The Art of Losing

The morning we lost you, I took a shower.

I was in a good mood. We'd finally closed the Asher case. And that morning, as we watched Jason Stotas being led away in handcuffs, you'd put an arm around my waist, squeezing me gently for a few seconds.

The shower was hot, and the stream of water was strong. I ran my washcloth over my side, tracing the path your hand had taken. For months, I would cry over that move. Should have showered later, should have waited. Shouldn't have hastened to wash away any trace you'd left on me. Skin cells, maybe even a hair.

I stepped out of the shower humming, and noticed my cell phone's message light was on.

"Hey, Sara, it's me. It's, ah, you know... it's, yes, me. Ah... well, I'm in the air, have been for a bit. Nothing much to look at up here. Clouds, water, crossword puzzle I picked up in the airport... But I can't stop thinking... ah... see, I'll be back on the fifteenth, and I was thinking, maybe we should talk then. It just seems like... yes, talk, we should. I... not just talk, I mean, go somewhere too, but talking is important. Okay, I'm not really making... and I'm on one of those phones on the back of the seats, the ones that make you pay by credit card, and charge about a hundred dollars per minute, so I should go. I just wanted to... let's do something when I get back. Maybe I'll call you from Tokyo, when I'm not presenting. Either way. Yes. I... okay. Yes. Goodbye, Sara."

The message was replayed five times while I cooked breakfast, smiling at your shy bumbling. Allowing myself to hope. Two more times while I ate, and another while I brushed my teeth. Once more while I drew the drapes closed, and then I laughed at myself. Deleted the message. Deleted it with a flick of my thumb. Just pressed seven on the keypad, and it was gone.

The morning we lost you, I was asleep. Dreaming of big hands and low murmurs, like always. Only it was more vivid, and when I got up at one point to get a glass of water, I wondered whether I'd still have these dreams if you were in bed with me. Wondered how your skin would feel under the smooth sheets, wondered if you'd hold me as you slept.

My cell phone rang around three, and as I opened my eyes I hoped it was you.

The evening after we lost you, I stormed into the lab, demanding answers from everyone I saw. Catherine's sobbing voice had given out twenty seconds into her call, and all I'd heard was that they'd lost contact with your plane. Lost contact, what does that even mean? Ten minutes, an hour? How often do airplanes really check in?

Nick, Warrick, Greg, and Brass were in the break room, looking stunned. When I marched in, they pointed wordlessly to the television screen mounted high in the corner of the room. A grave-looking reporter was standing outside LAX, reporting that Delta Flight 118 had fallen off radar three hours earlier.

"He didn't fly out of LAX," I told them tersely. "He took a cab to McCarran at seven this morning. He flew out of McCarran."

Warrick rubbed his cheek. "Connection," he managed.

We huddled together on the break room couches all night, our eyes glued to the screen. Catherine wandered in and out, looking pale. Ecklie, in a rare act of kindness, arranged for swing and day shifts to cover graveyard that night.

I think he knew we couldn't leave you, and our only link to you was that television. They showed aerial satellite photos of a massive storm front in the middle of the Pacific. Airline officials were tight-lipped, but aviation specialists had plenty to say.

"Your main obstacle out there would be the wind," one attested, drawing on a whiteboard. "If this is your plane, and you're cruising at around 30,000 feet, you've got four different fronts coming at you at once." He scrawled several arrows coming at the plane, then shook his head. "Even with the most seasoned pilot, the plane would be thrown every which way."

"So you aren't optimistic for the safety of Flight 118's passengers and crew?" the reporter asked.

The man frowned deeply. "Look, you have to understand, they were in the middle of nowhere. No place to make an emergency landing, and that's assuming the force of the wind hadn't already snapped their necks."

At this news Greg bolted from the room, his hand clamped over his mouth. Nick and Warrick, glancing at each other wearily, did a quick rock-paper-scissors, and Nick obligingly left the break room in search of Greg.

Brass called a few law enforcement friends in LA, asking for any information they could offer, while Warrick rubbed Catherine's back absently.

And me? I sat and watched. Watched the endless interviews with the so-called experts, the colored map of the storm, the speculation on how many ways you could have died. And I waited. Because they'd find you, surely. Even if the wind were strong, you would have known how to hold your head between your legs. And even if you had crashed at sea, you'd have been the one showing people how to use their seat cushions as floatation devices. You'd figure out where the black box had sunk and gather everyone over that spot, borrowing a lady's compact mirror to catch the sunlight and alert passing aircrafts.

So I watched, and I waited for the announcement of a miracle.

The day after we lost you, I sat on my bed, switching between CNN and MSNBC. The search teams hadn't yet located your plane, but they hadn't located any wreckage, either, so it didn't mean anything. They just weren't looking in the right spot.

The whiteboard guy came back onscreen, saying it was possible that the pilot had tried to veer around the storm, not realizing how wide it was. Since the search parties had no way of knowing if the pilot had gone right or left, or how far into the storm he'd gotten, they were looking at a search area of approximately 500 square miles.

An expert on wind came on, and spoke about whiplash until suddenly an emergency news announcement broke in. There was a high security alert at the Empire State Building. They covered it all morning, and every once in a while, "No sign of Flight 118" scrolled across the bottom of the screen, right before the current NASDAQ.

I drank until I slept.

The week after we lost you, Warrick took all your pets from your office and townhouse, and brought them to his apartment. When I raised an eyebrow, he told me he was just keeping an eye on them till you got back.

I spun on my heel, marching down the hallway and into Ecklie's office, announcing that I planned to launch a formal investigation into the disappearance of your plane.

"You're a crime scene investigator, Sara," he said with a sigh. "There's been no crime committed."

"You don't know that," I retorted. "For all you know, there was a bomb on that plane, and a terrorist messed with the radar before rerouting the flight. They could all be on the ground somewhere, being held hostage by some splinter cell." I didn't actually know what a splinter cell was, but it sounded good.

"Even if there were a crime, it's not in our jurisdiction. That plane left from LA."

"You don't want to find him, do you," I burst out. "He makes you look inadequate, and with him gone, you'd be the top dog around here. It's what you've always wanted."

I don't know what I'd hoped he'd do. Fire me, suspend me, anything to help direct my anger. But instead he just looked at me with sympathetic eyes.

"You've got ten weeks of vacation on the books. If you need to take some time to deal with this, I understand."

So I set off for Los Angeles, where I talked with the investigators. Floated my terrorism theory, but no one took the bait. I tried sleeping in my hotel room, but every time I closed my eyes, I'd see you on that plane, gripping the armrests tightly as your crossword puzzle slipped off your lap.

I called Verizon Wireless one night, saying that I was a police officer (a little lie) and that I was investigating a series of threatening messages left on my voicemail (a big lie). Customer service passed me around like a hot potato until someone finally admitted that there was no way to retrieve the message you'd left me, the one I'd deleted. Maybe within 24 hours, she said, but not after more than a week. I told her she'd be hearing from my lawyer.

The month after we lost you, Brass called and told me to meet them outside of LA. Some town called Marina del Rey.

Your mother held your funeral on a Monday afternoon. The whole team showed up dressed in black, and I wore a cream suit. Catherine hissed to me that it was inappropriate to come to a funeral wearing white, and I replied that it was inappropriate to come to a funeral with a giant stick up her ass.

The service was Catholic. I found myself wondering if you'd considered marrying me. Would we have held the ceremony in a Catholic church, to appease your mother?

You would have hated your coffin. It was thick, polished cherry wood with brass hardware. Greg told me softly that they'd brought special items of yours to put inside it. A collection of thick Shakespeare volumes, your favorite entomology texts, a handful of amusement park passes. All tightly enclosed in the casket. Pissed me off. Because not only would you have wanted to be buried in a pine box that would allow the insects to feed on you, but I was sure you'd be annoyed at having to dig up all your stuff after you were found alive. They just had to locate whatever island you were marooned on.

Catherine signed to your mother after the service. The only ASL I know is "hello" and "I love you," and neither seemed particularly appropriate. So I left through a side door, and packed a suitcase for Vegas.

The year after we lost you, I booked a round-trip flight to Tokyo. It was tough getting through security when they realized that I was staying in Japan precisely two hours, but my badge appeased them somewhat. I sat by the window with a pair of binoculars, trying to catch a glimpse of your island. You'd probably built a water filtration system by then, I figured, and were pretty comfortable. But it was still time for you to come home, and so I kept my eyes on the sea, on the way there and back.

We marked the anniversary by going over to Nick's apartment and getting plastered. When Greg drunkenly slid his hand up my thigh, I burst into tears. That night, I got on the internet, searching for open positions at crime labs. Crime labs that were far from Las Vegas, far from the team. Far from you.

Within a couple of days, I had interviews scheduled. Within a week, I was announcing to the team that I'd accepted a job in Boston. Nick and Warrick tried to be supportive. Greg sulked. Catherine and Brass looked relieved to see me go.

There was no party, no cake when I left. We'd stopped being a family right around the time that your plane fell off the radar screen.

Two years after we lost you, I met Mickey. He was tall and lanky, with red hair and green eyes, like I was simultaneously getting a "stop" and "go" signal every time I looked at him.

He came to the Boston lab as our resident entomologist, and was delighted to find that I knew quite a lot about the subject. I told him I read a lot.

I also told him about Greg's habit of playing rock music at crime scenes, and Warrick's tricks for lifting prints off doorknobs. I told him about everyone, except you. Your memory was mine to treasure, and I wasn't about to let anyone share it.

We went on a date, and talked about movies we liked, places we'd traveled. We ate sushi and drank sake. He walked me to my door, and kissed my lips, then my neck. I pulled him into my apartment, stripping off my clothes without ceremony and inviting him into my bed. When he finally drifted off to sleep, I went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. It helped muffle the sound of my sobs as I ran my hand over and over the side of my waist.

Three years after we lost you, Mickey took me to dinner in the North End and pulled out a velvet jeweler's box. I started to tell him he was rushing things, but he got down on one knee and told me he loved me, told me I was the woman of his dreams. I thought about my own dreams, how they were still of your large hands and low murmurs, and a tear slipped down my cheek as the pretty diamond ring slipped onto my finger.

The second we got back to his apartment, Mickey called his parents with the news of our engagement. Then he called his four brothers, then his two sisters, then his college buddies. I thought about calling the old team, but I'd lost touch with all of them except Greg. And I didn't feel like telling anyone anyway.

Three years and two months after we lost you, I got a call from Catherine. This was unusual in and of itself, but the fact that I'd never given her my Boston phone number gave me pause. It could only be bad news. Greg was hurt, maybe, or Nick had been shot at a scene.

I let the call go to voicemail, and headed out the door. Stopped at Dunkin Donuts for a large coffee and a bagel. Hunger, yes, that's what that uncomfortable feeling in my stomach was...

Catherine called two more times during my commute to work, and again as I entered the building. It was with relief that I caught sight of Mickey, walking down the hall toward me. His broad grin was contagious.

"Baby, come here, you've got to see this."

He pulled me into the break room, where half a dozen people were gathered around the television, staring at it wordlessly. Déjà vu of the worst kind, especially when I saw the words "Flight 118" on the screen.

"This is unreal," Mickey said excitedly. "Sara, you have to understand, this guy is the reason I got into this field. He's a legend."

Two uniformed officials were standing at a podium, taking turns speaking into the dozens of mounted microphones. But the camera was panning past them, to focus in on a man standing a few feet to the side. A tanned, gaunt man with a large scar on one cheek. His weary blue eyes scanned the crowd in front of him, as if he were looking for someone.

Mickey moved closer to the TV, not noticing when I sank to the floor.

The officials explained that a passing pilot had seen a signal from the tiny island, that he'd been flying off-course at the time. A one-in-a-million chance, they emphasized, and the camera pulled in tighter to get the survivor's reaction.

And for the first time since we'd lost you, I felt my heart start to beat.

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