“They’re your lungs,” said 4B. “Just stay downwind.”
She heard the hiss of a match and the long draw of a breath before the faint smell of smoke wisped her way. Most of the smoke was floating away from her, so she didn’t complain.
4B glanced again at Ship, who stared at the lit end of the cigarette she held.
“I gave these things up twenty-three years ago.”
“Oh?” asked 4B, knowing the story would follow.
“Yeah. Macie wouldn’t stop hounding me. Kicked it cold turkey, just so she’d stop nagging me. This here is my fifth pack since Saturday.”
“That isn’t good for you. I’m telling you as a doctor and a friend.”
“Probably not,” replied Ship taking another long drag and blowing the smoke away from 4B. “You want to hear something stupid?”
Besides picking up smoking again after almost a quarter of a century? 4B wanted to ask, but she didn’t. It was just concern she felt. She didn’t need to be shitty, even though she felt more snappish and edgy as each day without Nora dragged by.
“Sure,” she said instead.
“I keep thinking Macie’s ghost will appear and kick my ass for picking it up again.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Nora heard Ship suck a lungful of smoke in, hold it in, and then blow it out. “But she hasn’t. And I’m kinda pissed off about that.” There was a long pause. Without turning to look at her, 4B imagined Ship leaning against the rail, eyes half squinted as her mind turned. “I really thought she would have come back to give me a sign or something, you know? But I don’t feel her. I haven’t seen her ghost, I haven’t heard her voice. Not even a sign she’s hovering around me, looking out. Not a single sign. And that’s what pisses me off.”
4B was intrigued about the otherwise practical woman’s belief in ghosts, but she knew exactly what that felt like. She’d been waiting for Nora to show up or send her some sort of sign, but she’d been stuck there with nothing for three days. As if reading her mind, Ship said:
“Hey, I know it’s tough, but she’s gonna be back. Nora will be here soon.”
“I hope so.”
“She will. I have no doubt. Macie might not be haunting me right now, but I know she wouldn’t let nothing happen to her little sister’s kid. She’s watching over Nora. I’m positive about that.”
“It’s reassuring,” said 4B, but she didn’t really feel it. She’d never believed in ghosts and she didn’t have the expectation of an interactive afterlife.
They sat there for a few more minutes in quiet. Ship smoked her cigarette and 4B drank her coffee.
“Hey, thanks for taking care of the cat for me,” said Ship.
“Java?”
“Yeah, when Macie got too sick to check on her when Nora and Tack was out of town, that was my job. I shoulda been doing it these last few days, but I know I been too drunk to function for most of it. So thanks.”
“The cat needs to eat,” she said. It made her feel more connected to Nora, too, but she didn’t say it.
“So, what happens when she gets here? You gonna stay a while or are you gonna go back to wherever it is you’re from?”
“Massachusetts,” supplied 4B.
“Yeah. I knew it was one of those M states. You going back there?”
“I don’t know.”
“I can’t see Nora leaving Juneau, but weirder things have happened,” said Ship.
When 4B had jumped on the plane, she’d been focused on making sure Nora was okay. She hadn’t really thought about what came next.
“I wouldn’t ask Nora to leave here.”
It struck her then: she didn’t want to leave either. She loved it here. Not just because Nora lived here, though it did play a large role. The physical location called to her, grounded her, made her feel like she belonged. Before, when she’d been staying there with Nora, before she remembered where she was from, it was Nora who dominated her thoughts, gave her a sense of being where she should be. But with Nora not there, and her memory securely back, she still felt like she was where she needed to be. She felt more like she was exactly where she needed to be than she’d ever felt in her life. She chose it. Something opened up inside of her at the realization. She was home.
“So, there’s a chance you’ll stay?” Ship asked.
4B considered her answer, but before she had a chance to reply, Ship continued.
“You’re a doctor, right? We need doctors here. Pay’s really good, too. To attract doctors. They pay school loans off, too. Things like that. If you’re thinking about it, it’s good to know.” Ship lit another cigarette from the butt of the last. And 4B thought about the epiphany she’d just had as she watched Ship pinch off the cherry on the old one, rub the filter on the bottom of her boot, and stick the filter in her jeans pocket. She wondered how many times Ship had burnt a hole in her pocket doing that. “Besides, I’m gonna need a new doctor. Mine’s gonna kill me when she finds out I picked these up again.”
“If I was your doctor, I’d kill you, too.”
Ship looked down at the tip of the cigarette she had just lit and blew out a long stream of smoke. Then she looked at the pack she still held in her other hand.
“Fuck,” she groaned, pinching off the cherry from the new cigarette, sliding it back into the pack, and then crumbling up the remainder of the pack in one of her enormous hands. “Maybe Macie’s haunting me through you.”
The morning of the fourth day broke bright and clear, and Nora still wasn’t back. Almost three feet of snow covered the ground.
And 4B gave up.
Nora wasn’t coming back, and it was like a switch had toggled in 4B’s head. Hope had left.
When 4B went outside to escape the sense of aimless drift that came with giving up, the world was the kind of frozen beauty that crystallized the lungs and sent knives of bright light into her eyes. She stood on the top step of Nora’s front porch and tried to feel something in the stunning scenery, but it wouldn’t come. It had failed to come four days earlier, and her present was an empty container of time she had no interest in filling. Her memories were a brilliant kaleidoscope of color at which she couldn’t bear to look anymore. Her future was colorless and blank.
A tree, stark and brittle, stood in the middle of the yard. 4B stepped off the porch and went to stand below it, the fresh powder she walked through feeling lighter than the snow she was used to back on the East Coast. She had no idea what kind of tree it was. She couldn’t remember what it looked like a few weeks ago when the leaves were still on it, except a hundred glass bulbs had hung from the low branches. Now the branches were mostly bare and someone had taken the bulbs down, probably in preparation for winter. She figured she should start learning the local vegetation if she was going to stay. But even that thought couldn’t get her back to hope.
She pressed her hand against the cold bark and knew it was a good tree. It was a tall tree, with an interesting trunk, and lots of branches. A short, frayed rope hung from one of the lower branches, the seat part of the swing long gone. The bark had swelled around the rope, consuming it. Tall stacks of powdery snow lined the skinny branches and rested on the few straggler leaves, giving the tree an eerie reverse shadow look against the high blue sky. A breath of wind, barely perceptible, moved through them, and a spray of snow fell gently to the ground.
The sunlight, shining bright and clear, cast itself against the tiny falling snowflakes, and the effect was that of a million diamonds floating in the air. 4B looked up, and the sight of the branches, and the diamonds, and the infinite clear blue sky made her dizzy. She fell backward into the newly fallen snow and it puffed up around her, partially burying her in the white fluff as it settled back down. She felt the snow hit her cheeks and melt immediately against her warm skin.
Tiny drops of water on her face, like mercury, seemed to find each other and join, making tiny paths that slid into her hair and down along her throat. It tickled her skin. Trails of beautiful poison. Cold wa
s her cocoon, nestled in the snow in her brand new parka. She closed her eyes, felt the emptiness of her life, and decided, if she fell asleep right then, and froze right there, it would be okay. She didn’t have it in her to take her own life, but if her life took her, she figured it would be a fitting end. She’d cheated death once before, when she didn’t have a life worth living. Now she welcomed death when the life worth living stood just out of her reach.
But it wasn’t. She thought about staying in Juneau. She could get a job at the local hospital. She could learn the local wildlife and vegetation. She could help Aunt Mace’s friends carry on the legacy of a wickedly funny old bean’s work. She could be whoever she wanted to be, and do whatever she wanted to do. There were a lot of things worse than wandering down to The Strut a couple of times a week to sway next to the jukebox with a cold beer in her hand. Maybe she’d even get Crystal to teach her gymnastics. Someone needed to take care of Java. She receded into her thoughts and sensed the beginning of something new.
“Hold still.”
Her eyes were closed. She felt a shape hovering somewhere above her. Warmth filled her world and she opened her eyes. The light was almost too much, but in the middle of the brightness she saw two blue eyes, the shade of brilliant cerulean. It hurt to look, but she kept her eyes open.
The woman above her seemed so close, but she was too far away. 4B’s head cleared, the woman kneeled closer and a chorus of happiness filled her heart.
“It’s you.”
“Hold still. You look so pretty there in the snow. I want to remember this, coming home and finding you buried in snow.”
4B reached up and pulled Nora down to her and the world was right side up again.
“Where have you been?”
“The snow came faster than we thought it would. We had to land at an abandoned claim site when it hit and couldn’t leave until we shoveled enough runway. The site was next to a river between two ridges and no one was picking up our radio calls as we sat it out.”
Just like Crystal and the others had said.
“I’ve been waiting for you.”
“I’m here now. The thought of you brought me back.” Those were the best words she’d ever heard—until the next ones brushed her ear. “I love you, too.”
The end.
Also by Kimberly Cooper Griffin
Life in High Def
Chasing Mercury Page 41