Ghosted

Sarah sits up attempting to comfort Jenni. She eventually goes to bed in the spare room. On her way into work, she sees Eddie in a taxi, but must run out of traffic before she is able to see for sure.

Sarah and Rueben travel to Fresno to pitch a collaboration between their organization and a group of hospices. On a tour of the hospice before the meeting, Sarah and Eddie meet Ruth, a 15-year-old with a genetic condition who was one of their first patients. Upset at her situation, Ruth asks where the clowndoctors are when they’re needed, and Rueben promises to send one of her favorites to see her soon. After the presentation, Sarah is speaking with an executive about his questions, and he is dismissive and resistant to working with clowns. She argues with him and accuses his staff of lacking humility. Rueben confronts Sarah, infuriated at the prospect of her having prevented the deal and asking whether her behavior is related to his relationship with Kaia. She says that it isn’t. At the airport, Sarah takes a call from Jenni, who tells her that she has just seen Eddie at reception in their office building.

Sarah addresses another letter to Eddie, asking him if he’s in LA. She asks if he knows exactly who she is and whether he is the person she fears him being. While she doesn’t voice her suspicions and they remain obscured from the reader, Sarah has given more thought to the coincidence of meeting Eddie near Broad Ride on the anniversary of the accident and has begun to fear that he is Alex’s brother.

A 1997 excerpt from the Stroud News & Journal reports the arrest of a 19-year-old man for dangerous driving in connection with a fatal car accident near Frampton Mansell. The article does not list a name or details of the accident and, while it refers to Sarah’s then-boyfriend, Bradley, the details are vague.

At Jenni and Javier’s place, Sarah thinks about the man she has been thinking about for 19 years and suggests that Eddie can’t be him, since she’s certain that she would have known. At work, Sarah starts talking to herself, repeating, “I can’t do this” (203). She tries to get a handle on her emotions, but Jenni sees her and assumes that seeing Kaia and Rueben together is the problem. Jenni channels her emotions into a confrontation with Kaia, but Sarah acknowledges Kaia and Rueben aren’t the problem. During the conversation, Sarah realizes that Kaia has lost a child—a boy with cancer who was visited by clowndoctors—recalling a story that Kaia told during their first meeting. Jenni feels awful, but Sarah reassures her and tells her that she plans to visit the walk-in clinic, as she isn’t coping well. Walking outside, she sees Eddie across the street. He crosses halfway to her, then turns and disappears. Later, she sits at the Griffith Park observatory, trying to forget what the doctor told her earlier (which she later reveals to be a pregnancy diagnosis) and thinking back over her time with Eddie for clues as to his identity and how and when he realized hers. She searches her Facebook page and finds the message that Tommy sent her welcoming her back to the UK, calling her Harrington (her maiden name).

Sarah addresses Eddie in a letter, telling him that she knows he is Alex’s brother. She reflects on the fact that she used to dream of meeting him and that it was always terrible. She tells him that she needs to speak with him in person and invites him to call her American cell phone number to arrange it.

Sarah goes to see Jenni and is on the verge of confessing the pregnancy that she describes opaquely as a “squalid, sorry mess” (212), when her phone rings. She knows that it’s Eddie calling, and they arrange to meet the next morning at Santa Monica beach.

In another letter addressed to “you” from “me,” Eddie reflects on different possibilities for how Alex’s life would have progressed, imagining her as a struggling artist. Eddie hopes that his sister will understand why he has agreed to meet Sarah: the desperate urge to hear the details of what Alex was doing on the day she died and to figure out why he still loves the person who caused her death. Again, the details of the letter are vague, and the letter sounds as though it could be from Sarah to Hannah.

Sarah meets Eddie, who tells her that he’s been on the verge of contacting her for two weeks while staying with a friend. He says that he doesn’t know what to say to her, and she thinks of the fact that he used to have a sister, Alex, who was Hannah’s best friend. When he finally speaks, he says, “You killed my sister” (218). Sarah remembers having heard those words after Hannah was released from the hospital in an answering machine message from Carole. She remembers Hannah telling her that she hates her for killing Alex, which was the last time she spoke to her sister, 19 years ago. Sarah tells Eddie that Hannah never forgave her, which is what she meant when she told him that she had lost her sister.

He tells her that he wants to hear everything, and she begins with a description of her efforts to maintain her social status with Mandy and Claire. Mandy offered to set Sarah up with her boyfriend’s cousin, Bradley. He was unkind to Sarah and she persisted for social status rather than out of affection for him. Eddie interrupts to make a sarcastic comment about Bradley before telling her that he understands why she’s telling him these details, but he’d rather that she gets to the point. Sarah describes that, on the day of the accident, she was watching Hannah and Alex while they were playing in their den on Broad Ride. Bradley had asked Sarah to pick him up, and she had refused. Having borrowed his cousin’s car, he came and started trying to talk Sarah into racing him. She declined emphatically, but Hannah quickly got into Bradley’s car, and they set off. Sarah followed with Alex in her car.

Sarah pauses the narrative again and asks Eddie if that’s why he was there on the day they met. He says yes and that it was his first time doing so, as he usually spends the day with his mother. Sarah continues, describing Bradley’s driving maneuvers and her attempts to follow him, then trying to prevent him from passing her. As Bradley passed her on a blind turn, another car appeared, and Sarah realized that they were about to crash. Thinking of Hannah, she swerved into Bradley’s car, then into a tree, killing Alex. Eddie cries and tells her that he had always wondered why Bradley went to jail, but not Sarah, who tells him that she wondered that too. Sarah describes the fallout for herself and the family. Her parents planned to put their house on the market to facilitate a fresh start, but she called Tommy and went to LA instead.

Sarah tells Eddie about setting up her charity for Alex. He tells her that he thinks that Carole likely influenced Hannah’s decision not to forgive Sarah. He wishes that she’d introduced herself as Sarah Harrington. She asks why he didn’t use his real last name, and he tells her that he’d switched to using his middle name after the accident to avoid the sympathy. He realized who she was from Tommy’s Facebook post just after she left his house and wanted to pretend that he hadn’t seen it. Eddie explains his reaction after learning her identity; it involved “a lot of thinking and talking to [himself]” until Alan told him that Sarah had been in touch via Facebook (236). Eddie tells her that he started writing to her several times and that he loved her life story messages. She asks if he ever called her, and he says no. He tells Sarah that, while he’s glad they had the conversation, he’s planning to fly back to England the next day. They kiss, then he walks away. After he is out of earshot, Sarah announces aloud that she is pregnant.

Waiting for dinner at a biker’s café with Jenni and Javier, Sarah thinks about the note that she received from Eddie that morning with well wishes but also the acknowledgement that they shouldn’t keep in touch. When their seafood arrives, Sarah can’t eat it, wondering if she’s allowed to, and Jenni asks—first jokingly, then seriously—whether she is pregnant. As Sarah admits that she is and apologizes to Jenni, her phone rings with an unknown UK number, and Jenni tells her to answer in case it’s Eddie. To her surprise, it’s Hannah, but as she goes outside to take the call, Sarah can’t hear her sister over the sound of motorcycle engines. She tries to cross to a quieter spot on the other side of the highway without looking both ways, and the chapter ends as she realizes that a truck is about to hit her.