Sole Survivor

sweet sense of soaring, always too brief, and then the terrible fall that was more devastating because of the sublime heights from which it began.
        But maybe it was worse never to hope at all.
        He was filled with wonder and quickening expectation.
        He was scared too.
        “Something,” he insisted.
        He took his hands off the railing. His legs were sturdy again. He blotted his wet hands on his jeans. He wiped his rain-spattered face on the sleeve of his sportscoat.
        Turning to Barbara, he said, “Somehow safe to the meadow, then a mile and a half to the ranch. A mile and a half in an hour and fifteen minutes, which might be just about right in the darkness, with a small child to carry or help along.”
        “I hate to be always the pin in the balloon-”
        “Then don't be.”
        “-but there's one thing you have to consider.”
        “I'm listening.”
        Barbara hesitated. Then: “Just for the sake of argument, let's accept that there were survivors. That this woman was on the plane. Her name is Rose Tucker… but she told Mercy and Jeff that she was Rachel Thomas.”
        “So?”
        “If she doesn't give them her real name, why does she give them Nina's real name?”
        “These people who're after Rose… they're not after Nina, they don't care about Nina.”
        “If they find out Rose somehow saved the girl, and if she saved the girl because of this strange, radical news-truth-thing-whatever that she was bringing with her to the press interview in Los Angeles, then maybe somehow that makes the girl as big a danger to them as Rose herself seems to be.”
        “Maybe. I don't know. I don't care right now.”
        “My point is-she'd use another name for Nina.”
        “Not necessarily.”
        “She would,” Barbara insisted.
        “So what's the difference?”
        “So maybe Nina is a false name.”
        He felt slapped. He didn't reply.
        “Maybe the child who came to this house that night is really named Sarah or Mary or Jennifer.”
        “No,” Joe said firmly.
        “Just like Rachel Thomas is a false name.”
        “If the child wasn't Nina, what an amazing coincidence it would be for Rose to pluck my daughter's name out of thin air. Talk about billion-to-one odds!”
        “That plane could have been carrying more than one little blond girl going on five.”
        “Both of them named Nina? Jesus , Barbara.”
        “ If there were survivors, and if one of them was a little blonde girl,” Barbara said, “you've at least got to prepare yourself for the possibility that she wasn't Nina.”
        “I know,” he said, but he was angry with her for forcing him to say it. “I know.”
        “Do you?”
        “Yes, of course.”
        “I'm worried for you, Joe.”
        “Thank you,” he said sarcastically.
        “Your soul's broken.”
        “I'm okay.”
        “You could fall apart so easy.”
        He shrugged.
        “No,” she said. “Look at yourself.”
        “I'm better than I was.”
        “She might not be Nina.”
        “She might not be Nina,” he admitted, hating Barbara for this relentless insist-ence, even though he knew that she was genuinely concerned for him, that she was prescribing this pill of reality as a vaccine against the total collapse that he might experience if his hopes, in the end, were not realized. “I'm ready to face that she might turn out not to be Nina. Okay? Feel better? I can handle it if that's the case.”
        “You say it, but it's not true.”
        He glared at her. “It is true.”
        “Maybe a tiny piece of your heart knows she might not be Nina, a thin fibre, but the rest of your heart is right now pounding, racing with the conviction that she is.”
        He could feel his own eyes shining with-stinging with-the delirious expectation of a miraculous reunion.
        Her eyes, however, were full of a sadness that infuriated him so much he was nearly capable of striking her.
        Mercy making peanut-butter dough balls. A new curiosity-and wariness-in her eyes. Having seen, through the window, the emotional quality of the discussion on the porch. Perhaps catching a few words through the glass, even without attempting to eavesdrop.
        Nevertheless, she was a Samaritan, with Jesus and Andrew and Minion Peter marking the month of August as a reminder for her, and she still wanted to