“She brought this for me. As a thank-you.” I can barely hear your voice, and I have to lean in closer. “I have no idea how she was able to go in and get it. But she promised, I guess.”

Outside, lightning strikes.

You hold out your hand, offering the powder to me like a gift. I reach out to take it, but a gust of wind shoots through the windows, blowing the dust around us like starlight. I try to grab at it, but this precious stuff, whatever it was, is gone.

“No,” you whisper.

You reach up and touch the knot on my head, tears forming. It is the only time you ever touch it. You close your eyes. Your breathing slows. I grab your wrist and cannot find your pulse.

“Faster, Tom,” I say. “Faster.”

The Fly

Tom?” I say hesitantly, walking into Tom’s house at the end of that day, the longest of my life.

It has been a wearying stretch of tests and doctors. Tom left us at lunch because there was nothing to do, and I don’t think he knows what to do when there is nothing to do. I stayed beside you until dark, but I needed to get our things, get my car, and they said you were stable. So I returned to Tom’s house.

The sound of my voice dies quickly in the empty house. I can hear the taxi—probably the most expensive taxi ride of my life—make its way down the driveway. The sun is setting on this longest day of my life, and everything has that after-storm stillness, that quiet ache, that broken-down weariness.

I start to walk to your room, but I notice the deck door is wide open, so I cross the living room and look out into the dying light.

“Paul,” Tom says, his voice sad and strange and wavering. If he hadn’t said my name, I might have missed him.

I walk that long expanse of deck.

“Sit,” he mumbles. “Sit.”

So I do. I sit in the same chair I sat in on our first night here. The sun is setting, but all we can see from the deck, the eastern side of the house, is an easing into the darkest blues, a few strands of clouds, and a lake that fills me with sadness, because I know in that moment I will never come back to Nysa.

This is my final farewell.

“Paul,” he starts again, taking a deep breath. Even from where I am, I can see his mouth trembling with emotion. “Pearl?”

“She’s . . . stable but not well. The doctor is having problems diagnosing exactly what’s wrong. He said he’s not seen anything like it. Her breathing is the main problem, and the fever. They had to put her on a ventilator.” My voice breaks. I swallow hard. “They’ll try to wean her from it in a few days. But they don’t expect . . .” The lake water rustles in the dark. My vision blurs.