Chapter 25 Reece #2
“I sat with it. Made myself sit with it. Made myself think about what the next five years of my life look like in the staying version and what they look like in the going version. I made myself think about what Sara not having me looks like. I made myself think about what my mother… my mother does not have very many years left where she will know who I am. I have to decide whether the years she has left of knowing me are years she has me, even if I am at a distance, even if I am bad at calling, or whether the years she has left of knowing me are years where she knows I am dead. I had to think about that.”
I don’t say anything.
“And I thought about it. All of it. The Ph.D. My apartment. The bench. Min. Priya. Hellman. Every piece of the life I have in this town — specifically, in detail, the way you think about something when you’re saying goodbye to it.
I made myself say goodbye before I decided.
I didn’t want to decide and then say goodbye.
I wanted to say goodbye and then decide.
I wanted to know what it felt like to lose those things and then choose, having felt it. ”
“Yeah.”
“And then I sat with the staying version. The version where I stay. I sat with it for a week — what it would be like to be in this apartment in five years without you. With a Ph.D., a job, Sara coming to visit at Christmas, my mother in the home, the life I have, intact. I didn’t sit with it as the bad option.
I sat with it as a real option. Staying is a real life.
It’s the life I’d been building for two years. It’s not nothing.”
I let him have the silence.
“And…“
He stops. We are walking. The beach has curved and we are now walking back toward where we parked, at an angle, the wind on our left side. The dog and its couple are nowhere. There is no one on the beach but us.
“And I could not do it.”
“You could not stay.”
“I couldn’t stay. At the end of the week, staying was the version where I keep my sister, my mother, my degree, my apartment — a thousand small things.
And I lose you. I kept running it and it kept coming out the same.
The thousand small things aren’t the one big thing.
The one big thing is you. And it weighs more.
Not by a little. By a lot. The math isn’t close.
It’s not a hard call. I’d been telling myself it was hard because the cost was high.
The cost is high. But the cost being high doesn’t make the call hard.
The call has been clear for weeks. I was just sitting with the cost. I needed to. And I have. And I’m coming.”
“Okay.”
“That is the why.”
I look at him. I look at him and his eyes are wet, from the wind, partly, but not only from the wind.
I can tell which is which. He is letting his eyes be wet.
He is not crying in a way that is a thing.
He is just letting the wind do what the wind does and letting his face do what his face does and he is looking at me.
I’ve been the kind of person, for the last twenty minutes, who’s been letting him talk.
I’d thought my job was to listen. And I have listened.
I’ve heard him say I am coming and I have decided and the call is not close.
I’ve been carrying it. Now I have to do the other thing.
I stop walking. He stops walking. I look at him.
“Griffin.”
“Yeah.”
“I am going to ask you something. Before. Before Monday. Before Mendez. Before this becomes a thing.”
“Okay.”
“It is not the thing I would have asked you three months ago.”
“What would you have asked three months ago.”
“I would have asked whether to let you. I would have asked whether I was supposed to talk you out of it. I would have had a speech ready. I had the speech ready last week. I’d been working on it.
It was a good speech. It was about how I was the person who had left you once and had to be the person who decided not to do it again, even if doing it again was letting you come, even if the letting was the new version of the leaving.
Because I’d told myself the version of me who has learned anything is the version who would say no, do not come, I will go alone, you keep your sister, you keep your mother, you keep the life. “
“Reed.”
“I am not giving the speech.”
“Okay.”
“I’m telling you I had it ready. Telling you because I want you to know I had it ready and I’m not giving it.
I’m not giving it because I told you in the dark three weeks ago that leaving was off the table, and the speech was leaving in a different coat.
I almost didn’t see it. I saw it on Wednesday.
I’ve been sitting with it since. I’m putting the speech down on this beach.
Telling you I had it and that I’m not giving it — telling you so you know what it cost me not to give it.
Not giving the speech is the new not-sending. ”
He is looking at me.
“Okay,” he says.
“Okay.”
“Reed.”
“Yeah.”
“I was waiting for the speech.”
“You knew.”
“I knew you had one. I have been watching you have one for a week. I had been waiting to hear it. I had been getting ready to hear it and to say no.”
“You would have said no.”
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
“I am glad you did not give it.”
“I am glad I did not give it.”
He puts his hands on my face. His gloves are cold. He kisses me. He kisses me on the beach in the wind and his face is cold and his mouth is warm and he kisses me like he’s been holding something for three weeks and can put it down now.
“Reed.”
“Yeah.”
“Tell me your name.”
I look at him.
“What.”
“Your name. Your real name. The full name. The one on the gravestone. The one Mendez has.”
“Griffin…“
“You haven’t told me. Reed. You’ve told me everything else.
About the funeral. About Mendez. About your mother and the soup and the kitchen.
You’ve given me the whole inside of it. And you haven’t given me the name.
You’ve been carrying it. I want it. I want it before we go.
I want it because I’m about to get a different one, and I’m not going to carry yours into the new one if you don’t want me to.
I’m not going to write it down. I’m not going to say it again after today.
I just want you to give it to me. Once. So I have it.
So when I’m old, here, with the new name, I’ll have had your name. The real one.”
I look at him. The wind is in my eyes. I close them. I open them.
“Reece,” I say. “Reece Coletti.”
He looks at me.
“Reece Coletti.”
“Yes.”
“That is your name.”
“That was. That is what is on the stone. That is the name my mother gave me. Yeah.”
“Reece Coletti.”
“Yes.”
He says it once more, quiet, to himself: Reece Coletti.
He nods.
“Okay,” he says.
He puts his arms around me. He puts his arms around me on the beach and he holds me. He holds me hard. He holds me for a long time. The wind is in my hair and his chin is against my shoulder and his arms are around me and I am letting him hold me. After a while I say, into his coat, “Griffin.”
“Yeah.”
“There is one more thing.”
“Okay.”
“It is the thing we have not said out loud. It is the thing Mendez has not said out loud either, and I want us to say it on this beach, before we go anywhere, before any of the rest, so that we have said it.”
“Okay.”
“They are still out there.”
He does not move.
“The people who are looking. The case closed two years ago. Some of them went to prison. Most of them did not. The ones who did not are, as far as the program knows, still there. Still operational. Still the kind of people who, if they came across the right thread, would pull on it. The move to the new town does not mean they are gone. The move means we are harder to find. It does not mean we are unfindable. The new names do not mean unfindable. The new town does not mean unfindable. The program told me this in the second briefing two years ago, and the program told me it again last week. I haven’t been saying it to you because I had been telling myself you knew. ”
“I knew.”
“Did you.”
“Reed. I knew. I’ve known for three weeks. I’ve known since the call with Mendez when he said significantly weaker. Since he said easier to find. I’ve known. I just hadn’t said it.”
“Okay.”
“I have been thinking about it the whole time I have been deciding.”
“Okay.”
“You think I have been deciding without that information. I have not. I have been deciding with it. I have been deciding because of it. The version where I stay and you go is not the version where you are safer. It is the version where I am safer. You are still findable. You are still a person someone could find. I am going with you because if they find you, I would rather be in the room when they do than be in this apartment finding out about it from a phone call. That is part of why. I have not said it because saying it sounds dramatic. It is not dramatic. It is the truth. I have been thinking it through the whole time.”
I look at him.
“Griffin.”
“Yeah.”
“I’d been telling myself you didn’t know.”
“I know you had.”
“I’d been telling myself I was protecting you from knowing.”
“I know.”
“I am going to stop telling myself that.”
“Okay.”
“You knew.”
“I knew.”
“And you are coming.”
“And I am coming.”
We stand on the beach. The wind is doing what the wind does.
The dog and the couple in down jackets are nowhere on the visible beach anymore.
The sky over the lake is the gray it has been for the whole walk and is going to be for another hour, and then it is going to start going gold, and we will be in the car by then.
“There is no version where we are safe,” I say.
“There is no version where anyone is safe.”
“That is not true.”
“It’s functionally true. There’s no version where the people I love are safe from anything.
My mother isn’t safe from her mind. Sara isn’t safe from a car accident.
You aren’t safe from the people who are looking.
I’m not safe from any of those things either.
The list of things people aren’t safe from is the entire list. I’m not picking you because picking you is safe.
I’m picking you because picking you is what I want.
Safety isn’t the calculation I’m doing. I’m doing a different one.
It has come out the same way every time. ”
I don’t answer for a long second.
“Say it.”
“I am choosing you knowing they are still out there.”
He waits.
“I am choosing you because they are still out there. The whole reason I am choosing you is that the time is finite and the safety is fake and the only thing that’s real is what we do with the time. I’m choosing you because — the time.”
“And you are choosing me knowing it.”
“I’m choosing you knowing it. I’ve been choosing you knowing it. For three months.”
He nods, in the cold.
He kisses my forehead. He puts his arm around my shoulder. We start walking back.