My lips press together around the one word that bubbles to the surface. “Meret,” I whisper.

“She’s home. With Kieran. She’s fine.” Brian hesitates. “When I got the call…I thought I should see you first.”

To make sure that I was not hooked up to wires or cut into segments or burned beyond recognition. What happened to me?

I try to remember, but my mind is full of vivid textures: the sting of sand, the corona of the sun, the shimmer of the desert. Pictures that do not match the hospital room, with its blue chair and plastic water pitcher and wide, blind mounted television.

The only thing I can recall, other than Egypt, is Meret’s DNA test. I close my eyes. “Sorry,” I exhale. “So…sorry.”

Brian shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter right now. Let’s just get you well enough to go home.”

Home is such a loaded word. Is it still mine, if the last thing I remember is leaving it?

It hurts to move my head, but it also hurts to think. Maybe that’s what happened. Maybe, when I drove away from Brian and Meret, I never got to where I was headed.

That tugs a string of pearls: Thane, England, Win.

Lose.

Can you miss something you never truly had?

Or someone?

That thought hurts even more than my skull.

Brian traces his thumb over the back of my hand lightly and exquisitely, like he is touching a butterfly that might take wing at any moment. “I should get a nurse. Tell someone that you’re awake.” A sob catches in his throat, and he bends over, kissing our joined fingers. “I thought you were gone for good,” he says, his voice breaking.

He said that to me once before, too.

I lift my free hand and slowly touch it to the back of Brian’s head. His hair is soft as down. I run my nails over his scalp, let my palm settle against his cheek. My eyes drift shut, entrusting myself to him, like I always have.

There is a commotion in the hallway, a muffled argument. Then the door bursts open, and one voice rises above the others: “I don’t care if I’m not related to her. You can’t bloody keep me out of there.”

Wyatt pushes his way into the room. He stands, wild-eyed, assessing the bandage around my head and the machines I’m hooked up to and my husband, who has gotten to his feet and is still holding on to my hand.

And me. Awake. Alert.

A smile breaks over his face, and it feels like a sunrise inside me. You’re real, and you’re here, I think, and I know that is exactly what is going through his mind, too.

“Thank God,” he breathes. He takes a step forward. “You’re all right? You’re truly all right? Say something,” he demands.

“Wyatt,” I reply. “This is Brian.”

* * *

—

MY MOTHER USED to say that bad luck came in threes, and as usual, she was right.

The results of the DNA test.

The plane crash from Cairo to Boston.

And my heart. There is no way for me to come out of this without it breaking.

I explain to Brian that I flew from London to Cairo; that I found Wyatt; that I told him about Meret; that we were coming back to her on the plane that crashed. I thought I was fine, because I had walked away from the wreckage. I hadn’t even been checked out by a doctor yet, because Wyatt was the one with a cut on his scalp that wouldn’t stop bleeding. I was asking an airline representative about flights to Boston when the whole room spun. After that, I didn’t remember anything.

I watch the two men take each other’s measure. Neither of them speaks. Then Wyatt holds out his hand to Brian.

Brian stares down at it. “Are you fucking kidding?” he says.

My unlikely savior turns out to be a neurosurgery resident, who comes in to check on me and is delighted to find me conscious. Brian and Wyatt retreat to separate corners of the room while the doctor examines me, shining a light in my eyes and asking me questions and pressing down on my toes to test my central nervous system. He explains that I had an emergency craniotomy, after a CT scan showed an epidural hematoma. Surgeons relieved the pressure by removing the blood between the brain and bone in the epidural space. They drilled a burr hole into my skull, elevated a skull flap, evacuated the clot, refastened the skull with tiny titanium plates, and sutured the scalp. I had youth on my side, and the good fortune to collapse at a Level I trauma center, which meant that I’d had immediate care—all of which boded well for a positive outcome. I’d be monitored for two to three days here in North Carolina, but could do follow-up care at a hospital closer to home.

That word again.

By the time he is finished, I am sitting up, the headache is ebbing, and my voice is stronger.

“All in all,” the resident says, “you have a lot to be thankful for.”

He leaves us in happy oblivion, to write notes on my chart at a nurses’ desk somewhere.

I glance at Brian, and then at Wyatt. I swallow. “Wyatt,” I ask. “Can you give us a minute?”

The stricken look on his face nearly breaks me. “I’m not going anywhere,” he says stubbornly. “Just outside the door.” He narrows his eyes at Brian, as if he does not trust him not to hurt me.

When, clearly, it’s been the other way around.

The door snicks shut behind Wyatt. “Brian,” I begin.

He sits down on the edge of the bed. “Dawn, you have a head injury. This conversation…it doesn’t have to happen now.” He pulls out his phone. “But I know someone who’d really like to talk to you.”

He hits a few buttons and before I can protest Meret’s beautiful face blooms on the little screen. “Mom!” she screams. Her smile is a galaxy.

“Hey, baby.”

“Are you okay? What happened to your head? Do you still have hair?”

I fight a grin. “I’m going to be okay,” I tell her, and I realize that I will fight anyone and anything to keep this promise to her. “They drilled a hole in me. And I have no idea if I have hair.”

“For real?”

“I could look like a bowling ball under all this gauze,” I say. “Do you think you could stand to be seen in public with me?”

“When are you coming home?”

I flick a glance toward Brian. “In a few days. When the doctors let me.”

The image on the phone tips and whirls and suddenly Kieran’s face swims into view. “Hey,” he says, peering at me through Meret’s computer screen. “Brian said it was an epidural hematoma with mass effect. Sexy.”

“This is why you’re single,” I say, and he laughs.

“You are okay,” Kieran replies. Then he sobers. “Look. I don’t have enough family for you to be disposable.”

I feel my throat swell. For so long, it was just the two of us. “I know.”

I hear Meret’s voice scrambling with his as she tries to wrestle her computer back. I have so much to tell her, but now isn’t the time. Not when Brian is standing here; not when I don’t know what the next five minutes will bring, much less the future.

For a few moments, I just stare at her on the screen, drink in the sight of her again. Her face transforms with the ghosts of emotions: fear, anger, relief. She seems to be weighing her words, and I wonder what conversation Brian had with her before I woke up; what conversations Brian had with her when I was in Egypt. I remember her email to me, asking if it was her fault that I’d left.

I wanted Wyatt to build a relationship with his daughter, but maybe he’s not the only one who needs to do that.

“Mom?” she says quietly, finally. “I missed you.”

“I missed you more.”

In the dark her eyes are stars. “Don’t die, okay?” Meret whispers.

“It’s a deal,” I answer.

She hangs up, and I hand Brian back his phone. He slips it into his pocket. I have tears in my eyes, and when I wipe them with the back of my hand, Brian brings me a tissue. “I didn’t realize…” I begin, and the words evaporate like snow under sun.

Brian looks down at his feet. “I guess it’s harder to think about what’s not in front of you,” he says quietly, and then shakes himself, as if he’s trying to recalibrate.

“Does she know the truth?” I ask.

He hesitates. “You need to rest—”

“Brian.”

“Yes,” he says. “She figured most of it out herself. I mean, you went to Egypt. That would seem pretty random, unless…” His voice trails off. “You shouldn’t be thinking about this right now.”

“Brian,” I say, “we can’t pretend it away.”

“You almost died,” he says, his voice so soft I can barely hear it.

“But I didn’t.”

“It changes everything.”

I wait for him to meet my gaze. “Does it?”

Just because I am lying in a hospital bed and he feels sorry for me doesn’t mean all the emotions he felt yesterday aren’t still roiling beneath that plastered equanimity.

He clears his throat. “Did you sleep with him?”

Of all the things I expected him to say, this wasn’t it.

“Did you?”

I swallow. “Yes.”

The pain in Brian’s eyes makes me feel like I’m going to be sick. I did this to him; me. His silence hurts more than any of his yelling. He sinks into the chair beside the hospital bed, his elbows on his knees. “Did you fall in love with him?”