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“I should go get ready,” I say. “To go to the hospital, I mean.”

“You want a ride to the ferry?” Dad says, smiling at me. His smile looks so much like Tess’s, and I don’t know if I’ll ever see Tess smile again.

None of us do.

forty-three

I haven’t seen Tess in the morning since pretty soon after the accident, when everything was still a crazy blur, and when I get to the hospital, I’m surprised by how things in her ward are exactly the same as they are in the afternoon and at night.

I thought maybe the nurses would be less tired-looking or—I don’t know. I guess I thought the morning might be more hopeful somehow. Riding across the river with the sun shining on my face, and thinking about what Claire said about belief, made me wonder if things could be different for me. Better.

And so I thought maybe I’d only been seeing the hospital for what it had carved out of me, what it had put in my heart, all the fears about the future, all my worry for Tess. All my anger at her. And I’d thought that trying to move past that would make it different.

But it doesn’t. It’s still sad to see all the patients lying motionless, to hear nothing as I walk by their rooms except the sound of machines.

It’s how Tess’s room sounds. For so long I’ve been focused on wanting her to wake up, on willing it, that I don’t think I’ve ever—I thought about the machines, about her hooked up to them, but I don’t know if I’ve ever really seen it.

If I’ve let myself.

I can see why Claire comes here and thinks No. I am used to coming in and focusing on Tess.

Or, lately, on Eli.

But now I see that Tess, beautiful Tess with her long, gorgeous hair and still, stunning face, is gone. Maybe not forever—I don’t want to believe she’s never coming back, I want to believe that one day she’ll open her eyes—but right now, she isn’t here. Not the Tess I knew. Not the Tess I don’t know.

I sit down next to her.

“I—we need to talk,” I say, and realize this is the first time since the accident I’ve said this to her. Before I have said her name, pleading, or gone straight into saying things I thought would bring her back. Make her open her eyes.

But now I just want to talk to her.

“I saw Claire last night,” I tell her. “I—there was a lot about you I didn’t know, Tess. About you and Claire. You and Beth too. Even you and Mom and Dad. I always … you always seemed so perfect to me. So sure of who you were, and so quick to judge anyone who didn’t live up to your standards. That’s why I thought you stopped talking to Claire, you know. Because she did something you wouldn’t, and I thought—I thought you’d decided she wasn’t worth your time.”

I touch her hand, not because I’m expecting or even hoping for it to move. I touch it because she is my sister. If she was awake, I don’t know if she’d let me. I don’t even know if she’d still be listening.

There is so much I don’t know about her, and I touch her hand because I wish I had the chance to know the real her, even if what I’ve learned has made me see that Tess wasn’t perfect.

Tess is human, just like me.

“I guess you did decide that,” I say. “Just not … not like how I thought. How could you do it? I can understand why you didn’t—I see why you were afraid to come out, sort of. I always thought how people talked about you was annoying because it made me into nothing. But you—did you feel like it made you into nothing too? Like you had to be how people thought you were and not who you are?”

I lean forward, watching her closed eyes. Wondering what I would see if they opened.

“You hurt Claire,” I say. “You hurt her a lot, and maybe you were scared, but you—it was cruel. And now, after I find out about you and her, I still don’t—how could you do it, Tess? How could you break her heart and then ruin her life? Was it—Claire says it was because you never expected her to find someone else, even if it was for a little while. Is that true?”

There. I see it again, a tiny flutter behind her closed eyes. Maybe what the doctor said is true. But maybe what I thought is true