All the Days We Can't Leave Behind
by Wendy Nikel
I don't mention the days between. She's back now, so it doesn't matter. Right?
I try to pretend it didn't happen. (It did, but it didn't.) We continue our routine of "before," with takeout-box debris and scribbled Post-it fridge messages and her helmet--intact and unscratched--by the door. Everything's the same, save for the constant buzzing of awareness in my mind, sharp and persistent. I can't forget how fragile this all is, how easily one can slip from here to not-here, from the highway to a drawer in the morgue.
(The drawer was cold and loud on its runners. One of her boots was missing. The coroner gestured to the brochure in my pocket and sighed. "You'll still remember this. They told you that, right?" He clicked his pen and tucked it behind his ear, among wiry and haphazard hairs.)
I should be grateful that the Rewind worked as advertised, that I'm the only one who remembers those days. Yet sometimes she'll run a finger down her hairline, as if subconsciously, she expects there to be a gaping, angry wound there. (There was.)
"Stop looking at me like that," she says as she catches me watching.
"Like what?"
"I don't know. Like I'll disappear if you let me out of your sight. It's unnerving." Normally, when we bicker like this, she'll grab her jacket and go for a ride to clear her head. But when she reaches into her pocket, the keys aren't there. We search the apartment for hours, emotions flaring. I avoid the loose floorboard where I hid them.
The bill arrives in the mail. Somehow, it follows me from the missing days. I can't hide a debt that large, and with REWIND, INC on the label, I can't lie.
(The cost was high, but I didn't care. Pay by the hour! Money back guarantee! My eyes glazed over the block of fine print. I scrawled my signature on the dotted line and tossed the clipboard onto the desk. "How soon?")
We sell the motorcycle to pay for it, rather than cash in the "for an emergency" bonds from her Gramps. Even as the bike is hauled away, she doesn't argue with what I've done. But I wonder, by the look in her eye, if she resents it.
She takes the dog out on long walks around the block; I pace the kitchen until I hear them on the steps. She goes out to lunch with the girls to kick back; I call to check in every hour.
"I'm fine," she fumes over the click of silverware in the background. "Stop smothering me. You've got to let this go. Nothing's going to happen."
"I can't." The words squeeze painfully past my heart. "It already did."
"It was an accident." Her sigh is static crackling on the line. "No one could have expected it. No one could have helped it. What happened that day wasn't your fault."
