The Sky We Walk Upon

The Sky We Walk Upon

Prologue

It is a Tuesday morning too cold to even snow, and walking down the streets of January in Maine makes me want to write you. Not write to you, or about you, but actually write you back to me so that you might be mine again.

Occasionally, people from warmer regions ask me how I can stand the ice and the cold of the long winter seasons here, and I try to explain that things thaw in the winter, things become. I understand myself in the winter, as if everything in my life is so in focus against the whiteness of it all, the stillness, that the world just makes sense. Even my breath – the very proof that I’m alive – curls visibly above me in thick, cloudy ribbons as I exhale.

Sometimes, I tell them about you.

CHAPTER ONE

Hannah Mackenzie scooped a stack of folded t-shirts out of her dresser drawer and dropped them into the open suitcase on her bedroom floor before collapsing across her bed, not bothering to change her clothes or pull back the blankets. It was too hot to move another muscle. August was usually hot in New England, but this year had unleashed one of the hottest summers Hannah could remember, the humid nights having kept her sleeping in just a t-shirt and underwear since mid-May. Some nights she would pull the top corner of a sheet up over her shoulders, sticking her legs out the bottom, but more often she slept under nothing at all and fell asleep listening to the crickets rubbing their legs together somewhere behind the dark window screen. This night was definitely a no-sheets night. Hannah used her toes to flick her pink flip-flops onto the carpet, closing her eyes and feeling the bittersweet feelings she always felt when it came time to return to college and say goodbye to summer: part gratitude for the memories she’s collected over the past few months, part reluctance to get back to schoolwork and schedules.

She’d spent the last few months with her old high school friends, all home visiting their parents before the fall semester, and they’d soaked up the freedom and the sunshine with equal gratitude. There were late night rides with the music up and the windows down, graduation parties for friends who had gone a year ahead of them, bon fires on the beach, and the ever-repeating phrase of impending nostalgia: “This might be the last time we’ll ever ___.” This year, though, she felt the bitter part of bittersweet more acutely, knowing that after this last year at UMF, it would be time to find a real job and join the race of people without the luxury of a summer vacation. Hannah’s friends seemed to sense new opportunities lingering somewhere out beyond their next few steps. To them, the world was pregnant with possibility, and their words and excited faces emanated their beliefs that this change, this ending, was the conclusion of something good but the beginning of something that might be even better if they chose their footholds correctly. Hannah was less certain that her future would be as clean and shiny new as she hoped it would be. She still had to make it through one more grueling year of business classes and an internship at some yet-to-be-determined location. And job searching. And work. And putting in her hours with the student life committee. Somehow. The list of duties for a college senior seemed endless.

As exhausted as her body felt from a full day of packing, Hannah’s mind was not ready to shut down for the night. Graduation was practically a year away and she was already tossing and turning in her bed about things that, in the present moment, she could really do nothing about. This was typical Hannah. Planning was a good idea, she knew this, but sleepless nights were neither comforting nor productive. She tried flipping over to lie on her back, stretching her arms up over her head for maximum air flow to the sweatier parts of her body. It had to be a hundred degrees up there. The boxy green numbers on her phone said 11:45, too late to call Justin. He had to be up even earlier than she did. Oh well; she’d see him back on campus tomorrow anyway. Maybe putting her thoughts down in her journal would be helpful?

Ultimately, Hannah decided she was too tired for anything but an almost-midnight snack. Flicking on her bedside lamp, Hannah finagled her toes back into her flip-flops and headed downstairs. The temperature dropped at least ten degrees by the time she’d reached the first floor. In the kitchen, Hannah found her mother sitting on a barstool at the island by the sink, holding a cup of tea between both hands. Hannah, weaving her long hair into a quick, unsecured braid, shuffled past her mother and shut off the water in the sink, which had been left running. “Hey, everything okay?” she asked.

There was no response from her mother, just a glance and a half-smile in Hannah’s general direction. It appeared to Hannah that that miniscule excuse for a smile required an enormous amount of effort from the woman who had raised Hannah in her early years with seemingly no effort at all. Only the last decade or so had shown Hannah and her father the extent to which their wife and mother had changed, how lost and broken she seemed to them lately.

“The water was running,” Hannah said gingerly. She and her father had learned over time what Elise looked like when she was having a “down” day, how she held her shoulders hunched just slightly forward or took a little too long to focus her gaze on them when she was in a particularly fragile place. There were times when they feared the wrong words or tone of voice or facial expression would scare her deeper into herself, and so they trod lightly.

“Sorry,” Elise said quietly, and tried again to smile. This time it was stronger.

Hannah settled herself on the stool next to her mother. “I couldn’t sleep either. Gotta go back to Farmington tomorrow. The summer kind of flew by.”

“Did it?”

“It’ll be nice to see Katelyn, and Justin. Haven’t seen him in a couple weeks. Kind of nervous for classes and everything though.” Hannah, having received no sort of help from her mother in continuing the conversation, glanced into her mother’s teacup, which didn’t appear to have any liquid gone from it and still contained the teabag. “Want me to take care of that for you?”

Elise pushed the teacup towards her daughter. “Thank you.”

“Okay, will you be up in the morning? I want to say goodbye.”

Her mother nodded and, slowly, as if she were carrying a great weight on her back, got up from her stool and made her way down the hall. “And then I might go to church,” she said barely loud enough for Hannah to hear.

Church? Was that what she said? Hannah had not expected those to be the next words out of her mother’s mouth. It had been a long time since anyone in this family had had a good enough reason to step foot in a church. Not that they had anything against people who did that sort of thing; there just hadn’t been a reason to try and figure out what the point of it was. They were doing alright on their own so far, with the exception of Elise’s current emotional... instability, and they got to sleep in on Sundays. Hannah must have misheard. “Did you say ‘church’ Mom?”

“No, nevermind.”

“Okay.” Hannah wasn’t going to press the issue. “Good night, Mom.”

“Night.”