第4章 The Name They Did Not Share

The fourth night's rain had been the first test of the letters, and the letters had passed it, and the passing of it had taught them something about the bridge, which was that a bridge built in the rain is a bridge that has been tested, and a bridge that has been tested is a bridge that can be trusted, and they trusted it now, both of them, in the way you trust a thing you have been feeding for nights, in the way you trust a river you have been watching, in the way you trust a stranger who has never once given you a reason not to. The rain had become part of the bridge's history, like the planks and the ropes and the bottle, and the history was the keeping, and the keeping was the crossing, and the crossing was the whole of it. The rain had stopped by the time Wren got home, and the moon had come out from behind the clouds, and she stood at her bedroom window looking out over the dark Hales toward the west bank, and she knew, without being able to see him, that he was out there, the stranger with the J, standing in the reeds or on the planks, looking back toward the east bank the same way. She did not sleep much that night, and when she did she dreamed of the bridge, four planks and two posts, simple as a child's drawing, growing one plank at a time out of the dark water, and in the dream she was crossing it, and on the other side there was a figure waiting, and she could not see its face, and she was not afraid. The third night came with rain, a slow September drizzle that hung over the Hales like a held breath, and Wren came to the bridge anyway, with the hood of her jacket up and a new bottle in her pocket, because a bridge kept at night in the rain is a bridge that knows you mean it. She found the west bank's answer under the last dry plank almost at once, a bottle that had not been there the night before, and she opened it with hands that were cold and quick, and she read the letter by the flashlight she had promised herself she would not need. The letter was short. It said: I am seventeen too. I live on the west bank. I have lived here my whole life, and I thought I knew every inch of this river, and I was wrong, because you and I are standing on the only two inches of it that matter, and they are the same inch. I am sorry too, for the thing I have not done yet, which is probably the thing you are going to make me do. I do not know your name. I am not going to ask. I am going to keep answering as long as you keep writing. Wren read it three times in the drizzle, and then she sat on the wet planks of the bridge with the letter in her hands and the water moving under her and the rain beading on the river's skin, and she felt something she had never felt before, a warmth that had nothing to do with the weather, a thread running from her chest out across the dark water to the west bank where a stranger was standing, probably in the same drizzle, probably reading her letter the same way. She folded the letter carefully and put it in the dry inside pocket of her jacket, the one over her heart, and she took out her own bottle and wrote her answer by the flashlight, because the rain had made the moonlight impossible. She wrote: I do not want to know your name either. I think that is the whole point of a bridge, that you can cross it without carrying your name with you. I am going to keep writing. I am going to keep coming back. There is something in this river that has been waiting for us to find each other, and I am not going to let it wait alone. She did not sign it W this time. She signed it with the only thing she had that was hers alone, a small drawing of a bridge, four planks and two posts, simple as a child's drawing, and she corked the bottle and wedged it under the last dry plank and stood a long time in the rain looking across the dark water at the west bank where she knew, she could feel, the stranger was standing. Miles was standing there. He had been standing there for an hour, in the rain, on the west bank at the edge of the reeds, not on the bridge, because the bridge was half Wren's and half his and the middle belonged to both of them and neither of them had crossed it yet. He had found her letter an hour ago, and he had read it in the rain, and he had written his answer and placed it and then he had stood at the edge of the reeds, looking across the dark water, and he had felt it, the thread, the same thread Wren was feeling, running from his chest out across the river to the east bank where a stranger was standing in the same drizzle reading his letter the same way. He did not cross the bridge that night. He did not know how to cross a bridge that had become a promise. He stood at the edge of the reeds until the rain let up and the east bank's flashlight went out and the dark settled back over the river, and then he walked home along the west bank with the drawing of a bridge burning in his pocket, four planks and two posts, simple as a child's drawing, and he understood that he had just been given a map to a place he had never known he was looking for, and that the map was a drawing of a bridge, and that the bridge was the only real thing in his life, and that he was going to have to learn, slowly, one letter at a time, how to cross it.