It’s enough.
Nora collapses to her knees and embraces her brother. Sobs burst out of her in waves; tears stream from her closed eyes and soak her brother’s neck. If he bites her, so be it. If she joins him in whatever foggy limbo he inhabits, so be it. They will wander it together.
The boy’s name is Addis.
We draw lines between his scattered volumes, connecting them with his sister’s, and we smile. Two tiny parts of our vast body, a brother and a sister, severed and now reattached. The average temperature of the universe rises a degree.
“Addis, I’m sorry,” Nora sobs. “I’m so sorry.”
His arms are limp at his sides. His face is tight with confusion. But when Nora finally releases him, he stares into her eyes, frowning in concentration, and raises one hand. It trembles in the air for a moment, as if about to fall. Then it brushes Nora’s face.
We dwell in this moment for as long as we can, wrapping it around us like a warm blanket. Then, with great reluctance, we step back into the cold river of time.
Nora hears footsteps creaking on the staircase.
A chill rises in her spine and she stands up, wipes her eyes, steps in front of her brother.
The big man enters her home.
I
“M,” I HISS. “Don’t.”
He moves toward the scorched building like he’s being dragged. “Have to,” he mutters. “Have to be there… Have to explain.”
I look to Julie for help but she’s staring at the top window with a preoccupied frown. Tomsen is busy with her scooter, cranking it down from its rack to ready it for a tour of DC. Neither of them seem to share my concerns, and I can’t even define what they are. All I know is I don’t like the coldness in Nora’s eyes and I don’t like the fear in M’s, and I don’t want them anywhere near each other.
“Julie,” I say. “Is this Nora’s house?”
“I don’t know. She never talks about her childhood.”
“But I’ve heard you…”
“I know she grew up in DC and I know her parents abandoned her in Seattle, and that’s about it. Took me years to pry that much out.” She takes a step toward the building, then reconsiders. “She has this recurring nightmare about a wolf in a playground. It always makes her get weird for a while, but this…”
I grit my teeth as M climbs the steps to the entryway. “So she wants to be alone right now, right?”
Julie seems to wake up, just now realizing M’s intent. “Oh. Marcus! Yeah, definitely don’t go in there.”
He steps through the door and onto the staircase.
“Hey! You really don’t want to bother her when she’s like this.”
He disappears into the sooty blackness.
“Fucking idiot,” Julie says, throwing up her hands. “No idea what she sees in him.”
I run after my fucking idiot friend. At the top of the stairs, the floor is covered in a layer of dust so thick it’s almost soil. The sun pours through gaping holes in the burnt roof, painting golden bars on the clusters of moss and weeds. But a trail of footprints has destroyed much of this newborn landscape, and I don’t have to be a tracker to recognize these tracks: a woman and a man and four children.
I see my friend standing in the doorway. Over his shoulder, I see Nora. Her eyes are red. Wet. Round. And behind her: a small Dead boy who bears her a striking resemblance.
“No,” M whispers. “No, no.”
“You,” Nora says.
“Nora, I’m…”
“You,” Nora says.
“I’m so…sorry. Didn’t…remember. I’m so—”
A throaty scream rips out of Nora, a knot of grief and rage and confusion tangled and pulled tight.
She lunges at M.
He stumbles back into the hall and I hear the fleshy thumps of her fists slamming into him. Not the hooks and jabs of an honest fistfight, not clean punches to sturdy targets like the belly and the jaw—she hits him in dangerous places. The temples. The throat. The wounds she just finished stitching.
She is trying to kill him.
And I am paralyzed, because I don’t understand what’s happening. He is nearly twice her size and could fit both her fists in one gorilla palm, but his hands hang at his sides. He does nothing to stop or even soften her blows. And not because she is too weak to hurt him—she is hurting him. He gasps and chokes and reels backward, then finally collapses, but Nora doesn’t stop. She straddles his chest and pummels his face over and over, and the whole time he just looks at her, his dark red blood mixing with tears.
“Nora! Stop!”
Julie rushes up the stairs behind me and tackles her friend, knocking her onto the dusty floor. For a moment I’m certain Nora will attack Julie; her face is contorted and her bloody fist is cocked and I wrench myself free of my paralysis to intervene. But she regains just enough control to convert her punch into a violent shove. Julie tumbles off her and Nora jumps up, runs into the apartment, and emerges with the boy in tow. She lingers for just a moment over M, and I see the red mist clearing from her eyes, leaving a sort of numb horror. Then she rushes the boy down the steps like the building is still on fire, burning all these years and forever.
I hear Tomsen’s voice from outside. “You’re bloody. What happened? Who’s that? Is he Dead? He looks like you. Hey. What are you doing?”
I hear a small motor starting up, revving, fading into the distance.
Then I hear a voice from the apartment behind me, soft and scared. “Julie?”
Sprout stands huddled in the doorway. Joan and Alex are behind her.
Julie staggers to her feet and kneels in front of Sprout, breathing hard. “Are you okay?”
Sprout hesitates, then throws herself into Julie’s arms.
“Our friend,” Alex says, gazing sadly at the empty stairwell.
“She took our friend,” Joan says.
They come out into the hall and stand next to me, looking down at M. His right eye is already swelling shut. His left opens to a narrow crack, glistening with tears. He pulls in a shuddering breath and sits up.
I hug my children. They hug me back. They are warm.
I emerge from the building with M’s arm draped over my shoulder, keeping him balanced as he totters and sways, grimacing with each step.
“That’s why she was bloody,” Tomsen says, nodding as if this answers all her questions.
While Julie tends to the kids, I lower M onto the RV’s rear bed and gingerly lift his shirt. His wounds are inflamed and seeping blood, but most of the stitches are still in place.
“You okay?” I ask him in lieu of a medical examination.
He lets out a slow groan. Pain and regret and disgust. “Do you remember now?” he says. “The boy?”
I find a few glimpses of the boy’s face in my fog. A muted presence hovering behind my kids as they tried to redeem the airport, watching them tape photos to the windows in a childlike attempt to remind the Dead of life, observing but not quite participating in their noble arts and crafts.
And before that…faint flickers. A long walk. His hand held in bony fingers while grinning skulls taught him to kill.
“I remember a little.”
M rolls his head back and forth on the pillow. “I killed her brother.” His voice is choked, not just from the swelling in his throat. “Once I saw him…it all came back. Bright and loud.” He closes his eyes. “Wanted her to kill me. She deserved to.”