“What are you, my keeper?” I don’t want to explain the inexplicable.
“It’s that dream, isn’t it?”
I sigh, feeling my defenses crumble. All I can tell her now is the sad truth. “I can’t let go of it. I know it’s crazy—that I’m crazy—but the pictures are so familiar. I know how it smells there and feels there, how the mist floats up from the grass in the morning. How do I know these things? Maybe when you develop my film, I’ll get an answer. ” It’s the dream I’ve clung to.
As I say the words, I see my sister frown. It’s a quick expression, there and gone, but if there’s one thing sisters recognize in each other, it’s a secret being kept. “What?”
“What what?”
“You’re hiding something from me, and, given that your last big secret was my husband, I’m . . . ”
Stacey stands. Turning away, she walks out of the room. A few moments later she’s back, carrying a manila envelope. “Here. ”
I take it from her, though if I had two good legs, my instinct is to run. “I won’t like this, will I?”
“No. ” Stacey’s voice is soft; that makes me more nervous.
I open the envelope and find photographs inside. I look up at Stacey, who shakes her head.
“I’m sorry. ”
The envelope drops from my grasp. I turn through the pictures. When I get to the few taken in the airport, I gasp. T
here’s the plane, before the crash, and the crowd of hunters waiting to board, and the interior before takeoff. Riegert, giving his buddy the thumbs up.
After that, nothing.
No photos of the lodge or the rainforest or the lake. No spiderwebs dripping with dew, no clusters of old growth trees and the giant ferns at their feet. Just twenty-nine empty gray pictures.
“I wasn’t there,” I say slowly, feeling it for the first time.
“I’m sorry, Joy,” Stacey says after a moment, “but you have a real life here. And people who love you. Rayla says students ask about you every day. ”
I can hear my sister talking, but the words are like smoke, drifting past me. All I can think about is the boy who made me promise to stay for Christmas. My heart feels like it’s breaking down the middle; it’s hard to breathe. It takes all my self-control not to cry at the smoky, blank photographs. Still, I know what I’m supposed to say, what she wants to hear. “I’m sure everything will be fine when I start working again. ”
“Don’t you miss it?’
It takes me a minute to hear her. I look up. “Miss what?”
“The library. You used to love it. ”
I know Stacey hears herself say love it; all I hear is used to. “What I love doesn’t seem to exist. ”
“You’re starting to scare me. ”
“Join the club, little sister. ”
It is amazing how quickly a bone can heal. If only the heart were as durable. A little plaster, two months of bed rest, and voila! your broken heart is mended. I wish it were true.
By late February, I am moving well again. My headaches are all but gone and my leg is coming along nicely, according to the battalion of doctors who oversee my care. They urge me to consider returning to work, though, to be honest, I have trouble contemplating my future.
It’s because of the nights.
Alone in my bed, I can’t control or corral my thoughts. In sleep, I dream about the Comfort Lodge and Daniel and Bobby.
Even during the stark, bright daylight hours, I have problems. No matter what I’m supposed to be doing, I keep drifting northward in my mind. Everything reminds me of the pseudo-memories I can’t let go of.
My psychiatrist—the newest member of the post-crash-save-Joy-team tells me that what I’ve experienced is not that uncommon. Apparently lots of head cases are head cases, if you know what I mean.