You returned from where you had gone, but you returned without hands. We'd already heard, so we weren't surprised, and she and you and I hugged and joked like nothing had happened. You wore a sleeveless dress, as if daring any eye to follow the curve of your shoulders.

We climbed into the van because we had work to do. Something about teaching children to write. The way you buckled your seatbelt showed that you'd almost learned to adapt. Then you turned your face toward the window, away from me. I sat with you in the back seat because we'd loaded the equipment up front.

As we drove I drove myself crazy, because you never told us how. I analyzed--the tenderness I know best--in inapproriate detail any conceivable way it might have happened. Nightmares of heavy machinery or car crashes, of holding something that seemed innocuous until it burned or burst, of a maniac's blade. Of watching the contours of one's body unravel, of threads of blood and sinew and ink, of shock that blots out pain but leaves the shame. You'd always had more dignity than I'd ever had, so I couldn't imagine you'd cried or screamed. Instead I imagined I saw you going purposefully for help, leaning on no one, cupping what was left of your hands in just the way you'd carried that toddler who'd gotten too much sun.

I wanted to ask you, but I couldn't. I couldn't think if I wanted to know, and I couldn't tell if you wanted to say. But I wanted to ask you because I just wanted to tell you that you didn't have to be alone if you didn't want to be alone. I knew it might well be a lie; maybe no one could ever follow you to those places. Maybe we will always be apart.

She dropped us off and went to park the van. We were left in the moment we had so far managed to avoid: the moment of solitude and silence. Then you turned to me with tears in your eyes, and we held each other, and we cried. But between us we still could not allow a single word to pass.