She steps into the room, and before he tells himself he hasn’t seen her, he has seen her. The bedroom is the most vulnerable of sanctuaries. He puts down his book, puts two fingers to his lips and reminds himself that just because nothing is impossible, few things are probable. Nonetheless, she has slipped into the room and they both know it.

When her plane went down he spent three days confounded by the words. The plane went down. He asked his brother exactly what they meant. His brother said, I’m just your brother.

His sister said, You’re in a state of shock. No, he said, I’m exploring language. Language, he said, is a foreign country each of us carries around inside and I’m just discovering the one inside me. Okay, his sister said.

Several weeks after the funeral he walked out of the foreign country, crossing the border into a familiar landscape of planned orchards and shallow canals. He walked one canal path and saw his reflection on the water. Cherry trees were also reflected, and behind them big clouds like a child’s painting of lamb’s wool.

When she steps into the room he knows it is her because, like it or not, it is her bedroom, too. A person does not lose her bedroom simply because her plane goes down. But she is quick about it, so that when he notices she is already gone. Whether she has left or quietly slid into her side of the bed, he cannot tell. So he leaves the light on all night. In the dark she might venture to press her lips against his. He knows how brave she is, that she has fully explored her country of language and has returned to tell him of its thousand secrets. He doesn’t want to hear a thousand secrets. He knows one or two, and they possess all the terror he can bear.