Page 72 of The Night We Lost Him

My heart is racing so fast that I’m having trouble taking in what he is saying. I’m finding it hard to even believe that we are here. But of course we are here. I’ve driven us here, haven’t I? Into a corner we both want to get out of.

“Jack, come on,” I say. “Nothing has happened with Elliot. I’d never do that to you. To us.”

“This isn’t about Elliot. I mean, it’s certainly not helping anything, but I’m not threatened by him,” he says. “And I get it. All the loss. Your mom blew a hole through you. Fuck, it blew a hole through me. And now your father too. It’s too close together. It’s all too close together for anyone to know how to process it.”

“So your answer is to leave?”

“My answer is to give you some space,” he says. “Because it’s not working for you with me here.”

“That’s not true.”

“Maybe it will make it easier for you to be on your own… or pivot. Or to start fresh.”

“So this is about Elliot?”

He doesn’t answer. But I feel him pushing up against it—what he won’t allow me to deny that I’m doing, what he won’t watch me give away.

I fight the tears that are filling my eyes. He walks around the counter, sits down beside me. And when he starts talking again, his voice is low, even lower and gentler than usual, as if it’s taking all his energy to say it. For both of us.

“What do you want, Nora?” he says. “Because I want you to have it. Honestly. Whatever it is.”

Time. That’s my honest answer. I want time. Except I don’t just mean I want time to feel better, to feel like the world isn’t slippery and lonely. I also want the time he can’t give me, that no one can give me, the time I’ll never have again. With my parents, here again. With Jack, when loving him, when loving anyone, felt lighter. When I didn’t simultaneously feel it in my bones, the fear of it primal and real now. The moment I’ll lose him too.

“I want to believe that we’re just stuck,” Jack says. “At least that’s what I’ve been telling myself. But I’ve been telling myself the wrong thing. Because it doesn’t matter, either way, if I can’t get to you anymore.”

“Jack, I’ll work on it,” I say.

“I don’t want you to have to work on it. I want you to want it. I can’t do it another way.”

It isn’t a threat. It’s the opposite of a threat. There’s no guilt, no shame. It’s just a promise.

He reaches out and takes my hand, his fingers crawling their way through mine.

I look down, my eyes too fogged with tears to know which fingers are his and which are mine.

“I really don’t want you to go,” I say.

“That’s not the same thing as wanting me to stay.”

Falling Fatalities

Jack leaves for the restaurant, and the house goes silent.

I sit on the bed and stare straight ahead at the photographs lining the fireplace mantel. Framed candid shots and Polaroids and photo-booth strips, glimpses into our last couple of years together: photographs of the two of us in our backyard and at friends’ weddings, on a bike-riding trip upstate with my mother. I even have a framed photograph of us at thirteen years old. I found a copy of our eighth grade yearbook and there it was, a class picture in woodshop. We were on opposite ends of the first row. Jack was smiling at the camera, but I was looking down the bench toward him. Jack likes to joke that I was definitely looking past him at Hudson Ricci, the kid to his left, who everyone had a crush on. But I know it was Jack. Even then, I knew.

I can go to see him, I think. I can fix this. I just need to stand up. My phone buzzes, stopping me, an unknown number on the caller ID. For a brief moment, I get to tell myself it’s Jack calling from the restaurant’s landline. Jack saying he’s not going. Jack saying we can figure this out. Stay there. Stay where you are. I’m on my way.

But it’s a woman on the other end of the line. Her voice terse and serious.

“This is Dr. Susan Clifton. I received your email. I work with Lanie Robertson.”

Dr. Susan Clifton. The second of the two forensic pathologists.

I sit up taller, focus in. “Dr. Clifton,” I say. “Thank you for the call. I really appreciate you getting in touch.”

“Of course,” she says. “Though I’m not sure how much help I’m able to be. I took a look at the files you sent. And, to be perfectly frank with you, most aspects of your father’s fall lend themselves to multiple interpretations.”

“Okay…”

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