February, Present Day

The sound of the fan coming on brought me out of a heavy sleep. Its initial slow clicks accelerated into a whoosh that covered the growls of dogs facing off by the pasal outside our gates. I squinted at the battery-powered alarm clock on Sam's side of the bed, its numbers barely illuminated by the moonlight shining through the window. Just after two in the morning.

When the moon wasn't out, nights were black in our part of Kathmandu. No street lamps. No lighted signs outside shops, along empty streets, or on deserted corners. When the electricity went off — and sometimes stayed off for ten hours a day — the windows of Nepali homes hung like empty eye sockets from the brick walls that held them.

Living with unpredictable power was a skill I was still trying to master. Even after two years, I'd leave a light switch or two in their on position after the bulbs had flickered out. So when the fan hummed on and the old fridge shuddered back to life downstairs, I'd set off on my nearly nightly game of turn-off-the-lights. From the darkness of the house, I could tell that I'd done better than usual tonight, but I assumed the bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling in Ryan's bedroom would be on when I got there.

As I reached for my robe, I wondered where Sam was, what he would see when the sun crept over the mountain peaks four hours from now. Though the weather was unusually warm for February in Kathmandu, I knew it was much chillier at the altitude where he lived during his weeks away from us. But the cold never seemed to bother him. Wherever this trek had taken him, he'd be lying in his tent or under the stars on his side, arms crossed, a thin blanket pulled shoulder-high, impervious to the temperatures, filth, and hunger that would have daunted lesser men.

Though I'd gotten used to waking up without him, I missed the sameness of living alongside Sam. His routines were as familiar to me as my own. Every morning he was home, his eyes would open at dawn — those pale blue eyes that stood in stark contrast to the ruggedness of his features. He'd glance up and gauge the time from the brightness of the sky, ignoring the clock that sat on the nightstand next to him. Then he'd throw back the blanket and swing his legs out of bed in one smooth movement, pulling on the baggy Nepali pants he'd left stacked on the floor like a fireman's uniform the night before.

The lights and fans turning on in the middle of the night wouldn't have woken Sam. They never did, when he was home. Nor was he bothered by the ringing of copper bells at six o'clock each morning, attempts by the pious to earn the favor of their gods. He slept like a sated baby, with two folded T-shirts for a pillow so he wouldn't get "soft" during his days with us.

I glanced at Sam's picture on the dresser under the window. How little he'd changed in nearly twenty years. With age, his features had become sharper. His cheekbones more prominent, his mouth set off by deeper creases at its corners. The youthful glow of our first encounter had tightened into something less naive — something more lived-in.

Sam would be home in a few days. Back under this roof. Back in our lives. Back in my bed. I tried to muster up the swells of anticipation that had preceded his returns in the early stages of our life in Nepal. But I couldn't manufacture the longings. Not anymore. They'd faded gradually, in almost imperceptible ways. On nights like these, I feared that I had too.

I ran my fingers through my hair as I left the bedroom, expecting to feel sleep-tangles, but was surprised — again. The cropped hairstyle had been more resignation than aesthetic decision. It had underlined a shift in my worldview. A relinquishing. A submitting.

"Cut it all off."

It was three months into our Kathmandu transition. I'd just stepped out of the shower and had called to Sam to bring me a pair of scissors.

"Cut it all?" He looked puzzled. "Lauren, are you sure?"

Appearance was utterly unimportant to Sam, but he knew my hair, thin and straight as it was, was one of the few features I actually liked about myself.

"It's too hot. And too much hassle. And it never really feels clean." I gathered it, wet and dripping, into a tight ponytail and took stock. I looked different without its fullness framing my face. My skin looked paler, my neck thinner. I felt exposed, but I knew this moment had been weeks in the making. Months, perhaps.

"Cut right above where I'm holding it," I instructed Sam, "and I'll fix it when you're done." My hand shook where it gripped the ponytail.

Sam positioned the scissors, but his expression was still uncertain. "Lauren, are you absolutely sure?"

I nodded. "New life, right?" I said, attempting optimism, trying to make of this action a decision — not a capitulation. "New life, new look." The knot in my stomach contradicted my self-deception.

Sam smirked. "And fewer hair products to pay for."

How typical of Sam to measure this moment on a financial scale. I stared at my reflection and felt a chapter slamming shut. There was a flutter in my chest that might have been excitement or dread. "It's just a haircut," I said — a feeble assertion. Then I nodded at Sam to begin cutting.

I didn't feel any freer as I took the scissors from his hands minutes later and saw the approval on his face. I combed my hair straight and snipped the ends into an even bob as change seeped its uncertainty into my resolve. Then I snipped some more. Out of victory. Or maybe spite. Resignation. When I was done, the bob had become a short, spiked cut that symbolized more than I was willing to admit.

* * *

With a flashlight lighting the way, I crossed the threshold to Ryan's room and tried the door. He lay spread-eagled under his pile of blankets, his mouth slightly open, one hand dangling off the edge of the mattress. With sleep softening his features, he looked his age again. Thirteen and vulnerable. He stirred as I turned off his overhead light and reached for his alarm.

"Electricity came on," I whispered.

"What time is it?" His voice was sleep-rough and bothered.

"A little past two. Try to go back to sleep."

He groaned and let his head fall back onto his pillow. "Can you make baked oatmeal?" Semiconscious and still thinking about food.

"For breakfast?"

"Yeah." He burrowed deeper.

"Sure."

He turned toward the wall and pulled the blankets close around his face, the way he had since he was a child. I smiled and resisted the impulse to find the edge of his bed in the darkness and sit there, listening to him breathe. I wanted to run my hand over his hair until he fell into a deeper sleep. But I couldn't do that anymore, not even in the middle of the night, when slumber weakened his resistance.

Though there were still moments of connection between us, they'd grown scarcer with each of Sam's returns, and every time he left again, I lost more of our son. Ryan pretended not to miss his dad and went out of his way to let me know how little he cared. About anything. It wasn't so much in words as in the absence of words — overfull silences.

But he'd spoken to me without scowling just now. I felt my heart constrict as I pulled his bedroom door shut.

There was no need to tiptoe as I headed downstairs in my rubber-soled slippers, though I did anyway. The floors and stairs were made of cement. No creaking boards or sagging steps — only cold concrete and colder feet. I circled through the living room on my way to the kitchen, pulling a blanket off the back of the couch and wrapping it around my shoulders to ward off the February chill.

After two winters, the penetrating dampness still surprised me. We had no central heating, just a small electric radiator we used on rare occasions, when the cold got bad enough to warrant the power usage. Even then, it was only effective in the tiniest of rooms. I'd taken to wearing layers inside the house — sweats, long-sleeved T-shirts, zip-up sweaters, and fleece jackets. Sometimes, I'd add fingerless gloves to the vagrant look. All three of us slept with hot water bottles in our beds. Anything to ward off the creep of shivering discomfort.

For our twice-a-week showers, we'd drag our radiator into the downstairs bathroom and use it just long enough to hop in and out of the cement tub. We kept mouths and eyes closed to the bacteria in the thin trickle of water drawn by gravity from a cistern two stories above.

I flipped the switch that pumped water to the roof, knowing we would run out if I didn't take advantage of our hours of electric power. Then I placed an empty pitcher under the filtration system that hung above the kitchen sink and turned on a slow stream to fill it, lining up several other pitchers for later use. I set a pot of filtered water on the gas stove to heat for tea and installed myself at the dining room table, lifting the laptop's lid.

One of my middle-of-the-night activities was using my laptop when the faster Wi-Fi signal from the NGO next door had fewer users sharing it. I knew Sam disapproved of my "borrowing" it, but I told myself the occasional midnight usage was harmless.

I didn't spend much time communicating with the past. It seemed healthier not to keep too connected to what had previously fed and defined me. But on nights like these, in the silence of a sleeping house and with much-needed water refilling our rooftop cistern, I had time to spare and nowhere to go.

I opened my Gmail account. A couple of promotional e-mails about discounted photo books and vitamins. The weight loss ads I'd started receiving after clicking on a site hocking raspberry ketones. And a note from Sullivan.

Sullivan.

We'd met in Austria — her Southern belle exuberance an odd match to my Midwestern wallflower reserve. And for reasons still mysterious to me, we'd become friends. She was as self-promoting as I was self-effacing. As flamboyant as I was restrained. As outspoken as I was measured. She quoted Steel Magnolias like I quoted C.S. Lewis. And somehow, in a tiny Bible school perched on a mountain in a town named Sternensee, where our presence was as illogical as it was providential, we'd recognized in each other an odd-shaped missing piece.

If someone had told me when I started college that I'd get to spend a semester in Europe studying theology in a chalet with twenty students from around the world, I'd have doubted the prediction. Granted, my growing-up years had been steeped in youth groups and church services and prayer meetings and outreach projects. But as I grew into my teens, my faith had become more circumstantial than intentional. There were moments along the way when something indefinable hinted at a soul connection. A flutter of spiritual yearning. A dependence on the divine. But those occurrences had remained mild and fleeting until college, when a new circle of believing friends had awakened my desire to learn and experience more.

So I'd searched for a school where I could bolster my beliefs with knowledge and where living in another culture would broaden my worldview. I'd found both in Sternensee's quirky Christschule, an English-language Bible school where international students came to study and ski — sometimes in reverse order. I'd spent a semester there, basking in a foreign world and accumulating credits that would somehow count toward my bachelor of arts from an American college.

I'd met my husband there too — something Sullivan had predicted nearly from the moment she met Sam.

When was it that she and I had started communicating again? Two years ago? Nearly three? Life had gotten in the way after college, and multiple moves had put an end to the Christmas cards that came slipping into the mailbox between Thanksgiving and New Year, leaving sparkles on my hands and a strange wistfulness in my mind.

I opened Sullivan's e-mail, bracing for the effusions of enthusiasm I'd come to expect. Three days ago, she had twisted my arm into opening a Facebook account. Chickadee. Chick-a-dee! she'd written. You have got to come over to the dark side. I've found every single member of the Sternensee gang, and I've got to tell you, while I've been maintaining my girlish figure and youthful countenance, these people have gotten appallingly old. Listen, I know you're not into this sort of thing, but you're the only one missing from our little reunion page. I could picture her waving a hand in the air as if dismissing something trivial. Just give it a try, will you? You won't need to sign your name in blood or anything. The gang'll be thrilled to hear from you!

Sam was suspicious of Facebook and its power to monopolize one's time, and though I didn't have any moral convictions about it, I'd resisted the social networking phenomenon mostly because I disliked fads. But I knew Sullivan. Her powers of persuasion were well honed and irresistible. The timing of my crossover to the "dark side," as she called it, might have been in question, but the inevitability of it was not.

So on a quiet evening three nights ago, I'd clicked the Facebook icon and, taking a deep breath, begun to fill in my information. Twice I'd closed the page, telling myself it was the wise thing to do, and headed to another room to grade some papers. Twice I'd returned to the computer, berating myself for my misgivings, and set about entering the information again. The gang'll be thrilled to hear from you! Sullivan's words prodded me on.

As soon as the deed was done, I'd clicked out of the app and gone about my business as usual. I hadn't opened it again in three days — partly to prove to myself that I was capable of restraint and partly out of nervousness about reconnecting with "the gang."

Whatever qualms I'd had, Sullivan's latest e-mail put them to rest. You did it! What a kick in the pants! Welcome to the realm of the connected and addicted, Chickadee. I promise you will not regret it.

She might as well have sent a voicemail. Her accent, intensified perhaps by the passage of time, drawled out of the screen as I read.

Here's something you may not realize: sites like these are most effective if you actually visit them, which I know requires a bit of a leap into the unknown. So I've sent you a message on Facebook — a personalized guided tour. I could charge you for the Sullivan Geary Facebook Tutorial, but since you're a pal o' mine, it's yours for free. So head on over there and open my message. Now. (Are you still reading this? I said — now!)

I stepped back into the kitchen, just a few feet away from the dining room table, to change out the pitchers. Then I took the pan of boiling water off the stove. With steaming tea in hand, I returned to the dining room.

I opened Facebook, typed "Sullivan Geary" in the search bar, and scrolled down to her thumbnail to click on it.

Sullivan's profile picture, a black-and-white shot of the socialite holding her beloved three-legged Dudley, was perfect. Her hair was stylishly tousled, her makeup impeccably applied, and her smile as orthodontist-straight as any movie star's, but the dog she held — a mix of unknown origin, one ear higher than the other, with the stub of one foreleg unapologetically displayed — said more about my friend than any professional portrait could have.

This was the Sullivan I loved: a polished, charismatic woman in full command of her world, who wielded her status like authority and served on the boards of countless charities, demanding donations by the sheer magnetism of her spirit. And a softhearted empath who had stopped her white convertible on a torrid Savannah day to rescue a stray who'd been hit by a car. The veterinary bills had been astronomical and the outcome uncertain, but she'd fought for that little life like a mother for her child. And Dudley had survived.

I moved my finger on the trackpad until the cursor hovered over the blue message icon and clicked, then I followed Sullivan's instructions to a T, choosing my privacy settings, deactivating e-mail notifications, and trying to figure out the difference between walls, newsfeeds, profiles, messages, and instant messages. Despite Sullivan's strong recommendation, I balked at uploading a photo and declined Facebook's offer to help me find friends.

After an hour or so of stumbling around the site with little evidence that I'd accomplished anything, I took one last sip of my cold tea and prepared to sign out. That's when I noticed that another red number had appeared on the message icon at the top of my screen. I checked the laptop's clock. It was almost eleven at night in Savannah. Surely Sullivan, whose beauty rest was a nearly religious concern, was long asleep.

I clicked the icon and frowned. Aidan D? Then I put down my cup and stared at the screen, my breath catching.

Aidan?

I clicked to open the message. The thumbnail next to Aidan's name was a blur of primary colors, but I didn't attempt to get a closer look. The words next to it were enough to make me shove the laptop away, incredulous, then draw it closer again.