Chapter Fifty-Two
The old Dodge Dart rolled to a stop on the road. Through the dirty glass of the passenger window, Helen saw Agnes staring
at her, wide-eyed.
Helen laughed.
Agnes leaned across the seat and unlocked the passenger-side door’s manual lock. Nothing in the old Dart was automatic other
than the music player Agnes had installed herself.
Helen climbed inside and all the two women could manage at first were greetings of hello, said with mutual surprise and relief
and fondness in their voices.
In the rearview mirror, Agnes saw a truck coming up behind her, so she put it back into drive and asked, “Why are you hitchhiking?”
“To get into town to use a phone. I’m going back to Seattle.”
“Oh my God!” Agnes said. “That’s where I’m going today!”
“I guess I’m going with you then.” Helen put her bag and record player in the back seat.
“Thank God,” Agnes said, and they both started to laugh again.
“I read the articles,” Helen said. “Thank you.”
“I was just coming by to check on you. I’m sorry—”
“No, I’m sorry I yelled at you—”
“No!”
“I mean it!”
“It’s fine!”
They were talking over the top of each other when Agnes said, “But what happened?!”
Helen wanted to tell Agnes that, in some ways, what happened was that Agnes had always been a sliver of light reaching into
Helen’s darkest places. It wasn’t just the articles. It was all the times Agnes had shown up again and again. But Helen didn’t
have the strength to explain all of that today. But once she was back in the city and beginning to feel more like herself,
she would drive out and visit her friend. She would tell Agnes everything she had been through, and she would thank her properly.
But today, all Helen said was “Wade’s brother left. And I’m leaving too.”
Agnes was glad to hear it, but she also felt a wave of sadness. That meant Helen wouldn’t be on the other side of a hike any
longer. “Are you okay?”
“Not entirely,” Helen said. “But I will be someday.” She reached over and squeezed Agnes’s hand. “I’ll come visit you once
I get things figured out. I promise.”
That made Agnes feel a little better. She could sense Helen didn’t want to talk about things in detail right now, and even
if she did, Agnes wouldn’t have known exactly what to ask.
So instead, she said, “How about some music?” as she turned the volume up on the stereo.
Helen said, “Music sounds good.”
So the women drove with the country music playing, and after a few songs, Helen asked if they were listening to the same musician
Agnes had shared with her a couple of days ago.
“Yeah,” Agnes said. “He’s on tour in a couple months too. He has a stop in Seattle.”
Helen tried to picture herself crowding by the concert stage with Tyler, leaning her body into his. Since his death, she hadn’t wanted to do any of the things she used to love because she knew it wouldn’t be the same. But then, nothing was the same anymore.
“I’ll go with you.”
Agnes looked over, a grin spreading on her face. “For real?”
Going to a concert with Agnes would be a different version of something Helen used to love. But she’d never know if she could
learn to love it again unless she tried it.
“For real.”
Agnes squeezed the steering wheel in excitement. “I’ll get the tickets tonight!”
Helen smiled, and for the next hour, she watched the trees and the trailers and the No Trespassing signs fly by.
Eventually they rolled into a twenty-five-mile-per-hour speed zone and stopped at a single blinking light to let a semi-truck
loaded with cut timber back out of a driveway. That’s when Helen saw the coil of smoke rising into the sky. Kitty-corner,
a man with a ruddy face and a fleece coat was tending to a burn pile in his front yard.
The flames were so bright.
The man was tossing things into the fire and watching them curl up and disappear into the orange and the black.
The burn pile was so large it made Helen think of her own garden.
She remembered Isaac’s little smile just before she shoved him toward the flames.
It had been a curious thing, that smile he’d given her.
During the last week, it had been a relief not to have to hide her darkness from him, and she exhaled slowly at the thought.
She replayed their final encounter in her mind: how even as she’d been ordering him to leave, he’d still been trying to convince her to join him.
She could picture the disappointment on his face when it became clear she wouldn’t.
She wondered where he was this very instant.
Was he forever burning? Was he still lingering on the outskirts of the living?
She realized she might not ever have those answers; it was probably another thing she would learn to live with.
Suddenly, the country music stopped, and everything fell silent. Or so it seemed at first, but when Helen looked over at Agnes,
she could see the other woman’s mouth was still moving to the song’s words.
And that’s when Helen sensed his presence. It teased down her spine.
He was back.
As the awareness took hold, Helen slowly spun in her seat to face him.
Her impression of Isaac sitting in the back behind the driver’s seat was so faint, Helen could see through him. They held
eye contact for a moment, and then she glared at him. His body grew fainter in response, now barely there.
She turned to face the front. “Agnes, do you see anything?”
“What?”
Helen nodded toward the back seat, and Agnes glanced back. Worry knitted her brow.
“No,” Agnes said. “Should I?”
“No, you shouldn’t.” Helen smiled softly. “Not unless I say so.”
Agnes looked over at Helen, confused, but then the vehicle behind them honked. Agnes had no choice but to pull forward and
continue down the highway.
Helen drew in a quiet breath. Someday she would die and be with Tyler again, but someday wasn’t today or tomorrow or the next
day. She was still going to have to figure out how to carry the pain of missing him. During the last week, there had been
moments when Isaac’s destruction had felt like what she needed.
The road began to wind in a series of sharp turns. Agnes had to keep her eyes glued to the pavement, so she didn’t see Isaac
appear again, now visible because Helen had reached an open palm into the back seat, searching, asking, inviting.
Isaac’s hand, solid now, came forward to clasp Helen’s. Their fingers twisted and intertwined. A dark shiver ran through Helen’s body, and she kind of liked it.
Yet she had already chosen to start a brand-new story for herself that wasn’t cloaked in shadows. She had already decided
the city would be full of so many new things, so many unknown possibilities. She would be able to begin on page one and see
where it led her this time. That was one of the beautiful things about starting over.
Helen squeezed Isaac’s hand hard enough that, for a moment, her fingernails dug into him.
And then she let go.