“Maybe that’s why you’re here,” he says, without looking up. “Because you were honest.”

I wait awhile before I say-”What do you mean?”

Fifty

“I saw the hype around your book. I remember walking into the hospital and seeing people reading it in waiting rooms. I even saw someone reading it at the grocery store once. Pushing her cart and reading like she couldn’t put it down. I was proud of you.”

I don’t know how I feel about him being proud of me. He barely knows me. It feels condescending, but then it doesn’t. Isaac isn’t really a condescending guy. He’s equal parts humble and slightly awkward about receiving praise. I saw it in the hospital. As soon as anyone started saying good things about him, his eyes would get shifty and he’d look for an escape route. He was all clickety-clack, don’t look back.

Sixty two pieces.

“So how did that get me here?”

“Thirty minutes,” he says.

“What?”

“It’s been thirty minutes. Time for a shot.”

He stands up and opens the cabinet where we keep the liquor. We keep finding hidden bottles. The rum was in a Ziploc bag in the sack of rice.

“Whiskey or rum?”

“Rum,” I say. “I’m sick of whiskey.”

He grabs two clean coffee mugs and pours our shots. I drink mine before he’s even had time to pick up his mug. I smack my lips together as it rolls down my throat. At least it’s not the cheap stuff.

“Well?” I demand. “How did it get me here?”

“I don’t know,” he finally says. He finds the piece he’s looking for and joins it to the ear of his deer. “But I’d be stupid to think this wasn’t a fan. It’s that or there is one other option.”

His voice drops off and I know what he’s thinking.

“I don’t think it was him,” I rush. I pour myself a voluntary shot.

I don’t have much of an alcohol tolerance and I haven’t eaten anything today. My head does a little flipsy doosey as the alcohol runs down my throat. I watch his fingers slide, clip into place, slide, search, slide…

100 pieces.

I pick up my first piece, the one with the bulldog.

“You know,” Isaac says. “My bike never did grow wings.”

The rum has curbed my vinegar and loosened the muscles in my face. I fold my features into a version of shock mock and Isaac cracks up.

“No, I don’t suppose it did. Birds are the only things that grow wings. We’re just left to muck through the mire like a bunch of emotional cave men.”

“Not if you have someone to carry you.”

No one wants to carry someone when they’re heavy from life. I read a book about that once. A bunch of drivel about two people who kept coming back to each other. The lead male says that to the girl he keeps letting get away. I had to put the book down. No one wants to carry someone when they’re heavy from life. It’s a concept smart authors feed to their readers. It’s slow poison; you make them believe it’s real, and it keeps them coming back for more. Love is cocaine. And I know this because I had a brief and exciting relationship with blow. It kept my knife-to-skin addiction at bay for a little while. And then I woke up one day and decided I was pathetic—sucking powder up my nose to deal with my mommy issues. I’d rather bleed her out than suck her in. So I went back to cutting. Anyway … love and coke. The consequences for both are expensive: you get a mighty fine high, then you come barreling down, regretting every hour you spent reveling in something so dangerous. But you go back for more. You always go back for more. Unless you’re me. Then you lock yourself away and write stories about it. Boo-hoo. Boo fucking hoo.

“Humans weren’t made to carry someone else’s weight. We can barely lift our own.” Even as I say it, I don’t entirely believe it. I’ve seen Isaac do things that most wouldn’t. But that’s just Isaac.

“Maybe lifting someone else’s weight makes yours a little more bearable,” he says.

We catch eyes at the same time. I look away first. What can you say to that? It’s romantic and foolish, and I don’t have the heart to argue. It would have been kinder if someone had broken Isaac Asterholder’s heart at some point. Being stuck on love was a real bitch to cure. Like cancer, I think. Just when you think you’re over it, it comes back.

We take another shot right before I snap my last piece of the puzzle into place. It’s the Waldo piece from underneath my coffee cup. Isaac is only half finished. His mouth gapes when he sees.

“What?” I say. “I gave you a good head start.” I get up to go take my shower.

“You’re a savant,” he calls after me. “That wasn’t fair!”

I don’t hate Isaac. Not even a little bit.

The days melt. They melt into each other until I can’t remember how long we’ve been here, or if it’s supposed to be morning or night. The sun never stops with the damn light. Isaac never stops with the damn pacing. I lie still and wait.

Until it comes. Clarity, bleeding through my denial, warm against my numb brain. Warm—it’s a word I’m becoming less and less familiar with. Isaac has become increasingly worried about the generator lately. He calculates how long we’ve been here. “It’s going to run out of gas. I don’t know why it hasn’t already…”

We turned off the heat and used the wood from the closet downstairs. But now we are running out of wood. Isaac has rationed us down to four logs a day. Any day now the generator could run out of fuel. It is Isaac’s fear that we will no longer be able to get water through the faucet without the power. “We can burn things in the house for heat,” he tells me. “But once we run out of water we’re dead.”

My feet are cold, my hands are cold, my nose is cold; but right now, my brain is cooking something. I press my face into the pillow and will it away. My brain is sometimes like a rogue Rubik’s cube. It twists until it finds a pattern. I can figure out any movie, any book within five minutes of starting it. It’s almost painful. I wait for it to pass, the twisting. My mind can see the picture that Isaac has been looking for. While he, no doubt, paces the kitchen, I get up and sit on the floor in front of my dwindling fire. The wood is hard against my legs, but wood absorbs heat and I’d rather be warm and uncomfortable than cold and cushioned. I’m trying to distract my thoughts, but they are persistent. Senna! Senna! Senna! My thoughts sound like Yul Brynner. Not girl voice, not my voice, Yul Brynner’s voice. Specifically in The Ten Commandments.

“Shut up, Yul,” I whisper.

But, he doesn’t shut up. And no wonder I didn’t see it before. The truth is more twisted than I am. If I am right, we will be home soon; Isaac with his family, me with mine. I giggle. If I am right, the door will open and we can walk to a place where there is help. All of this will be over. And it’s a good thing, too, we are down to a dozen logs. When my toes are thawed, I stand and head downstairs so that I can tell him.

He’s not in the kitchen. I stand for a moment at the sink where I usually find him looking out the window. The faucet has a drip. I watch it for a minute before turning away. The whiskey we were drinking a few nights ago is still on the counter. I screw off the cap and take a swig straight from the bottle. The lip feels warm. I wonder if Isaac was in here doing the same thing. I flinch, lick my lips and take two more deep sips. I walk boldly up the stairs, swinging my arms as I go. I’ve learned that if you move all of your limbs at once you can chase some of the cold away.

Isaac is in the carousel room. I find him sitting on the floor staring up at one of the horses. This is unusual. It’s typically my spot. I slide down the wall until I am sitting next to him and stretch my legs out in front of me. I am already feeling the effects of the whiskey, which makes this easier. “The carousel day,” I say. “Let’s talk about it.”