When You Were Here

can go?”
    “Oh, like my place? Do you want to come upstairs and have tea and we can talk there? Maybe we can even put Sarah’s photo on the table while we chat. I’ll get out the lilac seeds you sent my mom.”
    Holland looks away, swallows.
    “Sorry,” I mutter. “That was shitty.”
    She shakes her head. Her blond waves are flatter than usual. Ten hours on a plane will do that. “It’s okay.”
    “No, it’s not. But we can’t go to my place.” The apartment is not my house in Los Angeles. It’s not a place she gets to float in and out of when she appears with food or with luggage. This place is mine. “Are you hungry?”
    “Starving,” she says, and flashes me the tiniest smile. I look away.
    “I know a twenty-four-hour sushi place.” I guide her down a quiet side street. There are no street barkers hawking TVs or cell phones here. I tip my forehead to a half-wood, half-screen door that I slide open. We enter a sardine-size sushi shop. The gentleman who runs the place holds out his arms and grins.
    “ Hisashiburi ,” he says. Long time no see.
    “Chigau? Senyoru ni kittan darou.” Are you kidding? I was here the other night!
    He shrugs playfully, then asks me what I want to eat.
    I gesture to Holland. “Kanojo no hoshii mono.” Whatever the lady wants.
    He laughs, a deep hearty belly laugh and looks at Holland, then spreads his arms in front of the sushi bar, stocked with tuna, octopus, yellowtail, salmon, shrimp, and more. “Anything for you,” he says in a thick Japanese accent.
    “Thank you,” Holland says, and we sit down. She leans into me. “You speak Japanese.”
    “Just a tiny bit.”
    “That was a whole conversation, Danny,” she says, and there’s pride on her face. It makes me sort of want to flex my muscles and let her watch. Then I lose the thought, because We. Had. A. Kid. And. The. Kid. Is. Dead.
    “You should order,” I say, pointing to the food.
    “Are you going to eat?”
    “Sure.” I ask for some salmon, tuna, and octopus, and she chooses eel, miso soup, and edamame.
    “So…” I say.
    “I saw Sandy Koufax,” Holland begins. “I ran into her and Jeremy at the beach a few days ago. She raced up to me to say hello. She wagged her tail and put her paws on my chest and licked my face.”
    My dog. My loyal, faithful dog.
    Holland continues. “I think she wanted me to say hi toyou too. So from Sandy Koufax, hi . She misses you.” Holland stops talking and pauses. She looks straight at me. “She’s not the only one.”
    I shake my head. “Don’t.”
    If I let her talk like this, I will sink. My whole body will go underwater and never come back up.
    “But I do. I do miss you, Danny. I’ve always missed you. I’ve missed you every day since…” Her voice trails off for a few seconds. “And that’s why I wanted to talk to you. That’s why I’ve been e-mailing and calling. Even if it took me flying five thousand miles, I’d fly five thousand more to tell you.”
    “What are you going to tell me?”
    “I want you to know why I never told you the truth about Sarah.”
    “Okay. Tell me the truth,” I say as our guy hands over a plate of sashimi and some miso soup. It seems strange to be eating and talking about this .
    “You know how I love kids,” Holland begins. “I love taking care of them. I love working at the camp. And I’ve always wanted kids. Just not as a teenage mom, not as a freshman in college, obviously. So when I found out I was pregnant, it was all so wrong.” She doesn’t touch her soup, just rests her hands on the counter as she talks to me. “But it was all so right in this weird way too. I think that’s what surprised me the most. I mean, as a girl you always think at some point, What would I do if I got pregnant before I was ready? But then it happened. And I was shocked. Becausewe were careful even when I started on the Pill. So I took, like, ten pregnancy tests. And every time, it didn’t feel totally wrong. It felt like something I’d want. And with you. But just not then. So I was totally confused, and then that just turned into being totally paralyzed. Because all I knew was that I wasn’t going to end the pregnancy. But I couldn’t think beyond that.”
    “So naturally you dumped me.”
    “Yes.”
    I hold out my hands, waiting for an answer. But it doesn’t come yet.
    “I couldn’t think beyond each moment. I couldn’t tell anyone. I couldn’t tell my mom or my roommate. I wore these baggy clothes, and