Comfort & Joy

“Shhh,” Daniel says. “Shhh. ” He turns, carrying Bobby upstairs. I can hear their voices. Soft. Uncertain.

Daniel is singing to Bobby; the hushed notes of the song underscore the sounds of crying. It’s a song I don’t recognize, and I don’t understand the words, but it moves me nonetheless, makes me think about the times in my life—long ago now—when I felt safe and loved.

I feel my way to the registration desk and find the phone. It’s time to call Stacey. Lightning is a strobe light that turns off and on, blasting me in and out of darkness.

I pick up the phone and call the operator. There are two rings, then, the electricity snaps off, the phone goes dead, and everything goes dark.

In my dreams, the world is full of strange noises and unfamiliar smells.

Light. It is buzzing all around me like bees around the comb. There is a thunk-whoosh sound that repeats itself, over and over.

It’s the surf at the beach they called Kalaloch; I hear the waves whispering to me, calling me to come forward, feel their coolness. I feel as if I’m being held under the water. I can’t breathe. Panicked, I try to fight my way to the surface, but it’s useless.

“Joy, wake up. ”

“Wake up. Pleease. ”

It’s my sister’s voice.

I’m out of the ocean now. For a blissful moment I’m ten years old again, and we’re at a KOA campground in Needles, California. Stacey wants to break the rules, go swimming at night in the pool by the registration building. She is tugging on my sleeve.

Then I’m back on Madrona Lane, close enough to touch my pregnant sister and yet unable to reach out. The wedding invitation is on the asphalt between us. Thomas James Candellaro and Stacey Elizabeth McAvoy request your presence . . .

“Wake up, Joy. ”

Someone touches my arm, pushes me gently.

I open my eyes, disoriented at first by the shadowy darkness around me. I expected to be at home, staring up at my own ceiling, listening to the sound of old Mr. Lundgren’s lawn mower.

Bobby is beside my bed, looking down at me.

I push to my elbows, shove the tangled red hair from my eyes. “Bobby,” I say, trying to get past my dream. Everything is still watery, confusing. I can’t

remember a sleep so deep.

“You wouldn’t wake up,” he says, his eyes full of worry.

“I was up late last night,” I say, as if he can understand the kind of sleepless night that comes with regret.

“I dreamed you went away. ”

I close my eyes and sigh. How could I have blithely befriended him and not seen how all this would end?

Fantasies.

I’ve wrapped myself in them, let pretty images from an impossible future be my safety net, my safe place to land. I’ve thought of my time here as an adventure. In truth, it was an escape. All along, the clock on my discovery has been ticking. I simply didn’t hear it before.

“Are you leaving?”

I want to lie to him; more than that, I want my lie to be the truth.

But I don’t belong in this wild place, no matter how much I want to. This is the truth I stumbled upon in the dark last night as I tried to sleep. Daniel has never even hinted that he feels something for me. All my “what ifs” were really “if onlys. ”

I have been like Bobby, a child chasing a ghost on a dock at dawn.

I touch Bobby’s plump cheek. In no time at all, his skin will roughen and grow hair. He will be a young man, and I will be a memory of his childhood.

“I want you to stay,” he says, his voice unsteady.