Hannah looked up to see her enter. “Hi,” she whispered back.
“Are you okay?”
Hannah shook her head, no, new tears brimming. “Are you?”
Vivian shrugged, gave a sad smile as she moved into the chair across from Hannah. “We’re setting him free,” she said. Her eyes welled. “I don’t want to. I don’t want to.” She looked so old in the fragile light, as if loss made gravity stronger, stretching faces, casting shadows. She caressed Henry’s face and Hannah imagined how many times she must have done that when he was just a newborn in her arms.
“The doctor will be in soon,” Vivian said.
“I can go,” Hannah said, though it was the last thing she wanted. “If you want to be alone.”
Vivian reached across Henry’s chest. “Stay,” she said, grabbing Hannah’s hand and squeezing. “He would want you here. I want you here. It won’t be much longer.”
A nurse came in quietly, double-checked if they were ready. A morphine drip and sedative were added, explained. The nurse’s kindness brought on fresh tears. They waited. Hannah clung to each moment. Even as she suffered in the terrible anticipation, it seemed better than the finality. She forced herself to watch when the nurse unplugged the respirator, to bear witness to the end of everything that mattered to her. It was suddenly strikingly quiet. Her hand left Vivian’s, found Henry’s again. She watched his peaceful, undisturbed face. I love you, Henry, she thought. It’s going to be okay now. His body gave a small shudder beneath her hand.
“He’s going,” Vivian said.
They each kissed his face and Hannah clutched his hand tight so he would know she was there.
“Goodbye, Henry,” she whispered.
Goodbye.
EPILOGUE
They buried Henry on a quiet blue day in July amid mourners whose grief had been suspended for so many years it became relief. The four of them seemed to inhabit their own atmosphere, private and removed. Maya did not recognize herself as she moved through the ceremony, how subdued she could be. Beside her, Hannah was stoic, her shoulders pushed back as though she were once again at the bow of that whale-watching boat, at war with a fear that extended in every direction and beyond the horizon. Blue and Renee were calm, quiet presences throughout and, like Maya, watchful as spotters should Hannah fall apart. She did not.
When it was Maya’s turn to say goodbye, she approached the casket, put her hands on the wood and imagined it as a small ship taking Henry on an adventure into another world. An ache of grief, pure and uncomplicated, filled her, felt not entirely bad, somehow satisfying in its truthfulness. It was as if memory had finally attached to some free-floating torment she’d been wrestling with, made it into an enemy more knowable and defined. For twelve years Henry had become something bigger and more nebulous in her mind, lived inside her as a formless accusation, an abrasion of guilt on her conscience. Now that he was gone, she could remember him as more than the constant quiet reminder of that night; she could remember him as her friend.
There would be no return to innocence. If she’d hoped, which of course she had, that the damage those men had inflicted would die with him, she was quick to realize it would not. It would never be fully gone for her, for any of them. It would sometimes be bigger and sometimes be smaller, but it was impossible to remove the psychic shrapnel of that singular bullet. Their bodies absorbed it, functioned around it.
And maybe innocence was overrated and resilience the opposite. Maybe there was beauty, not in suffering itself, but in the depth of intimacy it fostered with other people. Maybe that was the trade. She could tell herself that anyway. She could make it be real.
That night after the funeral, they crashed at Hannah’s apartment and stayed up late sharing warm, funny memories of Henry. Maya tried not to think about anything but the present—not the eviction notice awaiting her, not Andy back in Montauk, not the yawning future or how little she understood of what she would do about any of it. For the next few days at least, she’d be staying on with Hannah to make sure she was okay.
* * *
The following day the four of them woke up late to the sun banging at the windows. Blue and Renee brought their bags down to the rental car and hugged Maya and Hannah goodbye.
Blue was, more than anything, relieved to be going home. It had all been so much and she needed time alone to process. Still, she was happy to have the company of Renee for several hours as she drove her back to Connecticut. She’d send a service to pick up Renee’s car at Nana’s, have it delivered to Renee’s house. They were both too drained to take on the extra drive time themselves.
They were not suddenly back to being best friends. The deep trust they once shared had been shattered, for Blue, on that night long ago. Even if she wanted it to, her heart would not open too wide for Renee. But she was beginning to understand that life had a lot of pain and loss in it, so when the potential for repair was there, she should try to take it. She would leave space for something new to grow, not expect too much, nor dismiss the possibility of what could be.
When they reached Renee’s, Blue parked the car and they sat for a moment.
“I wish we could just keep driving,” Renee said.
“I can take a few more spins around the block,” Blue offered.
Renee smiled sadly. “Not far enough.” She flipped the visor mirror down and began to fix her hair. Her dress, the one she’d worn the day she arrived in Montauk, was wrinkled, her face drawn from sleeplessness, her makeup faded, and yet somehow she looked younger, or at least less guarded. She pulled out her lipstick, then sighed. “Hopeless,” she said as she shoved it back into her purse without bothering to reapply it.
She glanced up at the house she shared with Darrin and back to Blue as if reminding herself there was someone there, more in her life than just him. “You think I should leave him, don’t you?”
“You’re asking my opinion on a love relationship?” Blue replied with a laugh. “I don’t know what you should do.”
“Part of me thinks I should just run. The other part of me thinks that’s what I always do. I don’t know which instinct is right. Either could be.”
“I guess you’ll know what you’re going to do when you do it,” Blue said.
Renee nodded. “Yeah. We’ll see what he says when I confront him.” She puffed up her cheeks, blew her bangs up on a big exhale. “This should be fun. I haven’t even told him I’m pregnant yet.”
“Good luck,” Blue said. “You’ve got this. Let me know how it goes.”
Renee climbed out of the car, ducked her head back in, smiled. “Thanks.”
As Blue drove back to Manhattan, she imagined what was happening inside that house, whether Renee had walked in and confronted Darrin or whether she had paused just outside the door, pulled out her compact, reapplied her lipstick, put on her Renee smile, and said nothing. Blue was sure she knew what she would do if it were her, but everyone was always sure what they would do in a hypothetical.