He covers his face with his hands. “Jesus Christ, Lo—I got up and you weren’t there. I looked everywhere for you. You should have left a text, something—”
“I don’t have a phone,” I remind him and I’m amazed at how effortlessly all of this is coming out of my mouth. He’s looking at me and he doesn’t see someone who is dying. I look past him, trying to see into the Great Room. “Is Lev back?”
“They’re about ten minutes out.”
Fuck. “Where’s Emmy?”
“She’s having a snack and watching TV.”
“Okay.” I nod, my throat is getting so tight, in a minute I won’t be able to say another word. “Okay. I’m going to head to the cabin, shower…”
“All right.” He studies me. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
He doesn’t look like he believes it. “Don’t go anywhere else.”
“I won’t.”
I stare at him for a moment too long, my head full of Rob’s voice. Foster and Bea. Emmy. Foster’s child. I’m terrified I can see it now, how there are parts of Emmy that don’t belong to me or Bea, our mother and father. And what I thought might have belonged to Lev—the curve of her jaw, her frame, her square shoulders—so obviously, painfully, belong to someone else. He grows uncomfortable under my gaze.
“What?” he asks.
“You said Bea would come back. Do you really think that?”
“Of course I do.”
“Why?”
“Because Lev saw it.”
* * *
I slam the door to the cabin behind me, pacing the room.
She can’t be dead.
She can’t be.
“You can’t be dead,” I whisper.
He saved my life.
I sink to my knees and press my hands against the floor, too shocked, too numb to cry. She can’t be dead. I reach for her, trying to conjure her from nothing to prove me right. You’re not dead, Bea, you’re just not here.
Come back.
The door to the cabin opens and Lev steps inside, finds me on the floor. He says my name and I don’t answer him. He kneels in front of me, concerned.
“Lo? What is it?”
I look up at him.
“Did you see Rob?” I whisper.
He looks away. “It was fruitless, but this isn’t over.”
I can’t stop myself; I start to cry.
“Lo.” He’s alarmed. “What is it?”
“I’m scared,” I manage.
“Of what?” He presses his hand to my cheek and I squeeze my eyes shut and I see a semi coming down the road and my brakes don’t work. The calls, the breathing on the other end of the line. Good-bye … “Is it the baptism?” He presses his lips to my forehead as the tears continue to stream down my face. “Trust in me with all your heart. Don’t try to understand it, just trust in me, and I will show you the path.”
“If Bea came back,” I ask, “where would she fit?”
I open my eyes, and find myself face-to-face with the necklace. It’s turned around, the anchor against his throat, and from here, I can see, for the first time, what’s etched on the back, what Rob told me was on the back: B & F.
I slowly look up at him.
He brushes a tear from my cheek.
“Do you think she’ll ever come back?”
“Forget the things which are behind you,” he tells me, “and look forward.”
Tonight.
Leave with Emmy tonight.
2017
Bea waits.
In the cabin, while Lev showers, she curls up on the couch and closes her eyes. By the time he’s done, she’s made her body still, parted her mouth, turned her breathing even and deep. The light shifts under her eyelids, his shadow falling over her body as he contemplates it. And she prays—to who, she doesn’t know—that he will let her rest.
She’s afraid of what she is about to do.
She is afraid of how easy it would be to stay.
Lev reaches across her for the afghan on the back of the couch, laying it over her. She listens as he moves around the small space, waiting for him to settle in for the night, taking the bed without her. Eventually, he does.
After six years, she knows him, knows the way he sleeps, knows when he has fallen far enough past the surface, she can safely make her move. She knows, too, how limited this window is, knows how easy it is for the world to call him back.
She slowly slips out from under the afghan, rising from the couch.
She tiptoes across the room and puts on her shoes, grabbing her coat from the rack; she’ll put it on outside. She takes a deep breath and reaches