Wyatt is one of the few people I don’t have to explain this to. The cobra-headed goddess of the peak, she was associated with the mountain above the Valley of Kings. The name means She Who Loves Silence, and she was worshipped by the workers from Deir el-Medina who built the royal tombs. She would blind or strike down those who stole or committed a crime, but she could also be merciful.
It had been hard to find an Ancient Egyptian deity who had, at her heart, forgiveness. “People screw up,” I tell Wyatt. “We make mistakes and bad decisions and piss off the people we care about, and if we’re lucky, a goddess like Meretseger takes pity on us.” I meet his gaze, and finally say what I came all this way to say. “That’s why I named our daughter after her.”
FIFTEEN YEARS AGO, when I had left Egypt during the neshni, when the roads had flooded and Wyatt drove me to the airport in Cairo, I felt sick. Once or twice I even thought I’d have to ask him to pull over. Now, looking back, I know it wasn’t anxiety.
Wyatt and I had used condoms with the exception of that first night, so what were the odds?
The same odds, I supposed, as those of finding a painted rock inscription in the middle of a desert.
The same odds as those of falling in love with the person you thought you hated.
The same odds as those of finding a soul mate.
I think of the Coffin Texts, Spell 148: Lightning flashes; the gods become afraid. Isis awakens being pregnant.
A spark in the sky, another neshni, another child. It was that simple, and that unexpected.
I am sitting in the bathroom on the closed toilet seat, trying to keep myself from flying apart, when Brian finally comes in. He is not the man who begged me to stay just an hour ago. He is hard, his eyes flat and empty. “Meret’s asleep,” he says. “I managed to find her three studies on the Internet that showed flawed DNA test results due to foreign bodies in the sample.”
I try to nod, but I can’t even do that. I think that if I move an inch, I’m going to shatter. Brian leans against the vanity, the marble surface that has my face lotion and his shaving cream on it, side by side, as if it were that easy. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asks finally.
“I didn’t know.”
It is the truth, although now, I wonder if I was just trying to convince myself on some subconscious level. By the time I found out I was pregnant, I’d already lost my mother. I’d had what I thought was a period. I’ve always been irregular, and time had warped in hospice, so my last moments with Wyatt seemed months earlier, rather than weeks. Now, though, I remember how Meret was born two weeks before her due date, as the nurse reassured me she looked just as robust as any full-term baby. I remember holding her, staring at the curve of her ear, and thinking of the shape of Wyatt’s. But then, there was Brian, rocking Meret when she had colic. There was Brian, tossing her in the air until she squealed with delight. There was Brian, teaching her how to jump in from the side of a pool. Eventually, I stopped looking for my past in my future.
Maybe I’d been blind. Or maybe I’d just wanted to be.
“I didn’t know,” I repeat, tears sliding down my face. “I didn’t know.”
Brian’s jaw is so tight that it distorts his face. I barely recognize him. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t actually believe you,” he says. “Can I ask you just one question? Did you pick me as an easy target?”
“No. I fell in love with you.”
He shakes his head. “Guys like me, we live in our grandparents’ basements and collect comic books and eat leftovers for breakfast. We might meet girls who are smart and funny and pretty, girls who don’t have to coach themselves on conversation topics before they walk into a room, girls who see us as more than science nerds—but we never take them home. And we never, ever get lucky enough to marry them.” He looks at me, so cold I shiver. “I should have known.”
“Brian, I swear to you. I didn’t know Meret wasn’t yours.”
“She’s mine, goddammit,” he snarls. “In every way that counts.”
I nod, swallowing. “Yes. Of course.” I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand. “So now what do we do?”
“We?” Brian says. “I don’t even know who you are.”
He walks out of the bathroom. I follow him, but at Meret’s door he gives me a look over his shoulder that stops me. I watch him slip inside to spend the night watching over her.
She’s in the best hands, I realize. Far better than mine.
Brian may not know who I am, but I do. I’m a coward.
Which is why I take the overnight bag I was packing before my world fell apart, and slip out of the house.
* * *
—
A FEW WEEKS ago when I left, I hadn’t been the one at fault. After Brian had missed Meret’s birthday dinner, when he came home swollen with an apology about Gita, I got in my car and started driving.
He’d texted. Please, Dawn, I’m sorry.
Let’s talk.
I made a mistake.
I’m getting worried.
I had watched the messages rise on the GPS screen, ignoring each one.
Until one came in from Meret, who had been in her room as her father and I argued. She knew nothing about Gita; she—I thought at the time—did not realize that I’d even left the house.
Come say good night?
So less than an hour after I walked out of my house I walked back into it, and Brian apologized. He approached the way you would a feral animal, or someone whose world has gone to pieces around her. He said he thought I was gone forever. I went up to Meret’s room, tucked her in, and pretended I’d never left.
But I had.
All these weeks, I have not told Brian where I was driving to, when I was interrupted by Meret.
The airport.
All these weeks, I have not told Brian why I left. He assumes it is because after he told me about Gita, I was shocked.
I was. But not at Brian.
When he confessed, when he waited for my fury or my absolution or something in between…I didn’t feel angry. I didn’t feel hurt.
I didn’t feel much of anything.
And that scared the hell out of me—more than infidelity; more than realizing that I might have mistaken comfort for love. So I did what I’ve always done, when nothing makes sense: I ran. Had Meret not texted, had the universe not intervened—I would have gotten on a plane.
Three weeks ago, I thought I was running away from Brian.
But maybe, without even knowing it, I’d been running to someone else.
* * *
—
WHEN I ARRIVE in England, I have lost the entire day. I boarded the flight in the early morning, and by the time I land in London, the sun is just setting, and there is a stream of traffic on the road, people heading home from their workday. The zoom of headlights becomes a glowing snake, like when Meret would wave a sparkler around in the dark, and I tracked her by the firefly trail she left behind.
Meret.
The bus drops me off in the center of Richmond. I have Thane Bernard’s address, thanks to the Internet search company, but I’ve realized too late that I do not have international service on my cellphone. So I stop at a pub, where a group of men and women who look like office mates are drinking pints and playing a trivia game on the television behind the bar. There, I order an ale and a meat pie, and I ask for directions.
I feel like I have jumped timelines. Like this version of Dawn is one who might be friends with the raucous crowd next to me, trying to remember the names of the characters on Three’s Company. Like I might have moved here after grad school and taught at Cambridge. Except that this other me wouldn’t be sitting on a pub stool feeling a hole where her moral core used to be.
“Another, luv?” the bartender asks, nodding at my empty glass.
I could sit here all night and delay the inevitable. But I have a flight back to Boston tomorrow morning, when I have to learn how to be brave, how to face the mess I’ve made.
I walk along the bank of the Thames and through a beautiful park where joggers rush past me, lost in their own music. I stop and pet a dog wearing a bandanna with the British flag on it. At last I find myself in front of the townhouse of Thane Bernard.
It is red brick, with an intricate black Victorian gate. I crane my neck, trying to see all the way up to the third story. It is narrow, rooms built in layers rather than sprawled. Several of the windows spill soft yellow light, like cat’s eyes.
“Win,” I whisper, “this is for you.”
A letter can be a beginning, or so I try to convince myself. In Egypt there are multiple origin myths, and in the Memphite one, Ptah speaks creation, and the hieroglyphs become the world.
I take the scroll from my backpack and open the gate, walking up to the small stoop. There is no mailbox, just a little slit in the door. Before I can slide the scroll through the slot, a movement catches my eye. In the wide double window to the right of the door a woman is carrying a roast chicken on a platter. She sets it on the dining room table.
This, then, would be Win’s other timeline. She might be here, cooking dinner. Calling everyone down for the meal. Healthy. Alive.