“Please just give me a second. I don’t know what to do.” I put my finger up in the air. Exasperation tinged my voice because it seemed unfair that I should be the one to decide what we did next.
I stepped further away and watched him pace like a man possessed, in front of a backdrop of red-brown bark slathered with woolly, green moss. He became smaller and smaller in my vision as I disconnected. I walked backwards until my ankles hit a log, and I was forced to sit down. I was blank, my thoughts like startled birds, cruelly anchored to the ground, jerking up and scratching against each other. Feathers flying. Nowhere to go.
I stared at him for an hour or so, my eyes tired, round discs that begged for tears that wouldn’t come. I stared at him until the sun disappeared and the coolness of the earth rose around us in sheets. Until one thought snapped its strings and whirled into the sky in broken-winged arcs—you love him.
He stopped pacing and sat opposite me. Only five meters away, but the distance between us seemed so far, perilous, flawed, and spiked.
I stood and his eyes followed me, the hope in them wounding me. “I’m going to light a fire,” I announced, approaching the broken ground between us for the pack.
His eyes fell to his hands and I wondered—did he see blood on them like I did on mine?
I hurt for him, I hated him, and I loved him. I wanted him. Always.
Sighing, I began building the fire.
“Can I help?” His voice was meek, and I loathed the sound of it.
“Get some of the bigger wood, over there.” I pointed to a fallen log. It was damp but hopefully, it would burn.
He stumbled off, always breaking branches and crushing plants in his wake.
I coaxed the flames; the wet, smoky smell filled my head with other nights, nights before he ruined things. My eyes watered as the breeze blew smoke in my face. I rubbed them with the back of my hand.
Returning, he placed the wood by my side. He sat closer, edging towards me like I might bite him. I did feel rabid. Angry and confused. I wanted to hate him, but I couldn’t. I wanted to forgive him, but I couldn’t.
“Rosa, say something,” he begged.
“Like what?” I snarled into the fire that was more smoke than flames. Leaning down, I held my hair in one hand while I blew on it.
He didn’t know what to do with his hands—in his lap, behind his back, in his hair. Every now and then, they reached for me, and I inched away.
“Do you hate me?” he asked
“No…”
“Do you still love me?” He was an idiot. The doubt in his voice almost broke my heart.
“Don’t ask stupid questions,” I snapped.
“Right, sorry.”
I picked up a small branch. It crumbled in my hands, so I sprinkled it on the fire. Slowly, the flames were building. It was simple in there. I could have wished for my life to be simple, but it was like asking a meal to drop from the sky. It wasn’t going to happen.
Joseph dragged the pack towards him, bumping it over my feet, and retrieved some food. “Are you hungry?”
“No.”
“You can’t even look at me, can you?” His voice was sliced-up pieces of what it used to be.
If I looked at him, my anger would melt away.
My eyes snatched a glimpse, a profile of his tormented face, and I was reminded just how much we’d both suffered, the things we’d had to do.
When I was in Grant’s home, my only thoughts were getting back to him and to Orry. I just couldn’t understand how he could do it. How, after only a month apart, could he have put his lips on some stranger’s? But then I thought about how lost and alone I was and I wondered… If someone had offered me comfort in my weakest moment, would I have taken it? It had been so hard to hold out hope that I would see him again, when it seemed impossible. I tried to squeeze my feet into Joseph’s worn-out shoes. I tried to understand why. I didn’t want to understand, but I needed to.
“If I look at you, I’ll forgive you. I don’t want to do that yet,” I said through a grimace.
“Oh, okay. What can I do?” His voice was a peak of emotions, each one tumbling down a cliff and landing in my lap to sort through.
I shrugged hard, my whole body feeling exhausted by all the words, all the apologies, and all the promises broken.
“Explain it to me.”
The world slowed. The arms of the clock rewound as Joseph took me back to that first night when he’d left me because he had to. I listened to his anguish and I started to understand the pain, the hopelessness, he had felt. The burden of believing everything was his fault alone.
The shadows of the trees curled around us, protecting us, and gave us this time to absorb each other’s lost days. It was so much more than I’d realized.
His face got sadder and longer with every day he went through.
After hours of listening, questioning, he reached the part of the story I had been dreading.
“She offered me a way to forget, and I took it. I was selfish, stupid, drunk. None of that is a good enough excuse, but that’s the truth.”
“And it was just a kiss?” I winced, anticipating the answer to a question I shouldn’t have asked.
“Rosa, I’m so sorry. It was a kiss that would have led to more if Rash hadn’t stopped us.” He wrung his hands out, squeezing the last bit of blood and tears onto the soaked ground. “I’d like to think I would have stopped, it all felt so wrong, but if I’m honest, I just don’t know.”
I knew. “You would have stopped.”
His laugh sounded like a sorrowful hiccup. “I can’t believe you have faith in me after everything I’ve put you through.” His lips were set hard with harsh memories of the past. “I killed people, men with families like me. And whether or not it was in self-defense, I’m not sure it matters. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw you dead in front of me, then I’d blink and they joined you, this pile of people I’d hurt, killed, left behind. When I did what I did, it was because I couldn’t stand myself. I didn’t want to see your face and their faces anymore. It was killing me. I needed you and you weren’t there and it was my fault.”
He poured his bad dreams out. They landed in the mud for me to inspect and maybe to bury. And because I still loved him, I felt awful that I hadn’t been there to help him through it.
My head collapsed in my hands, and I stared into the fire. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m really angry about what you did, but you’re not a bad man, Joseph. You’re messed up, not bad. You need to understand that not everything is your fault. Some things just happen.”
I wished I had a higher horse to stand on, a step, anything. But after all the mistakes I’d made, the promise I’d broken, all I could do was look him in the eye and try to understand.
He put his hand over mine and although my instant reaction was to snatch it away, I let it stay. I let his warmth soak into me. It lifted me even as I fought against it.
I floated outside of my body, my mind begging for perspective because it seemed unreal. My Joseph couldn’t have done this. But with every passing second, I understood, as I watched his grief-stricken body heave in breaths he didn’t think he deserved, that my Joseph was broken and I couldn’t walk away from him.
JOSEPH
I’m trying to convince myself it’s a dream. A fast, hollow dream. Because I hurt her. I hurt us. And I should have been better than this.
She didn’t cry much. She was holding herself together, holding herself away from me as if I were a fire and she needed to lean away from the heat.