Close your eyes.

"They are closed. It's dark. Where am I? Can you-"

Shhh. Relax. I need you to listen.

"I'm listening. Can you get us out of here?"

Focus. Listen. You can hear her.

There is a break in her voice when she says her.

"... up. Sorry ... Please..."

"Marah." When I say her name, lights come on. I see that I am in the hospital room again. Have I always been here? Is this the only here for me? Around me are walls of glass, through which I see other, similar rooms beyond. Inside here, there is a bed surrounded by machines that are hooked up to my broken body: tubes and electrodes and casts and bandages.

Marah is sitting beside that other me.

My goddaughter is in soft focus, her face is blurred a little. Her hair is cotton-candy-pink, razor-cut, and unattractive as hell, a little roosterlike the way she's gelled it, and she has on more makeup than Alice Cooper in his heyday. A big black coat makes her look like a kid playing dress-up for Halloween.

She is saying my name and trying not to cry. I love this girl, and her sadness scalds my soul. She needs me to wake up. I can tell. I will open my eyes and smile at her and tell her it is okay.

I concentrate hard, say, "Marah, don't cry."

Nothing.

My body just lies there, inert, breathing through a tube, eyes swollen and shut.

"How can I help her?" I ask Kate.

You'd have to wake up.

"I tried."

"... Tully ... I'm so sorry ... for what I did."

The light in this room flickers. Kate pulls away from me and floats around the bed to stand by her daughter.

Marah looks small and dark next to the glowing image of her mother. Kate whispers: Feel me, baby girl.

Marah gasps and looks up. "M-mom?"

All of the air seems to go out of the room. There is an exquisite second in which I can see that Marah believes.

Then she slumps forward in defeat. "When will I learn? You're gone."

"Can it be undone?" I ask Kate quietly. It scares me to ask, and the silence between my question and her answer feels like an eternity. At last, Kate looks away from her daughter and at me.

Can what be undone?

I indicate the woman in the bed-the other me. "Can I wake up?"

You tell me. What happened?

"I tried to help Marah, but ... really. When have I ever been the person you want beside you in a foxhole?"

Always, Tul. You were the only one who didn't know that. She looks down at Marah again, and sighs quietly, sadly.

Had I even thought about Marah last night? I can't remember. I can't remember anything about what happened to me, and when I try, some dark truth presses in and I push it away. "I'm afraid to remember what happened."

I know, but it's time. Talk to me. Remember.

I take a deep breath and scroll through memories. Where to pick up the story? I think about the months after her death, and all the changes that happened. The Ryans moved to Los Angeles and we lost touch in the way that happens with distance and grief. By early 2007, everything had changed. Oh, I still saw Margie. I had lunch with her once a month. She always said she looked forward to her days in the city, but I saw the sadness in her eyes, and the way her hands had begun to tremble, and so I wasn't surprised when she told me that she and Bud were moving to Arizona. When they were gone, I tried like hell to get my life back on track. I applied for every broadcasting job I could find. I started with the top ten markets and worked my way down. But every single road came to a dead end. I was either overqualified or underqualified; some stations didn't want to piss off the networks by hiring me. Some had heard I was a diva. The reasons didn't really matter: the result was the same. I was unemployable. That's how I came to be back where I started.

I close my eyes and remember it in detail. June of 2008, less than a week before Marah's high school graduation and twenty months after the funeral, I ...

am in the waiting room of KCPO, the small local TV station in Seattle where I first worked for Johnny, all those years ago.

The offices have moved-the station has grown-but it is still a little shabby and second-rate. Two years ago I would have considered local news beneath me.

I am not the woman I was before. I am like a leaf in the deep midwinter, curling up, turning black, becoming transparent and dry, afraid of a strong wind.

I am literally back where I began. I have begged for an interview with Fred Rorback, whom I've known for years. He is the station manager here now.

"Ms. Hart? Mr. Rorback will see you now."

I get to my feet, smiling with more confidence than I feel.

Today I am starting over. This is what I tell myself as I walk into Fred's office.

It is small and ugly, paneled in fake wood with a gunmetal-gray desk and two computers on the desk. Fred looks smaller than I remember, and-surprisingly-younger. When I first interviewed with him-in the summer before my senior year of high school-I thought he was older than dirt. I see now that he's probably only twenty years older than I am. He is bald now, and smiling at me in a way I don't like. There is sympathy in his eyes as he stands to greet me.

"Hi, Fred," I say, shaking his hand. "It's good of you to see me."

"Of course," he says, sitting back down. On his desk is a stack of paper. He points to it. "Do you know what those are?"

"No."

"The letters you wrote me in 1977. One hundred and twelve letters from a seventeen-year-old girl, asking for a job at the ABC affiliate station. I knew you'd be someone."

"Maybe I wouldn't have been if you hadn't given me that break in '85."

"You didn't need me. You were destined for greatness. Everyone saw it. Whenever I saw you on the networks, I was proud."

I feel a strange sadness at this. I never really thought about Fred after I left KLUE for New York. How hard would it have been to look back just once, instead of forward?

"I was sorry to hear about your show," he says.