of being normal? Pressing on with a conversation because I like the color of his eyes, the sheen of sweat on his neck? Convincing myself he was mysterious when I should have realized he was just rude.
“Stop the wagon,” I order. “I need a rest.”
He hesitates and jerks his chin upward. “There’s a little village in about a kilometer. I usually water the horses there.”
“I’d like to stop now.”
“It’s just a kilometer.”
“Fine. Don’t stop. I’ll get out now by myself and walk.” I’m already standing, wobbly on my bad foot. My knee bashes painfully against the seat as I eye the distance to the ground. “I don’t want to ride with you another second longer than—”
But then he does stop, pulling swiftly on the reins—and I lurch forward, grabbing the side of the wagon to steady myself. Part furious, part embarrassed, and part throbbing from where I’d hit the seat, I straighten my dress and climb down onto the dirt road. Knee stiff and aching, I start down the path, desperate to put distance between me and Josef.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see him pause for a moment, deciding whether to come after me. He doesn’t. He unhooks the horses and leads them for a drink, one bridle in each hand, toward the stream we’ve been following.
Josef doesn’t know my brother, I tell myself as I hobble down the road. Josef doesn’t know me. Josef doesn’t know how any of this works any better than I do. Josef is an ass.
Josef is an ass. But if he’s right, then I have no hope.
I stop in my tracks, doubling over with nausea by the terrifying prospect of hopelessness. This wish, to find Abek, to find one person in millions of people—it hangs together by the finest of threads. All it takes is for Abek to not add his name to one list, to decide he doesn’t want to be found.
This thinking isn’t good for me; this thinking will burrow into my mind like a worm. It already has. My hands shake; I feel as if I can hear the bones rattling inside my skin. If Abek doesn’t want to be found, then I won’t be able to find him because he doesn’t want to be found, and if I don’t find him, then I won’t find him because he didn’t want to be found and I will never see him again, and I failed, I failed, I failed.
I fold my hands together to keep them from rattling and try to think of something concrete that I can do, something that will occupy my brain. Josef said there was food. Walk back to the wagon and get the food, I instruct myself. One foot in front of the other.
The tin pail is still on the floorboard, where Josef pointed to it earlier. The food is neatly wrapped, two of everything. I divide it, leaving Josef’s portion on the driver’s bench, where Josef should see it when he gets back, and then take my own portion to a stump by the side of the road, forcing myself to sit and put pieces of bread in my mouth.
In the distance, I can see him by the creek with the horses. He coaxes them down the steep bank, and while they drink, he wets a grooming brush, brushing the sweat from their backs. Josef is too thin. It’s easier to think of his flaws when I’m as angry at him as I am. He’s too thin, and his eyes are a little close together, and they’re weary like an old man’s, with dark circles and crinkled lines.
Josef is broken like me.
I have no evidence for this. It’s not an excuse for anything. But it’s what hits me, watching Josef intently pour himself into these small actions with the horses.
Josef is broken like me.
When he’s finished, he ties the horses to a post and comes back to the wagon, where he silently picks up the food I’ve laid out and eats with his back toward me. After a few minutes, he walks over, arm extended, a ripe purple globe sitting in the palm of his hand.
“There was a plum,” he says, holding out the fruit. “It rolled out onto the floorboard, but there was only one. Half of it belongs to you.”
“I don’t need it.”
He’s already pulling a small knife from his pocket and slicing the plum around the seam. “Well. Half of it’s yours. You can eat it or not; I’m not