Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Eight
Ellie is driving, even though it is the middle of the night. No one is anywhere. The streets, the sidewalks, the whole town is empty, as if every single person who lives here has just up and left. The traffic lights keep blinking red, but Ellie doesn’t halt or yield.
No.
This time, she refuses to stop until she finds him.
Click, click, click.
She turns the car, keeps going. He’s somewhere out here. She knows this as much as she knows anything. She feels it deep down inside her, like some telepathic message he’s sent. Where else would he be? He’s not at their home. As far as she knows, he doesn’t have another home here. Is it possible he’s back at his hotel, the one he brought his baggage back to on Sunday night, shortly after their plane landed? But he’s not. Ellie is certain of it. Jonah wouldn’t be sitting and staring at a wall right now, not with everything that’s happening. Everything that has already happened.
Click, click.
She flips on her blinker, even though it isn’t necessary because no one else is on the road. Even so, it’s a hard habit to break—this practiced instinct to let people know where you’re heading, which direction you hope to end up traveling. The car moves past the cafés and tiny shops and charming window displays, the store interiors beyond them black and closed up until morning, the whole world dark and empty and quiet. Her hands set on ten and two like always, Ellie peers through the windows anyway. Please, please, please. She knows any second she will look up and see him, that he’ll be right here in front of her, that together they’ll finally be ready to both apologize and make amends.
Up ahead, a familiar intersection appears. Elm and South. Of course, Ellie thinks. Why hadn’t she thought of it before? This place, this four-way stop that points in every direction and yet more than once has managed to point them right to one another. It makes perfect sense. This is where she will find him. This is where they will meet again.
The car idles beneath her. She peers in her rearview as she approaches the blinking light. No one is behind her. Not yet.
Click, click.
She turns left, arrives at a stop sign, and then turns left again so she can circle the block. She arrives back at the intersection—their intersection—the light ahead still flashing red. Red. Red. A heartbeat. Ellie looks around. No one. She circles again. And then again.
A few minutes later and she finds herself back at the start, the traffic light dangling above her. She only tilts her head down for a second. Just long enough to click on the heat and shake this chill that hasn’t left her alone ever since she was in Bunny’s hospital room. It makes no difference. She doesn’t need her eyes on the road to know that, finally, he’s here. Ellie feels him—his energy, his presence—before she sees him. Even if all her senses simultaneously shut down and stopped working right now, she’d still know that Jonah was close by.
It only takes one second—one small choice—to know she’s made a terrible mistake.
Their eyes catch for half an instant. But she can’t stop. The vehicle moves forward. It all happens too fast.
The car makes contact. Her head slams against the steering wheel. Even so, Ellie sees what has happened. Jonah, in the crosswalk. Jonah, out for a walk, just like he’d said. Jonah, lost and alone in the middle of this tragic night and searching for her, too. The sound of it—both silence and noise—bleeds in her ears.
She bolts from the car and screams out into the night, but no one else can hear.
Jonah, his face young and lineless, his dark, thick hair free from any grays, standing in the middle of the intersection, apologizing again and again and again, and then asking if he could buy her a cup of coffee.
Jonah, lying next to her on her springy apartment bed, both their teeth stained red from wine, and just talking.
Jonah, the orange sun dipping itself into the calm sheet of ocean behind him, the delicate ring placed between his fingers, and the question she always knew he’d ask.
Jonah, wearing his new navy-blue suit and dapper matching bow tie as he stood at the altar, the autumn sunlight smiling down on them through the panels of stained glass, and the way he whispered in her ear before he kissed her. Forever and forever and forever.
Jonah, flipping pancakes in their first apartment—the one with the pleasant back porch and the yellow bathroom tile—and both of them laughing.
Jonah, standing in the unfinished cement basement of their starter home, holding a metal tool he had no clue how to use, water spewing from a pipe overhead, as if they stood together in the rain.
Jonah, trying to look brave even though he was afraid, as he walked back into the hospital room and unpeeled the lid from another lemon Italian ice.
Jonah, his face a bit older, a little patch of grays forming alongside his forehead, as he moved back and forth and back and forth across the porch, carting her parents’ boxes out of the family’s house and moving their boxes inside.
Jonah, chasing Maggie through the living room and pretending to be a monster, one who always hugged and tickled her in the end.
Jonah, seated on the edge of Maggie’s bed, her head down on his chest as she cried and cried and cried about some boy, with Ellie looking on from the hallway.
Jonah, his arms crossed as he stood in their bedroom doorway, watching Ellie toss the laundry all around and then listening—like a verbal gunshot—the first time she said it.
Jonah, beside her on the plane, and watching his seat-back television, pretending.
Jonah, slicing yellow pound cake at Bunny and Frank’s table, and trying. And failing.
Jonah, in the baggage claim, his black wheeled carry-on at his side, not knowing where he was going, or where he’d ultimately end up, or how to say goodbye. I’d still do it all again.
Jonah, in the window seat and handing her a cup of breakfast blend, that small, seemingly insignificant gesture that he knew, even in this strange place, would offer her a small sense of home.
Jonah, the red traffic light blinking. Her foot pressing the gas. And then ...
And then.
And now.
Jonah, in the back of an ambulance. Strangers poking and prodding him and pushing her off to the side. Her own head bleeding, a gash above her brows—but nothing compared to him.
Him.
Eyes closed. No sound. Nothing looking quite right.
“Is he—will he be—”
“Ma’am, please,” the EMT repeats over and over and over as the crew presses and presses and presses their hands against Jonah’s chest—the one where she has rested her head, and where Maggie has rested her head, that hulking, tender cavity.
“I didn’t mean it!” Ellie is screaming. It’s like she’s outside of herself and looking down, as if she’s witnessing someone’s else’s life and tragedy unfold. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen! It was an accident! It was all an accident!”
“Please, ma’am,” the EMT insists again.
“He wasn’t supposed to be there!” she screams out. “We aren’t supposed to be here!”
The EMT doesn’t say anything this time. He’s too preoccupied.
“This isn’t supposed to be our life,” Ellie sobs, but no one is listening. Not really. “This isn’t our real life,” she cries to herself.
Beneath her, the vehicle begins to slow down. It feels like a plane pulling back as it begins its final descent.
“This isn’t real,” she whispers, like a prayer. Or like a wish. “None of this is real.”
The man removes a walkie-talkie from his belt, holds it close to his mouth.
“Dispatch,” he says into his device. “Please prepare for trauma arrival.” He turns, looks at his team. “Everyone ready?” he poses. Please secure your seat-back trays and personal belongings. “We’re almost there.”