PROLOGUE 

November 19, 1969

I linger, nearly untethered. The sound of my breathing fills the room, heavier all the time, and further and further apart. It won’t be long now. The room is dark, or nearly so, lit only by the sliver of sallow light bleeding in under the door. How clear everything looks suddenly, how sharply in focus. You sit nearby, folded into an uncomfortable chair, your gray dress rendering you nearly invisible in the gloom.

You’re so very quiet, fingers moving rhythmically over the strand of shiny black beads in your lap. You’re holding your breath, I realize, listening with your whole body, counting the seconds as the silence builds, ticking off the minutes, the breaths, the heartbeats. Waiting for one more breath. Praying it comes. Praying it doesn’t. Praying for some kind of miracle. There won’t be one, of course. There’s just the waiting now. And the soul-wrenching questions about what we’ve done.

So much time has passed. Years of emptiness, of longing for what was lost. And yet, the loss remains. Even now, when you’re close enough to touch. We made so many promises. Feverish whispers and talk of forever. How young we were to believe in such things, how foolish. But we meant them when we made them, didn’t we? Now, a lifetime later, they lie between us in this hushed, dark room—unkept.

Fault on both sides, we realize now. Though I was the one who began it—the one who should have known better. You were young and so new to love. You weren’t ready for what came next, for the testing of what we felt—for the fallout. But I wanted you so badly, so blindly and completely, that I put you in an impossible position and then blamed you when you failed the very first test.

One word from you might have saved me, saved us, but you couldn’t utter it. Your silence, your unwillingness to defend me, to choose me, was the first wound. Years later, when you turned up out of the blue, I wasn’t prepared for your tears—or for your judgment of the choices I’d made—and so I wounded you to even the score. An eye for an eye.

Still, here you are at the end of things, and we’ve made new promises. For the sake of what we once shared—what we’ll always share. There’s still so much to say, so many things I’ve neglected to tell you, in spite of all my carefully laid plans. But there’s a new weightlessness now as I watch you in your chair, the peculiar sensation of having slipped my skin, of being gradually unshaped—of leaving.

You look up suddenly and reach out—as if to hold me here. You bend down then and kiss me—that other me, already cooling against the dingy hotel sheets. The absence of sensation as your lips touch mine is startling, and I feel a stab of grief, realizing I’ll never know your touch again.

Once again, we’re separated.

You stare at the hand beneath yours, the skin almost translucent, all knuckles and veins. It seems impossible that I could be gone—even to me. You lean closer to make sure, touching wrist and then throat. Yes, my love, it’s finished. You’ve kept this part of your promise, and now you must keep the rest.

You let out a sound as you step away from the bed, a half-strangled sob that makes me long to comfort you. But there is no comfort for such a moment, only regret that it had to happen like this—and that you had to be a part of it. Forgive me. There was no one else.

You straighten your shoulders and look around the room, assuming an icy calm. We’ve talked through what happens next. There are things to tidy up, items to gather, a call to be made from the pay phone on the corner. Go now, and see to them. And then begin again, fresh. There are precious things—fragile things, my love—that require your care.