“Are you sure about this?” Stanley asks.
I look around the condo. It’s empty, save for the stacks of cardboard boxes labeled BOOKS and DVDs and MISC. STUFF. “I’m sure. Anyway, it’s a bit late to be questioning our decision.”
The movers will drag in the rest of our furniture tomorrow. For now, all we have is a bed and a TV. And Matilda’s cage, which sits on the floor. She’s nibbling a food pellet, seemingly oblivious to the change in scenery.
I sit on the edge of the bed and turn my Rubik’s Cube over in my hands.
Stanley limps over, leaning on his cane, and sits next to me. “I know that change is a big deal for you,” he says. “And I know you liked my house.”
“This is closer to Elmbrooke, and to your school. It’ll be easier.”
A few boxes labeled MOM’S STUFF sit next to Matilda’s cage. “What are you going to do with those,” I ask.
“Probably donate them to Goodwill.”
I nod and look at him from the corner of my eye. “How does it feel.”
A smile quirks at one corner of his mouth. “Terrifying. But in a good way.” He looks around the condo.
He’s been getting a new treatment, a series of injections designed to strengthen the collagen in his bones, and his sclerae aren’t as noticeably blue now. But I can still see a faint tinge, like the sheen on a pearl. “Yes.”
Sunlight pours in through the picture window in the living room, illuminating the white walls. Everything here feels so bright. It will take some getting used to.
“The kitchen stuff is still in boxes,” he says. “Want to go out for dinner? I think there’s a pancake restaurant around here.”
I nod and slip into my hoodie, and we leave the condo. On the way, we pass a park. It has a small pond, and a bench. “Wait,” I say.
He parks, and we get out and sit on the bench, side by side. A pair of geese glide across the water. A rabbit is digging in the grass. She stops and looks up, ears alert and quivering.
We sit, comfortably quiet. Beneath our feet, the winter-brown grass is squishy from the melted snow. A few tender green shoots are visible, pushing their way toward the sun. I breathe in the sharp, cool air. It holds a smell that is familiar yet new.
“It’s funny,” he says. “I was just thinking, about that phrase from Watership Down . . . ‘My heart has joined the Thousand.’ I know it’s about mourning, but to me, that part of it always sounded kind of . . . hopeful. Like it’s about becoming something bigger than yourself. About connecting with other people, or the world.”
Overhead, the sky arches, blue and clear, and there’s a sensation of lifting in my chest—a sense of opening. My heart has joined the Thousand, I think, trying out the new meaning. It feels accurate.
I remember the first time I saw Stanley, sitting on a bench in a park just like this. I was upset, I recall, because a stranger had invaded my territory and disrupted my carefully planned routine. I thought about getting up, walking away, and never coming back. I came so close to doing it. But something stopped me. Something—what?
A hint of curiosity. A random pulse of electrical activity in some deep, hidden fold of my brain. The opening and closing of an ion gate on a single nerve cell. The spin of a subatomic particle within that ion gate. Something so small, so seemingly random. And now Stanley and I have a home together. Being with him feels easy and natural—like something that could last forever.
Intellectually I know there is no such thing as forever. Someday we will die and our bones will turn to dust. Someday humankind will be gone and the earth will be ruled by sentient rabbits, or by the machines we leave behind, or by creatures we can’t even imagine. And then the sun will go supernova and swallow the earth and all the other planets, and the universe will continue to expand until the bonds of gravity loosen and all things drift away into the darkness, and all stars will go silent and cold, and matter itself will break down into nothingness. Time will end, and there will be nothing but vast, cold, empty space. The atoms that once composed our bodies will be dispersed across unimaginable distances.
But then, subatomic particles are connected in ways we don’t understand. Two particles that have interacted physically are bound by quantum entanglement. They will react to each other even after being separated, no matter the distance, linked by intangible cords across space and time.
I tilt my head back, looking into the bright sky, and smile. Stanley reaches for my hand, and I take it, fingers slipping easily and naturally between his. And I find myself thinking of that moment, years ago, when I awakened in the hospital after swimming to shore. I remember the doctor’s words: She’s a lucky girl.
For the first time, I believe it.