The Distance Between Us by Masha Hamilton Page B

she says.
    He coughs. “So you’re okay, right?”
    “Yeah, fine.” That damn word again. She tries not to let it fall heavily.
    “When the hospital released you, I took that to mean you were, you know, fine.”
    Sven—charming, polite, company-fit-for-the-queen Sven—sounds almost embarrassingly awkward.
    “It was—you were—lucky,” he says. “We all—but you, a couple more inches—be careful, Caddie. From now on.”
    She knows. It’s simply a matter of odds. She’s used up too many lives. Sven, too. All three of them, in fact. She presses the phone between her ear and shoulder and crosses her arms. “Hey,” she says, “what’s with Rob?”
    “Somehow he talked them into sending him directly to Chechnya.”
    “Jeez. I had to struggle to get back here.”
    “So you’re working again? Already?”
    “Yeah. Well, features . . .” She moves toward the window and pushes it open. She smells chicken cooking with rosemary:some mother preparing dinner before work, probably. Suddenly Caddie is impatient with small talk. “So listen, Sven. That driver—”
    “I have no idea.” Sven’s voice turns abrupt.
    “No, of course not.” She rubs the back of her neck with one hand. “But you talked to him more than the rest of us.”
    “I don’t know , Caddie.”
    Caddie feels the breeze shift, escaping through her apartment. The remaining air turns heavy. “Of course not,” she repeats.
    “I mean, I was the one who talked, not him,” Sven says. “He was quiet. That’s what I remember.”
    “His skin,” she says. “You remember? So leathery.”
    “Not that it matters.”
    “No,” Caddie says. “Right-o. I keep thinking, though.”
    “Yeah, I know. But you’ve got to let it go.”
    “Thinking,” Caddie goes on as if he hadn’t spoken. “Thinking we should go.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Back, of course. Find that driver. That goddamned driver.” She hears her voice sharpen. Her words come involuntarily, like an arm raised to counter a blow.
    “Caddie.”
    “Find all those assholes. Deal with them.” What a relief. The need to say it aloud has been pressing against her, knotting her stomach. “Let them smell fear,” she says.
    “They do smell fear,” Sven said. “All the time.”
    “More fear, then.”
    “Caddie. Yaladi and his men—or his enemies, or whoever it was—anyway, they’re all long gone. The trail’s cold.”
    He’s right about that, of course. It goes cold so quickly there. “But—”
    “Trying to find them could get us into serious trouble,” he says. “For what?”
    “We owe it to Marcus,” she says. “You don’t ignore something like this.” She’s angry that Sven doesn’t understand. But embarrassed, too, that she has shown herself to be so underdeveloped a human as to want to personally slow-torture the ambushers. “We’ve got a responsibility. We—”
    “That’s crazy,” Sven interrupts. “Our responsibility is to remember—and go on.” He pauses and sighs. “We will go back, Caddie,” he says more gently. “Someday.”
    So he wants her to wait, then. For someday. “Same road?” she says. It sounds insane to her own ears, even as she says it.
    “Together,” he agrees.
    “We’ll try to find that driver?”
    “Sure,” he says.
    She’s being worked, she knows. But from Sven, at this moment, she can permit it.
    Into the silence, he adds, “I’ve seen his parents. They’re concerned about us.”
    “Hmm.”
    “Made me feel better, Caddie, to talk to them. Maybe you should catch a flight to London, come see them, too.”
    “Oh.”
    “And you know about the website?”
    “Yeah.” Mike mentioned it when he came to the hospital.
    “Have you taken a look? There’s a shot of Marcus that I took. And lots of stuff people have written.”
    She hasn’t gone there. But she doesn’t answer.
    “Some really nice tributes.” He trails off. “Well . . .”
    The conversation is wearing out; Caddie hears it in his voice. His