The Distance Between Us. Masha Hamilton

cleaves his chin. His eyes sweep down the hallway, following the orderlies, then anchor on her. His stare is intense, yet vacant. Caddie has seen this expression before. In the woman, smelling of vinegar and sweat, who collapsed on her in front of a bombed building. In the child whose father had been shot that same day. In Sven, that afternoon.

      “Something happened to you.” He says it to her, even though she’s thinking it of him. He speaks English with an accent. Russian, she thinks.

      “Many things.” She speaks with deliberate indifference as she begins walking away.

      “The earth is hungry, it takes as it needs,” he calls after her. “If we knew where we were going to fall, we could spread straw.”

      It sounds like something he has said before many times, a personal truism that is unfamiliar to her. His tone, however, is familiar. And he speaks as though he recognizes her.

      But no. He’s a stranger, just some stranger. Caddie stiffens her shoulders. “Poetic,” she says. “And ridiculous. You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

      He isn’t angered by her curtness. In fact, he seems amused, maybe slightly intrigued. The way Marcus would be. He’s about to speak again. She doesn’t want that. She turns and strides down the hall, making her escape.