Seven years earlier — Spring 2043
—————————-
The house was not the same house.
It was the same house. The same hallway, the same stairs, the same kitchen at the back with the window that caught the morning light. But the hallway had no bags stacked along the wall. The stairs had no drift of post on the third step. The kitchen table had no mugs left from yesterday, no saucer with a cigarette burning unattended, no thin white pool of milk spreading toward the edge of the placemat.
There were flowers on the hall table. Nothing expensive. A supermarket bunch in a glass vase, the kind you bought because it was Tuesday and the ones from last week had gone. Someone had put them there. Someone had trimmed the stems.
Upstairs, through the closed door of the children’s bedroom, two voices were arguing about something that mattered enormously to both of them and would be forgotten by morning.
“I’m telling you, it was this big. It was the biggest bird I’ve ever seen,” Ethan said.
Hannah’s voice came back immediately, older and sceptical. “You’ve seen a pigeon.”
“It was bigger than a pigeon.”
“How could it be bigger than a pigeon. What bird is bigger than a pigeon.”
“I don’t know what it’s called. It was just — big. It had wings.”
“All birds have wings, Ethan.”
“Not all birds.”
“Name a bird that doesn’t have wings.”
“Penguins.”
A pause. The particular pause of an eight-year-old who had been about to win an argument and had just had the win taken away from her.
“Penguins don’t count,” Hannah said.
“Why don’t penguins count.”
“Because they don’t fly.”
“You said wings. You didn’t say flying.”
“I’m not talking to you anymore.”
“You’re still talking.”
“I’m stopping.”
A theatrical silence. It lasted about four seconds.
“Ethan,” Hannah said.
“What.”
“That’s not stopping.”
Downstairs, in the living room, two people heard this exchange and did not intervene.
The television was on but muted — some film neither of them was watching, a black-and-white thing with people in hats talking urgently in rooms. The coffee table had two empty plates, a nearly empty bottle of red wine, and one glass because they were sharing. The curtains were open. The street outside was dark and quiet and the light from the room fell out onto the pavement in a pale gold rectangle.
He was stretched out on the sofa with his feet on her lap. Late thirties and looked younger. Brown hair, a bit too long at the front, the kind of hair that had been due for a cut for about three weeks and would be due for another three. He had a face that smiled easily, the lines around his eyes already suggesting he smiled often. He was wearing a t-shirt with a small hole at the collar, the kind of hole that appeared when a garment had been washed approximately two hundred times and was now softer than anything else in the drawer. His feet were bare. One sock had been abandoned under the coffee table. The other was still on.
Sarah was curled at the other end of the sofa with her feet tucked under his legs for warmth. She was in her early thirties. Her hair was down, the way she wore it at home, and she was wearing a jumper that was too big for her and that belonged to him and that she had stolen approximately four years ago and never returned. She was looking at him instead of the television. She had been looking at him for some time.
"You know that t-shirt is a disgrace," Sarah said.
"This t-shirt is vintage," Michael said.
"It's vintage if it's from a shop that doesn't exist anymore. It's not vintage if you bought it at Tesco in 2038 and wore it every week since."
"That's a different kind of vintage."
"That's a bin kind of vintage."
Michael looked down at the collar. He touched the hole with one finger, gently, the way you might touch an old friend who had been through something. "It's breathing."
"It's disintegrating."
"It's breathing. T-shirts need to breathe."
"T-shirts don't have lungs."
"This one does," Michael said.
From upstairs, the argument had shifted. Ethan's voice, carrying through the ceiling with the particular penetrating clarity of a six-year-old who had not yet learned that walls did not stop sound: "— and it looked at me. It looked directly at me. With its eyes."
Hannah's voice, older and more sceptical, carrying through the same ceiling: "Birds don't look at people."
"This one did," Ethan said.
"Birds look at worms, Ethan. Birds look at seeds. They don't look at people."
"This one looked at me. It knew my name."
"It did not know your name."
"It did. It said it."
"Birds can't talk."
"This one could."
"What did it say, then," Hannah said.
"It said — " A pause. The pause of a six-year-old inventing. "It said my name. It said Ethan. In bird language."
"Bird language."
"You don't know bird language. You can't say it didn't."
"I can say it didn't. I'm saying it didn't. I'm saying it right now."
Sarah put her hand over her mouth. Her shoulders were shaking. Michael was grinning at the ceiling with the particular expression of a parent who was trying very hard not to laugh out loud and failing in small quiet ways that made the sofa shake slightly.
"She's going to kill him," Sarah said.
"She's not going to kill him. She's going to lecture him about ornithology for another ten minutes and then they'll both be asleep," Michael said.
"She's eight and she already argues like a barrister."
"She gets that from you."
"I don't argue."
"You argued with me about the t-shirt for five minutes."
"That was a discussion."
"That was a prosecution," Michael said.
Sarah shifted her weight and leaned forward and picked up the wine glass from the table. She took a sip and handed it to him. He took it without looking, the easy handoff of people who had been sharing glasses for a long time.
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"It's our anniversary," she said.
"It is."
"Fifteen years."
"Fifteen years since you picked me up off the pavement," Michael said.
"I didn't pick you up. I helped you up. There's a difference."
"There's no difference."
"Picking someone up is when they can't get up themselves. Helping them up is when they're already getting up and you just — help."
"You definitely picked me up."
"You were already standing."
"I was on one knee."
"That's standing."
"That's proposing," Michael said.
Sarah laughed. It was a real laugh, the kind that started low and went up at the end, the kind that made him smile just by happening. Outside, a car moved past on the road and the headlights swept the living room wall and were gone.
"The sign," she said. "You were holding that sign someone handed you on the Tube. PROTECT CHILDREN NOT DATA. By the time we got to Parliament Square the rain had got into the cardboard and the corner had folded over so it just said PROTECT CHILDREN."
"That was the point, though," Michael said. "I was holding a sign that said the thing I actually believed."
"You were holding a sign that was falling apart."
"That too."
She looked at him. "I got separated from Keira. The crowd just moved. I was holding onto her coat and then I couldn't."
"You never found her again that day."
"Not until the coach home. She was furious. She'd lost her banner.
"NO MORE DATABASES," Michael said. "The red paint that ran."
"You remember that."
"I remember everything you've ever told me about that day."
Sarah was quiet for a moment. "I hated it. Every part of it except you."
"That's a lot of pressure," Michael said.
"You handle it."
"I fell over in the rain. That was my big contribution."
She was looking at him now, properly. "You were there. That was the contribution. You came down on the train by yourself and someone handed you a sign and you held it. You held it even when it fell apart."
"The sign wasn't the point."
"No. It wasn't."
"You were the first person who'd smiled at me all day," Michael said.
"I wasn't smiling. I was laughing at you. You were covered in mud."
"Same thing."
"Not the same thing."
"I'd been in London for four hours and no one had looked at me. And then I fell over and you were there. And I thought —" He stopped.
"What."
"I thought: that's the person. That's the one I want to keep knowing."
Sarah looked at the wine glass. It was empty. She didn't fill it.
"I searched for you," she said. "Afterwards. I didn't get your number. I was too embarrassed. You were older. I thought you probably had someone. So I went home and spent the whole coach ride trying to remember exactly what you looked like and then I searched for you."
"I know. You've told me."
"I tried every spelling of your surname."
"There's only one spelling."
"I didn't know that. I tried about twelve."
"Twelve spellings."
"At least."
"And you found me."
"I found a Michael Clarke in Thetford who was twenty-three and worked at a building firm and had a photo of himself from the march. Holding the sign."
"I'd put it on my profile."
"You'd put it on your profile. Like a badge."
She laughed again. Then she didn't.
"I think about them," she said. "The kids who didn't come home. Every time we talk about that day."
"I know."
"I think about them and then I think about you. And both things are true. They're both still true."
Michael put his hand on her ankle under the blanket. The hand was warm. He left it there.
"Both things are true," he said.
"Is that all right?"
"It's the only way it works."The television flickered silently. The people in hats were still talking urgently. Upstairs, someone had got out of bed.
The footsteps were small and uneven, the particular rhythm of a child who had not yet learned to walk quietly and who did not want to anyway.
Ethan appeared in the doorway in superhero pyjamas that were slightly too big for him, the cuffs rolled up at the wrists and the ankles, the fabric faded from a deep blue to a soft grey-blue that had been through the wash enough times to be technically clean and aesthetically ancient. His hair was sticking up at the back. He was rubbing one eye with the heel of his hand and holding a Superman figure in the other — the soft one, the one with the faded cape, the one he would still be holding at thirteen in a different version of this house.
“I can’t sleep,” he said.
Michael turned his head on the sofa. “You can’t sleep.”
“No.”
“Why can’t you sleep.”
“Because Hannah is snoring.”
From upstairs, muffled but immediate, Hannah’s voice: “I am NOT snoring. He is LYING. He always says that.”
Ethan turned toward the stairs without moving from the doorway. “You ARE snoring. I was right there. I could hear you from my own bed.”
“That was breathing. Normal breathing. Everyone breathes.”
“Not like that.”
“Like what.”
“Like — “ Ethan paused, apparently searching for the right comparison. “Like a drain.”
A sound from upstairs that was not quite a word and not quite a scream and was, in the language of eight-year-old girls, the sound of someone who had been compared to a drain and was not going to let it stand. Michael was pressing his lips together very tightly. Sarah had given up entirely and was laughing into the cushion.
“I’ll handle this,” he said.
He stood up. He was not a tall man but he seemed tall in the doorway, the way fathers often seemed tall to their children before the children grew. He held out his hand. Ethan took it. The Superman figure was transferred to the other hand so that the holding could happen properly.
Sarah watched them go up the stairs. She watched the back of her husband’s head and the back of her son’s head, the same brown hair, the same way of walking slightly to the left. She got up from the sofa and followed them. Not because she needed to. Because she wanted to watch. Because this was a thing she wanted to remember, and she didn’t know — couldn’t have known, was seven years away from knowing — how much she would need to remember it.
The children’s bedroom was small and warm and amber in the light of the single lamp on the shelf between the two beds.
Two single beds against opposite walls. Hannah’s side: a poster of horses, a poster of a whale she had drawn herself that looked more like a submarine with eyes, a small collection of stones on the windowsill arranged by size. Ethan’s side: a Superman poster that was too big for the wall space and had curled at one corner, a second Superman figure on the small shelf, a glass of water on the bedside table that was too full and would, in seven years, be knocked over onto the carpet.
Hannah was sitting up in bed with her arms crossed, her hair escaping from its plait, her face arranged in the particular expression of an older sister who had been falsely accused and was prepared to present evidence. Ethan was climbing back into bed with the Superman figure still in his hand, settling under the duvet with the practised wriggle of a child who had done this every night of his life.
“Right,” Michael said. He sat on the end of Ethan’s bed. The mattress dipped under his weight. “What’s all this.”
“Dad,” Ethan said. “Tell her. Tell her she snores.”
“Dads can’t tell people they snore,” Hannah said. “That’s not a thing dads can do.”
“I’m not sure that’s in the constitution,” he said.
“What’s the constitution.”
“It’s a — never mind. Ethan. Have you been saying Hannah snores.”
“Yes.”
“Have you actually heard her snoring.”
A pause. A very small pause. “I heard something.”
“What did you hear.”
“Breathing. Loud breathing. Snoring breathing.”
“That’s not snoring,” Hannah said. “That’s just breathing. Everyone breathes.”
“Not that loud.”
“I breathe normal. You breathe weird.”
“I don’t breathe weird.”
“You breathe like — “ Hannah made a sound that was meant to be Ethan breathing and was actually just a series of snuffling noises that made Ethan sit up in bed with the expression of someone whose honour had been deeply insulted.
“That’s not what I sound like.”
“That’s exactly what you sound like.”
“Dad. That’s not what I sound like.”
Michael looked at Sarah in the doorway. She was leaning against the frame with her arms folded, watching. The look he gave her was the look of a man who was surrounded and outnumbered and deeply happy about it.
“Right,” he said. “New rule. No one snores. No one breathes weird. Everyone sleeps.”
“I can’t sleep,” Ethan said.
“Why not.”
“Because — “ He stopped. He had forgotten his reason. He searched for a new one. “Because I’m not tired.”
“You’re very tired. Your eyes are tired. Your face is tired. Your feet are tired.”
“My feet aren’t tired.”
“Your feet are exhausted. They’ve been walking around all day.”
“My feet feel fine.”
“Your feet are lying to you.”
Hannah snorted. It was a very small snort and she tried to turn it into a cough and failed.
“Hannah,” Ethan said. “She made a noise. That was a noise.”
“That was a cough.”
“It was a snort-cough.”
“There’s no such thing as a snort-cough.”
“There is. I just heard one. Dad. Tell her.”
“I’m not getting involved in the snort-cough debate,” Michael said. “I’m recusing myself.”
“What’s recusing.”
“It means I’m not getting involved.”
“That’s not a word.”
“It is a word. It’s a very good word. It means I’m staying out of it.”
Ethan considered this. He seemed to accept that his father had used a legal loophole and that there was no point arguing with legal loopholes.
“Can I have a story,” he said.
“It’s nearly half past nine.”
“Please.” The word stretched out, four syllables where there should have been one, the particular music of a six-year-old who knew that the word please was a magic word and was testing how much magic it contained.
Michael looked at Hannah. “What do you think. Do you want a story.”
Hannah shrugged with the elaborate casualness of an eight-year-old who wanted something very much and was not going to admit it. “I don’t mind. If you’re going to tell one anyway. It doesn’t matter.”
“Is that a yes.”
“It’s a — it’s a fine. It’s a yes-fine.”
“A yes-fine.”
“A yes-fine is different from a yes. It’s less enthusiastic.”
“I see. And are you less enthusiastic.”
“I’m — medium.”
“Medium enthusiastic.”
“Medium.”
He looked at her for a moment, and his face did the thing it did when he was pretending to be serious and was not serious at all. “All right. One story. Then sleep. Actual sleep. With sleeping and not talking. Ethan. Promise.”
Ethan held up the Superman figure. “Superman promises.”
“Superman promises are legally binding,” Michael said.
“They are,” Ethan said. “Superman said.”
“Superman is a reliable witness.” He leaned back on his hands. “What do you want a story about.”
“Superman,” Ethan said immediately.
Hannah groaned. “You always want Superman.”
“Superman’s the best.”
“There are other stories.”
“Superman’s the best story.”
“You don’t know that. You haven’t heard all the stories.”
“I’ve heard enough.”
Michael looked at Hannah. “What do you want a story about.”
Hannah thought about it. She thought about it for longer than Ethan had thought about it, because she was older, and questions deserved proper answers. She pulled the duvet up to her chin. She looked at the ceiling.
“Someone who helps,” she said. “Even when it’s hard. Even when no one else does.”
“That’s Superman,” Ethan said.
“That’s not just Superman. That’s lots of people.”
“Superman’s the best at it.”
“Can you let me — I’m trying to — Dad.”
Michael was looking at the ceiling now too, the way he did when he was finding a story. Not reading it from up there. Just pointing himself somewhere that wasn’t either of their faces, so the story could arrive without an audience watching it come. Sarah knew this look. She had watched him find stories for seven years.
“Actually,” he said. “I think there might be one story that does both.”
Ethan stopped fidgeting. Hannah stopped pretending she wasn’t interested.
He reached over and turned off the main light. Just the small lamp on the shelf remained. The room went amber. The shadows of the two beds stretched up the walls.
He settled himself. He was not a performer. He told stories the way he did everything else — quietly, with attention, as if the story was a thing that deserved to be told properly and he was the person who had been asked to do it.
“There is a man,” he said, “that everyone knows.”
He told them about Superman.
Not the Superman from the films. Not the one who fought aliens and saved cities and caught falling planes. A different Superman. A quieter one. The one who walked down streets instead of flying over them. The one who had learned, over many years, that the people who needed him most were not the ones screaming for help. They were the ones who were silent. The ones who were overlooked. The ones who had been decided about by people who had never met them.
He told them about a boy.
Ordinary. Quiet. Walked with his head down. The kind of boy who noticed things other people walked straight past — a bird on a feeder, a tap left dripping, a photograph that needed straightening. The kind of boy that most people didn’t look at twice. He went to school. He went home. He had his life, which was small and known and his. He was all right. He knew where he was. He knew who he was.
And one day, without planning to, without asking to, the boy did something good.
Not a big thing. Not the kind of thing that gets written up anywhere. Just — he saw something happening that shouldn’t be happening, and he did what needed to be done. It cost him, the way brave things cost people. But he did it anyway, because it was the right thing. He knew it was the right thing. So he did it.
And someone saw him.
The person who saw him told someone. That person told someone else. By the time the boy had gone home and sat down and had his tea, something had changed. The world knew his name.
Some of them wanted to thank him. That part was all right, at first. Thank you. We saw what you did. We’re glad you were there.
But then it became something else.
Some of them wanted him on television. Some of them wanted him to come and speak at things, to say things, to stand in certain places and be seen. Some of them had decided — without asking him, without knowing him, without knowing the first thing about his life before this — they had decided what he was. They had a very clear picture of it. They would like him to match the picture.
And the boy — the quiet boy who walked with his head down — looked at the picture and thought: that’s not me. That’s not who I am. I just did the right thing. That was all I did.
But the world had already made up its mind.
In the doorway, Sarah was very still.
Superman saw it happen.
He was on the street — because the street was where you actually saw things — and he watched the boy and he recognised what was happening. He had lived inside something like it his whole life. The weight of a name you didn’t choose. The gap between what the world had decided you were and what you actually were. He knew what it did to a person. He had felt it. He had spent years learning to carry it.
So he made a decision.
Not a speech. Not anything large. He went to where the boy was.
And he stood next to him.
When the cameras came, he was there. When the people who wanted things from the boy came — the people with plans, the people who had decided what his bravery meant and what he owed them because of it — Superman was between them and the boy.
Not fighting. Not making a scene. Just there.
Because standing next to someone is the most powerful thing you can do. More powerful than flying. More powerful than anything the cape gives you. What it says — to the boy, and to everyone watching — is: I see who this person actually is. Not the name the world gave them. Not the thing they’ve been decided to be. I see who they are.
And I am not going anywhere.
The room was so quiet that Sarah could hear the lamp buzzing faintly. She could hear her own breathing. She could hear, in the silence, the particular stillness of her children listening.
Slowly — not quickly, because these things are never quick — the boy understood something.
He was not alone in it.
He had someone standing next to him who knew his actual name. Who knew — underneath all the noise, underneath all the pictures the world had made of him — who he was.
And because of that, he could carry it. All of it. The attention. The weight. The gap between who he was and who they had decided he was. He could carry it because he was not carrying it alone.
That is what Superman does.
Not the flying. Not the strength. He sees the people nobody else is looking at. He stands next to them. He refuses to let the world be the one that decides who they are.
Michael was quiet for a moment. He looked at his son. He looked at his daughter.
Hannah’s voice, very small: “Is the boy all right?”
“He is. He doesn’t always know it. But he is.”
“Does Superman stay with him?”
A pause. Longer than the others. The length of a father choosing the truest thing he had to give.
“Superman stays as long as he can. And when he can’t — when something happens and he can’t be there anymore — the boy has the story. He knows someone stood next to him. He knows what that looks like. He carries it. And that’s enough. That’s always enough.”
He sat for a moment longer. Then he reached over and tucked the duvet up around Ethan’s shoulders. Ethan was not quite asleep. His eyes were almost closed. The Superman figure was on his chest, rising and falling with his breathing.
“Night, bud.”
“Night, Dad.”
He stood. He went to Hannah’s bed. He pushed the hair back from her forehead with one hand. She turned her face into the touch for half a second, the way she always did, the way she would deny doing in the morning.
“Night, Han.”
“Night, Dad.”
He crossed to the door.
He came out to the hallway.
Sarah was standing against the wall. She had been standing there for the whole story. Her hand was against the door frame. She had not moved it.
In the memory — the real memory, the one that had happened seven years ago in this room with these people — she had been smiling. She had been proud. She had been in love. She had thought: this is my husband, and he is telling our children a story, and they will remember this, and we will be happy for a long time.
In the dream, her face was wet.
He closed the door behind him. He did it carefully — holding the handle down, releasing it slowly, so it wouldn’t make a sound. The same way Ethan closed doors, at thirteen, in the house she had let become a ruin.
He saw her face.
He didn’t ask why she was crying. He just opened his arms. She stepped into them. She fit there the way she had always fit there.
“You’re so good at this,” she said into his chest. “You’re so good with them.”
“I learned from you.”
She shook her head. “I’m not — I don’t — “
“Hey.” He pulled back and looked at her. His hands were on her shoulders. His face was the face she had seen every day for fifteen years. “You are the best mother those kids could have. You know that.”
In the memory, she had smiled. In the memory, she had said something like I know or thank you or you’re not so bad yourself. In the memory, they had gone back downstairs and finished the wine and fallen asleep on the sofa and woken up at two in the morning with stiff necks and laughed about it.
In the dream, she looked at him and said the thing she had been trying to say for seven years.
“I can’t do this without you. I don’t know how. I’ve been trying and I can’t.”
His face changed. The warmth was still there, but something else was underneath it now. Something that had not been in the memory.
“You have to,” he said. “You have to, Sarah.”
“I don’t want to.”
“I know.”
“I miss you. I miss you so much. Every day. Every single day. I wake up and you’re not there and I think — I keep thinking — “
“I know.”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I wasn’t — I’m sorry I let you — “
“Stop.” He put his hands on either side of her face. His thumbs wiped the tears from her cheeks. “Stop. You didn’t let me do anything. It was a fire. It was an accident. It wasn’t your fault.”
“I should have gone in.”
“You couldn’t have.”
“I should have — “
“Sarah. Look at me.” She looked at him. His eyes were the same eyes. Brown. Warm. The eyes she had first seen looking up at her from a wet pavement in London while she laughed at him. “It wasn’t your fault. You hear me? It wasn’t.”
“I’m failing him,” she said. “I’m failing both of them. I can’t — I don’t know how to be what they need. I don’t know how to be you.”
“I’m not asking you to be me.”
“But you’re not here. You’re not here and I’m trying and it’s not — it’s never — “
“I know.” His voice cracked. “I know. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I left you.”
She looked up.
He had never said that in life. He had never apologised for dying — he couldn’t have, he didn’t choose it, the fire had chosen and he had chosen Ethan and the choice had been the right choice and it had killed him. He would make the same choice again. He would never apologise for it.
In the dream, he said it. And she knew, then, that she was dreaming.
His arms were still around her. But the warmth had gone.
His hand was on her shoulder and it was cooler than it had been. Not cold. Cool. The way a hand went cool when the window was open and the night air was getting in.
The lamp in the children’s bedroom went out. The light from downstairs had changed — it was grey now, not gold, the colour of the light that came through the kitchen window in the early morning when nobody had opened the curtains yet.
“Michael,” she said.
He was looking at her with the same steadiness, the same attention. But there was something behind it now that hadn’t been there then.
“You’re angry at me,” he said.
“No.”
“You are. You’ve been angry at me for seven years.”
“I’m not. I’ve never — “
“You won’t let yourself. That’s different.”
She shook her head. She was still shaking her head when the hallway changed. The flowers were gone from the hall table. The vase was gone. The wall by the stairs had a bag against it that had not been there before.
“You think I left you,” he said. “You think I chose him over you. You think I went back into that fire knowing I wouldn’t come out and I did it anyway.”
“I don’t — “
“Sarah.”
She stopped.
“You think it every year. On the anniversary. On his birthday. On my birthday. You think: you chose him. You chose him and you left me with — “ He stopped. His voice was quiet, unhurried. He was naming something she had never named. “You left me with two children and a house and no one to help me. And I hate you for it. I hate you for dying.”
She was crying. She was shaking her head and crying. “I don’t hate you.”
“Not all of you. The part of you that hates me lives in the kitchen. It holds the mug. It doesn’t drink the tea. It’s been there since the funeral.”
The banister was wet under her hand. When she looked down, there was a mug on the step. Her mug. The one from this morning. The tea was cold. She hadn’t drunk it.
“I would have gone in,” she said. “If I’d been faster. If I’d woken up sooner. I would have — “
“You wouldn’t have.”
“I would.”
“You were frozen, Sarah. You were standing on the snow in your bare feet and you couldn’t move. Hannah was screaming and you couldn’t move. I was already inside and you were standing on the snow. You’ve never forgiven yourself for that either.”
She couldn’t speak.
“Two things you won’t forgive,” he said. “That you didn’t go in. And that I did.”
The hallway was darker. The bags along the wall had multiplied — not just a few now, stacks of them, the handles gone yellow, the oldest ones splitting at the seams.
“And then Hannah left,” he said.
She closed her eyes. “Don’t.”
“You let her go. You watched her pack a rucksack and walk out and you didn’t stop her. You didn’t phone her for three days.”
“I know.”
“But that’s not the part you can’t look at.”
She opened her eyes. He was closer now. His face was still his face. His voice was still his voice — the voice he used for bedtime stories.
“The part you can’t look at,” he said, “is that you were relieved.”
The word landed in her chest and stayed there.
“When she left. When the door closed. When you knew she was safe at Kyle’s. You were relieved. One less person in the house. One less person to fail. One less person watching you.”
“I didn’t — “
“You did. You thought: she’s out. She got out. And then you thought: I’m still here. With him. And I can’t get out.”
At the bottom of the stairs, in the hallway, someone was sitting on the second step from the bottom. The step where Ethan tied his shoes. The figure was small and dark and when it looked up it had her face — the face she’d had at eighteen, on the coach to London, before the march, before Michael, before any of this. It was looking at her with the contempt the young have for the old, the contempt of the person she’d been for the person she’d become.
“You were going to be something,” the girl said. “You were going to fight for things. You went to the march. You held the sign. You found him. You were going to be someone.”
“I tried.”
“You stopped. You stopped and you never started again. And now look at you.” She gestured at the hallway, at the bags, at the post on the floor. “Look at what you’ve done to his house.”
Sarah’s hand was shaking on the banister. “I know what I’ve done.”
“Do you? Do you know what happens next?”
The girl stood up. She walked up the stairs — past Sarah without looking at her — and stopped outside Ethan’s bedroom door. The door was closed. The lamp was out.
“He leaves,” the girl said. “Not tonight. Not tomorrow. But soon. He’ll go the way Hannah went. Or someone will take him. The school knows something’s wrong. The teachers talk. How long do you think before someone makes a call? Before someone comes to the house and sees the bags and the bottles and the carpet and him? How long before they take him?”
Sarah couldn’t breathe.
“And you’ll let them,” the girl said. “Because part of you wants them to. Part of you wants him gone. Not because you don’t love him. Because you’re tired. You’re so tired. You’ve been tired for seven years. And if he’s gone — if someone else is looking after him — you can stop. You can finally stop.”
“No.” It came out as a whisper. “No, I don’t — I would never — “
“You already did. With Hannah. You let her go and you were relieved. You’ll do it again. You’re waiting for it. Every time he walks out the door, part of you hopes he won’t come back. Not because you want him dead. Because you want it to be over.”
She was shaking her head. She couldn’t stop shaking her head.
Michael was beside her. His voice was quieter than the girl’s and worse, much worse, because it was kind.
“The worst thing,” he said, “is that you still love him. You love him so much it’s killing you. And it’s not enough. Love isn’t enough. You know that now. You’ve known it for years.”
She looked at him. His face was wet. He was crying, and the crying was real, and it was the most unbearable thing in the dream, because she had never seen him cry like this, and because she knew — even in the dream — that it was her own crying she was seeing, her own face, her own grief reflected back at her.
“I would have stayed,” he said. “If I could. I would have stayed.”
“I know.”
“I didn’t want to leave you with this.”
“I know.”
“You have to get up, Sarah.” His voice broke. “You have to get up off the kitchen floor. You have to put down the mug. You have to open the door. You have to — “
The girl at the top of the stairs turned. Her eighteen-year-old face was hard and cold and unforgiving.
“She won’t,” she said. “She’s never getting up. She’s going to sit at that table until he leaves or they take him. And then she’s going to sit there alone. And that’s the ending. That’s all there is.”
Sarah opened her mouth. She tried to scream.
She woke.
The bedroom was the bedroom from this morning. The clock on the radio: 12:04. She was on her side. Her hand was on the empty half of the bed. The sheet was cold.
She did not move for a long time.
Her face was wet. Her shoulders were shaking. The tears were coming without sound, the way they came when crying was something her body did without asking her. She could still feel his hand on her shoulder. She could still hear the girl’s voice at the top of the stairs.
She did not look at the photograph. She could not look at the photograph. But she could feel it there, on the bedside table, facing the bed the way Ethan always made sure it faced the bed. Michael holding the baby. Michael who had stayed as long as he could.
The clock turned to 12:07.
She reached for the glass on the bedside table. It was empty. She set it down.
She lay in the bed.
She did not sleep again.
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and then Add to home screen.