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IT TOOK TWOflights to get up to the town where Dad lived in Alaska—where I thought he lived. I spent the second flight studying a picture of him. Mom had gotten rid of the photos of them together but held on to one of him alone, just for me, and I clutched it in my hand. I was worried I might not recognize him. Or he might not recognize me. We could walk right past each other and not know it.
In the photo, he stood in the woods in a blue rain shell. Mist hung in the air, his breath making a thicker cloud in front of his bristly lips. He had a beard that needed trimming and bright eyes, crinkled up at the edges like he’d laughed right before the picture was taken. By the time I stepped onto the tarmac and scanned the thin crowd of people waiting, I had memorized every detail of his face.
He wasn’t there. I imagined adding gray to his beard, taking his beard away, making it longer. Scrubbing out the laugh lines and adding the sort of wrinkles you get from frowning, because I figured he couldn’t be that happy if he’d left his wife and kid. No matter what I did to the picture in my mind, it didn’t match anyone there, and soon everyone waiting for the plane had been claimed by one of my fellow passengers.
The only person left was a huge man wearing a puffy yellow jacket who stared straight at me, squinting, but didn’t move or wave or anything. His bushy red-brown hair poked out from under a baseball cap that might have once been yellow but had faded to gray brown everywhere except the brim.
I hitched my bag over my shoulder. Dad must have sent someone to pick me up, that was all. I walked over, my right foot dragging slightly. I still couldn’t lift it properly, and the ball of my foot scraped along the ground. The man watched my slow progress without budging.
“Hi,” I said when I got close. It sounded like a bird chirping, high-pitched and spastic. “I’m Jess. Did my dad send you?”
“Jess?” the guy said. He scratched his beard. “I’m supposed to be meeting Sequoia. Could be I’m in the wrong place, though.” He looked behind me as if another girl could be lurking there.
“No, that’s me,” I said. “Jess is my middle name. I never go by Sequoia.”
“Oh, great.” He grinned. He looked a lot less intimidating when he smiled, but he still could’ve closed a hand around my entire head. “Carl’s waiting.”
He’d turned around and started walking before I really remembered that was my father’s name. Carl Green. Not Cooper; Mom hadn’t changed her name.
“So he sent you?” I asked the man’s back as I struggled to keep up. I had to take three steps to one of his, and that meant instead of taking slow, careful steps with my bad foot, I had to fling myself forward in a lurching limp. Which I wasn’t supposed to do. Will, my physical therapist, had been really clear about that. Slow and steady and I’d walk almost normally someday.
“Uh-huh,” the man said. I was puffing by the time we reached the fence that divided the tiny tarmac from the parking lot, and he stopped. He looked around at me and blinked rapidly. “Sorry. I can take the bag, if you want.”
I shook my head, slinging the duffel around to my front and folding my arms over it. “It’s fine,” I said, jaw set.
He rubbed the back of his neck with his palm. “Forgot you were handicapped. Is that the right word? Handicapped? Or is it something else? I think it’s something else. I think handicapped is wrong. Sorry.”
“It’s fine,” I said again. I didn’t want to have this conversation. I was grateful when he nodded. But when he set off again he walked slowly, peeking at me out of the corner of his eye, and I could keep up pretty well. I focused on lifting my foot all the way off the ground. If I let it drag, I’d trip eventually, and a fall was the worst thing I could do to my healing muscles and tendons and bones.
I hadn’t realized before the car crash how much a body could break, and I hadn’t realized until the months afterward how imperfectly it got put back together. Parts of me would always be broken.
“I’m Griff,” the man said abruptly as we walked, and all I could think to do was nod.
•••
THIS IS WHAT you need to know about Griff:
He’s probably the nicest guy I’ve ever met, even though he’s a bit odd. He looks like a mountain man but claims it’s camouflage: mountain men won’t eat you if they think you’re one of them, he says. He tells a lot of jokes like that, but he has a totally deadpan delivery, so you can never tell if it’s a joke or one of the strange things he believes. If you laugh at the wrong thing, he’ll give you this sad look. He loves the color yellow. Jesus is his personal savior. And if anyone’s coming for me, it’s him.
But if he is coming, it’s not for months. And maybe not at all.
These days I think about him a lot. He’s on a list that cycles through my mind all day. Mom, Scott, Will, Dad, Griff. Lily. Not George so much, because George is an asshole. Michelle, Ronnie, and then I’m out of people I really knew, and I start picturing faces from all over the place. The guy who served me ice cream the day before the accident. The woman at the gas station with three blond kids who stood at the nose of her minivan and put a hand to her forehead like she didn’t know if she was going to get back in it. The pilot who’d flown the first leg up to Alaska, who’d known my mom, who’d invited me up into the cockpit but hadn’t said anything, and I hadn’t said anything, and we just sat there being quiet and sad until I had to go take my seat.
I thought it would be food that I fantasized about, but so far it’s people.
BACK THEN Iwas more than a little scared of Griff. Which was only smart—strange guy telling me to get in his car? Yeah, that seems safe. Only I didn’t see another option. I had a phone number for my dad, but I’d already tried it during my layover and gotten a recording telling me it was disconnected.
I probably should have gone back to Seattle then. Explained to the social worker that something was wrong, and I couldn’t go live with my dad after all. And yet I didn’t. I didn’t turn back when the call didn’t go through, and I didn’t turn back when Griff was waiting for me.?
Griff’s car was an old station wagon, probably older than he was. The back of it was full of takeout bags and soda bottles, a sleeping bag, three banker’s boxes, a full set of suitcases, and two pairs of shoes. The front seat was full of receipts, which Griff scraped off onto the floor when he got in. I wedged my bag between my feet, making the receipts rustle, and shut the door.
“You didn’t bring much,” Griff said.
“I don’t need much,” I said. The lawyer who’d taken care of selling the house and the furniture had rented a storage place for the rest, for whenever I wanted it. My memories would be tucked away safe, he’d said.
It felt like he was giving me permission not to remember. I didn’t want to think about my life before, because I loved it too much. Loved Mom too much. I could lock everything up and forget about it until it all healed over, however long that took. As long as it would take to teach my body to walk properly again, I thought. When I could take a step without thinking about how to lift my foot, maybe I’d go back to Seattle and remember.
