* * *
Later that day, Mack finally emerges from the shadowed woods of the dirt road. Dust rises beneath his pickup truck’s tires. The road ahead is empty. There’s only the low afternoon sun shining on green lawns and the distant Sound. Rounding a curve and seeing his family’s shingled cottage, Mack pulls his truck into the packed-lawn driveway and sits back with a long breath. It’s as though he’d been holding that breath the whole drive here. Finally getting out, he walks around to the truck bed and lifts the duffel he packed with a few changes of clothes.
And looks up when someone must’ve spotted him and calls out his name.
“Mack! Good to see you,” Rafe yells as he and Rosa cross the dirt road.
“Rafe. Rosa,” Mack says, putting down his duffel and resettling his baseball cap on his head.
His neighbors stop at the edge of his lawn, keeping a safe distance between themselves and Mack. “Where’s Avery?” Rosa asks. “Inside already? I’d love to say hello.”
Mack glances back at his cottage. “No.” He looks at Rosa and turns up his hands. “Avery’s not here, Rosa. She’s not well, actually.”
“She’s not?” Rosa takes a step closer. “Mack?”
Mack shakes his head. “Of course you’d have no way of knowing. After our honeymoon, well, she got sick. With that virus.”
“No!” Rafe exclaims, right as Rosa gasps a surprised breath.
Mack nods. “She did. Happened about a week after we were home, when she started coughing. And came down with a fever, too. It wasn’t good.”
“Oh my God,” Rafe says. “Mack, we’re so sorry. Is she okay?”
“No,” Mack tells them. “Avery’s not doing too well right now.”
When Mack pauses, his friends are silent—but they don’t take their eyes off him as they wait for more.
“We thought at first that maybe she caught it at the wedding,” Mack goes on. “There were a lot of people there. But we investigated, and all our guests were fine.”
“Good, that’s good, Mack,” Rosa says, her hands clasped close.
“Right. So it wasn’t that,” Mack assures her. “And when we were here at Hatchett’s Point, we were pretty much isolated. Which meant she caught it after we got home. And then with contact tracing we got our answer. Right after our honeymoon, Avery stopped at the post office to pick up our held mail, from when we were away.”
Rafe’s voice drops. “Oh, no.”
Mack nods. “Yeah. The post office followed all safety protocols with social distancing, and mask wearing. But the line to get in was long that morning. And even though only a few people were allowed in at a time, other cases of the virus have been traced back to that same location.”
“This is just terrible news,” Rosa says.
“We did everything we could then.” Mack shakes his head. “Once she got sick, Avery quarantined at home. And I did, too.”
“You’re okay?” Rafe asks.
“I am. I have no symptoms, and tested for the virus a few times. All the results were negative.” Mack takes a long breath. “I think it helped that Avery and I did our best to stay apart, the best we could. And we wore masks, even at home. Then? It seemed like she was improving after a couple of weeks. The fever broke. Her cough stopped.”
“That’s good, no?” Rosa asks, her voice hopeful.
“We thought so, Rosa. We did. Avery even began writing thank-you cards to our wedding guests. Did some work at home, too. A little bit. But one afternoon, she took a turn for the worse.” Mack chokes up then. “I won’t go into details, but it happened fast. When her cough suddenly came back, it was debilitating. Avery found it hard to even breathe. An ambulance brought her to the hospital a few days ago.”
“I am just devastated to hear this, Mack.” As she says it, Rosa’s eyes fill with tears.
“I know. Me, too. We all are.” Mack quiets before going on. “The worst of it is that she was intubated yesterday.”
Rafe steps closer. “You mean, she’s on a ventilator?”
“She is, Rafe.”
“But—” Rosa looks past Mack as though Avery will be coming out the cottage door, maybe. “It’s so hard to believe. I just saw her a month ago. Poor, sweet Avery.”
Mack picks up his duffel. “I’ll be staying here for a while and will let you know how she’s doing.”
“You can’t even go see her at the hospital, can you?” Rafe asks.
“No,” Mack answers. “No visitors allowed. The doctors will reach me here.”
“Mack.” Rafe turns up his hands. “If there’s anything we can do.”
“Thank you, Rafe.” Mack gives a wave, picks up a cooler, too, out of his truck and heads inside the cottage.
* * *
Later in the evening, Mack manages to eat a piece of lasagna with a small salad. Alone in the cottage, he washes and dries the blue stoneware plates. As he does, he looks out the kitchen window to the backyard. The sun is going down, leaving long shadows on the green lawn. Mack grabs a dishtowel and dries his hands, then stands at the slider door to the deck.
And breathes. In and out. In and out.
Which gets him panicked, as he no doubt imagines Avery’s own struggle. The machine breathing for her now. So he puts a sweatshirt on over his tee and cargo shorts before heading out across the yard toward the beach. His steps are quick as he rushes through the sandy path. The dune grasses rustle in the evening air. Those sweeping grasses brush against him, and at one point, he swats them back.
By the time he’s on the beach, he’s winded. So he stops there to get his bearings, looking down the length of the twilight beach. It’s empty at this hour.
After a moment, Mack walks, then trots across the sand, over the tideline, straight to the water. The waves are small tonight, lapping again and again. At the water’s edge, he kicks off his boat shoes and walks right in. He’s clumsy, splashing through the shallows until he’s deep enough to scoop up handfuls of water and throw them on his face, his neck—sobbing as he does. He stands there, knee-deep, his face bent into his cupped hands, his shoulders heaving. In time, he lifts one more handful of the sea and splashes his face again, then drags his wet hands through his hair.
Before turning away, he steps deeper into the water and stops to look out at the horizon. The twilight sky is lavender above the dark blue Sound. An undercurrent tugs at his legs. Dipping his fingers into the salt water, Mack lifts them dripping and blesses himself—right there beneath that evening sky.
* * *
Mack leaves the beach.
There’s no urgency to his steps now. If anyone were to see him, they would see a man depleted. With his shoes hooked onto his fingers, he walks barefoot on the sandy path through the beach grasses, which seem to have stilled. Not one blade moves as fireflies rise from the dunes. When he emerges onto the lawn, the cottage up ahead is dark. It’s only a black silhouette against the evening sky. Crossing the sloping lawn, Mack approaches the cottage, steps onto the deck and goes inside through the slider.
The rooms in the cottage are silent. No movement. No voices.