Fly Away (Firefly Lane 2)

“How can I help her?” I ask Kate.

You’d have to wake up.

“I tried. ”

“… Tully … I’m so sorry … for what I did. ”

The light in this room flickers. Kate pulls away from me and floats around the bed to stand by her daughter.

Marah looks small and dark next to the glowing image of her mother. Kate whispers: Feel me, baby girl.

Marah gasps and looks up. “M-mom?”

All of the air seems to go out of the room. There is an exquisite second in which I can see that Marah believes.

Then she slumps forward in defeat. “When will I learn? You’re gone. ”

“Can it be undone?” I ask Kate quietly. It scares me to ask, and the silence between my question and her answer feels like an eternity. At last, Kate looks away from her daughter and at me.

Can what be undone?

I indicate the woman in the bed—the other me. “Can I wake up?”

You tell me. What happened?

“I tried to help Marah, but … really. When have I ever been the person you want beside you in a foxhole?”

Always, Tul. You were the only one who didn’t know that. She looks down at Marah again, and sighs quietly, sadly.

Had I even thought about Marah last night? I can’t remember. I can’t remember anything about what happened to me, and when I try, some dark truth presses in and I push it away. “I’m afraid to remember what happened. ”

I know, but it’s time. Talk to me. Remember.

I take a deep breath and scroll through memories. Where to pick up the story? I think about the months after her death, and all the changes that happened. The Ryans moved to Los Angeles and we lost touch in the way that happens with distance and grief. By early 2007, everything had changed. Oh, I still saw Margie. I had lunch with her once a month. She always said she looked forward to her days in the city, but I saw the sadness in her eyes, and the way her hands had begun to tremble, and so I wasn’t surprised when she told me that she and Bud were moving to Arizona. When they were gone, I tried like hell to get my life back on track. I applied for every broadcasting job I could find. I started with the top ten markets and worked my way down. But every single road came to a dead end. I was either overqualified or underqualified; some stations didn’t want to piss off the networks by hiring me. Some had heard I was a diva. The reasons didn’t really matter: the result was the same. I was unemployable. That’s how I came to be back where I started.

I close my eyes and remember it in detail. June of 2008, less than a week before Marah’s high school graduation and twenty months after the funeral, I …

am in the waiting room of KCPO, the small local TV station in Seattle where I first worked for Johnny, all those years ago.

The offices have moved—the station has grown—but it is still a little shabby and second-rate. Two years ago I would have considered local news beneath me.

I am not the woman I was before. I am like a leaf in the deep midwinter, curling up, turning black, becoming transparent and dry, afraid of a strong wind.

I am literally back where I began. I have begged for an interview with Fred Rorback, whom I’ve known for years. He is the station manager here now.

“Ms. Hart? Mr. Rorback will see you now. ”

I get to my feet, smiling with more confidence than I feel.

Today I am starting over. This is what I tell myself as I walk into Fred’s office.

It is small and ugly, paneled in fake wood with a gunmetal-gray desk and two computers on the desk. Fred looks smaller than I remember, and—surprisingly—younger. When I first interviewed with him—in the summer before my senior year of high school—I thought he was older than dirt. I see now that he’s probably only twenty years older than I am. He is bald now, and smiling at me in a way I don’t like. There is sympathy in his eyes as he stands to greet me.

“Hi, Fred,” I say, shaking his hand. “It’s good of you to see me. ”

“Of course,” he says, sitting back down. On his desk is a stack of paper. He points to it. “Do you know what those are?”

“No. ”