her that he hasnât understood, and so she has the chance to back up and off this path, but she doesnât.
She just takes a deep breathâdiaphragm up, diaphragm downâand says some words she doesnât want to have to use so close to one another. âMike. That night. I keep wondering, Andy. What would it have been like? To drown?â
âOh.â Andy looks into his glass, and into Elizabethâs faceâher eyes are alert, concentrating, sureâand takes a deep breath too. And he tells her, gently, calmly, simply, the way he knows he should.
Tears roll down her face and gather in his eyes but he keeps going. What he says is part medical opinion and part thirty years of friendship.
He says that, once the shock of the cold was over, Michael probably wouldnât have felt much.
He says that Michael would have been so focused on getting Kate out that he wouldnât have been thinking about his own body.
He says that physical strength and the instinct to save both himself and Kate would have taken over.
He says that the weight of Michaelâs own wet clothes and the weight of Kate and her wet clothes would have been a huge burden.
He says that Michael would have struggled but there would have come a point when he couldnât struggle anymore.
He pauses and looks at Elizabeth, touches her arm, a question: Is this enough? She nods. Keep going. Iâm OK. Her eyes say, Despite appearances, this is OK. Her heart screams for him to stop talking, but something stronger in her needs to hear this.
He says, âMichael probably lost consciousness.â He saysâhe falters as he says itââHe might not have known. About the dying. We canât know.â
âNo,â says Elizabeth. âNo. We canât know.â
Later, in the dark, knowing how well Mel sleeps after a drink, she takes a blanket and sits on the stairs, listening to Mikeâs voice on the answering machine, over and over and over until itâs a beloved white noise. Sheâs consented to the machine being switched off, so that unwary callers donât have to hear her husbandâs voice, but she wonât have the recording replaced. As she said to Mel the last time they talked about it, itâs not as though she isnât here to answer the phone. Mel had made a face that said, Well, Iâll let this go for now, but this isnât the end of it.
Andyâs words have been partly reassuring: she likes knowing that Mike wouldnât have known, wouldnât have been thinking about dying, would instead have been focused on getting Kate out, getting himself out. But the conversation has also reminded Elizabeth of what sheâll never know.
She wonders how he felt, what he thought about, whether he panicked or was calm, whether he thought about her. She goes upstairs and gets into bed and holds her breath, just to see if she can discover how it might have felt, but something more primal even than grief makes her pant and panic before she gets anywhere close.
Mike,
This morning, by the gate, it was a few crocusesâcrocii?âtied with a silver ribbon again. I was out there earlyâit was barely lightâbut youâd beaten me to it. I felt as though, if Iâd been fifteen seconds earlier, Iâd have seen you disappearing around the side of the gate (or through the fence, or dematerializing, or however you do it). It seemed as though the air was still reassembling itself around the place where youâd been.
I put them in our bedroom, on my bedside table. I opened the curtains, a little bit, so that they would get some light, although I know it doesnât really matter once theyâre picked. Thank you for bringing them for me, today, of all days, when Iâve lain awake all night and thought about drowning.
I keep telling Mel she can go home, and she says yes, or she could stay here, because she can work anywhere she can plug her laptop in, and