The tape dispenser he has no patience for. The kitchen table stained with rings. The stairs where he kissed her, where she was reclined and uncomfortable but loving every second until Rebecca had appeared, Pick a room for crying out loud. The whole house is a trap. And so a call is made, and Olivia’s father tells her that there will be another plane ticket waiting, and Rebecca vows to call in to Olivia’s work and say her flight got canceled, that she needs more time.
Numb, Olivia leaves her suitcase packed in a corner, ready to go as if the trip were just about to begin, as if the city had been right and nothing had happened. The only difference is the unopened gift from Delan’s father, which gets placed against the wall.
Sweaters thrown into a duffel bag. Heavy jeans and close-toed shoes. Everything now for Washington, where the weather will match her mood. All the film will go with her, as well—all but that one roll, which she places in a box under her bed. And then the next day, she heads toward Rebecca’s car. Pink azaleas line the path, blooms edged in white.
From the porch, Mason yells, “You’re coming back, right? Wait, you leave a check?”
“Ignore him,” Rebecca tells her.
“What?” Mason says. “We have the mortgage—”
But Rebecca cuts him off with a firm “shut the fuck up” and nudges Olivia’s arm. “You take your time, love.”
The plan is to create contact sheets and take it from there; a friend of her father’s on the island is a photographer and already agreed to lend her his darkroom. Maybe it will help. But as the plane thunders into the sky, it occurs to her that if they crashed, last moments captured on film would be lost forever. Soran. To lose even one image of him would be a tragedy, but there is Miriam as well. That photo Olivia took of her holding a sleeping Lailan, the love on her face. That was the evening of the raid, only hours before, and though Miriam lived, it was in some ways a last moment as well. What if that was lost? Panic bolts through her, and the man beside her assumes she’s afraid of flying and insists on buying her a drink when they reach cruising altitude. She downs it in a teeth-freezing head tilt.
“I used to be afraid too,” he says, signaling the stewardess for two more.
“And then what?”
“Oh. I guess one day I just wasn’t.”
She turns back to the window. “I’m not afraid of flying. It’s not me I care about.”
He laughs, and she turns to him, confused.
“Sorry,” he says. “I just realized. That’s how I stopped being afraid of flying. My wife left me, and I didn’t care if I lived or died. Made travel a cinch.” He hands her the new drink and raises his in a toast. “All I have to say is sometimes you gotta boil it down and just do the bare minimum: live. That’s it. All that’s required.”
Liv. She thanks the man and hears Delan’s voice as the window grows blinding with restless, cloud-trapped sun. Sometimes living is all you have to do.
Maybe it’s the clouds, maybe it’s the exhaustion, but sleep is sudden and heavy and when she wakes, it’s the end of the flight and the man beside her appears to be dreaming, his eyes moving behind closed lids. She watches him for a moment, this stranger who told her living was all she had to do, glad to be the one observing and not the one observed. Then she spots three freckles on his cheek, and the urge to connect them into a triangle is so overwhelming, she has to sit on her hands. Maybe she should find a pen and do it. A story to tell Delan at some point.
When her father meets her at the gate in Seattle, there is a hug that lasts so long, the people around them stare. Her arms are at her sides until he squeezes her tight. One squeeze, as if he knows she needs some cue to let go. And she does. Lifting her arms around him, she feels the shoulder of his sweater dampen beneath her cheek. People around give them a wide berth.
“This looks like a long goodbye,” her father says when at last they pull apart.
In Baghdad, she’d walked away with goodbye held back. Refused the word as if its denial meant another day would be ensured. As if not saying it rendered their separation a mere pause. Already it’s a regret she has, because the omission now feels reckless. Presumptuous. What if that was it? Kurds say goodbye for too long. There’s nothing worse. And then she’s thinking of Soran and knows of course that Delan was wrong. Because there is something worse—when goodbye never gets said at all.
The ferry with its wet floor and churning heart. The salted air. The petunias that line the boardwalk. Dark clouds fume on the horizon, leaving but never gone, and still puddles reflect branches and stop signs and windows of buildings. Everything is familiar, and that familiarity is double-edged. To have a place you can go, a place that is known and safe, where you can take deep breaths and finish dreaming and not fear something at your back, it’s a sort of miracle. And to go through life never having seen that as a miracle, that in itself is miraculous. Everything a fun house series of good fortunes, a growing recognition that slows Olivia’s steps and makes her pause a bit too long before remembering to answer when someone says hello.
At night, they have mussels with
