The Forever Bridge Read Free Page B

every bit of courage she has, mustering the will from some primitive place, and makes her way to the kitchen where she unlocks the door.
    Bunk stands on the porch, and she knows he is trying not to look around at the mess. The inside of the house is immaculate, but she has given up on anything beyond the front door. She knows he is silently assessing the disaster, and so she beckons him in.
    “Morning, Syl,” he says, stepping into the dim kitchen.
    She nods and motions for him to sit at the table.
    “You got any coffee going yet?” he asks, and she shakes her head.
    “Is something . . .” she begins, and is startled by the crackling sound of her own voice. When was the last time she spoke? “Did something happen?”
    “No,” he says, shaking his head. Smiling. Bunk’s easy smile has always calmed her. Her body remembers this, and she sighs, her fear dissipating.
    “You sure?” she manages. “Ruby?”
    “Everything’s good. Ruby’s doing great.”
    Still, she is trembling as she goes to the counter to make a pot of coffee. She runs the cold water into the carafe and pours it into the machine. Her hands recollect this ritual. Coffee, filter, mugs. It steadies her.
    “And Robert?” she asks. She can’t look at him when she asks this, and so she simply watches the coffee drip into the pot. But she can feel his eyes on her back, and she knows he is reading the pain of Robert’s name in the defeated curve of her spine, regret revealed in her slumped shoulders.
    “He misses you,” Bunk says, and she feels her throat close.
    She turns to him, realizing, after it’s too late, that her face is wide open, her hope exposed like an open wound.
    “We all miss you,” Bunk says, looking down at his hands. He’s said too much.
    As the coffee brews, she sits across from Bunk at the table. The stitch in her side persists, and she winces slightly as she sits.
    “Listen, Syl,” Bunk says. “I am actually here about Ruby. Rob and I were hoping she might be able to come stay with you for a week or so. Just still school starts up again.”
    She is confused. Ruby hasn’t stayed with her for months. The last time had been a disaster. The last time, Ruby had to call 911. The memory of it is excruciating, embarrassing.
    “I know you’re still having a rough time,” Bunk says, his eyes filled with concern. “But she’s eleven now. Spends most of her time with her nose in a book or out riding her bike. She’s an easy kid, Syl, mature. And she misses you too.”
    “Why now?” she asks in that strange, rusty voice.
    Bunk smiles again. She notices that his teeth are worse than the last time they spoke. That whatever issue he’s had with that canine tooth has gotten bad. She wishes he had the money to see a dentist. That he could take care of it.
    “It’s Larry,” he says.
    Larry is his and Robert’s little brother. He lives on some tiny island off the coast of North Carolina. The last time she saw him, that anyone saw him, was at Jess’s funeral almost two years ago.
    “He’s in a bad way,” he says. “Which I’m sure ain’t no surprise.”
    And Sylvie recalls Larry’s glassy stare and trembling hands at the funeral. And she’d known it wasn’t grief, wasn’t sorrow that made him that pale and thin, that had turned him into a shadow of himself.
    “It’s kind of funny actually,” Bunk continues. “We been talking about getting down there. Try to get him some help. ‘Course the issue’s been money. Ain’t it always? But then Rob goes and wins five hundred dollars in one of those scratch-off lottery things. Up at Hudson’s? So we thought, maybe it’s a sign.”
    None of this makes any sense to her. For one thing, Robert hasn’t won a thing in his life. He used to joke about his bad luck, back when misfortune meant silly things like locking himself out of the car or losing his house key in the snow. Before bad luck meant accident, meant disaster.
    “Ruby can’t come with us, for obvious reasons.