For several minutes there was nothing else.
Eventually Ellie looked toward Ray.
“Are you still Ray?”
The question destroyed him.
He wiped his face.
“Yes.”
“I think I am.”
Ellie nodded.
“Daddy was right.”
Ray closed his eyes.
Sarah watched him.
Something did not fit.
Not badly.
Just incompletely.
Ray had said he carried the placemat because he hoped to find them.
But why?
He had saved Ellie.
Stayed with Danny.
He had fulfilled enough.
Sarah asked:
“Why did you stop using the name?”
Ray looked at her.
His gaze moved toward Ellie.
Then the roadway.
“Because I heard her saying it.”
Sarah frowned.
“What?”
“While we waited for emergency crews.”
Ray rubbed one hand over his face.
“She kept repeating my name.”
“Ray.”
“Ray.”
“Ray.”
“I thought it was because she was frightened.”
“Now I know Danny told her to.”
He looked down.
“For months afterward, I heard it in my sleep.”
“Every time somebody called me Ray, I went back to that ravine.”
Sarah softened.
“So you started using Reggie.”
“My middle name is Reginald.”
“I left the riding group I was with.”
“Moved.”
“Stopped going through Millbrook.”
Sarah stared.
“You were traumatized too.”
Ray laughed bitterly.
“Doesn't feel like I earned that word.”
“Trauma isn't something you earn.”
He looked at her.
She continued.
“You saved Ellie.”
“I couldn't save Danny.”
“You stayed with him.”
Ray looked away.
Sarah asked the question she had spent three years fearing.
“Was he alone when he died?”
Ray looked immediately back.
“No.”
The certainty made her cry again.
“No, Sarah.”
“I was with him.”
She bent over the table.
Her whole body shook.
For three years, she had pictured Danny alone in cold metal.
Calling for her.
No one hearing.
Now that picture broke.
It hurt.
But it broke.
Ray moved instinctively as if to comfort her, then stopped himself.
Sarah reached across.
Took his hand.
That was permission.
He held hers.
“I stayed until I couldn't feel his pulse anymore.”
Ray’s voice trembled.
“I promised him I wouldn't leave.”
Sarah squeezed his hand harder.
“Thank you.”
He shook his head.
“Don't thank me.”
“I am.”
“Sarah.”
“You gave him something I couldn't.”
Ray looked confused.
“You gave him a person.”
“When I couldn't be there.”
That silenced him.
They sat with it.
Then Sarah remembered something.
“You knew my name.”
Ray nodded.
“Danny told me.”
“What else did he say?”
Ray’s expression changed.
There it was.
The thing he had been avoiding.
Sarah felt it instantly.
“What?”
Ray released her hand.