Dear Edward(92)

When we got there, it was like driving up to a Hollywood movie set. To see a section of a plane lying in the middle of a dairy field I’ve driven by hundreds of times looked about as horrifying as seeing a whale beached there. My first thought was, We’ve got to get it back up in the air. That seemed like as reasonable a goal as any.

Before this, the most serious emergency I’d reported to was a heart attack suffered by an old guy in his bed. His wife called 911, we showed up, and he survived. We’d taken a training course but nothing that touched anything like this. Olivia was super. She yelled at us to break into separate quadrants. She told us to look for people to help. I went to the far left, near the tail, which had splintered off from the rest of the plane. I climbed over cracked metal and puddle-jumped seats and unrecognizable objects for at least an hour. Coughing because of the smoke. I could hear other people yell, “Hello, hello?” I hoped my colleagues were having better luck than I was.

I was trying to figure out how to quit in an acceptable way—basically hightail it back to my car—when I heard you.…

Edward does everything he can to avoid the memory of the crash, but sometimes it comes over him like a sickness, and once it begins, there’s no escape. It descends in the darkest hour of a sleepless night. Occasionally, it sneaks in when he catches his breath a certain way, or when a loud noise makes his heart sputter.

Without warning, the plane tips downward inside him.

He grips his father’s hand and Jordan’s. They make a rope with their arms, and Eddie stares at the rope as the overhead compartments bang open, and bags fall through the air. He’s not sure if the plane is pointing up, or down.

“I love you, boys,” Bruce says, in a fierce voice. “I want to be here with you. I love you.”

“I love you too,” Eddie says.

“I love you,” Jordan says.

It’s unclear whether they can hear each other, over the hissing, the cannons of sound around them. Maybe a door is open somewhere. Maybe up is down.

“Jane!” Bruce shouts, into the din.

The people around Eddie make noises he’s never heard before, and will never hear again. There is a deafening crack, like the world has split in two. He sees teardrops on his arm. Are they his, or Jordan’s?

The noise is so loud, the pressure on his face, on his skin, so great he can’t keep his eyes open. He, and everyone, falls.

… I didn’t believe your voice at first, Edward. I was certain I was hearing things. But the same sentence rang out, over and over, and I moved toward it, as if it were a magnet.

“I’m here!”

“I’m here!”

I pulled aside a metal sheet; it felt like opening a door, and there you were, furious, as if offended at the wait. You made eye contact with me, and shouted: “I’m here!”

I stared at you, this tiny boy with a seatbelt still around your waist, until you yelled again. Then I stepped forward and picked you up, and you held me around the neck, and I felt like you were saving me in the same moment that I was saving you.

We walked back toward the others, while you repeated, quieter now, but with the same level of insistence: I’m here. I’m here. I’m here.





Epilogue





June 2019

Edward and Shay drive across the country with the windows down on the Acura, a second-hand car they bought with Jax’s money.

Edward has used the money to execute most of the ideas he’d dreamed up that night in the basement. It will pay for Shay’s and Mahira’s college and post-graduate educations—Mahira has been gifted the amount through a charity that supports the education of girls of color, so she doesn’t know it came from Edward. Lacey, it turned out, had great administrative skills from her work at the hospital and was very helpful at coming up with creative covers for distributing the funds. She’d liaised with Principal Arundhi’s botany club, passing the money on to them with the caveat that the principal never know where it came from. The club had designed and built a freestanding greenhouse where they could hold their meetings and showcase their personal collections, including the preeminent assemblage of ferns on the East Coast. Lacey had also founded a small charity devoted to survivors of tragedies, in order to make gifts to other people Edward designated, including Gary and the whale-conservation fund that employed him, Lolly Stillman, the nun, and the three children whose photograph Shay is never without.

The Acura’s air-conditioning system is temperamental, so they try not to use it even though it’s often ninety degrees outside. They take highways and drive fast. Shay’s hair—brown again—blows back from her face, and when she drives and it’s her turn to choose the music, they listen to hip-hop. She often beatboxes along, which makes Edward cackle with laughter. When he’s behind the wheel, he’s less consistent. He chooses according to his mood: sometimes a podcast, sometimes Bach, sometimes no music at all.

High school graduation was two weeks earlier, under a white tent on top of a hill. Principal Arundhi had handed out the diplomas, and Mrs. Cox and Dr. Mike had attended, as had Lacey, John, and Besa. Edward had stopped being a patient of Dr. Mike’s six months earlier, and he’d been surprised by how happy he was to see the therapist. Mrs. Cox’s graduation gift was a copy of her son’s newly published book of poetry, and both Edward and Shay grinned widely when the wrapping paper was pulled off. “Harrison is very talented,” Mrs. Cox said, holding up the book so everyone could see the cover. “He won the Walt Whitman Award, which is quite prestigious.”