A Thousand Letters(31)

"So are we." The words were solemn, and grief struck me again, regret washing over me alongside it. "I … I'm sorry I haven't been here. I'm sorry I wasn't the son I should have been. I should have come home more, been present, stopped … stopped running away."

His brow dropped, eyes soft and full of understanding. "Wade, you are everything I wished for. I am proud of you, and not once have I resented you for finding your way in this world. Not once."

"I thought I had more time." My voice cracked, and he squeezed my hand.

"So did I," he said gently. "We all did. But do not regret that. That is one thing I will ask of you. For of all sad words of tongue or pen, / The saddest are these: It might have been! Stop running away so you don't spend the rest of your life wondering. Whittier knew this, and so do I. So should you."

I was left without words as Sophie and Sadie brought lunch in on trays, so I sat at his side, his words settling into my mind as I fed him.

Stop running. I had no choice. I was here. She was here. But I didn't know how to face my past. I'd been running for seven years, and there could be no full stop. There would be no sixty-to-zero, not without slowing down first or my brakes would catch on fire. But I thought about that crack in the wall again, and looking through it, I found the smallest hope.

We talked about nothing and everything, taking every small second where we could. And when he was finished eating, he fell asleep. When we left the room, we stood in the hallway without purpose, as if the hours of the day had been reset to mark the times when we could be by his side.

Dad would be asleep for an hour or two, and I didn't want to sit, didn't want to wait in that quiet room, didn't want to be still. I loathed the unscheduled time, the lack of structure I'd become so accustomed to missing, throwing me off kilter. I longed for the action of my body to distract me from the things I couldn't change, so I pulled on my coat and opened the door to find peace.

Instead, I found Elliot.

She wore her blue peacoat and yellow hat again, her eyes dark and wide with surprise at meeting me on the steps of the house.

"H-hi," she breathed, eyes moving behind me to the door. "Is everything okay?"

"He's fine, just resting."

I didn't offer more, and she looked away, the color rising in her cheeks. "Oh."

I cleared my throat, not sure what to do or say, caught in the stretch of the moment. "The girls are inside," I offered after a second.

She smiled politely. "All right, thank you."

But something came over me as she moved to walk past. "I'm going for a walk, if you'd like to come with me."

She stopped, her gaze meeting mine with shock, and I was sure mine reflected the same thing. "That would be nice," she answered softly, sweetly, and something in my heart thumped and rattled like a loose bolt with every beat.

I said nothing more, just started down the stairs and she followed. I wanted to be near her, but I was afraid of her, afraid for my heart. Indecision and uncertainty slipped over me like a fog as we walked quietly through the city and into the park.

The silence wasn't companionable; it was heavy with years and words between us, and it stretched on so long, there seemed to be no breeching it gracefully. It was the collective story of us in a twenty-minute span of footsteps.

We ended up at the Glenspan Arch, a place we had been a hundred times, what felt like a hundred years before. The small river ran gently next to us, and I could hear the steady hiss of the cascade just beyond the arch.

"Do you remember the first time we came here?" she asked, the words gentle and hesitant as we approached the stone bridge, nestled in the arms of the forest.

"You'd never been anywhere in the city, which was weird, considering you'd lived here your whole life," I mused. Once I'd met her family, I'd understood completely. They were self-serving, uninterested in participating in life outside themselves, and they'd do anything to drown out Elliot's light, to cull her spirit.

Those thoughts I kept to myself.

She nodded, smiling as her eyes drank in the world around us. "I thought we'd stepped into a fairy tale."

In a way, we had. I'd kissed her in the shadows of this archway, surrounded by the echo of the stream. I'd held her hand along this path, my world illuminated by her. It was a dream, a myth, a story from a long time ago.

"Do you come back often?" I asked, pushing the memories away, wondering why I'd brought us this way, although in the back of my mind I recognized that anywhere we'd have gone would have brought the past back to me.

Elliot shook her head. "I don't have much time these days, not without the kids. And bringing them here wouldn't really be relaxing." She chuckled. "I've come a few times to write, though."

Finally, ground I could stand on. "Sophie told me you got your Lit degree. Congratulations."

"Thank you. I don't know if I would have gone, if it weren't for Rick. He's always believed in me, even when I didn't believe in myself."

"He does that. Decide what you'll do with it?" I asked as we slipped into the cool shade.

"I haven't had much time to think about it."

I made a noncommittal sound through my nose, which did little to hide my disdain at the thought of her family. "Because of your sister's kids?"