Dear Edward(80)

“Oh.” Mahira turns her face, looks toward the back storage room. “I was on my way home from school. I always walked past a big sports bar on the corner of Eighty-third. It has televisions covering all the walls, and they’re usually tuned to two or three different games. Football, soccer, ice hockey. But”—she hesitates—“that day, all of the screens were showing one side of an airplane lying in a field. I stopped because the image was so unusual, especially for that place. I walked into the bar, which I’d never done before, and the bartender told me what had happened.” She stops talking for a second, then puts her hands out in front of her, as if about to receive something: coins, a gift, communion? When she drops her hands again, puts them on her thighs, she says, “Back at home, at the deli, the news said that one boy had survived.”

Edward processes this. “You would have thought it was Jordan.”

She doesn’t respond. A new reality blossoms in Edward’s brain. Jordan is the one who survives, and instead of going home with Lacey and John from the hospital, he insists on recuperating with Mahira, in the apartment above the deli. Edward can picture him lying in a single bed, one of his legs in a cast. His face is contorted with pain, but he’s looking at Mahira. He’s going through the loss with her and finding comfort in that. When the plane crashed, he didn’t lose everything.

“I’m sorry,” Edward says.

“You and I were supposed to meet on a beach in California.” Mahira smiles, but the smile has effort behind it. “Do you want to hear something strange?”

Shay, who hasn’t spoken in some time, says, “Yes, please.”

“I’ve been going to get my tarot cards read by a woman who works a few blocks from here. She has a purple lamp in her window and a chime hung in the doorway. It’s absurd, and I don’t believe in any of it, but I can’t seem to stay away.”

“What does she tell you?”

Mahira’s cheeks turn a faint pink. “Part of it is fairy tales. She talks about Jordan and our love. I guess that’s why I keep going. I haven’t had anyone else to talk to about it. My uncle won’t hear his name mentioned.”

“Jordan,” Edward says reflexively.

“Jordan.” Mahira says the name in the same tone she used with the UPS guy—deliberate, authoritative. She says his name the same way she called out the word tomorrow.

There’s a pounding on the door, and they all jump. The silhouette of a figure is visible through the marbled glass. A fist is raised again, then dropped. The person walks away.

Edward wonders what the tarot-card lady would talk to him about. He likes the idea of someone talking to him about his and his brother’s love. He says, “Can you tell me why you and Jordan were a secret? Why he didn’t tell me?”

She shakes her head. “We never talked that much, to be honest. I was afraid long conversations would ruin everything, that I might say something stupid. I kept thinking I would talk soon, ask questions soon, tell him everything soon.”

“You thought you had time,” Shay says.

“Yes.”

Edward thinks of the letters, all the people asking him questions, wanting to believe they could find a solution, or resolution, to their heartbreak. The lonely girl in front of him and the ache of those letters make his own chest hurt, and he hunches slightly.

“I should reopen the store,” Mahira says.

“No problem,” he says.

But they stand in silence for a few more moments, before they break apart.

When they enter the garage that night, Shay says, “Why can’t you talk to John in the house, over breakfast, like a civilized person? We don’t even know how early he comes out here in the morning. We may have to wait for hours and hours.”

“I have to talk to him here. Away from Lacey.” Edward sits down on the footstool, which he thinks of as his footstool. The chair belongs to Shay.

“You’ve turned bossy lately. I’m not sure if I like it.”

Edward smiles. “You can go to sleep until he gets here.”

“Oh, I will.” Shay wriggles around in the armchair, as if looking for the most comfortable spot. She says, “Did you almost kiss Mahira today?”

Edward freezes for a second, and his cheeks flush. “I thought about it. For Jordan.” He takes an uneven breath. “I’m not sure what I can or should do, for him.”

“I saw you considering it.”

“How? What did that look like?”

She smiles and shrugs. “I couldn’t describe it in words.”

He meets her gaze, and there’s something new there. Edward used to think that what had happened had happened only to him, but he knows Shay has been changed, and he knows the writers of the letters have been changed too, so the ripple effects feel possibly infinite. He is on the lookout for the infinite now, in Shay’s dimple.

There’s a pause, and she turns off the flashlight. Shay says into the darkness, “Good night.”

She turns away from Edward and curls up in the chair. He remains upright on the stool. The air between him and Shay is charged, the atoms swollen with new possibilities. He knows—somehow—that they both imagined kissing each other. He had imagined tilting his head to the side, and leaning in. Their lips touching. He thinks of the air between him and Mahira that afternoon, the shimmering presence of his brother, the loss of what was.