I shake my head against her, not believing her words, but feeling deeply touched by them anyway. Especially because I know that to Kiera, this all must be an elaborate hallucination on my part. It must be. People don’t come back to life. People don’t appear from parallel lives.

I gather the fabric in my hands and she says, “It’s okay, love. It’s okay. It’s okay,” over and over again. I can’t stop from sobbing now. “Cry, it’s okay.”

A long time passes. Somehow, without a conscious decision on my part, we go from standing to sitting on the ground; eventually I’m a puddle in her lap. I go through waves of crying and not being able to breathe and then stillness, and I know that she won’t leave even when I start up again. I know she won’t be annoyed; even though she jokes around a lot, I know she won’t this time. Whatever this is, she’s here.

An Ethiopian song I distantly know from the depths of my own playlists has come on, and with surprising clarity I remember it’s called “Homesickness.” Part one or two, not sure which. I don’t think I would have recalled even the title if I wasn’t experiencing the feeling myself then. The feeling of homesickness in a new and truer sense of the word.

It’s then, with devastating clarity, that I feel almost transported back to the scene. The headlights. The stoplights changing from red to yellow to green and back again. I remember feeling that it was odd that they went on and on like that, they were on a schedule of some kind. They’d had a major role in what had just happened—the biggest, maybe, and yet on they went.

There were sirens in the distance, coming toward us, and it was weird to know they were for us. I’d never had a personal relationship with the sound before. The radio was still on. The other driver was trying to speak to me, then looked in our car and saw … Aimee. And so, I had looked.

She had looked unnatural and broken. Too still. Her hand was in her lap, the back of her knuckles flat against her thigh. Her hair was hanging down in front of her face, blowing a little in the impartial breeze. I noticed and considered the stupidest things. Like how she’d picked those pale-blue jean shorts to wear. That white tank top. For tonight. For this, and she didn’t know. She wore socks with tennis shoes, as if she’d ever need to worry about a blister again. So strange that she had protected herself from a little discomfort like that, but that it wouldn’t matter anyway.