In the middle of long January nights, he was tormented by a fraction of relief that Henry was dead. All those times he had tolerated the choice Sophie made, and all the ways he’d deliberately made his own choice not to be anyone’s competition. A few times just before dawn, waking from yet another nightmare of paralysis—whispered voices calling Help Me, Help Me—Martin visited the shale-strewn cliff edge overlooking the Mohawk, pushed by the longing to find refuge in a place high above the frozen water. Frozen almost frozen. He had missed the signs. Even by the end of February, separate in their grief, Martin found that he and Sophie still didn’t have the heart to be near one another. After nearly two months of distance, he made attempts to reconnect them, inviting Sophie to meet for hot chocolate or to take a walk through the scattering of naked birch and oak and maple behind the high school. But their once-companionable silence felt strained now, full of thick absence. Sitting side by side at the diner’s counter, they ordered by pointing at the menu; they exchanged no more than a few words before leaving their ceramic mugs of cocoa half-finished and then parting wordlessly on the sidewalk out front.
