In the light streaming past a partially open door, Daniel tried to get his bearings: The body against his own was very feminine, and there was the smell of fresh shampoo in his nose. The room he was in was a bedroom he wasn’t familiar with—but he knew who was with him. Lydia was beside him.

Which was not good news.

One look at the shock on her face and he thought, Fuck. What story had come out of him? What had he told her in his sleep?

There were things she couldn’t know about him. When you lived in two worlds, and straddled the incompatible … you had to watch what came out of your mouth. Even in your fucking sleep.

Maybe especially in your sleep.

Daniel moved away from her, rolling onto his back and bringing his legs up. He’d kept his jeans on, and he pushed his palms into his thighs and moved the denim off his hips.

“Sorry I woke you with my noise.” He tried to keep his voice light, casual. “I talk in my sleep sometimes. I should have warned you—in the future, just ignore me.”

Stop talking so fast, he told himself.

As she pushed her hair out of her face and sat up higher also, he had a thought that this is what she’d look like after he made love to her. Well, except for the expression on her face.

Which was more like after someone had been in a car accident. Or maybe the victim of a robbery.

“You weren’t talking, Daniel.” She cleared her throat. “At least not at the beginning.”

“Sorry.” Goddamn it. “So, ah, what was I babbling on about.”

“It was your mom.”

Daniel’s breath caught. “What about her.”

“She was … in the water.”

All at once, his lungs froze in his rib cage and his torso became a slab of granite. But he told himself it was good. It was better than so many other options that could really have complicated things.

Rubbing his chest—you know, just so that he could separate being in that cold river from where he actually was on this totally-dry-land mattress—he shook his head.

“Wow. Been a while since I’ve gone there.”

“I just wanted to … help you,” she said. “That’s why I came in.”

“I appreciate it, but like I told you, if it happens again, just ignore me.” He forced his mouth into a smile. “And listen, if you want, I can go back out into the woods—”

“No.”

“Okay.”

Annnnnnnd then it was cue the awkward silence. Lydia was obviously too polite, too respectful, to pry, and he didn’t want to ever go back there under any circumstances ever again. But he felt like he owed her an explanation. Or a context. Or …

“So …” The words would not come out of his mouth. “How ’bout those Mets?”

When she didn’t crack a smile and just stared down the bed, the sadness in her was so tangible, it changed the temperature in the room.

“You don’t need to worry about me,” he said—and almost kept the roughness out of his voice.

“I should go.”

And yet leaving seemed to be for her the same thing as him telling her she should head back to her room: An intention that had no energy behind it.

Daniel cracked his knuckles one by one. And when he’d finished with the thumb on his left hand, he took a deep breath—and felt like he was breathing in nothing at all.

“My mom jumped, okay? Off a bridge, into the Ohio River.” He shook his head. “It was no big deal, all right? People jump off of bridges all the time.”

Her dumbfounded expression was totally understandable, but he wasn’t going to take the words back.

“How can you say that—”

“Because I have to believe it or it’s all my fault.” When she looked up at him sharply, he looked away from her just as fast. “I was not expected, okay? My birth was not a happy event because I was not … what she wanted. Frankly, I don’t blame her. Didn’t blame her. Whatever.”

“Oh, Daniel—”

“No, don’t be all sorry for me. It is what it is.”

Rubbing his tired eyes, he wondered how long they had to stay in his cesspool—

“What happened that night?” she asked softly.

Daniel frowned. “How did you know it was night?”

“You said so. You said you couldn’t see anything.”

“Yeah.” Sensations of drowning, of cold water in his face, in his mouth, down in his lungs, threatened to drag him back into the past. And he kept talking just to try to pull himself out of the memories. “She, ah, she was drunk and behind the wheel. She stopped in the middle of the four-laner bridge. When she got out … I thought it was just to run. You know, leave me and the car, just get the fuck out. But she, ah, she headed for the railing. She didn’t hesitate. I mean, she just grabbed on and swung her legs out to the side. I remember she got one of them caught—so she kind of fell sideways? She must have hit the water on her side. I don’t know.”

“Oh, Daniel. I’m so sorry. To see that—”

“I was an idiot, of course. I ran to where she’d jumped. But like I could do anything up on the bridge? And then there was the fact that the current was going under where I was—she was already being swept away. When I finally figured that out, I hustled across the highway and looked into the water. The moon was out, and there were lights all over the bridge. I saw her surface right below me so I jumped in.” He shook his head again. “Man, that water was freezing and hard. I got the wind knocked out of me—but not because I hit bad. I went in feet first. It was just a stun because it was so cold.”

He wrapped his arms around himself. “As soon as I got my breath back, I tried to find her. I couldn’t see shit. Water was splashing into my face and the waves made it impossible to look around and I was being carried away from the bridge lights. But there were these docks up ahead. Piers. They had lots of gas lanterns—and somehow, I saw her head bob. I swam like a motherfucker. I swam as hard as I could. And then I got to her …”

The physical sensations came back in a fresh wave of agony, the cold, the coughing, the weakness in his body. His mind had been screaming and he would have let it out, but he hadn’t been able to spare the oxygen.

Every time he blinked, he saw the wet hair fanned around his mother’s head and her back bobbing up and down.

“I rolled her over so she could breathe. But it had taken me a long time to get to her. A lifetime.” He coughed a little. “And then I started swimming. I thought if I could get her to shore …”

“Someone would help you.”

“Yeah.” He pictured those piers, the big lantern lights, the parking lot that had been empty. “But I lost hold of her body. I was going down myself … swimming with one arm—and it was so cold.”

Snapping out of it, he shrugged. “In the end, I saved myself. They found her the next day after she’d gone over the Falls of the Ohio. Fifteen miles down the river.”

As he fell silent, Lydia brushed the tears from her eyes. “I am so sorry.”

“It just is.” He glanced at her. “I can’t go back and change anything. She made her choice and I couldn’t save her and that’s where I need to leave it. Enough with the emotion, you know? Feelings don’t change shit.”