“I’m sorry. That just sucks.”

He took my hand then and held it. Sometimes he was the best.

“But she’s being taken care of, right?”

“Nobody knows what to do.” The doctors had been talking about how, once she had stabilized, meaning, once they could do no more for her, she could be moved to a nursing and rehab place in Marin.

“It doesn’t sound like there’s much of anything to do.”

“But it doesn’t feel right. Her life shouldn’t just come to this full, stupid stop.”

“Carla, that’s what life does.”

I didn’t have any answer to that. After a while we turned back toward home, and Aaron said, “I’m waiting for my passport. Once it comes, I’m all set.”

“Set for what?” I said, although I thought I knew.

“Vancouver. I got the job. I can start as soon as my feet hit the ground there.”

“Oh wow.” He’d told me about the job, this particular job with a software firm, but he’d downplayed it, made it sound like something it was best not to take seriously. Now it was a real thing, churning my stomach like a washing machine. “So I guess—”

“I guess one way or the other, you’re going to have to pack up the rest of your stuff.”

“That’s supposed to be an invitation? Wow, how could I refuse.”

“Come on. You know I want you to go with me. You’re my girl.”

And I guess I did know, though it would have been nice if he’d remind me once in a while. “What would I do in Vancouver anyway?”

“Whatever you want. Go back to school, like you keep talking about. Choose whatever career you want. I’ll be making good money.”

Maybe he realized he was sounding a little like an army recruiter. He tried again. “I want us to have a life together. I don’t want anybody else. You’re a total brat sometimes and I even love you for that, because you won’t quit on things when they’re important to you. Like your crazy poets. But you have to make up your mind and stop putting everything off because of these other people and their problems and ideas and whatever, because, you know what? You were never really a part of it.”

I’d told myself pretty much the same thing, when I was feeling sad and hopeless. But I didn’t want to give up on everything I’d felt or learned. And I didn’t want to just tag along after a man. Even though I still loved Aaron, had never stopped loving him. I was thinking of Viridian now, even if Aaron was not Mathias or anything like him. Could you ever be in love without being somehow diminished?

Lost in our debate was the fact that I was the injured party, that Aaron had messed around on me and tried to get away with it. It seemed all that had receded, and now it was only me, being exasperating and willful.