do that on my own.”

He looks at her.

“And you were right about something else, too. I did want to be punished. I know—it was a mistake—but something terrible had still happened. For a while, I even wondered whether I would be arrested,” she says. “I think a part of me wanted to go to prison. At least there would have been a way to atone. This might sound ridiculous, but sometimes I envied you. I don’t think you can imagine the torture of that kind of guilt.”

Eli holds her gaze. “I’m sure you’re right. I can’t.”

“Gloria told me something wise,” says Laurel. “Self-compassion can be harder than penance.”

She remembers the moment exactly. They sat in Gloria’s living room chairs. By the distance in her expression, Gloria wasn’t only thinking of Laurel.

Eli nods. Then he says, “I miss her.”

“Gloria?” Laurel smiles. “I miss her, too.”

She rubs her arms. The heat has lifted. Instead, the sky is gray and spitting.

“The weather was like this last time,” Laurel says.

Eli hands her the first cup of coffee. “I noticed that as soon as I woke up.”

“Thank you,” she says, taking it. She is soothed by the heat of the mug in her hands, a small pleasure never used up. “What will we do if Silas isn’t there?”

“The same thing we’ll do if he is. Find a portal. Make it home.”

But if today goes the wrong way—if they stand waiting for a child who never comes—Laurel knows that they won’t be okay, no matter how they reassure each other. They’ve relinquished an entire world for Silas Two. She can’t contemplate the emptiness of a Duoverse without him.

—

They work together to pack the car. The briefest touch of his hand on her arm. Yes, they still need it, their bond, at least for one more day. Eli loads the cooler and a thick coil of rope. Beach chairs. Blankets, to keep Silas warm, if Silas is there. Laurel double-checks the hospital bag. Inside are fleece pants, a sweatshirt, two pairs of socks. The last time she packed a bag like this, she was nine months pregnant.

They lost Silas in late afternoon, but they arrive in the morning just in case. The clouds have discouraged other visitors: there is only one other family on the beach. A middle-aged man and woman sit in sweatshirts, reading. Near the line of the water, a small child and an older woman—his grandmother, presumably—play with buckets and shovels.

Eli watches the lake. Laurel opens the magazine she took from the apartment, Midwest Living, and stares unseeingly at recipes.

“You should eat,” she tells Eli, at lunchtime. She hands him his sandwich, egg salad on wheat.

—

By early afternoon, Laurel’s heart rate has started to scare her. She isn’t warm enough to swim, but she gets in anyway, just for the shock of the cold.

The other family packs up. When his parents take the bucket, the toddler cries; his grandmother, who can’t find her shovel, whimpers, too. The younger woman carries the child to the car. The man follows with the older woman, arm in arm, and Laurel sees that she is his mother. After Silas died, she noticed similar pairs, elderly women with strong, middle-aged sons, and felt an envy so acute it verged on madness.

Once, in weather like this, she sat with Silas on the beach in San Francisco. Eli had been invited to give a talk at UC Berkeley, and they decided to make a family trip.

Seymour and Julian offered their empty bedrooms. Laurel and Eli hadn’t been there since the night of the Other Worlds party. The house seemed shy this time, withholding. Silas crawled under furniture and slid down the banisters. At dusk, he ran through dark hallways, turning on lights.

Across the bay, Eli bounced between meetings. Julian let Silas play with his paints and brushes so that Laurel could work on her postdoc research. She used the attic room that had once been Gloria’s.

“We never come up here,” Seymour said. “It’s barely changed since she left.”

Laurel couldn’t envision Gloria in the attic. There was the matter of the steps: Laurel had only known Gloria after her Lyme diagnosis, and this room was five stories high. It was also spartan in a way that seemed unlike her. A twin bed sat below a slanted wall, a simple desk beside the only window. The most colorful thing in the room was a piece of fabric, hung over the bed. Folk patterns had been expertly embroidered in red thread.