I couldn’t have imagined then how things would unfold and implode, that I was choosing a partner who’d suffocate me and a grad program I’d come to loathe, or that my parents really wouldn’t be upset if I quit—that they really meant it when they said they just wanted me to be happy, and that “being somebody” meant nothing to them—or that, one day, I’d fall in love again but better, and I’d trade my sticky cocoon of a life for the bright sting of sea salt in a literary Eden. I’d marry a man who lets me keep my own oxygen, and we’d nest in the coziest hamlet in the Hamptons, just like Steinbeck did, and E. L. Doctorow and James Fenimore Cooper did, too. So maybe someday I’ll look back on this summer and say, I didn’t know if we’d ever heal from that horror, but look at us. We really did.

I thumb the sueded edges of my holy book’s pages, open the back cover, remove the postcard tucked inside: a photograph of a gilded temple, spires aimed toward the heavens, the neon-pink words Bangkok, Thailand printed over the image in fat cursive letters. On the other side, Kayla has written my work address and nothing else. There is no message, no signature, but I know what it means. In the blank space, she is telling me she’s out there, opening, widening. She is thanking me. Reminding me that we’re in this together.

I return the postcard to its hiding place and drop the book into my bag. “Bridgehampton,” I tell the cashier, who doesn’t look at me when she takes my debit card, swipes it, slides it back through a gap in bulletproof glass. The man who’d been behind me moves beside me and shouts at the window, “Great Neck!”

Back I go, walking the length of a line full of people going home to their families, their lovers, friends, dogs and cats, their couches, and framed photographs—images that have become the memories, galvanized just so—or heading to airports, jobs, parties, plans, or leaving secret meetings, leaving it all behind. Someone elbows me in the ribs, and I apologize, then take it back. Through damaged speakers, a muffled voice announces a track change, and an undercurrent of commuters reverses direction right on cue.

Below glowing screens where Solari boards should be, a crowd gathers to stare at backlit lists of departure times, tracks, and destinations. I join them and join their upward gaze, too, and it’s like this—squinting alongside strangers, all of us searching for our homes—that I hear my own voice saying, “I’m with you,” out loud. When no one seems to mind, or object, or notice at all, I say, “I’m with you,” again. “I’m here.”

Jonah