pls don't hate me okay thx bye.

PART FOUR: AFTER ALL THIS TIME

Hearts don't keep well in a suitcase – "Safe Flight" by Wild Rivers

Claire – October

We're running late this morning. Normally I'd have Bear up by six, fed by seven, and out the door by eight.

But last night, the roof caved in at the house across the street after a heavy rain. We were both up past midnight: me mopping water with the women while the men fashioned a fix out of duct tape and sealant and tarps, Bear snoozing against the chest of whichever mother or grandmother hadn't held him a while.

And late nights do not make for easy mornings.

It's a bit of a hike to the restaurant, about a forty-minute walk, and I'll be surprised if someone doesn't beat us there.

Bussaba and Panya are usually in the kitchen around dawn, chopping vegetables and stirring broth and shredding the meats that cooked overnight. Their son Paitoon, who will have left the house before the sun even thought about rising, to get to one of his three jobs, will join us later for the afternoon rush. And we will all go home together.

But they were also across the street last night, all of them. Panya's age and hips forced him to move slowly and sleep later. I'm not sure Paitoon slept at all.

Panya was still getting ready when we left this morning and offered me a ride over on their small but mighty tuk-tuk. I needed the space, though. It smells so good here after it rains, in a way Washington never did. Back home, the rain weighed everything down. Here, it lifts everything up. Me included.

Bear starts babbling in my arms, spewing his favorite and only word with gusto, and I talk back the way I've learned he likes. The way the internet—spotty as it may be at the café—says you're supposed to when they're this age.

I step over a puddle leftover from the rain, the restaurant in sight.

"Oh, really?" I say in Thai, my burning arm forcing me to switch him to the other side. I'm not fluent, nowhere near, but it's amazing how fast you can pick up a language when you're immersed in it. When you have no other choice.

Sink or swim, Paitoon tells me whenever he sees me toting my surfboard out the door. Sometimes he joins me.

"Papa," Bear says again, getting so excited his little fist nearly hits me in the face. The dimples of his knuckles bowl me over every time I catch sight of them.

"I know," I say back, matching his excitement and stepping around the side of the restaurant.

There's a man hunched over on the stoop of the kitchen door, a backpack at his feet. I start to wake him, tell him I don't have any money, but that if he waits until we open, he can eat a hot meal for free.

Except I know this man.

He's more familiar than the back of my hand. He is the beating of my heart and the regret that lances it like bullets. I spell his name with the stars; it is written on my soul.

"Quil?" The word is foreign on my tongue, but not in my thoughts.

I never expected when I watched that video, sent that text, this would be the result. But I had hoped. In the parts of myself that weren't broken, I hoped for him. For this.

He has a beard now—still, my brain corrects. I knew he had a beard. Back when we were still talking, when I hadn't wrecked us beyond repair. But other than that slight addition and the flew-through-five-time-zones fatigue coloring his under-eyes, he looks the same. Unageing while he waits for me to grow up. I wondered if he'd keep phasing. Now I know.

I see the moment he registers Bear in my arms. I look down at him there, to see what Quil sees. Bear gives him a toothy grin, four little chiclets gleaming back in the mid-morning sun.

"Papa," Bear says in greeting.

Quil's face goes white, his dark brows scrunching in confusion. He looks back and forth between the two of us with hurt and horror and disbelief, and something stirs uncomfortably in my stomach. His disapproval still cuts like a knife, even after all this time.

Why would Quil—

Oh fuck me. The phrase runs through my head in every language I know.

"Don't freak out," I say quickly, shifting Bear on my hip. I want to set him down in favor of taking Quil in my arms, but Bear is a baby. And there's rocks, glass, other sharp objects. "It's the only word he knows."

While Bear looks up at me funnily, unused to hearing English words, Quil's face oscillates between blanching and flushing. "He's not—"

"Ours? No." But he could have been. He almost was. In another universe.

Quil still looks confused, staring at Bear like his entire world has shifted.

I'm surprised that I can still read him like a book. Surprised, but also not. He is the one who taught me how to read, after all. Him and my mother. "He's not yours, Quil," I say again. "Or mine."

Except I look down at Bear in my arms, and he chooses that moment to lay his head on my shoulder, and my heart stirs. He is mine, a little. In the ways that matter.

And I don't know what that means. How this world I've built here intersects with the one I left behind, if they even do. If they ever can. How to explain the choices I've made when I've only just started to understand them myself.

"Can we sit?" I say. "Inside, I mean."

"I could use a drink," he gruffs, hooking a curved hand around his neck.

He follows me inside after I unlock the door, and as I've done so many other mornings, I get Bear settled in his corner, the one with the makeshift playpen and soft flooring. It is meticulously cleaned every night before I leave. I make sure of it.

In the kitchen, I make the strongest pot of coffee I can, using bottled water we keep on hand for tourists. If Quil is as fresh off the plane as I suspect, there will be no way he can stomach the local water yet.

When I return to him, he's up, studying the faded and torn family pictures on the wall. The newest one includes me. Bussaba and Panya are to my left. Paitoon is on my right. Bear (real name Mee Noi) is perched on my hip between us.

I set the two cups of coffee on the table and plop the bottle of bourbon I found in Panya's secret stash. A bottled water next to that.

I wipe the condensation off on my shorts. "I wasn't sure what kind of drink you were going for," I say. "So I brought options."

He looks back at me, and for a second I can read his mind. I am unfamiliar now; he doesn't recognize me anymore. It's just a flash, that look, and then it's gone.

It stings all the same.

"Thanks," he says, and sits. The chair feet scrape loudly across the floor as we pull up to the table.

He uncaps the bourbon and pours a heavy splash into his coffee. Then, he takes a pull straight from the bottle. He winces, but I don't think it's from the alcohol.

I reach for his hand, and he shifts it away. That hurts worse than any of it.

"Congratulations on your award," I say, soft but sincere. "You earned it. And your speech was beautiful."

He gives a quick nod of acknowledgement. Doesn't respond verbally at all. He won't meet my eyes. Every time I try to catch his gaze, he looks away. Over to the kitchen door. Out the window. Back to the family photos. Mostly, though, he looks at Bear.

"Where should we start?" I say, knowing wherever he chooses will be inadequate. Not enough and too much. My heart aches from pounding so hard.

"The kid, preferably," he says. There is a bite to his words I don't like—they remind me of the last time we spoke.

I weigh my options, none of them good. I'm silent so long he either loses patience or takes pity on me. I can't quite tell.

"You said 'Papa' was the only word he knows," Quil says. "Why?"

That, I can answer. Maybe it's an olive branch, in his own way.

"He was having some speech problems, with the F sounds especially. The Thai word for 'dad' is pronounced 'phoh,' and everyone was getting frustrated, him most of all. We tried 'Papa' instead and he picked it up in two days. It's universal."

"Got that right," he mumbles, but I still hear him. And the soreness in his voice, scraping like sandpaper.

This feels surreal, to have him across from me. Sitting in these chairs. On this continent, in this time zone. Maybe this is why I ask my next question.

"Did you really think I'd have a baby and not tell you? You know me better than that."

"That's the problem, Claire," he says. It's the first time he's said my name, and it sounds all wrong. It's the wrong color, the wrong shade of red. Not red like passion, but red like anger. "I don't think I do know you better than that anymore."

"I haven't changed that much," I say, but I'm too quick with it, and he knows I know I am lying.

He stares down at his cup of coffee, half-gone, while mine remains untouched.

"Who is he to you?" Quil asks. "Are you his babysitter or nanny or something?"

Maybe I should have known since I saw him on the step, that I had woven a tangled web. It is all about to come unraveling, faster than I can spool the thread.

"It's a little more complicated than that," I say, just as the bell to the kitchen door chimes.

We turn our attention there, and even Bear perks up as he hears the footsteps grow louder. But it's not Bussaba or Panya, who I am expecting.

It's Paitoon.

"Claire," he says. My name has no Thai translation, and so I had to teach him the new syllables and letters, and sometimes it still sounds clunky if he hasn't practiced.

"What are you doing here?" I say in Thai, my fluency making Quil sit up straighter, lean in to try and parse the meaning of words not meant for him.

Paitoon crosses the room to us, and I see the shock in his own face at Quil's presence. But it doesn't stop him from doing what he does next.

He leans down and kisses my hair.

Claire – Last October to April

After I got off the phone with Callie, I went to the nearest pharmacy and bought five pregnancy tests. Was it overkill? Maybe. Were they overpriced? You bet. Was it necessary? Absolutely.

My mother getting sick and dying were out of my control. The Black, unchanged with time or space or prayer or tears, was also something I couldn't get my arms around.

This was a way to take something back for myself.

I told myself if the tests were positive, I would catch the next flight back to Washington. Quil deserved to know, for better or for worse. And it would be strained for a bit, while we learned how to be together again, but I thought he'd be happy. I thought I'd be happy.

Or at least learn how again.

When the tests came back negative, five in a row, I sat down on the dirty bathroom floor, in a pharmacy in Fiji, and sobbed. They felt and sounded ugly. These gasping, guttural things straight from the core of me.

I was so fucking relieved.

I lost my mother—how was I supposed to find it in myself to be that for someone else? When the greatest example I'd ever have was gone? How was I supposed to love another person so selflessly, when there were days I couldn't even find it in me to love myself?

I kept running, after that. I no longer cared about getting cheap flights. I cared about getting away. From Fiji, I flew to Indonesia. Island-hopped by dinky boat and charter plane, reminiscent of the one Solomon flew in Hawaii.

After two months in Indonesia, two months of missing Quil and my mother and myself, it felt like my skin was too tight. I hopped the next plane to the Philippines, to Siargao Island on the eastern edge of the archipelago. There was a beach I desperately wanted to surf there. It was on the list Quil sent me, after I first left. So was the one in Indonesia. And Australia. And Hawaii.

I only went to places on that list. I don't think he ever realized he had a map to me. Or maybe he didn't want to.

I didn't care that I couldn't speak the language, that I got lost, that I looked like a tourist.

The day in April I landed in Phuket was the day things changed for me. I'd used a significant chunk of my remaining funds to get there, and the two previous surf competitions I'd entered hadn't gone my way. I was in the airport bathroom when I saw the flyer. Five minutes later, I hired a tuk-tuk to bring me to Khao Lak.

And I was there—here—to stay.

I had officially run out of money.

To make matters worse, the surfing competition I'd seen the flyer for was cancelled due to monsoon conditions. I holed up in the cheapest hostel I could find, one that miraculously didn't require a credit card on file, and sobbed the entire weekend. Outside, it rained and rained and rained and rained. I snuck out in the middle of the night so I wouldn't have to pay, and started walking toward where I thought the tourist district would be.

I don't know why I didn't call him, or anyone else from home. I knew they would have helped me.

But I was tired of needing the help of others. I didn't realize then you couldn't get anywhere, really, without it.

I'd been on my way to a coffee shop I saw the day before, ready to wash dishes or take orders or flip signs. Knowing English here was a useful skill, one I was ready to flaunt all over the place if I had to.

I'd been about to enter that coffee shop when I heard the ear-piercing scream. It wasn't the sound of someone in danger, but it was the sound of someone in need of help.

It was my mother's voice in my head that lead me next door to the open-air restaurant. It was empty, save two tourists who were hastily throwing cash on the table and packing up their things. They ran away from the noise, the unknown.

That day, I moved toward it.

When I poked my head through the kitchen doorway, the first thing I saw was the baby, laying on a side table. It couldn't have been more than four months old; it was hard to tell because it was small for any age. The gender was indistinguishable beneath its loose-fitting clothes and androgenous hair.

But it was still a baby, and it still needed help.

"Are you okay?" I said to the baby, and took a step deeper into the kitchen.

That was when he appeared.

His hair was stuck out, light-socket style, like he'd given it a few hard tugs. His eyes were dark and shadowed. Everything about him was dark and shadowed. He could have been my age, or maybe closer to Quil's. It was hard to tell with the look of panic morphing his face. The apron he wore was grease-stained and food-speckled.

Seeing him knocked me back into reality, and I took in the signs of a bustling kitchen around me. Sharp knives dangling from the wall, vegetables sizzling in the decades-seasoned wok, Thai cooks shouting over each other just to be heard.

In my opinion, there was entirely too much commotion in this kitchen, considering the only two customers had already left.

"It's really loud," I said to the man in the apron, and pointed to my ear, then the baby. "It's scaring him."

His eyes narrowed, even as he studied me. I wore a dress that day, because my mother always told me to dress for the job I want, not the one I have. Which, at that moment, was none. My shoes were sandals, highly impractical for walking along the sandy, broken gravel roads of this coastal Thai town. Something in me, though, just wanted to try that day. I couldn't explain it.

Whatever he saw in his perusal was enough to trust me. Or at least not to think I had ill will toward this baby.

He went to scoop up the child but I stopped him, gesturing to his apron and then the baby again. His eyes did that thing, where I thought he was seeing more than I was willing to show. He nodded his head at me, and I took the baby instead. It was the first time I held Bear, but it would not be the last.

It was the first time Paitoon followed me. It would not be the last, either.

The restaurant was still empty, the noise muffled by the kitchen door, and I walked the baby away from the ruckus. To a corner of the room far away enough so it could hear my soft voice over their angry ones.

"Shh," I said, and "It's okay" and "I've got you."

Someone cleared their throat behind me, and I remembered I wasn't alone. I turned. The man had taken off the apron and was smoothing his light-socket hair into something still messy, but more managed.

"Thank you," he said, in the choppiest English I'd ever heard. I could tell he'd never learned how to say the words, that they were just something he'd heard about or read once. His tan cheeks flushed with earnest embarrassment, or maybe shame.

"You're welcome," I said back, shifting the baby more comfortably in my arms. It was already settling down. And then, because he had tried, so did I. I said it again, in my best Thai. It was bad.

He smiled graciously at me and held a hand to his chest. "Paitoon."

I repeated his gesture, hand to chest. "Claire."

That was when he said something indecipherable to me. "Khuṇ tā ṣ̄er̂ā."

"I'm sorry," I said. "I don't speak Thai."

He said it again, slower, like maybe if I had more time to comprehend it, I would. "Khuṇ tā ṣ̄er̂ā."

"I don't understand," I said, shaking my head.

He held up a finger, and his face took on this sincere thinking look. It hit me in the heart, the honesty of his actions and the transparency of his features.

Paitoon pointed at me, and it wasn't until he made the next gesture that I realized he was using visual clues. I couldn't remember the last time I'd played charades. He laid a hand on his chest, over his heart.

Then he made one with his hands, fingernails to fingernails and thumbs to thumbs, and broke it down the middle.

He pointed to his eyes.

And finally, he pointed back to me.

I shook my head, eyes watering, not because I didn't understand, but because I didn't want to.

I was always pretty good at charades.

He disappeared into the kitchen and came back with a pen and piece of paper. He wrote it down for me and made the gesture for a phone and then typing.

I didn't want to look it up, but he wasn't letting it go.

The literal translation provided by the internet was this:

You have sad eyes.

And when I locked my phone, I realized what had made me dress up that day, of all days.

It was the one-year anniversary of my mother's death.

We forewent the paper and pen, opting instead to pass my phone back and forth, typing rudimentary get-to-know-you phrases in. That's how he introduced me to Little Bear, which I quickly shortened to Bear in my mind. Boy, he said when I asked. Four months old.

He seems happy now, I'd typed back. Where is his mother?

I, of all people, should have known better.

Dead, he said.

I'm sorry, I said. What was her name?

Hannah, he said.