Chapter 74: Bonus Chapter 2: Not One Person Said Yes

Fragment one: the police station.

“Mr. Archer, we’ve searched every possible route and found no leads. It’s as if the vehicle vanished into thin air.”

“Then keep searching.”

“We’ve done everything we can.”

“Then do more.”

The officer looked at him and hesitated.

Nathan understood that look.

That look said, She’s dead. You need to accept reality.

Nathan refused.

He walked out of the police station. The wind outside was so strong he could barely stand. He stopped on the steps and looked up at the sky.

The clouds hung low and gray, like a huge wet rag had wiped all color from the world.

For some reason, he remembered Chloe saying she loved summer skies most.

“So blue they look painted,” she had said. “And the clouds look like cotton candy. They make me want to bite them.”

At the time, he had laughed at her. “How does everything make you think of food?”

She had answered with perfect confidence.

“Because I’m hungry.”

That was when they had only just started dating.

She was still the girl who could be happy over a bag of chips.

The girl who stomped through puddles on rainy days and splashed mud all over his pant legs.

The girl who showed up at the lab door when he worked late, holding a bowl of instant noodles and saying, “I knew you didn’t eat.”

Nathan closed his eyes.

Wind slid down his collar, bitter enough to cut.

He didn’t move.

Because other than standing there and waiting for her, he had no idea what else to do.

Fragment two: Alvin’s house.

Chloe’s parents sat in the living room.

Carol was crying. Alvin smoked in silence.

A cup of coffee sat cold on the coffee table. Beside it, the ashtray was packed with cigarette butts. Alvin’s hand trembled slightly, but he didn’t stop. One cigarette after another.

“Nathan, go home first,” Alvin said.

His voice was hoarse, rough as sandpaper dragged across wood.

“I’ll call you if there’s news.”

“I’m not leaving.”

“You staying here won’t help.”

“I’m not leaving.”

Nathan sat in Chloe’s room, holding her pillow.

Her scent was still on it.

Not perfume.

Not shampoo.

Her.

He couldn’t describe what it smelled like, only that it belonged to her. Hers alone. In the whole world, no one else had that scent.

He buried his face in the pillow.

Deeply. Desperately.

As if he could carve that smell into his bones.

On the wall was a photo from high school. Chloe in a cheerleading uniform, smiling so brightly she looked like a little sun. On the desk lay a novel she had only half finished before she left, a bookmark tucked into page 123. A pothos sat on the windowsill, its leaves drooping because no one had watered it for days.

Nathan took the plant to the kitchen and watered it.

Then he returned to the bedroom and held the pillow again.

He sat there without moving.

Like a statue.

Fragment three: midnight, their apartment.

Nathan sat alone on the couch.

The TV was on, but no one was watching. Some late-night talk show played on the screen. The audience laughed, the sound fake and hollow, like it had been recorded in a studio long before anyone said the joke.

On the coffee table sat an open bag of chips Chloe hadn’t finished.

They had expired.

Nathan picked one up and ate it.

It wasn’t crisp anymore. It had gone soft, with the stale taste of old oil.

It no longer tasted the way it had when she ate them.

When Chloe ate chips, she always licked off the seasoning first, then crunched through the chip afterward. He used to think the habit was childish and had scolded her for it more than once.

“Can you eat them normally?”

“They taste better this way. Try it.”

He had tried it.

She was right.

It did taste better.

But he had never told her.

Nathan put the chip back and collapsed against the couch.

The fabric still seemed to hold the shape of her body. She liked curling up in that corner with her legs thrown over his, eating snacks while watching TV. Sometimes she fell asleep halfway through a show. He would turn off the TV and carry her back to the bedroom.

Half-awake, she would mumble, “Nathan, you’re so good to me,” then nuzzle into his arms and fall asleep again.

Nathan buried his face in the couch cushion.

Closed his eyes.

His mind was full of her.

The way she smiled.

The way she got angry.

The way she rose on tiptoe to kiss him.

The way she said, “Nathan, I like you best.”

The way she said, “We have to stay together forever, okay?”

The way she wore that red coat and spun in the snow, laughing like a child.

Nathan reached out, trying to grab something.

He caught nothing.

Only air.

Cold air, slipping through his fingers.

2005 · Autumn

“Nathan, I want to have another baby.”

On the other end of the phone, Carol’s voice was so calm she might have been telling him she had run out of milk.

Nathan stood in the dairy aisle of the grocery store, a carton of milk in his hand. He froze. The carton almost slipped straight through his fingers.

“What did you say?”

“Alvin and I talked about it.” Carol’s voice did not waver. “If we’re old when Chloe comes back, if we’re gone by then, she won’t have a single blood relative left in this world.”

Nathan held the phone and stood in the middle of the aisle. Shopping carts rolled past him. People compared prices, reached for yogurt, argued softly over brands of cereal.

No one noticed him.

“You’re already…” He stopped and did the math. “You’re fifty-one this year.”

“I know.”

“There are risks.”

“I know that too.”

Her answer was so steady that it left him nowhere to go.

Carol said, “I promised Chloe I’d give her a younger brother or sister. When she was little, she used to talk about wanting a baby brother all the time. I promised her.”

Nathan opened his mouth.

Nothing came out.

He wanted to tell her not to do this. He wanted to say the risk was too high, that Chloe would never want her mother to gamble with her life for a promise made to a little girl years ago. He wanted to say grief had already taken too much from them. It did not get to take more.

But he heard something in Carol’s tone.

Not impulse.

Not stubbornness.

A mother’s promise to her daughter.

The last thing she still believed she could do for Chloe in this world.

Nathan thought of something Chloe had once told him about her mother. Carol was the gentlest person in the world, Chloe had said. She never lost her temper, not even when Chloe failed an exam. She would only say, “It’s okay. Try again next time.”

Gentle people were often the most unbreakable.

Because their gentleness was not weakness.

It was a choice.

The choice to keep loving people without making them pay for it.

Nathan lowered his eyes to the milk carton in his hand.

His fingers had gone numb.