Page 117 of The Wild Beneath

Evan pulls his hands away from hers. He stares outside at the rain, falling slanted against the darkened window. Eventually: “I want you to have what you need.”

“Can you please ask Greg to take me up on the barge?” she asks.

A longer pause. Evan leans over, covers his face with his hands. His nod is almost imperceptible.

They do not speak as he drives her out of the city toward the port, past land still fallow from the tsunami. They park next to a wall of graffitied concrete. Evan kills the engine and sits with the key in his hand. The marina is full of boats.

Annie has her eyes on the water.

“Greg’s at the end of the south slip.” Evan moves to open the car door.

“I’ll go on my own.” She stops him with a hand on his forearm. “It’ll be easier.”

“When will you be back?”

She doesn’t know the answer. The space between them feels impassable. A seagull lands on the hood—­long orange legs and a curved beak. Utterly still, it peers at them through the windshield.

“All those summers when we were kids, when you left to go south?” Evan’s voice cracks. “I never knew what I would do if you didn’t come back.”

It makes her remember Evan at seven years old, on a high tree branch. They were leaning against each other, a habit neither of them were fully aware of.

“You would have kept going,” she says.

“I’m not ready for this.”

“My mom always said to listen with my whole body. Do you remember her saying that?” Annie’s eyes fill with tears. “I feel like I stopped, and I don’t know how to start again.”

The seagull on the hood lifts up and away.

“I might die if I don’t remember how.”

“Is this it, then?” His voice is trembling. She realizes he is crying.

His words make her ache like the coldest winter. Here is the divide and she’s stepping over it, into a place where Evan might no longer be hers. She cannot make it across. He kisses her. She lets him, lingering there.

“I love you.”

“I love you, Annie.”

She pulls away. “I need to do this.”

She summons her resolve and gets out of the car.

Rust weeps down the hull of the barge. It smells of oil and metal. A ring of old tires forms the fenders, and a crane moves logs from the truck beds onto a holding area in the middle. The deck is sandy with splinters of wood.

Annie locates Greg in his orange, weatherproof coveralls.He gives her less than five words and a few feet of space to set up her tent for the overnight passage.

She’s grateful he does not want to talk. Because she’s busy second-guessing herself. Evan sounded so confident that Walker was dead. Impossible that he lived, is what he said. Maybe it is impossible, trying to climb back into a life she can never return to.

Evan loves her; they love each other. He readies her coffee supplies before she wakes up, premeasures the grounds. Knows how hot she likes the shower; stocks the freezer with chocolate peanut-butter ice cream for post-shift exhaustion; finds her AirPods every time she misplaces them, which is often.

The unexplainable, nearly desperate need to leave this behind does have an objective flavour of insanity.

Then why does it feel like the only option she has?

Pitching her tent, Annie conducts a swift mental experiment. She could turn around and march back into her life. The hospital hallways would welcome her, a never-ending parade of sick patients. The incessant pinging, beeping, clicking, scrolling. The buzz of electrons turning sparks into numbers. She imagines the clamour of city streets, the grind of machinery, whirring engines, squeals of tires. Evan would wrap her up on the couch and kiss her forehead.

A tightness winds up and into her.