The Good Goodbye by Carla Buckley Read Free Book Online Page B

be back in thirty minutes. Let me know if you need anything.”
    “Okay. Thank you.”
    He reaches up to slide the curtain across the glass wall and Arden and I are alone. All I can see of my daughter is the ghostly rounded shape of her bandaged head and the sheet covering her. I wait for the shadows to sort themselves out and carefully reach again for the skin on the inside of her arm, just enough for the tips of my four fingers to line up, the fine hairs I know are palest blond, the soft rise of a narrow vein, the reassuring warmth of her skin. The small purple-and-green butterfly, wings open, seeking freedom. Fighting for it.
    I should be worrying about the fire. I should be demanding to know how it happened, demanding to know how all the safeguards failed, leaving my daughter barely clinging to life, but all I can think of is She’s here. She’s in this room with me right this moment. I can see and touch her, and that’s all that matters.
    Rustling behind me. It’s Theo, letting himself quietly into the room. “How is she?” he whispers.
    “Talk to her.” I’m so glad to see him. He brings warmth into the room, solidity. “She needs to know you’re here.”
    “Hey, sweetheart. Hey, Arden Garden.” His voice is forced and unnatural, and tears sting my eyes. “Daddy’s here,” I say to compensate, in a chirpy voice I instantly regret. We are all going to have to practice speaking normally. I inhale and try again. “Guess what today is. Our anniversary. Can you believe it?”
    I tell her about the homecoming kids and how the server had to break up a mashed-potato food fight. I pretend this is a regular conversation and that we are at home, in our kitchen, just the two of us. I tell her about the twins, and how Oliver took his ant farm to school and, miracle of all miracles, not one ant escaped. I tell her Rory’s sleeping in the room next door, and that she’ll be okay, too. What I don’t tell her is that this might not be true, and that the doctors are all wearing grim expressions. I don’t tell her I’m sick with fear.

    Later, in the cafeteria, while the nurses are changing Arden’s bandages and the Foley bag, I cry against Theo’s shirt. “How did this happen?” I’m blubbering. I’m barely making sense. There had been fire alarms and smoke detectors, rules about appliances. No candles. Cooking in the kitchens. “How did this happen?” My hands are fists, gathering up the material of his shirt. Over and over, I see my daughter cartwheeling through the air, arms and legs outspread. The ground had been hard. It had been unforgiving as it rushed to meet her. “Why Arden? Why Rory?” Why us?
    Theo rubs his hands up and down my back. “I don’t know,” he murmurs, and it only makes the images in my head spin faster. Arden on the ledge. Arden in the air. Arden on the ground. I have to know that bad things don’t just randomly happen. “I have to know,” I insist, and the next day, I do.
    —
    “How is she?” my mother asks on the phone.
    I’m in the ICU family lounge. The window offers a rain-smeared view of slanted utilitarian rooftops and concrete. The windowsill is wide and stacked with cardboard boxes of jigsaw puzzles in faded colors. A ruffled paperback of sudoku puzzles sits on the round table, a pen lying across its magenta cover. I’ll be right back, the owner seems to have said, but it’s been there for hours—overnight? A bulletin board offers celestial help, a suicide hotline, coupons for a local dry cleaner, and a missing poster for a dark-eyed girl staring unhappily at the camera.
    “The same,” I tell my mother. We’ve talked twice already during the course of the night—or has it been three times? I have nothing new to share. We’re in a holding pattern; all we can do is wait to see if the extra fluid in Arden’s skull starts to drain. She could make a complete recovery. I have made Dr. Morris admit this. It’s possible, the doctor had said. Anything is