another woman—someone he had actually known since childhood; the daughter of one of their parents’ colleagues at the university—Elliot didn’t think fault-finding was strictly necessary, but when Sarah had a theory she was not to be derailed from sharing it.
“See, Dory never really needed you,” she explained. “Not like the other women who’ve fallen in love with you. That’s why you felt okay promising to never let her down.”
“No, I like people counting on me,” he slurred. “I’m a cop, remember? That’s what I do, I help people.” He overturned his glass on the table, and it made a closed, hollow sound.
Sarah had smirked. “But never the same person twice.”
It was possible she was right.
Quarantine Day Ten
As the days passed, what had started out as panic and dread and a singular sense of his own mortality had turned into embarrassment at having to acknowledge his probable survival. But even allowing his thoughts to tend that way seemed like tempting fate. So Elliot continued to avoid reaching out to the families of his friends, or anyone else he knew, instead living like a ghost who had not yet passed over to the other side. He almost smiled thinking of how shocked Bryce would be by all the crying he’d been doing.
* * *
—
“Are you still coming for dinner tomorrow?” Sarah asked. Elliot could hear reggae music playing in the background, and the dull clack of dishes in the sink. “I’m making lentils and okra.”
“I thought you loved me.”
“Fine. I’ll make brisket. I asked Daddy for the recipe last week.”
“Dad’s disappointment dinner?” Frank always served his one specialty whenever he and Gretchen tried to sway their children from decisions not to their liking. They’d dined on brisket when Elliot had signed up for the police academy, when Sarah had come home with packets of Living Tree literature, and again when she’d dropped out of graduate school to work on the farm. “It’s actually pretty tempting without the side dish of crushing remorse.”
“We’ll skip that part. I’ll substitute some sisterly love.”
“I wish I could,” he said, trying to keep his voice casual, “but I had to switch some shifts around.”
“Darn it,” said his sister. There was the sucking sound of water draining. “Noah says we haven’t seen you in two weeks. But I told him it couldn’t be that long.”
Sarah was so busy, or at any rate harried enough by her own life, that Elliot had hoped she wouldn’t notice just how often he’d been putting off his visits. The last thing he wanted was for her to look at a calendar. “Let me talk to him.”
They put on the video chat, and Noah and Elliot chatted for ten minutes in the fond, distracted way common to small children and the people who love them. When they hung up, his apartment fairly echoed with emptiness.
Talking to his nephew always made Elliot wonder if having a child with Dory would have changed anything—if it would have changed him into the kind of person she could have kept on loving, after all. Becoming an uncle had made him realize there were parts of himself that had been lying dormant since his own childhood: silliness being foremost, but also an optimism that was innocent rather than willful—felt rather than contended.
And Noah, in the everyday modern miracle of how he arrived on the planet, sometimes led Elliot to think of his sperm donations in college, after his breakup with Keisha in sophomore year. It was the quickest money he’d ever made—enough for a nice used car. Elliot hadn’t thought much about it before Sarah revealed she’d gotten pregnant via donor sperm. He’d never told Dory about his donations, which had been for research purposes only. Yet sometimes the thought that he might have helped bring some strange and funny child into the world struck him as a good thing, even though his parents viewed his donations as a thoughtless mistake, one they were generous enough never to mention.
* * *
—
Another email came that day.
Hi again. Sorry for writing out of nowhere, but I wasn’t sure how else to reach you. I meant to say I’d love the chance to sit down and talk some time. JKG
Elliot started typing Who is this? But he deleted it. If it was a hoax or a spammer, better not to respond. And if it was a ghost, well, surely it would write again. He’d watched enough horror movies to know: ghosts always came back.
Quarantine Day Fourteen
Elliot saw Keisha