The Likeness

Another beat. “I guess it was that obvious. That night, the night Lexie died… we couldn’t have made it through, otherwise. And it shouldn’t have been a big deal. Various stuff had happened before, here and there along the way; everyone was always fine about it. But that night…”

I heard her swallow. “Before that, we had a balance, you know? Everyone knew Justin was in love with Rafe, but it was just there, in the background. I didn’t even realize that I… Call me stupid, but I really didn’t; I just thought Daniel was the best friend I could ever want. I think we could all have gone on like that, maybe forever-or maybe not. But that night was different. The second Daniel said, ‘She’s dead,’ things changed. Everything got clearer, too clear to bear, like some huge light had been switched on and you could never close your eyes again, not even for a second. Do you know what I mean?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I do.”

“After that, even if Lexie had come home after all, I don’t know if we…”

Her voice trailed off. I turned round and found her watching me, closer than I’d expected. “You don’t sound like her,” she said. “You don’t even move like her. Are you anything like her at all?”

“We had some things in common,” I said. “Not everything.”

Abby nodded. After a moment she said, “I’d like you to leave now.”

I had my hand on the doorknob when she said, suddenly and almost unwillingly, “You want to hear something strange?”

It was getting dark; her face looked like it was fading away, into the dim room. “One of the times I rang Rafe, he wasn’t in that club or whatever; he was home, on the balcony of his apartment. It was late. We talked for a while. I said something about Lexie-that I still miss her, even though… in spite of everything. Rafe made some flip comment about having too much fun to miss anyone; but before he said it, before he answered, there was this little pause. Baffled. Like it took him a second to figure out who I was talking about. I know Rafe, and I swear to God he almost said, ‘Who?’ ”

Upstairs, half muffled by the ceiling, a phone burst into “Baby Got Back” and someone thumped across the floor to answer it. “He was pretty drunk,” Abby said. “Like I told you. Still, though… I can’t stop wondering. If we’re forgetting each other. If in another year or two we’ll all have been wiped right out of each other’s minds; gone, like we never met. If we could pass on the street, within inches, and not even blink.”

“No pasts,” I said.

“No pasts. Sometimes”-a quick breath-“I can’t see their faces. Rafe and Justin, I can handle it; but Lexie. And Daniel.”

I saw her head turn, her profile against the window: that snub nose, a stray strand of hair. “I loved him, you know,” she said. “I would have loved him as hard as he’d let me, for the rest of my life.”

“I know,” I said. I wanted to tell her that being loved is a talent too, that it takes as much guts and as much work as loving; that some people, for whatever reason, never learn the knack. Instead I got the photocopies back out of my bag and flipped through them-I practically had to hold them against my nose, to see-until I found the streaky color copy of that snapshot: the five of them, smiling, wrapped in falling snow and silence, outside Whitethorn House. “Here,” I said, and held it out to Abby.

Her hand, pale in the near-darkness, reaching out. She went to the window, tilted the page to the last of the light.

“Thanks,” she said, after a moment. “I’ll keep this.” She was still there, looking at it, when I closed the door.

***

After that I hoped I’d dream about Lexie, just every now and then. She’s fading from the others’ minds, day by day; soon she’ll be gone for good, she’ll be only bluebells and a hawthorn tree, in a ruined cottage where no one goes. I figured I owed her my dreams. But she never came. Whatever it was that she wanted from me, I must have brought it to her, somewhere along the way. The only thing I dream of is the house, empty, open to sun and dust and ivy; scuffles and whispers, always just one corner away; and one of us, her or me, in the mirror, laughing.