With gratitude and love for my sisters:
Jin, Jacqueline, and Juliet
Life begins on the other side of despair.
—JEAN PAUL SARTRE
Winter
There are many versions of a story. Many sides and lenses that can distort, change, illuminate what is seen and unseen. What is heard and unheard. What is felt and unfelt. In the end, truth is but a facet of a diamond, a spark of ray from the sun, a forget-me-not flower seen from the eyes of a bee. What lives and breathes as reality is a perception, so who is to say what is possible and impossible?
Call it fate or simply coincidence, but the shorter version of how I found you begins like this. There was a dark speck on the side of the barren winter road that grew larger and larger as I drove closer. Expanding from a dot to a stone to a tree stump until I screeched to a halt. A few dozen feet away from a headless coat turtle-shelled on top of the snow. Both of my hands released the steering wheel and coned over my mouth. Was it a body? There was no movement. I slowly opened the door and stepped out. Had someone frozen and died overnight? It wouldn’t have been the first time that something like that happened around here. I took a step forward, and then another, the fragile crack of ice and gravel rippling through me. My breath misted before my face.
A head emerged.
I shouted in fright. “You scared the hell out of me!” A large vapor cloud formed as I exhaled long and slow.
Your disheveled black hair framed your face, petite, round. It was hard to tell how old you were, but something about your eyes told me you were older than you looked.
Slowly unfurling each limb as though in pain, you stood up.
I walked forward in relief.
“You looked like a dead body.”
Your brows gathered as you lifted and dropped your shoulders before bowing your head slightly. “Sorry.”
Then a brief wave of your hand and you started walking down the side of the road.
“Do you need a ride?” I called to your back. You stopped. “I’m on my way to town,” I said.
You gazed back, your eyes roaming my face before you turned and kept walking down the long cold road. Away from me.
• • •
That is the short version of how we met. You didn’t tell me then why you were so tired that you had to rest hiding inside your coat by the side of the road, but since then, after meeting again, you have shared a few of your truths. The longer story of us is like the horizon. We can only know what we see, and all that we wish we could understand is beyond vision.
Spring
The alarm beats relentlessly into my mind and I choke for air, ragged heaves pushing in and out as though I have been underwater far too long. My hand moves swiftly to turn off the incessant noise. The soft morning light flickers into my eyes before I close them again. The fading remnants of my dream, my mother’s face, haunt me. They come and go like spring rains, sometimes light and steady, sometimes fleeting mist, and then the occasional, torrential downpour. Her profile lights my mind. The dark line of her eyebrow. The labyrinth swirls of her ear. The gentle round of her nose and the sharp blade of her jawline.
In my worst moments, I wish her dead. At least then I could truly mourn. But to be missing for such a long time without any sign, lost or dead, just a name in the police data bank . . . The yearning for clarity sifts through me until all that lingers is the cancer of uncertainty. I have only the briefest memories, and these dreams, to tell me that she even existed at all. I glance over at the clock and finally force myself out of bed. The routine for school, if nothing else, is comforting in its predictability.
In the kitchen, I make the coffee and pour two cups. Cradling my hot mug, I check the outdoor thermometer from the window above the sink. Fourteen degrees. It has got to warm up any day now. I have said this for the last two weeks and the average temperature still hovers at twenty. The wind rattles the window above the sink.
“Nineteen.”
I turn around and find Dad standing in the doorway, dressed for work.
“Close,” I say. “Fourteen.”
Dad throws his blue tie over one shoulder and walks to the counter for his coffee and his laptop.
“You look tired this morning, Grace.” Dad tips his head to the side as he stares into my face. I lower my eyes and turn away from his hawk gaze.
“Just dreams, Dad,” I say lightly. “And I have midterms coming up.”
I can feel his focus shifting away, since he’s satisfied with my answer.
“Maybe you should cut back on some hours at the lab, Gracie.”
I don’t bother to respond. The internship at Genentium is coveted by high schoolers looking for a way into the best colleges. I know that the other interns and doctors there think I landed a spot because of Dad, who works on the corporate end, and that means constantly proving I belong. But Dad doesn’t understand or maybe doesn’t care. He is too busy already at his computer, buried in the database of the National Missing and Unidentified Persons Systems site, checking his e-mails, his science journals online.
His winter pallor makes him look tired too, though most people couldn’t tell you if he had a tan or not because of his darker complexion. For a white man, that is. But then who can say if he really is white? With his olive skin tone and coarse black curly hair, he could be part black or Southeast Asian or Native American
