23

Cara

She puts a hand against a large rock next to her for support. She doesn’t turn towards me but I see her whole body tense, suddenly alert when she hears her name. She freezes, like she’s trying to decide what to do. Run or stay. Finally she speaks.

“I’m not Grace.”

I move quickly away from the sea, towards Grace, towards the dark caves. The wet sand sucks around my feet. I don’t want to spook her but I need to get to her quickly. All my senses feel sharpened, the wind whips my skin, the waves roar, I smell the salt from the sea but I keep my eyes full only of her, fixed on her back. I won’t let her get away again. She still hasn’t moved. Run or stay. She looks like she’s waiting for me. Stay.

She’s just a few paces away and I force myself to slow. I’m whispering her name, again and again, like the more I say it the more real this will become. She lifts her hand from the boulder and I watch as she pulls her hood down, exposing the back of her head. Her hair is spidery and fair, like a newborn. I’m only a couple of paces away from her now. She keeps perfectly still as the light whips around the cove, as if searching for secrets, for us. My breath catches, my skin pricks with the realization that this is what I wanted: to find Grace, to be with her alone. Silence stretches out between us, the last before we both say and hear things we can never change. A silent goodbye to the Grace Nichols I thought I knew.

At last she drops her hand from her head and slowly, with a limp to her right, turns around to face me. Her eyes meet mine, and as we stare at each other I realize that I never really looked at Grace before. Just like everyone else, I assumed I knew what she looked like, who she was. But I only saw what I was told to see. I only saw her limitations, her illnesses, an impenetrable wall between us.

But tonight I see a whole world within her.

My lips make the shape of her name again, but it sounds wrong. She isn’t Grace anymore. Grace will always be the little shell in a wheelchair, hiding beneath her hat and behind her glasses. This woman who stands before me, smiling now, with a gaze that feels more like a challenge than a welcome, is someone else entirely. This is Zoe.

“Cara,” she says. Her voice sounds calmer than the air feels. She smiles again, briefly showing the small teeth that used to cause her so much pain. She takes a slow, hesitant step towards me. She speaks like she moves, slowly, like she’s still learning to trust herself.

“You know, I used to have all these fantasies about how I’d escape. In one of them, you’d come and I’d tell you everything. I’d show you my legs, how I could make them move more than I ever dared let on, and then you’d take me away.” All that time she was desperate for me to see her, as I see her now. All that time she needed my help and I couldn’t see beyond my own fear of her frailty. She shakes her head gently.