“Everybody has that—to some degree or other,” she added before I could say anything about how being abused as a kid, or crippled by a hit-and-run driver, doesn’t exactly happen to everybody, thank God.

“But still . . .”

She nodded. “I know. I guess it’s just some kind of weird guilt. Why me and not someone else?”

“It’s not being offered to someone else.”

“But why?”

She had me there. The difference was, for me it didn’t matter. I wanted her to have everything that had been taken away from her. I wanted to see her dancing and running and painting and living large the way she loved to live. What happened to her as a kid—that couldn’t be changed. But these physical holdovers from the accident. They could.

“Like Jack said,” I told her. “You’ll have to ask the crow girls that question.”

She smiled. “Yeah, and off they’ll go talking about cups of sugar and the colour of fish smiles or some such thing.”

“But you’re going to do it?”

“Ask them?”

“To see if they can heal you now.”

“Absolutely.”

We fell silent again. After awhile, Jilly reached over and took my hand.

“So all this talk about healing and the like,” she asked. “Is that you circling around us talking about our relationship?”

“No. Yes. Maybe.”

“If you’re having second thoughts . . .”

She started to pull her hand away, but I tightened my fingers around it. Not hard. Just enough to let her know that I didn’t want to let go.

“I did have second thoughts,” I told her, “but that was only when you left us on the mesa. When we’re together, I don’t have the slightest doubt that being with you is what I want. What I’ve maybe always wanted, except I was just too blind or stupid or both to figure it out.”

“Me, too.”

“But when you went away, I got . . . scared, I guess is the only way to put it.”

“Scared of what?”

“Well, neither of us is much good at making a relationship work.”

“Though you’re usually the one who gets dumped,” she said.

“I know. But that was still because it wasn’t working out.”

“So you’re afraid that’ll happen with us?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so. It’s just . . . what if it did happen? What happens to us being best friends? I can’t even imagine a world without you in it. You know, when I first heard about the accident, I could feel a piece of myself just go so still inside me. It was like something collapsed in my chest, and all I could do was sit there holding the phone and wonder if I’d ever be able to breathe again.”

Her fingers tightened on mine.

“We just have to make that not happen,” she said.

“Can we do that?”