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The last voice message is the earliest, sent minutes after Claudia had died, when I didn’t know it yet. When I press play, the sound of my voice—so naive, so hopeful—brings an ache to my chest that’s so intense I fear my rib cage is about to crack open.
“Hi. Listen, I don’t know where you are or where you intend to go, but I think wherever it is, you should turn around and come home. Because I love you, Claude. I’ve loved you since the moment I met you. And your happiness means the world to me. Much more than any stupid hang-ups I have because of something horrible that happened when I was a kid. In a lot of ways, I think what happened with Billy just gave me an excuse to avoid facing things that scare me. And being a father scares the shit out of me. But you’re braver than me. You always have been. So if having a baby will make you happy, then I think we should do it. Let’s have a baby.”
Astonishingly, I make it most of the way through without crying. It’s not until I hear those last four words—Let’s have a baby—that I lose it entirely. As the tears flow, I picture an existence in which everything in that message happens. Claudia comes home. We make love. A child is conceived. We prep and plan and babyproof the house and buy too much furniture and finally bring home an infant boy who will grow into someone not unlike Henry Wallace. Smart and kind and a little weird. Someone exactly like me and Claudia.
Then the fantasy ends, and I’m shuttled back to a reality in which I’m alone and clutching my deceased wife’s phone. Fitting, for that’s basically been my go-to mode for the past year. I envision a future spent frozen in this position, the years speeding by and me staying exactly the same.
That’s when I realize the time to say goodbye is now.
I reach for my phone and call Claudia’s number. In my other hand, her phone rings and my name appears on the screen. When the call goes to voicemail, I have to force myself to speak.
“Hey, Claude.” Sadness clutches at my heart when I realize I might never address her this way again. “I, um, need to tell you a few things.”
And I do, telling Claudia how much I love her, how she meant the world to me, how happy she made me even though I sometimes didn’t show it. When I run out of time and the message cuts off, I keep talking.
Minutes pass.
Then an hour.
Then I’m done.
I’ve said my final goodbye.
Claudia’s phone goes back into her purse, which goes back into the cardboard box, which I return to the closet. Then I take my own phone and delete Claudia’s contact information, an act that sucks all the air from my chest.
It feels like a betrayal.
It also feels like liberation.
Even though it’s well past midnight, I decide not to sleep in the bedroom. It seems too lonely here, too packed with the still-fresh sting of letting go. So I return to the tent, with its lumpy pillow and mildewed sleeping bag. While they’re no match for my bed, I’m more comfortable out here knowing that Billy might be nearby, just a silent shadow in the woods, and that Claudia might also be here, somewhere. A wisp of cloud in the night sky. A pulsing star that I could see if I only knew where to look.
I close my eyes and imagine both of them, so near and yet so far, watching over me as I fall asleep.
TWENTY-NINE
Scriiiiiiiitch.
The ending of The Dream is so loud I wake convinced it’s happening in real time. I’m in a tent, after all, its walls sloping to the ground beside me. I sit up and whip my head back and forth, checking each side of the tent, certain I’ll see a slash running from tip to grass.
Both are unblemished. Just two rectangles of orange fabric brightened by the predawn light.
Next to me, my phone springs to life with a familiar sound.
Ping!
Opening the trail cam app, I’m greeted by the sight of a loose sheet of paper caught on the breeze and skating across the lawn. The trail cam captured it mid-flight, the page hovering half an inch above the grass.
Odd.
I search for my pen and notebook, both of which had been in the tent with me when I went to sleep. I can’t find them, even after looking through everything else in the tent. Under the pillow. Inside the sleeping bag. An anxious knot forms in my chest when, instead of the pen or notebook, I spot another single sheet of paper.
It sits near the foot of the sleeping bag, right next to the tent’s flaps. When I pick it up, I notice how one edge of the page is ragged, like it’s been torn from the notebook. When I turn it over, I see three scribbled words that send fear streaking through me.
HAKUNA MATATA DUDE
I find another torn page just outside the tent.
And still more pages farther into the yard.