Ripple Effect

Chapter Eighty-Six: ...the way he saw her.

Henry

5:35 PM

All afternoon, Henry had felt like he was wading through a mud swamp of dread. In a way, it reminded him of those unbearable days and weeks after he'd given Elizabeth the hard truth—If you go to Baghdad, I don't know what things will look like when you come back. Each afternoon as the clock on the wall of his office at UVA had clunked its way closer and closer to the end of the working day, inevitably his thoughts would turn to what would be awaiting him at home. Would it be another night of wrangling the kids through dinner, bath, story and bed on his own before dialling Elizabeth's number at Langley every ten minutes until eventually someone—usually Conrad—picked up, only to say that she was working and couldn't come to the phone right now and it didn't look as though she'd make it back that evening either, or would it be another night of stewing in resentful silence where the only time she didn't outright blank him was when they were putting on a show in front of the kids?

At least back then he had understood what the problem was, and it hadn't come out of nowhere; after all, their arguments over her job had been building for years and they both knew it would come to a head at some point, especially after the events of Iraq. But today, her 'don't' had struck him like a train T-boning a truck on clear railway crossing. They had been doing fine before the poisoning. Better than fine. With the issue of Dmitri mostly behind them and with him having more time at home after quitting SAD, they had found a closeness similar to that of their early relationship, only—with all that life and understanding between them—so much richer: no longer exploring a new culture, but immersed in it and fluent in its native tongue.

Yet, when she should have smiled back at him and teased him for his cheesy line before kissing him and murmuring, 'I love you too', she had looked up at him with pain in her eyes and cut him off with a 'don't' before walking away and saying nothing more than, 'I'll talk to you at home'.

For a brief time, he tried to console himself with her parting words of 'I love you', but his mind only lured him down paths he'd rather not think about: I love you, but I'm no longer in love with you; I love you, but I can no longer be with you; I love you, but things have changed, I've changed, I'm not the person who I was before.

Now, he found himself stood in the deep blue shadows of twilight that hung outside their front door, trapped in the amber haze of street lamps that reflected up off the quilt of snow and drifted like a mist at waist height, whilst the mud swamp of dread had thickened so much that he could barely take a step; it made the sludge on the sidewalks easy to trudge through in comparison. She was waiting inside, waiting for them to 'talk', or so said the three black SUVs parked along the snow-hugged kerb and the DS agents who had asked him to pass along the box of walnut muffins from that bakery on the corner—the ones stuffed with red bean paste that reminded her of those Korean things, hodu-something-or-other, the ones she loved but pretended she only bought because other people liked them, the ones her agents said came with one condition: No more predawn runs.

For weeks, he would have given anything to talk to her, but now... What if he didn't want to hear what she had to say?

Part of him wished he could stand outside forever, stuck not only in dread but in limbo, because just like in those endless minutes after he'd learnt that she had collapsed, when he was waiting to hear whether she was alive or not, there was some small comfort to be found in not knowing. Until the words were spoken and the executioner's blade had dropped, there was hope. Hope that his fears were wrong. Hope that when she said she wanted to 'talk', that meant she was at least prepared to listen as well.

***

With his hand wrapped around the edge of the cardboard bakery box and pinning it against his side, Henry eased the front door shut behind him. The soft click rang out through the silence that engulfed the house. He paused for a moment and listened.