Free Simple Recipes by Madeleine Thien Page B

to you, clear as a picture. You tell yourself you’re bound to Charlotte, but what you’re afraid
     of is this: instead of getting on with your life, you’re following her. To make sure that she’s gone. To chase her out of
     your life. In all these vivid imaginings, you are the spectator, the watcher, the one who refuses to leave until the last
     act. You move through your emotions, anger settling on you like some forgotten weight. It makes you watch until the end.
    So badly, you want to be the person who grieves for her. Not the envious one, the one whose heart has toughened up. You’re
     standing on the road. There’s even a space for you. A bus stop, of sorts, lit up with harsh fluorescent lights. You never
     stray from it. No matter what, come hell or high water, come death or disease, you’ll stand there watching it all unfold.
    When you see the accident, you know it must have happened a hundred times before. The stretch of highway heading to Lloydminster,
     straight as an arrow. Wide open, it tricks the driver into believing she’s awake.
    You almost convince yourself you’re there, that it’s you, semi-conscious in the driver’s seat: exactly when you realize that
     the car is out of control, that it cannot be undone, exactly when, you’re not sure. Even the impact seems part of your dream.
     It knocks you out. But not before you see Charlotte, sitting beside you, the slow-motion crumbling of the passenger side.
     Her sleeping body, belted in, thrown sideways. She’s in your lap, slouched awkwardly against your body. You know you’re going
     under. The car. You have the sensation the car is closing in. Then you don’t even know it, you’re under, the three of you
     in your seats.
    Later on, Heather can only say,
We were speeding and the car slipped out of control
Hundred and forty kilometers on a flat stretch of highway. Over the ditch and straight for a tree on the border of a farmhouse.
    When the crash comes, this is what you see: lights flashing on all around. Houses you couldn’t see for the dark. Snapping
     to life. Hurrying out into road, all these people, half-dressed. Running in the dewy grass.
    The car is wrapped around the tree, the interior light miraculously blinking.
    You don’t want to be lovesick. You dream yourself sitting in an orange rocking chair, a steaming cup of coffee resting on
     the arm, the chair tipping back and forth and nothing spills. As if you could do that.Keep moving and the tiny thing you balance, the thing that threatens, stays secure. You love your husband, love him in a way
     that makes you heartsick. You think it is irrational to feel this way, to be so overwhelmed by the small tragedies of your
     life when all around you, there are images of men and women and children, in Dili there are the ones who never ran away to
     hide in the mountains. You pray for them in the best way you know how. You picture them standing on the street on a summer
     day, dust against their feet. You picture them safe. Before you know it, your hands are clasped in front of your face. It
     takes you aback, the way you sit there, shocked and unhappy.
    Hardly a month passed between the time you found the letters and the night the accident happened. In the morning, your husband
     heard the news by phone. He stayed on the phone all morning, calling one person then another. He knew them all, Jean and Heather
     and Charlotte, childhood friends from Saskatoon. You learned that after the car hit the tree, Jean and Heather stood up and
     walked away. In shock, Heather started running, straight down the road. An elderly man, still dressed in pajamas, guided her
     gently back to the site.
    It was Heather who called your husband. “Charlotte was asleep the whole time,” she told him. “She never felt a thing.”
    If your husband grieved, he did the gracious thingand refused to show it. When you asked him how he felt, he held himself together. “I dont know,” he said. “It’s over.”
    The