“It is okay, dear. You can tell me. Nothing will take us from each other. Don’t worry about that. And if you loved her, and she loved you, well, then you don’t have anything to regret. Even if it made you feel afterward like no one ever loved you at all, and no one could love you again, because not even you knew the depth of your aloneness. I am here for you. Harper?”
“Yes?”
“Stay awake, honey. Please stay awake.”
I heard her from down at the other end of the shore, as the pain pulsed and surged. “Maybe we will not have to row all the way, but will see a boat that can tow us the rest of the way to shore. See how fast we are going and how wonderfully the boat is holding us up and the water is holding the boat. Don’t fall asleep, honey.”
“No. Not yet,” I said. It was too painful to row, and I put the oar inside the boat, and let my hand fall in the cool water, and splashed some to my face.
“I wish I could hold you now,” she said sweetly to me.
“You already are.”
“Promise me you won’t die.”
“Yes.”
The sun was firing gold and copper in the distance, as it created and enthroned the new day, and the fog was burning away, and on the far shore light had already broken so beautifully, suffusing everything with crystal fire that seemed to burn from inside each thing alive as far as could be seen, filling the people everywhere around the lake with the awe and wonderment of certain mornings that make you see how good life is, and how eternal love is, and how perfect it would be to live your own life your own way, and how fine and beautiful it would be to live forever.