A Thousand Letters(54)

I kept reading, knowing he was asleep, not interested in silence, wishing the words would tether him to the world forever.

All he had to do was speak and his words hit my heart, hung over me, illuminating me. I had to let Elliot go or I had to hold on to her. When the choice stood before me that plainly, I knew there was only one answer. I'd tried to let her go for seven years, and last night was proof that I hadn't. I couldn't.

It was time I stopped trying. My only hope was we could finally sit down and have the conversation we should have had years ago when we were young and afraid. The conversation I couldn't give her when I was in the thick of war. The one I didn't think she ever wanted to hear.

Now I believed she did, and I hoped she would forgive me. I would honor my father and honor myself. I would put my fears aside, and I would do whatever it took to get her back.

An hour later, I was still reading, my voice rough. The nurse had let herself in and sat next to me, checking the machines and working on paperwork while he slept — neither of us wanted to wake him — and the only sounds in the room were my voice and the ticking of the clock, the ever present marker of seconds and breaths and heartbeats.

When his arm jerked in his sleep, I stopped reading, lowering the book. When his body stiffened and jolted off the bed, I leapt to his side, my heart stopping, my breath freezing, blood cold in my veins. And as he seized, body shaking, chin pointed at the ceiling, I held his face, cried his name. And my mask, my heart, the fabric of my soul shredded as I watched over him, weeping and lost forever as he breathed his last.





16





Vanished





Like boiling water,

Scalding, churning,

Steam slipping silently

Up and up,

And when it vanishes

I watch, wondrous,

Disbelieving

That it had ever been real.



* * *



M. White





* * *



Elliot

"He's gone."

Wade's voice was a thousand miles away, quiet and numb and small.

I slipped to the ground in my room, hands trembling and numb and whispered, "No."

"Please, come. We need you."

My cold hand cupped my mouth and I nodded, realizing after a moment that he couldn't see me. "Okay," was the only word to leave me.

The line disconnected.

I pulled myself up and gathered my things, stunned from shock, muttering blindly to my family that I had to go, unable to say where or why, unable to utter the words.

At first I walked, my mind tripping and skittering over the impossibility, over the inevitability, and then I ran, tears streaking my face. And then I was walking in the door of the house, the loss overwhelming me.

His absence was tangible, as if his spark lit the house, and now it was too still, too quiet. Sophie rushed me when I entered the library, and we fell to the ground in each other's arms. I couldn't breathe, couldn't speak, couldn't move, but my eyes found him where he lay in bed. He looked peaceful, as if he were sleeping as the nurse by his side solemnly disconnected him from the machines. Ben and Sadie sat on the couch, Sadie sobbing, Ben's face colored with the things I felt as he held her up. And Wade was nowhere, gone.

The light caught glimmering glass scattered all over the floor, and I saw the gears, the casing — a clock, smashed and broken, and we sat among the wreckage.



* * *



The day crept past us in a strange warp where hours were minutes and minutes, hours. We stood by his side and held his hands and cried. We said our goodbyes and kissed his skin as it cooled.

The funeral home came and took him away. A van from hospice came and collected the equipment. The nurse gave us condolences and left us there with an empty room and empty hearts.

Wade never came home.

Ben called with no answer, and we waited in vain as the daylight slipped away, crawling across the room imperceptibly until it was gone. And we sat in silence in the dark, no one possessing the energy to turn on a light, the twilight sifting through the glass from the clock on the ground, still chronicling the time without the need of its gears.

Sadie fell asleep first, and Ben carried her to her room in the dark. I took Sophie to hers, putting her into her bed, sharing a final burst of tears, trying to hold each other together for a moment longer before she fell asleep too.

Ben was downstairs, standing in the living room with his eyes trained on the sidewalk beyond the glass, and I stood next to him in silence. I couldn't stay, I told him — I needed out. And he promised he would be fine there without me, that he'd call if that changed. That he'd wait for Wade. It was my only solace as I pulled on my coat and stepped out into the bleak night.

The cold pressed down on me, the air charged as I walked home, and the snow began to fall in slow, lazy swirls, gathering quickly, a blanket of white against the dark of the night.

The house was quiet when I walked through the door, and I headed downstairs, numb from the cold and my loss. My room was warm and familiar, and I stripped down in the dark, unthinking, automatically, leaving my clothes where they fell. I shook as the cold seeped from my bones, kneeling naked by my fireplace to light it, not knowing why it was important, but it was. A fire had gone out and a new one was lit, a spot of warmth in the cold, a light in the dark. And then I slipped into my bed and lay beneath the blankets shaking, with my eyes on the flickering flames, a ward against the black of night.