She stands and goes over to the square of earth she and Bucky dug together. In the real world he’s under there. She takes a knee and puts the book on the grave. Maybe the snow will cover it. Maybe the wind will blow it away. It doesn’t matter. In her mind it will stay here. The book is Thérèse Raquin, by Émile Zola.
‘Now I know who you were talking about,’ she says.
10
Alice walks up to where the path ends at the knife-cut valley and looks across to the flat ground where the old hotel used to stand – the reputedly haunted hotel, according to Bucky. Once she thought she actually saw it, no doubt a hallucination caused by being unused to the thin air up here. Today she sees nothing.
But I could make it be there, she thinks. I could make it be there just as I was able to make the Bide-A-Wee be there, complete with all the details I didn’t put in, like the bagged glass in the bathroom or the stain, sort of like the shape of Texas, on the rug. I could make it be there. I could even fill it with ghosts, if I wanted to.
She stands looking across the gulf of cold air between this side and that, hands in her pockets, thinking she could create worlds. Billy gave her that chance. She is here. She is found.
June 12, 2019–July 3, 2020
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Robin Furth and Myke Cole helped me with research, found continuity errors, and made valuable editorial suggestions. My thanks to both of them. It comes with the usual caveat: If there’s something wrong here, that’s on me, not them. I also want to thank Bing West for No True Glory, his extraordinary account of the two battles of Fallujah. It was a great help.