The Face of Death

Bonnie sleeps. I think of her strength compared to my weakness and I feel ashamed.

I put the glass down. I stare at the computer screen. 1for-two-me.

Five days. That's how much time passed from my first meeting with Sarah to Juan's capture. More days have gone by since then, but it's the five days that stick with me like they were years. I carry a new scar, Sarah's scar. It isn't visible, but the deepest cuts are the ones unseen, the march to death inside. The body ages and withers and dies. A soul can age as well. A six-year-old can become sixty in the span of a heartbeat.

Unlike the body, the soul can reverse this process, and become, perhaps not young again, but vital. Alive.

Sarah's journey cut me deep. My own journeys have aged me, too far, too fast. But scars are more than reminders of past wounds. They are evidence of healing.

I accept as a truth that I will always have moments of pain when it comes to Matt and Alexa. That's okay. The only way to be free of them forever would be to forget them, and I won't give up a blessed moment. I accept that I will have moments of great fear when it comes to Bonnie, and I accept that this may never go away. All parents fear for their children, and I have more reason to fear than most. I am flawed, I'm not unharmed by the past, but I am alive and I'm pretty sure I'll be happy more often than I'm not. Pretty sure parts of my life will continue to glow.

More than that, I cannot ask. Hope for. But not ask. We finished packing away the house, Bonnie and I. We had converted Alexa's room into Bonnie's studio, a fitting memorial. The last thing, now.

1for-two-me.

I've come to realize that my fear of this is not just the fear of what I might find.

You love a person, you live with them, you marry them. You spend your whole life getting to know them. I learned something new about Matt every day, every month, every year. Then he died, and the learning stopped. Until now.

If I invoke 1for-two-me, and look through that folder marked Private, I may learn something good or bad, but however it goes, it will be the last new thing I'll ever learn about my husband. I'm afraid of that finality.

Maybe I should save it. Save it for a day when I'm old and gray and I'm missing him.

I ignore my tequila, and I lean forward and click on the folder. I enter the password and gain access. I see the icons that indicate that the files are photographs. They're all numbered. I poise the mouse-arrow over one, and pause. What am I going to see if I click this?

For a moment, just a moment, I consider deleting it all. Letting it go. I click the first, and it opens before me. My jaw drops. It's a picture of me. Me and Matt. Having sex.

I squint, looking closer, remembering. The picture was taken from the side, so that our bodies are in profile. My head is back, and my eyes are closed in ecstatic concentration. Matt is looking down on me, his mouth slightly open.

It's not artistic, but it's not anatomically explicit, either. It looks like an amateur photograph. Which it is.

Matt and I went through a period, a time I've learned many couples do. Where sex becomes a subject of concentrated fascination and exploration. You try things, experiment, leave your comfort zone a little. Eventually you find your middle ground, a place that contains the balance of the things that excite you without shaming you. It's a fumbling time, full of mistakes. It requires trust. Exploration is not always graceful. Sometimes it can be mortifying.

Matt and I had explored taking pictures of each other nude, and of some of our sex together. It excited us at first, but it didn't last. It wasn't something we were ashamed of, it was just something we were done with. We tried it, it was interesting, we moved on. I move through the photos, opening them one after the other, remembering each moment. There are photos of me by myself, trying to be saucy (but looking silly). I find one photo of Matt, sitting on the bed, back against the headboard. He's grinning. I close my eyes. I don't need the photograph. I see the grin, I see that mussed-up hair, the twinkle in his eyes. I can see his cock, and I remember thinking once that I knew it better than any woman anywhere, it had been in me and on me and against me. I had touched it and giggled at it, and I had gotten angry at it when it was too demanding. I had lost my virginity to it. My eyes are stinging. These, I think, are moments that will never come again. I don't know what my future will bring in terms of love and companionship. I do know that I'll never be that young again, that I'll never feel the need to explore that particular thing again. Matt and I had covered that ground. We'd fucked and fought and laughed and cried and learned, and that curiosity was done and gone. This was his, only his.

'1for-two-me, babe.' I smile, tears running down my cheeks. Matt doesn't reply. He smiles at me. Waiting.

Say the words, that smile says.

So I do.

'Good-bye, Matt.'

I close the folder.

64

'YOU READY TO GO?' TOMMY ASKS.

'Zip me up and then my answer will be yes,' I say. He does so and then pulls me into him with his one good arm. He kisses my neck. It has a familiar, comfortable feel. I hear the sound of footsteps. My precocious daughter appears in the doorway. She rolls her eyes and makes an icky face.

'Geez, can't you guys give it a rest? I want to go see Sarah.'

'Yes, yes, munchkin.' I smile, disengaging myself from Tommy.

'We're ready.'

A month had passed. Sarah had stayed curled into herself for a week. A week after that, she began speaking again. Theresa and Bonnie and Elaina spent hours by her bedside in the hospital, coaxing her away from her despair.

It was Cathy Jones who'd finally gotten through to her, though. Callie had brought the cop to the hospital. Sarah had seen her and burst into tears. Cathy had gone to her and grabbed her up and we left them alone.

Theresa was as wonderful and resilient as Sarah had described her. She hadn't had much interest in getting better or being coddled. She wanted one thing and one thing only: to see Sarah. She had a strength to her, a warmth, that Juan had failed to extinguish, and she gives me hope for Sarah.

Last week, I got the call. Sarah was coming home. Really coming home--the home she'd had to leave so many years ago. The irony of this gift coming from Juan wasn't lost on any of us. We didn't care. Cathy had moved in, at Theresa's request. Theresa had cleaned the place from top to bottom, had thrown open all the shutters and let the light in again. She'd hung the painting on the wall above the foot of Sarah's bed.

I'd had an idea, as well, a possibility. With Theresa's help, I checked it out and found it to be true. We had a homecoming gift that we were all pretty sure Sarah would like.

'Are we almost there?' Bonnie asks.

'Pretty close,' Tommy says. 'I just need to remember which turn to take. Darn snaky Malibu streets.'

'It's a left,' Bonnie replies, patient. 'I memorized the map.'

I sit back and enjoy hearing the sound of Bonnie's voice. It is magic to me. Music.

'Here we are.'

We pull up. Elaina and Theresa and Callie come out to greet us, followed by a surprise guest--Kirby.

'Is she here?' Bonnie asks, running up to them.

'Yes.' Elaina smiles. 'She's inside, resting.'

Bonnie heads toward the door at a dead run.

'I see where we stand in the order of things now,' Callie says. 'We are uninteresting, honey-love, uninteresting and old.'

'Speak for yourself, Red,' Kirby chirps. 'I'm going to be young forever.'

'That's because you're going to die before you get old,' Brady drawls, appearing from inside the house.

He and Callie are dating. I remember her telling me about her problems with relationships, about how 'her