“So am I, Dandelion. That’s why they got me to play football.”

“You’ll grow out of it,” I said.

“No, I’m done growing. Sick of it. How about you?”

He sat next to me on the way back. He’d lost a sibling, too. I don’t know how the subject came up. But it did. Talked about it intensely, in the back of the bus. Talked about it honest. Then rarely if ever talked about it again, all through dating for three years, engagement, and then marriage. Because we didn’t have to. He already knew how I was feeling around the date of my brother’s death. And I knew how he was feeling.

I didn’t have to keep pulling out my insides for him. Explaining any new thing might pull all the stitches out, without warning. Neither of us would ever “get over it.” Neither of us would expect the other one to pretend to.

But we were different. His family had gotten it right. His sister’s death didn’t pull them apart. It brought them closer together. Maybe I kept his family at arm’s length because that was too painful. Maybe I resented how much time they’d had to say good-bye.

“Hey, Bear.”

“Hey, Dandelion.”

I never thought anyone would call me Dandelion. I never thought I’d be married, or to a bear. Never thought I’d have a kid. All I had focused on for the longest time was escape. Escape velocity.

We hadn’t used those terms of endearment in a long time.

Would it have made a difference if we had?

[38]

I stayed out there by the oak tree for a while. The dead leaves obscured the man’s path to the observation site. A sour smell permeating the undergrowth, a kind of sweat smell that registered like sickness. Like my mother’s last years. I felt I had smelled it before, but the memory of my mother snuffed it.

I took out my key chain, flicked on my little flashlight, examined the ground in a semicircle out from the oak into the corridor of woods. The faded glow of dusk couldn’t quite claim this territory. I already knew you couldn’t be seen looking out from behind the oak. But here? I’d never realized how much of a shadow you’d be. You could stand there for hours and no one would ever know you were there. Never disturb you. The line of sight to the street—at a right angle to our house—was negligible. A thicket of high bushes. But once on the street, you’d have to get into a car. Or you’d have to walk four or five blocks to a public park. Either you’d have to look normal, like you belonged, or someone would notice you.