He had all the focus he needed, all the Quiet, too much Quiet to hang on to any thought, the focus so tight he couldn’t even see what he was looking at, which was his foot, pinned by the mechanism that siphoned the two tracks to one or the one track to two, he wasn’t sure, and it didn’t matter and he knew he should move, and told his legs to step, to step, and was it his foot or his shoe that was caught, maybe he had time to get the shoe off, to leave the shoe behind, but untying his shoe was everything, was too much, his focus had narrowed to his shoelace and his phone’s flashlight on his shoelace and it was a Gordian knot, a Gaelic complication, a labyrinthian impossibility, and in the Quiet there was a clanging, and in the Quiet he knew this shoe was not coming off, and he stepped back with his other foot, and in the Quiet the train spun him with noise and light, spun him tight in his blanket, and he fell.
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
JULIE
Julie had managed to alienate her entire family. Her daughter slept at her weird activist commune headquarters, furious with her. Her son was who knew where, furious with her. Val was camping in their daughter’s bedroom, leaving before Julie woke, timing her evenings to avoid Julie, furious with her. Julie tried to accommodate the anger, tried not to enter a room where Val might be; she’d rather not see her wife than watch her stand and walk away.
She had no idea how everything had gone so wrong. Every day was an exercise in wrongness, wrong piled on top of wrong. There had to be something she could say or do to bring them back. Mere apology wasn’t doing it; she had tried that. Nobody answered her calls.
The anger couldn’t last forever; she didn’t think so, anyway. Family; family lasted forever. Good family, anyhow. A part of her thought this was punishment for the way she’d shut her own parents out. That was different; that was survival. That was the family she’d been born into, and this was the family they’d created out of nothing. Created family, bound by love and promises and blood and tears and laughter. Why had it seemed so much stronger? Family was the shelter and the storm, both at once, an impossible thing that didn’t seem impossible. You assume your house is sturdy until the roof rips off and leaves you in the rain.
So she carried on. She went to work, she paid the bills, she waited for someone to come through the door and sit with her and tell her she hadn’t ruined them. She had the sinking feeling that she was the storm.
Her cooking had, for the first time in her life, begun to improve. Cooking turned out to be yet another thing that wanted attention and practice. She’d always thought of it as a chore like mowing the lawn or cleaning the grout, a thing you did to have it done. In this time when none of her normal coping mechanisms proved adequate, she found comfort in the subskills of food preparation. She watched videos explaining proper knife technique, explaining the chemistry and alchemy of baking and the smoke points of various oils.
Tonight she’d attempted a galette, which was a thing like a savory pie but slightly different, free-form on a cookie tray instead of in a pie dish, which was a thing she knew they had somewhere but had not been able to find. It had thinly sliced yams, yams she’d sliced relatively evenly and only undercooked slightly, and goat cheese, which she’d bought specially, and caramelized onions, which she’d almost had enough patience for. The result was lumpy and misshapen but she’d cooked it right, and it tasted as close to delicious as she’d ever gotten. She wanted desperately for someone to arrive home and try it, to recognize in its flavors that she had always meant well and loved them all unconditionally.
She carved a large piece and left the rest on a trivet by the stove for a family that wouldn’t come for it. Sat on the couch—the table was for family, and hers was achingly absent—and turned the television to a rerun of a show she and Val liked to watch. She couldn’t bear to watch a new episode; it seemed like a violation of rules that she was the only one left keeping. Except she’d been the one to violate other, bigger rules. This was all her fault, despite her good intentions.
The door to Sophie’s room opened, and Julie felt sudden hope that the scents of onions and butter and dough had drawn Val. She wanted to say There’s dinner, but any invitation could be rebuffed, and that would feel infinitely worse than being ignored.
Val came downstairs, to the actual room Julie was in, and Julie turned, but the expression on Val’s face was wrong. “David’s in the emergency room. Something about a train.”
Julie was on her feet in an instant, her plate on the floor.
They didn’t talk. Julie’s car was closest, but she passed her keys, because she had too many questions, like which hospital, and what about a train, what did that even mean. Easier to let Val drive than ask those questions and potentially get answers to them.
Val wasn’t a speeder,
