Under the Northern Lights(41)

“I’m so . . . I’m so sorry, Michael.”

He looked up at me with haunted eyes, like he was reliving the moment over and over. My chest constricted as I watched his pain. “Want to know the worst thing . . . the part that makes all of it so . . . unbearable?”

I couldn’t speak, so I merely nodded for him to continue.

“She didn’t die right away,” he said. “He shot her in the stomach, nicked her spinal cord, so she couldn’t walk, couldn’t get help. But she yelled. She was just a few feet from a busy street, and she cried out for help over and over, but no one did anything. Some of them told the police later that they were too scared, too unsure. They didn’t want to risk getting involved, so they didn’t do a damn thing to help her . . . until it was too late.”

My eyes filled with tears, tears that slid down my cheeks. Michael watched the drops rolling off my skin with a face devoid of emotion. “That’s why I won’t ever go back,” he murmured.

Wiping my face dry, I knelt in front of him. “Won’t go back . . . to New York?”

His eyes refocused as he reconnected with the present. “That’s why I won’t go back to anywhere people are. Humans are the worst species on this planet, and I don’t want to be among them again. Ever again.”

The heat in his tone and the vitriol in his words took me aback. “You can’t really feel that way. Not about everyone.”

He twisted his lips as he considered that. “There are a few . . . exceptions . . . but by and large, humans are not good, decent people. They’re selfish, conniving . . . cruel. I’d rather live out here with the animals than there in the thick of them. At least you know where you stand with animals. People, though . . . they’re just crazy.”

While I understood where his world beliefs stemmed from, I couldn’t agree with them. Not with his unrelenting ferocity. The human race was flawed, yes, but there was goodness to humanity that couldn’t be found in the animal kingdom. We were unique, special, and cutting our entire species out of his life seemed too extreme. Balance was everything; it ruled the world. “I understand that people let you down, and what happened to your wife . . . that was just . . . awful. But giving up and hiding out here isn’t the answer. I could show you a better side of people, something to give you hope again.”

His eyes seemed to deaden as he stared at me. “Hope is an illusion, as insubstantial as rainbows in the sky. I worked in the emergency room at a major hospital right in the heart of New York. I know what life is all about. I know what humanity is all about . . . and I want no part of it.” He pointed to my cross necklace. “Your Maker there, he messed up somewhere along the line when he created us. And if we were created in his image . . . then I want no part of him either.”

He’d said yesterday that he hadn’t wanted to break my heart, but every word he was saying was slicing me open. How could I help someone so torn apart? “Michael . . .”

Holding a hand up, he stopped me. “We’re not going to agree about this . . . I can tell. You have your beliefs, I have mine, and we just . . . we shouldn’t talk about it, okay?”

I felt crushed, saddened, but I knew he was right. Until I could convince him to give humanity another chance, we’d never agree on this. Nodding, I told him, “Okay.” Then I stood up and headed for the door. I needed something to do after that conversation. Might as well start dinner.

The chill in the air felt good on my face as I walked to the shed to get some meat out of storage. The entire time I worked, I contemplated Michael. Grief had hardened him, turned his insides to stone. I wasn’t a therapist like my sister; I didn’t know how to help someone in that way. All I knew how to do was take pictures, and that seemed like a woefully inadequate skill at the moment. Michael needed true help, and I didn’t feel capable of giving it to him. It killed me to know that I would leave here with him still broken, that I would have failed in trying to help a good man. And I truly believed Michael was a good man—that was why he was in so much pain.

Gripping my necklace tight, I said a prayer for him. It was the only thing I could think to do.

When I returned to the cabin, Michael was pacing the room. He locked gazes with me when I closed the door, and his eyes were laced with regret and sadness. “I’m sorry,” he immediately said. “I know that was a lot to take. Sometimes I wish I didn’t feel this way . . . but I do, and I think I always will. And even if I . . . I like you too . . . between my feelings for my dead wife and my views on society and religion, I just don’t see any possibility of us . . . working.”

Even though hearing him say that he liked me too thrilled me in a way that nothing else had recently, I kind of agreed with him. He was too broken for me to fix. The two of us falling into a passionate relationship . . . it wouldn’t just be a bad idea. It would be catastrophic. “I know . . . and I think I understand now. But I can’t handle months of us ignoring each other. I really would rather live in the forest than face that every day. Can we still . . . be friends?”

A slim smile curved Michael’s lips. It was my favorite smile, the one that made my heart race. And looking at it now, I still felt flutters in my stomach . . . I probably always would. But right now, he was beyond my reach. His heart and mind were locked up tight, rusted shut from years of disuse and distrust. It would take a miracle to pry them open again, and I wasn’t sure that I could be that miracle for him. But I prayed that I was, because if Michael was ever going to be a whole human being again, then he desperately needed divine intervention.