Page 51 of The Long Way Home

But the path to our tree is all wild and busy flowers. Tended to, of course. Nothing unkept about it. An intentional mess. He’s a sweetheart, Mr Gibbs. I think he’s the only person in the world who might know what happened, besides Jonah’s mum.

I get to the tree and my heart sinks like usual.

To be expected, all things considered.

I look around for him, hoping he’s just a moment away. My eyes trace the tree, find our initials carved into it.

All three of ours.

And then my eyes fall down the trunk to the stone we lay to remember the tiny baby girl we lost that no one even knows we had, and there are magnolias laying there and I know he was here.

He was here and now he’s gone.

I feel like someone places a vacuum over my mouth and sucks the air right out of my lungs.

I lose him again and I lose her too for the billionth time in my life and I feel like the world is ending again.

Is it horrible or miraculous that you can feel that feeling so many times throughout your life?

Miraculous you survive, horrible you live to feel the world slipping out from under you again.

The world’s slipping out from under me.

“He drove up just before dawn,” Mr Gibbs tells me quietly from behind.

I don’t know where he’s come from, how long he’s been there.

“Oh,” I say and I nod, but it comes out strangled and foreign.

I stumble backwards from the tree a bit.

“Are you okay, Ms Parks?” Gibbs asks, I think. It’s hard to tell because of that sound.

What’s that sound?

“Yes.” I nod, my eyes have gone funny.

That’s such a strange sound. Where’s it coming from? I glance around. It’s like a wounded animal, like something’s being ripped open.

Mr Gibbs is watching me carefully.

“I’m fine,” I reassure him.

I touch my face. Is it wet?

I look up. When did it start raining?

He reaches for me. I don’t know why.

And there’s that sound again. That gut wail and that rushing sound.

What is that?

“It’s okay,” he tells me gently. He tells me I’m okay how you tell a lost child you find in a grocery store. “You’re okay,” he tells me again and the edges of my vision start fading.

Everything’s fading to black. I really wish that sound would stop. BJ always makes things go to black for me, but this is different. It’s not just me and him in all the world and the world falling to silence as he and I blast to stereo — it’s not that sort of fading. I’m fading.

What the fuck is that sound?

My legs are going out from under me.

My heart is racing.

I can’t see.

Am I falling?

I think I am the sound.