A blurry world sharpened itself in the eyes of the man. His new eyes plucked out individual dust motes swirling in the room, because the world he inhabited was a room, he decided. Light filtered in from the window to his right, to his left, a bedside table sat. There was no clock to tell him the time, though he a vague notion that there should have been. Instead, a white lamp with a nondescript shade rested upon the table. Beside it rested a packet of medicine.

The man reached out an arm, hardly conscious of doing so, and picked the packet up from the table. Nyquil, one pill missing. The man closed his eyes again, feeling a strong haze pulling at his mind. Odd feelings of helplessness and terror floated just above his consciousness as he burrowed deeper into the soft white blankets on the bed. His hand slowly loosened from the packet of pills as he drifted.

When he woke again, light was no longer streaming through the window, and the man felt a little bit more human. The room was no longer so hazy. He slid his legs from beneath the white coverlet and rested them on the hardwood floor. As he catalogued his body, he realized that he could feel nothing but the scratch of a pair of navy blue pajama bottoms around his ankles. There was none of that vague terror left, but even so, when the white walls seemed to move fractionally closer to him, he decided to move.
The house was deathly quiet as he walked down the corridor. He managed badly in the dark, needing to trail a hand along the walls to find his way. He did not know this place. But he had not questioned anything about his surroundings before, so he would not then. Somehow he feared that if he let in the curiosity, pain would come at its heels.

He descended the staircase and came into a kitchen. The space was small and spotless. Stainless-steel appliances and eggshell-painted cupboards met his vision when he found the light switch. The fact that there was no individuality to his surroundings, no possessions, no decoration, flickered unwanted through his thoughts. He poured himself a glass of water from the tap and sat at a morning table he found in a little breakfast nook. The man emphatically tried to not look outside, but when he did, he was only met with blackness and snow-covered shrubbery near the window that was lit by the warm glow of the kitchen.

The man sat and sipped his water, trying to keep the panic out of his mind. There was one line of reasoning in particular that he desperately wanted to purge. I don’t know… I don’t know where… I don’t know who… I used to…I used to have a life, didn’t I? I used to be someone to somebody. Damn it. His throat tightened with an oncoming wave of fear.

At that moment, a jingle sounded as somewhere in the house a door opened.
“Hey, Henry. I brought you Chinese food and a change of clothes. The food was expensive, so I won’t take no for an…”
The intruder who walked into the kitchen obviously did not belong there. His dark leather jacket and black boots seemed to dirty the place just by existing. A wave of anger swept across the man as his eyes took the intruder in. Who was he to get his nicks and scratches on the floorboards? The intruder’s young face seemed too fresh for his surroundings, except for the bloom of a purplish bruise underneath his right eye. The overall impression was of a man that didn’t seem serious enough. Like everything was some great joke, written and orchestrated for the express purpose of amusing him. The man disliked the intruder immediately. Something must have shown on his face because the intruder stopped his monologue as he looked at the man. He lowered the Chinese food to the floor and paced forward.
“Henry?”
The man was confused again. He found himself on his feet, as if the intruder’s force of will had physically moved him to stand. The glass of water dangled uselessly by his side.
“Oh, God.” The intruder said. “I thought it might not happen this…” He broke himself off with a choking sound that seemed almost too dark for the moment. The sound reminded the man in a flash of strangling seaweed against flesh and black blood against snow.
The intruder’s eyes widened momentarily. “Henry, sit down. There you go. No, I’ll take the glass. You just sit.” The intruder pushed him gently back towards the morning table and a chair.
The man sat.
“Henry, your name is Henry,” the intruder said, crouching down so that he was eye-level with the man. He looked up at the man imploringly, with innocence in his expression. The innocence seemed forced to the man. “My name is George. Your best friend, George Donnelly, from school? We’ve done this before, do you remember? I’ve said this to you before, many times.” George squinted at the tile on the floor, the crinkles of his eyes pulling at the bruise, as if the laminate would tell him what to do. Or as if he really needed a pair of eyeglasses. “You always ask me the same things.”
“Oh yeah, what do I ask you?” the man questioned, his tone quiet and reserved, as if speaking to a rearing snake. There was something about George’s dark, squinted eyes that ignited some deep-seated suspicion in the man. Somehow, the man thought that this intruder--this George--wasn’t the friend he claimed to be.
“You ask me where you are.”
“Well,” the man intoned, still skipping his eyes over George’s face “enlighten me.”
“You’re in your home. You moved here after you finished your Masters.”
“What in?”
“The Masters was in Sociology. You taught at the community college down the road. Jesus. You loved that job.” The almost nonexistent wrinkles around George’s face climbed as he smiled. “You thought the moon rose and set on your students.” George’s smile widened.
There was a silence as the man processed what he heard. He had no recollections of teaching or earning his degree. He barely even knew what Sociology was. Somehow, that thought gave him a pang of true sadness. It was tragic, that he couldn’t remember his life’s work.
“Next, you’re going to ask me who you are, Henry. But I already told you. You’re Henry Smith.” George stopped, as if waiting for recognition from the man. When there was none, George continued all in a rush. “Your driver’s license, issued to you by the state of New York, says that you are six feet tall, have brown hair, and green eyes. The license would also say that you need corrective lenses to drive, which you do. It told me the same thing, but I never wear them, as you can probably see.” George gestured to his still squinting eyes. At that moment, the man became aware of the glasses that had always been sitting on his own nose. He realized that he must have worn them while in bed. That seemed wrong, but there was no time to think. George was still talking.
“You are highly organized, to the point of obsessiveness sometimes. I mean, good God, man; you organize your socks by color. You clean this place religiously. But I try to get you out of here every once in a while. We drive down to the city every other weekend to go to the clubs, where you have a scotch and soda every single time. All of the bartenders think you’re pompous.” At this, George seemed to crack. He made the seaweed-choked-blood sound again with his throat and the man felt cold.
“I’m your best friend, don’t you remember?” George’s smile grew sad. “And your parents died when you were about twenty. They loved each other so much, they died days apart. I was there at the funeral, but you didn’t cry.”
It was like listening to a narrator describe a character in a play. The man thought that this “Henry” fellow seemed nice enough, but he obviously wasn’t the man. The man and “Henry” weren’t the same. He couldn’t remember cleaning, and he didn’t remember the clubs, though he remembered what a scotch and soda tasted like. He couldn’t remember his parents. He knew what the color green looked like, but he couldn’t equate it with his own eyes. His own eyes were nothing. He was just a man who woke up in a bed clutching a packet of Nyquil. Nothing else. Not a teacher, not anyone’s acquaintance, and certainly no one’s best friend.
“Now you’re going to ask me what happened to you,” George supplied.
“Yes, that question has popped into my mind, once or twice.” The man remembered sarcasm. Obviously relieved, George grinned. But he soon grew serious and sat more properly on the kitchen tile. George took a deep breath and looked up again.
“You were driving in a snowstorm, back from school after a long night working, when you hit a patch of black ice and started to slide. The car hit and broke the guard rail on the Old Trail Bridge, just down the road.” At this, the man felt nervous and electrified with adrenaline. He almost didn’t want George to keep speaking. He almost didn’t want to know. But because this strange new world was the way it was, George kept speaking.
“Henry, you plunged into the river going at least thirty miles per hour. You hit your head on the dashboard and blacked out. Apparently, you were underwater for at least two minutes. You almost died. Twice.” George looked almost panicked at this. “I was your only…emergency contact. When they called me, you were in the hospital for the concussion and the hypothermia. When you woke up, they thought the amnesia would go away, and it did. For a time.” Another deep breath. “I took you back here last night and set you up in the bedroom. I gave you some Nyquil so you could sleep.” Lost in memories, George trailed off. The man shifted in his chair. He almost didn’t want to take up that much room when George was around, as if George’s being didn’t leave enough space in the room for the man. He didn’t want to make any sudden movements.
After some time, George’s eyes focused again.
“I brought you Chinese food, didn’t I? Are you hungry? It’s your favorite, but I bet it’s cold by now, sitting on the tile.”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, you’re having some anyway.”
“George?”
“Henry?” The man cringed. His name wasn’t Henry.
“Why does the house not have anything in it? No paintings, no posters, no knick-knacks. I don’t feel like I’ve lived here. I don’t feel like anyone has ever lived here.” Henry crossed his arms over his still pajama-clad chest.
George turned his back to Henry. “The house was just remodeled.” And he went to get two forks and the Chinese food.

Every day for four days, the man edged down the stairs, not quite understanding why they didn’t feel like his stairs, and installed himself in the breakfast nook. He had not been outside for as long as he could remember. Everything was still hazy and unclear. With a nameless sort of fear, he did not move unless it was to sleep or use the restroom down the hall from the kitchen. He spent his time watching the snow flurries through the window and tracing every path of sparkling frost as they climbed their way across the frame. Currently, he was writing an “R” and a “Y,” on the chill of the glass to complete his name. His name.
Slowly, he adopted his name as “Henry” in his head, if only for the sake of ceasing the incessant use of pronouns. His sense of self, however, was simpler than that. He wished that he could be nobody. He wished that he could just be his hands tracing patterns on a frosted glass, and his eyes following along. George was the one brought him back. George was the one that kept him on his toes.
Every night, George came to the cottage, bearing Chinese food. He always swept in with his jacket on and hair mussed, looking like a hurricane, pulling the cold outside air along in his wake. Henry was still suspicious of the intruder, even as George coaxed a plate of food into his hand. It wasn’t poisoned. At least Henry didn’t think so.
Henry did not want to know where George went when he left the house every night. Henry didn’t want to know. He just watched George with narrowed eyes as swept in and out like the tide. For almost a week, Henry traced on the glass by day and watched George in the evenings. By the end of the fourth day, he was ready to stop the gust of wind that called himself a man and demand some answers. The problem was, Henry didn’t know if he would like the answers. He couldn’t decide.
The front door opened and Henry decided.
George came in, wiping his boots on the overly-cheery welcome mat, and moved into the more comfortable temperature inside the house. Henry moved silently towards him and closely observed as the…intruder shed his jacket. Henry stopped right in front of George and waited.
“I’ve brought soy sauce today. You may not remember it, but you like soy sauce. Jesus-“

George looked up, saw Henry standing there, and reeled back. His combat boots tried to gain traction on a puddle left in the hall, but George fell anyway. Even as he hit the back of his head against the closed front door, his eyes were trained on Henry. To him, George didn’t seem scared. Just…expectant.

When the fall was over, Henry knelt down in the blood and melted ice and started speaking. “I don’t like you. I like that you bring me food and that you give a s***, because honestly, I don’t see anyone else doing it,” Henry hissed. He was livid. “But I think you’re in on this. I think you made me the way I am. And I swear to God, if you don’t tell me what happened very, very soon, we are going to have a problem on our hands. Do you understand?” The last was said with such conviction and fury that Henry scared himself. George was no match for this.

He was silent, his eyes as big as dishes, as he nodded his head. “Okay. Okay. Henry, just…”

“Don’t you dare tell me to calm down.”

“No, I won’t tell you to calm down. I was going to say ‘just give me a minute.’ Let me get up.” Henry was confused. He watched as George stood up stiffly, reaching his palm out in a gesture of surrender. “Go get your coat on. No, Henry. I can see you’re about to argue with me. Get dressed. It will be easier to show you than to tell you.” Henry let out a small breath. Finally, some answers.

When Henry did not move, George gave him a speculative look and disappeared again. Supple wool slid through Henry’s hands as the coat was handed over. Henry lifted his chin in defiance. He would not be ashamed that he could not remember where the hall closet was. George smirked at him and turned to open the front door. They stepped out into the world and left the cottage behind.

Outside, Henry breathed. He could smell the comforting, far-away smell of burning wood, and the crackle of freshly laid snow. It was pure and real, more real than anything he had ever smelled. It was too much, and he closed his eyes against the blinding white of the snow on the ground and the craggy outline of trees against the crisp sky. Too much. Too much. Smells and sounds and thoughts and observations raced through his head and he forgot what little he had left of himself until George touched his arm and brought him back.

Henry opened his eyes to see George watching him.

“Alright?”

“It’s just…so…cold,” Henry said.

“Well, button up, Henry. It’s a wide, cold, blue world out there. Ha!”

“What’s so funny?”

“Welcome to the human race.”

George seemed to revel in the look of pure confusion that crossed Henry’s face.

“Never mind. Just try to stick close to me.”

As they walked down the drive, Henry looked over his shoulder towards the house and got his first full glimpse of where he had been living for the past days. The cottage was made of stone and looked sweet, sitting there all alone in the woods. Dried ivy ran up the stone covering the façade, and Henry could tell that in the spring, there would be honeysuckle and violets and bees in the front garden. But in the winter, everything was covered in a deep blanket of snow. As Henry looked further, holding his hand up against the glare, he understood that there were no neighbors in sight. The cottage was isolated and antique. A witch’s cottage in the woods. He almost expected breadcrumbs.

Henry turned back around as they passed what must have been George’s car. It was dingy and small and inherently George. It looked odd next to the neatness of the house.
As they turned off the driveway and onto the main road, Henry became more and more edgy, and George became more and more depressed. The snow kept falling, and they were both soaked through after a quarter of an hour. At one point, Henry looked back and found George hunched over and small, seemingly ready for the world to throw a punch his way.

“Good,” said one part of Henry’s brain. “No,” said the other part. “You need him to tell you.”

Finally, the forest thinned and the road widened, and they came upon a bridge. It was a small iron thing, made just for crossing the pencil of a river that flowed underneath and the gulley that cradled the water. Cross beams held the whole pile up, but the bridge was obviously made for driving across, instead of walking. There was just a flimsy barrier of a handrail. In the middle of the bridge, Henry stopped, conscious of the fact that the sound of flowing water, of the ice melting from the nearby hills and finding its way to the river, was much louder than any other sound. The river was louder than the birds chirping in the afternoon sun. It was louder than George’s Zippo as he stopped for a cigarette, leaning against the rail. It was louder than Henry’s own breathing.

George did not look at him.

“This is where it happened.”

He spoke around his cigarette, and of course he would. It all came back in a rush. The haze was gone. Henry knew this was where it happened. He knew when they left where they were going, and he knew that George would do this. That he would look so nonchalant. That he would stand against that rail there and tell him that “this is where it happened,” and flick that Zippo lighter and try to keep his hands from shaking. He knew this was going to happen because it had happened before.

Blood-choked seaweed.

George started to hum the song. Hey you, with the pretty face, welcome to the human race.

And suddenly, Henry remembered everything.

Mr. Blue, you did it right, but soon comes Mr. Night, creepin’ over, now his hand is on your shoulder. Never mind, I’ll remember you this, I’ll remember you this way.

The melody brought Henry back.


Mary Donnelly is driving the car. Henry watches her from the passenger’s seat as she lifts one hand and moves it over the other, turning slowly on the road. She’s completely focused, worried about the snow. He can tell. She has that anxious little wrinkle between her eyes and her knuckles are white where she grips the wheel.

She is utterly beautiful.

Henry wants to kiss her. But he can’t.

She wouldn’t take it well if he did, he knows. She would tell him that his love is just because he was in pain and he latched onto her. She would tell him that he didn’t really love her. That he didn’t really love her skin and the way her back bends when she does her stretches in the morning and the way she says goodnight to him every night before she goes upstairs and he lays his head down on the sofa. That he didn’t love her fingernails and her toes and her snorting laugh and the way she wears her hair.

But she would be wrong.

He reaches over a strong hand and turns on the CD that he made her. He starts humming to the song that comes on, one that they both like.

“Will you turn that off? You know I love that band, but it’s snowing cats and dogs out there.”

“No. This is our song.”
She snorts and he’s going to tell her. He’s decided. “Hey, Mary?”

“Yes, Henry?”

He has lost his nerve.

“When are you going to renovate the cottage, like you wanted to?”

“That depends on when you get your sorry ass off my couch. Ha. Think of that. You’re on my couch at five o’clock on Wednesdays and Fridays and all night every night.”

Henry has noticed that she jokes about their situation a lot.

“Why would I need to move out for you to renovate?”

“Because you have to actually get off my couch if I’m going to buy a new one.”

“Mary?”

“Yes, Henry?”

“Do you mind so much?”

She looks over at him, soberly.

“No, Henry. I don’t mind at all.” She looks back at the road. “Sometimes I think we’re stuck together. Don’t you? I mean you have been living with me for two years now.” She makes a humming sound in the back of her throat. “I think it would be pretty lonely in that cottage all by myself. Not to mention the fact that George would kill me if I turned you out in the snow.”

“Mary?”

“Yes, Henry?”

“I love you.”

She turns and looks at him. Her eyes are snapping with a crackling sort of disappointment. Just like he thought they would.

“Henry…” And there’s the warning tone.

“I do. I love everything about you. I want to marry you and have children and grow old in that cottage of yours. I want to stop sleeping on the couch and stop being your patient. Seriously, Mary. We went from a doctor-patient relationship to something else a long time ago. You just didn’t notice it. So don’t give me that crap about morals and ethics and about them taking your license from you because I love you and you love me and why shouldn’t we be together.”

He says all of this in a rush, his mouth moving faster than his brain, and when he is done, she is in shock. Her wrinkled forehead does not move and her eyes are still and blank again.

“You love me.” It isn’t a question.

“With everything that I have in me. For years now.” He says it with a kind of despondency, as one would use to tell others that they have an incurable disease. He is resigned to his fate. Mary’s face goes through a sort of spasm at that, like she can’t decide whether to laugh or not, but it soon settles into the unsettling blankness.

“You love me.”

“Yes.”

“You’re in love with me.” As if she’s testing it out.

“Yes.”

She is still looking at him, and as she looks, Henry sees the most beautiful thing that he has ever seen in his life. He sees her widen her eyes in increments and raise her eyebrows and bring a shine into her eyes. She is the complete master of this smile and it is only for him. It is a secret thing, a blessed thing. And it is there. It is there in parts and it is there in its whole and it is glowing.

There is a squealing of tires and a sickening crunch and all of a sudden they are airborne, but she is still smiling. And when they hit the water, the music is still playing, and she is still smiling. And the last thing that he remembers is that smile.


“She loved you like nothing I’ve ever seen.” The Zippo wouldn’t light.
“Did she?”
“Henry, you’re so dense sometimes. She was so in love with you. When she spoke about you, she was so sweet, it made my teeth ache.” At this, George finally got the lighter to work and exhaled a blue cloud of smoke out over the bridge. “God. She was so stupid. I kept telling her that she shouldn’t get involved with you. She kept trying to tell me you weren’t together.” Pause. He turned around and looked Henry in the eye. “I should have never introduced you two.”
Henry didn’t know what to say. George was right. He never should have introduced Henry to Mary. Even when they had just met, Henry had known that he wasn’t good for her health. She was so careful with him and he just blundered through life. And now she was at the bottom of a river for her pains.
“Why didn’t you act on it sooner? Why didn’t you tell her?” George asked, still looking at Henry.
“Jesus, George! Maybe because she was your sister! Or better yet, my psychiatrist. You’re really asking me why I didn’t tell your goddamn sister why I loved her until it was too late?”
“Yes.”
Henry stopped. “Well… Well. She was your sister.”
“So?”
“So. So she was your goddamn sister! I couldn’t have told her. What if I messed it up? George, she was the one good thing that happened to me in college. You introduced her to me and suddenly I wasn’t alone anymore. You introduced her to me and I suddenly had someone to talk to.”
“The one good thing…”
“Do you know what we talked about during our sessions while we were still in school?”
“Me?” George smirked. He took another drag of his cigarette and looked out along the river. Utterly nonchalant. It pissed Henry off royally.
“No, you f*****. We didn’t talk about you. We talked about life. And how I was doing with…with the OCD. And how her schooling was going. And what kind of house she would buy when she graduated and had her own office. She wanted a cottage. That goddamn cottage, in fact. We talked about how we both had an unhealthy obsession with that stupid band. I told her that I couldn’t go to bed at night without brushing my teeth until they bled. And she still f***ing asked me to move in with her. You can’t tell me that she didn’t love me back.”
“But you still didn’t tell her.”
“I thought she knew.”
“Well she obviously didn’t know. Because she’s at the f***ing bottom of a river. I mean, how could someone be so surprised that they just drive off a bridge, Henry? You know what. No. It was just an accident. Just a f***ing accident, Henry.”
Henry was silent. George leaned more heavily on the barrier.
“Well, I can tell that you’re still angry, so we might as well trot the whole thing out again,” George said. He took one more drag, then flicked the cigarette into the river.
“Again.”
“Yes, again. You know we’ve done this before, Henry. You gave me a black eye for it last time. And the time before that. And the time before that.”
“Oh yes, and I’m tempted to do it again.”
“Why?”
“Because you didn’t tell me about her you royal fucking asshole! You kept me in the dark this whole time. This whole goddamn time! And the time before that. How long has this been going on, huh? How many times have I woken up with the brain of a fucking two-year-old and you’ve completely failed to tell me?” Henry felt his face contort with incredulity. “Every single time you were like ‘Oh, Hello, Henry. You look as if you can’t remember your name again. Here. I’ll tell you about your height and your hair color and what kind of stupid thing you do for a living, but I won’t tell you about the girl that you were madly in love with that you murdered.’ Did you not think it was important to tell me about her? To tell me that I killed her? That I killed the only woman I have ever loved. That I killed your sister.” And then, “I killed your sister. I killed Mary. Oh, God. Mary.”
He sank to the ground and pressed his palms to the iron of the bridge. It vibrated and shook with the wind and Georges footsteps as he came closer and crouched down. Henry pretended he couldn’t hear George’s breathing.
George reached out a comforting hand.
“Don’t touch me.” Henry swiped out and caught his balled fist on George’s cheekbone. Again. He hurt him. Again. There would be another black eye to replace the first. Henry knew that he should have felt guilt. It was George’s sister that was dead, after all. But George didn’t tell him. How could he have not told him?
“I deserved that.” George was holding the blood against his cheek with his torn hand. He looked roughed up. He was roughed up. It was odd, thought Henry, that the river kept flowing under the bridge. It was odd how quickly it changed.
“I told her I loved her, George. I told her I loved her while she was driving, while we were on a bridge in the middle of a snowstorm of all places.” Henry felt his eyes grow heavy. When he looked up at George, George looked back pityingly. “And you know what really gets me? You know what really puts the icing on the cake?”
“What, Henry?”
“After I told her, she smiled. Just for a split second. It was only the barest piece of a second. But in that second I could see what we could have been together. We could have grown old in that cottage, George. We could have lived.” Tears tore their way from his eyes and dripped down his nose. He could barely see. “I’ve never been happier than in that split second.” Blood-seaweed and choking. He finally broke. It was over, and it had left Henry in a crumpled heap with only the bridge underneath his cheek.
“I know,” soothed George.
“Yes, I’ve told you this before.”
“No. Well yes, but no. Henry, did you know that I was the one that found you? I found you both. I was just driving back from work, like both of you, when I saw the car in the drink and the broken barrier. I dove in the water just to drag your sorry ass out of that stupid car of hers.”
There was silence as that processed, but quickly a vicious anger came over Henry. He seethed through blurry eyes. “Why didn’t you save her, instead of me? Why didn’t you save your sister?”
George’s face crumpled, and he showed the first hint of genuine sadness that Henry had ever witnessed from him. Henry watched as George put his cut palms to his eyes and pressed.
“It wasn’t easy, Henry. Do you think it was easy? She was dead. She was sitting there in her seatbelt, underwater, just floating. God, Henry, her head was half caved in. The water had so much blood in it. Between that and the seaweed, I could barely see. I bet you didn’t know that her airbag didn’t go off, but yours did. I bet you didn’t know that, did you?” George paused. “Why do you think I saved you, you ass. You were still alive. She was just a floating corpse.”
Henry didn’t want to know or hear. His anger dissipated and he grew still, conscious of the fact that they needed to tread lightly here. George continued.
“I got you unbuckled, and believe me, it was difficult. I almost gave up on you. It was so cold, Henry. I know you don’t remember, but I do. I hauled you up onto the embankment and started performing CPR. Someone must have spotted us from the bridge, because I could hear sirens after a few minutes. But just as they got here, Henry, you opened your eyes and looked at me. ‘I killed her,’ you said. ‘I told her I loved her and she just wasn’t watching what she was doing. I killed her.’ You kept repeating it and repeating it, until they loaded you in the ambulance and you passed out.” George stopped his quiet explanation and bent his head, tucking it next to his chest, not looking at Henry.
Henry had stopped crying. He couldn’t feel his fingers anymore in the cold.
“How long ago was this, George.”
George didn’t answer.
“How. Long. George.”
George flinched. “Two months.”
“Jesus,” Henry breathed. He thought for a moment. “How many times? How many times have I forgotten? How many times have you not told me about her?”
“This will be the fourth.”
“Why do you keep doing it, George? Why are you still here?”
“Because I wanted to protect you. The first time you woke up and didn’t remember, I thought it was a miracle. It was like a second chance. I thought you didn’t have to know about her, about loving her and killing her. I was going to tell you, I swear.” George looked up with pleading eyes. “But I just couldn’t.” George’s shoulders dropped. “It didn’t matter anyway. You didn’t trust me. You never trust me. You wanted to know what happened. So,” he took a breath. “I brought you here. And you punched me when you found out. The next day, you woke up and didn’t remember a thing.”
“No.”
“What?”
“No. That’s not why you didn’t tell me, isn’t it?” Henry stood on shaky feet and loomed over George. George grew smaller and smaller, huddling closer to himself and making himself a smaller target. It was instinct and Henry viciously pitied him.
“You didn’t tell me because you felt guilty. You are such a selfish bastard, do you know? You felt guilty that you introduced us, that it’s all your fault in the first place. And above all, you felt guilty that you didn’t save her, didn’t you? You felt guilty that you didn’t even try. That’s why you keep buying me Chinese food, because you think you can punish yourself by sticking with me.” Henry wanted to kill him. In his memory, he had never known his own fists to shake so much and his vision to grow so deeply red.
He wasn’t going to ask George why he didn’t really try to save her. He just wasn’t.
“So. What are we going to do now, George? What do you plan we do now? You always seem to have the plan. Huh? Got nothing?”
George was still crouching on the ground, his shoulders shaking. He mumbled something.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t catch that.”
“We go home. It’s cold, Henry.” George looked up, and Henry could see some of himself in the man crouched on the bridge. They were both just so lost. Henry softened.
“Okay. Alright. Let’s just go home. It’s getting dark and cold. Here.” He reached out a hand, and wrapped it around George’s, levering him to his feet. They stood and pointedly did not look at each other.
When they took their first steps off the bridge, snow began to fall in earnest. It was a quiet sort of snow to go with a quiet sort of walk. Noiseless. Henry realized that he had not seen another living human being besides George in two months, since the hospital. In four cycles of memory, four lifetimes, he had not seen another person. Strangely, he was alright with that. People were not like snow. They were loud.
The sun had finally set by the time The Cottage peeked out through the trees.
The door creaked when George opened it and Henry stepped in. As he went to hang his coat on his favorite hangar in the closet, he sensed George moving behind him into the living room. When he was done, he too went into the room and spotted George staring blankly from the sofa, still fully dressed.
“You renovated,” mused Henry.
“Yes. Just like she wanted.”
“Because you didn’t want me to remember.”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“After the second time. I thought you might do better without the reminders.”
“Hm.” Even still, he could see bits of her everywhere. There was the window where she would stand in the morning and stretch. There was where the kitchen table stood where they would eat their meals every day. There was where her CD collection used to sit. Henry’s own collection used to slowly mix with hers, but not anymore. Even George was sitting on the sofa where Henry used to spend his nights. Henry’s pillow and blanket weren’t there anymore, of course. It was all gone.
Henry suddenly realized something. “Hey, George?”
“Yes, Henry?”
“Have I been sleeping in her bed this whole time?”
“Yes, Henry. It wasn’t as if she was going to use it.” Blank. George was blank.
If Henry wasn’t as incredibly tired as he was, he would have dwelled more on that fact. As it was, all he could think about was sleep, whether it be on her bed or not. As Henry put his foot on the first stair, George piped up from the couch. “I’ll be here when you wake up,” he said.
“Yes.” Henry did not turn around. He knew that when he woke up, he would not remember. He knew and he knew that George knew. It had happened before, after all. But Henry wasn’t afraid. He missed the comforting haze.
“Hey, George?”
“Yes, Henry?”
“I would do anything for her not to be dead. I would do anything at all. If I could just go back. If I could just re-do…everything…”
“I know, Henry.”
“Alright. Goodnight, George.”

“Goodnight, Henry.”
A blurry world sharpened itself in the eyes of the man.