The Beginning of After

as I’d said to David, I knew I wouldn’t be back. It was now or never. I moved the armchair slowly, so it squeaked loudly against the floor.
    Mr. Kaufman’s eyelids fluttered open and locked onto the ceiling. I froze for a moment, watching them. His gaze traveled to the window and downward, finally landing on me.
    We locked eyes for a long moment. I tried to make my face mirror his, expressionless and calm. But my heart pounded.
    “Know . . . you,” he said, his voice raspy but with a trace of his old strength behind it.
    “Yes,” was all I said.
    “Dina?”
    I slowly shook my head.
    “Not. Dina. D . . . D . . .”
    My mother. He was trying to remember my mother’s name.
    “Deborah,” I said.
    “How . . . are you?”
    He thinks I’m her. The thought of it almost knocked me off balance. Keep it together.
    “It’s Laurel, Deborah’s daughter.”
    His eyes scanned me up and down, then flickered with recognition.
    “Look . . . like her,” he said. There was something in the way he said it that made me wonder what Mr. Kaufman thought of my mother. Did he think she was beautiful? Did he have a little crush?
    Seeing him struggle with speech, with reality, I knew I shouldn’t be there. Like David had said, he wasn’t going to give me any answers. But I couldn’t move from where I stood.
    And then he frowned, a familiar frown I’d seen him make so often in the past.
    “Who . . . why . . .”
    I leaned in like I was offering to help him find his words.
    “Why . . . you . . . here?”
    The question came out weak and shaky but landed with a booming thud in the space between us.
    Why am I here?
    Why isn’t it my mother? Why is it me, alive, and the others dead?
    It was a gigantic question, a question I’d been hoping to find the answer to since April.
    I looked at Mr. Kaufman and now, the casually puzzled expression on his face gave the question an entirely new meaning.
    He wanted to know why I was here, visiting him.
    Without thinking, I said, “I’m here because of my parents and Toby.”
    Another puzzled frown from Mr. Kaufman. Then I remembered David’s vague request. Don’t ask him about the accident.
    What did he remember? Or more to the point, what had they told him?
    “Do you know what happened?” I asked, my voice rising into a high octave. I knew I was breaking the rules but couldn’t stop.
    He swallowed hard and said, using extra syllables, “A-cc-i-den-t.”
    “Do you remember who was in the car with you?”
    His face crumpled, like someone balling up a brown paper bag.
    “Bet-sy.”
    I took a quick breath, which felt hot as fire. My whole body was shaking. “Do you remember who else?”
    Mr. Kaufman looked at me with surprise and a little bit of hurt, like I’d slapped him. He moved his head slightly from one side to another in his version of no , not breaking our gaze.
    All movement in the room froze, the blinking lights on the IV machine and the soft billowing of curtains from the heating vent.
    He doesn’t know.
    To him, my family was alive. He existed in that world, still. A world that I would have given anything to have back. Why should he get to stay there, when he was the one who tossed the rest of us out?
    When I opened my mouth again, it felt like slow motion.
    “My parents and my brother. Deborah and Michael, and Toby.” I had to push the names into the stalled air. “They were there too. And they’re dead now. Too.”
    There was a pause where nothing happened. Mr. Kaufman’s face did not change, and I wondered if he’d heard me.
    Then, his mouth opened into a wide, hollow O.
    Out of it came a sigh filled with pure agony. A dusty, terrible gush that reminded me of Pandora’s box.
    He started to cough, almost gagging on his own breath, before the other sound came. Sobbing. Like a child’s sobbing. Soft and utterly broken.
    I backed up against the wall in horror. Oh my God, Laurel. What have you done?
    Footsteps down the hallway, fast with the little squeak of rubber-soled shoes.
    “What’s going on?” barked a nurse as she exploded into the room.
    I stammered in denial. “We were just talking . . . he got upset.”
    The nurse rushed to Mr. Kaufman’s bedside, and I turned and ran.
    In the hallway I saw the door marked STAIRWAY and crashed through it, taking the steps quickly as if someone were chasing me. Putting as much distance as possible between myself and the sound that came out of Mr. Kaufman’s mouth.
    I’m so sorry,