Redemption(41)

Quietly, I grabbed the instrument and went out to the back porch. There were benefits to small town living; being in the country, there wasn’t a house for miles. When I opened the case, my old friend smiled at me with a reflection of the morning sun off its wood. I’d saved for years to buy this violin, and when I completed grad school, my parents gave me the rest of the money to purchase it. People spent less money on cars than I had invested in this instrument, but it had served me well.

With rosin on the bow, I tuned her strings and played with the sunrise. I welcomed the day, painted the colors, and got lost in the melody. My fingers knew the way, like an old lover, they never lost their touch. I played for Joshua, I played for Matt, but at that moment, I played to replenish my soul. To renew my strength, to find my center—and the strength to keep going. I heard the glass door behind me but didn’t acknowledge Matt’s arrival. Either he’d ask me to stop, or he’d sit down and possibly find comfort in the notes that followed the wind. I don’t know how long he sat there, nor how long I played—just that I felt something other than grief for the briefest of time and gained the hope that I might find a way to live through this.



*

“What do you want me to do, Lissa? I didn’t choose my deployment date any more than you chose the date for the trial to start.”

“I don’t have anyone else, Matt. If you’re not there, I will be alone.”

“What is your suggestion? Would you like my Sargent’s phone number to see if you can get me an excused absence?” His callous words did nothing to help the situation, and the sarcasm was uncalled for.

I sat down hunched over in the kitchen chair with my elbows rested on my knees and my head in my hands. My long hair created a curtain to shield my face, but I didn’t bother crying. It wouldn’t change the circumstances. “There’s no one left.” The statement was more an acknowledgment to myself than an invitation for Matt’s response.

“Actions have consequences, Lissa. Yours were the gravest. You think being alone is worse than being dead?”

I stood slowly and stared him in the eye. “I think being dead would be the easy way out for me, and I contemplate that route daily. But I’m aware I have to pay for what I did, and no court can hand down a sentence any greater than the one I’ve imposed on myself. I know you’re hurting. I took your blood away from you, from your family, from everyone who loved him. But I didn’t do it on purpose. I will live with the guilt for the rest of my life, whether that’s twenty-four more hours or decades. Your being cruel won’t change that either way. So if this is the way our relationship is going to be from here on out, maybe we should both reconsider where it’s going.” I never raised my voice, I hadn’t gotten emotional and cried on him, but I had laid it on the line. It was time to fish or cut bait.

Matt cut bait.

“You’re right. My staying with you sends the world a message I don’t want them to receive. I thought this would be easier to do after I’d been gone for nine months, and the trial was over, but if you want to do it now, we can.”

I waited for the final slap in the face. It wasn’t a literal beating, but that might have been easier to face.

“I think we should put the house on the market and go our separate ways.”

Another time, another place, I had the personality to match the hair. I was a spitfire even as an introvert. When I got riled up, I expressed it, but defeat looked different than fight. I removed the diamond ring I’d worn for the last year and lifted his hand from his side. Turning his fingers over, I exposed his palm. I trembled as I set the ring in his grasp and then carefully folded it up in the security of his grip. I lifted up and pressed my cheek to his with tear-filled eyes.

“I’m so sorry I let you down.” Then I kissed his jaw and walked away.

I called a real estate agent the following morning after a sleepless night without Matt. He’d cleaned out his closet and left sometime yesterday evening. I didn’t expect him back and hadn’t tried to figure out where he’d gone. If Matt needed to escape, I’d let him go.

The agent, Lindsey, showed up around eleven that morning. I had given her my name, but she hadn’t registered it on the phone. She was edgy the whole time she took pictures and acted like she might somehow catch the disease of a murderer in my presence.

“Is this going to be a problem for you? Working with me, I mean.” I was sympathetic to her situation. I’m not sure I would want to help me either.

She let out a sigh, and her shoulders dropped a solid two inches. “No. I’m sorry. It’s not that I don’t want to work with you, it’s that I relate to you. I want to hug you and tell you time will allow you to move on.”

I didn’t know what she was talking about, but she was the first person I’d encountered since Joshua’s death who hadn’t spewed venom in my direction, so I decided to hear her out. “I don’t think there’s any moving on from this.”

“Do you have a few minutes?”

There was no telling where she thought I was going since clearly, the world was not my oyster. “Nothing but time, Lindsey.”

I offered her coffee and a seat at the table, both of which she took.

“When I was sixteen, I was babysitting my stepbrother. He was three, and I resented being stuck with him on my summer break. I wasn’t his mother, and it pissed me off that my mom let me play one so she could live it up with husband number three. David was a sweet little boy, and he adored me. The truth was, I loved him like he was my own. He couldn’t help our circumstances any more than I could—we were victims of our parents’ inability to use a condom.”