In the silence that followed that unanswerable comment, Mr. Walker reached into his pocket and pulled out a thin package wrapped in newsprint. Written across the top in red marker was: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LENI. “Alyeska found this in Mattie’s room. I guess he got it for you … before.”

“Oh” was all she could say. Her birthday had been forgotten in all the drama this year. She took the gift, stared down at it.

The nurse exited Matthew’s room. Through the open door, Leni heard Matthew screaming. “Waaaa … Na … sher…”

“The brain damage … it’s bad, kiddo. I won’t lie to you. I was sorry to hear you decided not to go to college.”

She shoved the present in her parka pocket. “How could I? It was supposed to be both of us.”

“He’d want you to go. You know he would.”

“We don’t know what he wants anymore, do we?”

She got up, went back into Matthew’s room. He lay rigid, his fingers flexed. The bolts in his head and scars on his face gave him a Frankenstein appearance. His one good eye stared dully ahead, not at her.

She leaned over and picked up his hand. It was a deadweight. She kissed the back of it, saying, “I love you.”

He didn’t respond.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she promised in a thick voice. “I’ll always be here. This is me, Matthew, climbing down to save you. Like you did for me. You did it, you know? You saved me. I’m standing here, by the one I love. I hope you hear that.”

She stayed by him for hours. Every now and then he screamed and struggled. Twice, he cried. Finally, they asked her to leave so they could bathe him.

It wasn’t until later, after she’d flagged down the water taxi and climbed aboard, as she was listening to the boat hull thumping over the whitecaps, with water spraying her in the face, that she realized she hadn’t said goodbye to Mr. Walker. She’d just walked through the care facility and gone outside, past a man standing in front of a shack held together with duct tape and plastic sheeting, past a group of kids playing four-square in the school playground, wearing arctic camo clothes, past an old Native woman walking two huskies and a duck—all on leashes.

She thought she had grieved for Matthew, cried all the tears she had, but now she saw the desert of grief that lay before her. It could go on and on. The human body was eighty percent water; that meant she was literally made of tears.