his jacket, and, since his sweater made prominent the empty sleeve hung by his side, she suddenly wondered if Ida was terrorized by the sight—if, despite the years she’d been living here, the arm creeped her out.
In the mudroom were sneakers but no boots, the boots put to better use on Ida’s feet as she and Linda played outside, the one making a snowman and the other taking photos, a million per second, one for each second Esme had missed seeing her child grow up. She had the idea her mom was making her a scrapbook, though none such had ever materialized.
She watched them through the window. Ida was wearing leggings that looked like neoprene and a bubble jacket she did not recognize, or recognized dimly; it was colored bark and had an HB Surf Series badge sewn into the arm. And then it hit her: these were her brother’s clothes. His steamer wet suit. His travel jacket for that one surfing trip off the coast of New Zealand when he was twelve. Esme was so floored by the evidence her parents had kept his stuff and even brought it with them to this place that it helped ease down the pill of her daughter ignoring her when she ran out of the cabin all smiles.
She hugged Ida anyway because the parent unloved is also undeterred. They had not seen each other in 3 months. Ida had been alive for 117 months, of which most of her last 1⁄39 Esme had been traveling. There were other 1⁄36s and 1⁄27s and even 1⁄18s for that half-year deployment to Diego Garcia, though maybe that was more like a 1⁄12 expedition, since Ida was only six at the time, which meant not even math could declaw Esme’s failings.
Next Esme greeted her mom, who did the scariest thing in her repertoire, which was to cock an eyebrow. The hairs there had shed long ago, so she’d taken to penciling them in with black liner. Every month, the curve got more pronounced and severe. It was a sickle, an arch, and, by now, a delta above each eye. When raised, the brow was lethal.
“Well, well,” Linda said, but without the scorn Esme had been readying herself for. In fact, the A brow was a red herring. She wasn’t mad anymore. Esme thought maybe she was fronting for Ida’s sake, but so what? She would take it. They hugged. And the hug was nice. She had never found in her parents a source of strength since Chris went down, and it was not like one hug was going to lade her coffers with the courage of heart to right her life, but it wasn’t hurting, either.
Linda said, “Ida and I were just finishing up this snowman,” and, to Ida, “What’s his name again?”
“Don.”
Esme was not sure she’d ever heard a name spoken with greater spite. Ida jammed a stick in his eye and looked at her mom. “Your clothes are ugly,” she said, and she marched back into the house.
“That went well,” Esme said. “Don? Who names her snowman Don?”
“She’s right, you know. If you’re going wear that nonsense, at least join the army. Be for real.”
Esme shrank a couple of feet. Her parents had only a vague sense of what she did, enough to know it screwed them up—New identities? Really?—but not enough to think it worth the trouble to find out more. Perhaps her father was more sympathetic, but she didn’t know; they didn’t talk.
She fixed the snowman’s eye. Apologized for his care.
“Not to worry,” Linda said. “He’s cold as ice,” and then she grinned, and to Esme this grin might have seemed stupid, except that nothing about her mother was ever stupid. She was too sharp and cagey to grin like that unless it was for sport or design. “Now, listen,” she said. “I’m glad you’re here. I’ve got news.”
Esme followed her through the snow. Her mother was the kind of woman who always liked to speak her beef with someone hungry for it.
“Is it Ida? She looks okay to me. Or, wait, is it school? Is she failing at school?”
Linda looked on her with what had to have been contempt, though maybe it was contempt plus pity, which is kind of like cherry Pepto—not so bad.
“It’s about your brother,” she said. “Chris.”
“Right, because I’ve actually forgotten his name.”
They were on the patio under porch lights. Esme sat at the table, her mom nearby.
“We got a call from the hospital,” Linda said.
The words