Page 76 of After His Eulogy
“Okay.”
“I have been thinking about it the whole time I have been deciding.”
“Okay.”
“You think I have been deciding without that information. I have not. I have been deciding with it. I have been deciding because of it. The version where I stay and you go is not the version where you are safer. It is the version where I am safer. You are still findable. You are still a person someone could find. I am going with you because if they find you, I would rather be in the room when they do than be in this apartment finding out about it from a phone call. That is part of why. I have not said it because saying it sounds dramatic. It is not dramatic. It is the truth. I have been thinking it through the whole time.”
I look at him.
“Griffin.”
“Yeah.”
“I’d been telling myself you didn’t know.”
“I know you had.”
“I’d been telling myself I was protecting you from knowing.”
“I know.”
“I am going to stop telling myself that.”
“Okay.”
“You knew.”
“I knew.”
“And you are coming.”
“And I am coming.”
We stand on the beach. The wind is doing what the wind does. The dog and the couple in down jackets are nowhere on the visible beach anymore. The sky over the lake is the gray it hasbeen for the whole walk and is going to be for another hour, and then it is going to start going gold, and we will be in the car by then.
“There is no version where we are safe,” I say.
“There is no version where anyone is safe.”
“That is not true.”
“It’s functionally true. There’s no version where the people I love are safe from anything. My mother isn’t safe from her mind. Sara isn’t safe from a car accident. You aren’t safe from the people who are looking. I’m not safe from any of those things either. The list of things people aren’t safe from is the entire list. I’m not picking you because picking you is safe. I’m picking you because picking you is what I want. Safety isn’t the calculation I’m doing. I’m doing a different one. It has come out the same way every time.”
I don’t answer for a long second.
“Say it.”
“I am choosing you knowing they are still out there.”
He waits.
“I am choosing you because they are still out there. The whole reason I am choosing you is that the time is finite and the safety is fake and the only thing that’s real is what we do with the time. I’m choosing you because — the time.”
“And you are choosing me knowing it.”
“I’m choosing you knowing it. I’ve been choosing you knowing it. For three months.”
He nods, in the cold.
