The week before Rebecca’s plane crash, Jane and I had a terrible-argument. I do not remember what it was about, but it could not have been any less ludicrous than this latest one about Rebecca’s birthday. The next thing I knew she had driven me to such a point that I hit her.

It was a slap, not a punch, if distinctions matter. And after I did it I thought I would die. I knew about her childhood, her father. I knew what I wasn’t supposed to be.

Jane took Rebecca to her parents’ place in Massachusetts. I wanted her back so badly I could taste it. But, like now, I did not know what to say. I just knew that where Rebecca went Jane would follow: she lived for Rebecca then, as she does now. So I threatened litigation if she didn’t send the child back. I expected her to come too, even if I didn’t say so directly.

When I heard about the crash over the car radio, I started to shake so badly that I had to pull off the highway. This has not happened, I told myself. You have not lost your entire family at once.

I drove to the airport and parked at a two-hour meter, the illogic of which struck me only after I had purchased a ticket to Iowa. I picked up a teddy bear-wishful thinking?-before I boarded. I looked around the plane wondering who else was headed to Des Moines because of the crash. When I arrived in Iowa, the wounded had already been shuttled to a hospital. My taxi pulled up directly behind another taxi, and Jane stepped out. I almost fell to my knees, seeing her there with mascara running down her face and her nose dripping. I stared at her and all the words defining forgiveness caught in my throat and for the life of me I couldn’t understand why Rebecca had not come out of that taxi as well. Stupefied, I asked where Rebecca was. I did not know that Jane had not been on fight 997; I did not learn that until several minutes later, and then only by deduction.

We were asked to go to the morgue, along with the other frantic-relatives, to survey the bodies that had been pulled from the wreckage. Jane stood outside, cleaving to a fire extinguisher on the wall, while I crept into the refrigerated rooms. I do not remember looking at the bloodied shrouds of infants and children. If Rebecca’s body had been there, I am not certain I would have admitted it to myself or the coroners, anyway.

We found Rebecca in pediatrics, tangled in wires and tubes. I lifted Rebecca’s arm and tucked the cheaply-made yellow bear underneath it. I pulled Jane close to me, burying my nose in her hair and rubbing my palms against her familiar shoulder blades. I never really had to say anything to get Jane to come home. I do not think I read the signals wrong when I believed that she understood.

Jane comes around the plane and stands almost directly in front of the spot where I am hidden. This is my chance. I am going to tell her. I am going to start by speaking her name.

She is close enough to touch. Wind breathes through the wreckage of the plane. It shrieks, an unnatural note. I reach my hand through the blind of corn stalks and stretch out my fingers. “Jane,” I whisper.

But at that moment Rebecca emerges from the twisted gyves and fetters of metal. Her hands are pressed against the sides of her head. She is screaming, running from the body of the plane with her eyes closed. Jane holds out her arms. She says something I cannot hear and Rebecca’s eyes open. I push aside the corn stalks, revealing myself, but I do not think Rebecca, who is facing me, notices. She falls against Jane’s breast, clutching and gasping. Her eyes pass right over me and they do not see a thing, of that I am sure. Jane smoothes our daughter’s hair. “Ssh,” she says. She sings something very softly, and Rebecca’s breathing turns even again. She grabs fistfuls of Jane’s shirt, over and over.

I stand only three feet away, but it could be three hundred. I am not privy to this. I cannot heal. If given the chance, Rebecca would not run to me. I am not even sure that Jane would run to me. I let the corn close in around my face and I turn my back to them. Even if I could get Jane to listen to me, get her to understand why it is that I cannot live without her, it is not enough.

It hits me: I am not part of this family. I would never say I am a scientist without offering proof. How can I say that I am a father, a husband?

Jane is murmuring to Rebecca. The words get softer and softer and I realize they are walking in the opposite direction. And this is when I make what could possibly be the greatest-and most difficult-decision of my life. I will not call to them when I do not know what to say. I won’t reveal myself without having anything to show. I have much thinking to do, but right now I act purely on instinct. It is hard as hell, but I let them go.

After we check into the only motel in What Cheer, I find myself remembering things that I have not thought about for years. I could understand it if I were replaying the crash over and over in my head-that would make sense to me. But instead I am seeing my father, plain as day. He moves around the edges of the motel room, picking up glass tumblers and straightening the bathroom mirror. He flushes the toilet, twice. I do not dare fall asleep; I do not dare fall asleep. Then, just as I have expected, he starts to walk towards my bed. But he changes course and sits instead on the other bed, next to Rebecca. He breathes clouds of scotch and tugs the blanket away, revealing, ripe, my daughter.

I was nine the first time it happened. My mother and father had a fight, and my mother left to stay with my aunt in Concord. I did everything I was supposed to: I made dinner for Daddy and Joley; I cleaned up the kitchen; I even remembered to put the hose into the sink when I ran the dishwasher. We all avoided talking about Mama.

But because she was away, and because I felt I had earned it, I decided to go into her room, to her perfume tray. Mama smelled different every day: like oranges and spice, or fresh lemon pies, or cool marble, or even the wind. When she left the room she left a memory, a scent, behind her.

I knew what I was looking for, a little red glass bottle in the shape of a berry that was called Framboise. The word was etched right on the glass. My mother did not let me wear perfume. Little girls who wear perfume, she said, turn into big girls who are tramps.

I was very careful with the fragile bottle because I didn’t want to spill a drop. I turned it over on my finger the way I had seen her do every morning, and then I touched this finger, wet with the smell of raspberries, to my throat and my wrists and behind my knees. I turned around and around in a circle. How wonderful, I thought. It is with me no matter where I go.

I stopped myself by catching my arms around the post of my parents’ bed. Standing at the door was my father.

“What the hell have you been doing?” he said, sniffing the air. He leaned closer to grab my shirt and the smell of whiskey cut through the thickness of berries. “You will bathe. Now!”

He made me strip naked in front of him, although I hadn’t done that in five years. He watched me from the door of the bathroom with his arms crossed. The entire time, I cried. I cried when the shower, too hot, scalded my skin and I continued to cry when I stepped onto the bath mat and toweled dry. “Go to your goddamned room,” my father said.

I pulled a flannel nightgown over my head and turned down the covers of my bed. I told myself aloud this was like any other night, and I tried not to lie awake waiting for punishment.

Joley came into my room on his way to bed. He was only five, but he knew. “Jane, what did you do wrong?” And I told him as best I could explain that I had stupidly been pretending to be Mama.

“There’s nothing you can do,” I said. “Get out before he hits you too.”