Elizabeth
1:01 PM
"Your pal, Durchenko, came through." Russell stooped over the coffee table that stood between the pair of leather armchairs and the couch opposite. He placed a wooden fork atop each of the two pallid-yellow polystyrene cartons, and then hauled the table closer to the couch; its feet scuffed against the carpet, and the light above rippled off the glass. Then he twisted around and shot Elizabeth a look. "Wasn't happy about you calling in a favour though."
Elizabeth lifted her bottle of water to her lips, and then paused and arched her eyebrows. "He never is."
"Told me to tell you that you're even now." Russell slumped down onto the cushion next to her, and smoothed his tie to his chest as he did so. He snatched up his fork and popped the lid off his carton. The smell of sautéed garlic, slow-simmered tomatoes and creamy béchamel spilled out.
Elizabeth's grip on the water bottle tightened a fraction, and the plastic crackled. At Russell's glance, the whites of his eyes alight with a flash of concern, she placed the bottle down on the table and dragged her own carton closer, avoiding his stare. "Well, I don't know about that."
She unfastened the lid and poked at the pasta with the prongs of her fork. Outside, gravel churned and brakes whined to a stop. She wound half a ribbon of pappardelle around the fork and lifted it above the dish; as it hung there, streaks of the orange and white sauces slithered down the rest of its length. Her hunger had been less than inspiring prior to Russell arriving, but now the growing clench in her stomach told her that she would have to force the mouthfuls down.
She let the pasta drop back onto the nest below. "Plus, so long as I'm secretary of state, I can always have him removed from US soil. Not a bad piece of leverage to have."
Russell studied her as he chomped over a mouthful. His gaze raked hot against her cheek. "Another reason for you to get yourself signed off."
"I'm working on it."
"I know you are. You just need to keep it up. No nosediving at the last hurdle."
She scooped up a forkful of the bolognese sauce. She lifted it to her mouth. She paused. "I'm beginning to think that home itself is the biggest hurdle of all."
The words fell into a lull.
Russell continued to watch her as he chewed. Then he wedged his fork between the tangle of pasta ribbons and the edge of the carton, and with his gaze never leaving her, he leant back into the corner of the couch and rested his arm along the top of the cushions. He drummed his fingers there for a moment, and then stilled. "Mike mentioned you were feeling apprehensive."
Elizabeth snorted. She pressed the back of her hand to her lips as she swallowed the bite. "I'm sure that's not the word he used." It did explain the impromptu pasta delivery though.
"Your family are fine, Bess, and they'll be glad to have you home. Once you're ready."
"Sure." She attempted a shrug of nonchalance, as though it really were that simple, but it came out as more of a flinch, an exclamation mark to the lie that word held. Because, in truth, the closer she came to being allowed home, the more distant she felt from the way things were before the poisoning...and all that had followed.
The clunk and slam of a car door echoed out, muffled by the glass of the window and followed by the scrunch, scrunch, scrunch of footsteps over the gravel.
When the footsteps quietened, the silence in the room felt deeper than before. Perhaps a taste of what would greet her when she finally went home.
She shovelled in another mouthful of sauce. The tomatoes were too rich, and the béchamel clagged at the back of her tongue.
"Look—" Russell lingered over the word. "I know it's Stevie's birthday on Thursday... I don't want this turning into another Thanksgiving episode."
She twisted around and stared at him whilst she poked pieces of ground beef free from her teeth using the tip of her tongue. "You mean you don't like getting calls in the middle of the night saying the secretary of state is planning to hop in an Uber in a bid to escape from a mental health clinic, only for her to fail to make it one step out of the door?"
She held his gaze for a long moment, daring him to rise to the bait. Had he met her with even a hint of judgment, it might have eased her apprehension a little, but the concern that lurked in his eyes only reminded her just how much the dynamics had changed since the last time she'd been well and at home.
She turned away again, shook her head to herself, and raked through the pasta with her fork. "I just need to figure some things out, that's all."
A heavy pause.
Then a sharp rap-tap echoed through the door.
Elizabeth's head snapped around. Jimmy, her DS agent, stood on the other side of the gridded glass panel set into the door, wearing an apologetic, if slightly uneasy, expression. At Russell's bark for him to come in, he rattled the handle and pushed the door open with a swoosh.
"Ma'am, I'm sorry to interrupt—" He leant into the gap between the door and its frame. "—but, Mr Jackson, can I have a word?"
"Later. I'm a little busy right now." Russell gestured to the takeaway boxes of pasta.
Jimmy shook his head. "I'm afraid it can't wait, sir."
Russell eyed him. "Well, what is it then?"
"It's..." Jimmy's gaze flicked to Elizabeth, and then back to Russell. "...sensitive, sir."
"Sensitive how?"
"If we could just speak outside..."
Russell stared him down, and after several seconds had dragged their way through that wasteland of a pause, punctuated by the clunk...clunk...clunk... of the clock that hung above the door, and still Jimmy hadn't moved, he gave a huff. "Fine." He waved Jimmy away again. "Just give me a minute." Then he sent Jimmy an acid sharp stare. "And there'd better be a war about to break out, or the economy capsizing. I thought I made it clear that we were not to be disturbed."
Jimmy hesitated for a moment, but perhaps had no response to that, or at least not one he was willing to give this side of the door. Then he nodded to Elizabeth—a taut smile—before he stepped into the hallway. With the door closed, he waited there, his back turned to the glass.
Was it wrong that with the way Jimmy's gaze had fallen upon her when he'd said 'sensitive', that part of her hoped that war had broken out? Better that than learning something had happened to Henry, the kids or Will. Though, as Russell and Dr Sherman kept reminding her, she was the target, no one else. There was an odd kind of comfort in that.
"I'll send someone in to sit with you." Russell eased to his feet, and as he skirted around the end of the coffee table and along the gap on the opposite side that ran in front of the two armchairs, he pointed vaguely towards the cartons. "I don't want you sitting in here alone."
"Russell—" Elizabeth's hair swayed against her cheeks as she shook her head. "I'm perfectly capable of sitting in a room with some pasta."
"The other week you weren't," he muttered as he strode towards the door.
She chucked her fork down onto table. The clatter wasn't half as satisfying had the fork been made of metal. "Look, this is precisely what I don't want."
Russell stopped. He turned to face her.
"People acting all weird around me, walking on eggshells, acting like I'm a different person because of this." She motioned to the whitewashed walls that had silently absorbed the drip, drip, drip of all the fears and thoughts Dr Sherman had squeezed out of her day after day. It was a surprise that they hadn't begun to mould. "It's bad enough that other people are going to treat me like that, I don't need you doing it too."
"And I don't need you panicking and backsliding right now." Russell's voice grated through the room. His shoulders rounded forward as he spoke—near yelled—as though stooping closer would make the message all the more clearer. "It doesn't take a therapist to see that your mood's off. Even Mike had his concerns, and his empathy level's on a par with that of a sociopath."
Elizabeth's eyes bugged, whilst she thrust one hand up, her fingers splayed. "That's because he is a sociopath."
"Doesn't change the fact that something's off with you." Russell fixed her with a firm stare, daring her to deny it, his expression contorted into half snarl.
But that was more welcome than the concern and sympathy of before. Elizabeth glared back at him, refusing to blink. "I don't need babysitting, Russell."
"It's not about babysitting." His voice strained whilst he arched back and addressed the ceiling in exasperation. It was as though he were having an argument with someone who refused to believe, despite the Principia Mathematica's extensive proof, that one plus one really did equal two.
A long silence followed.
Then, with his hands on his hips, he shook his head to himself, his jaw clenched, whilst his gaze sailed out towards the gloom that leached through the window. "You need to learn your limits and accept that maybe there's a reason why people worry about you."
The air between them simmered, awaiting—or perhaps inciting—her response.
When it didn't come, he turned and stalked away towards the door.
She waited until he reached it before she muttered, "Well, I wish they wouldn't."
It was meant to be the last word.
But he stopped. His fingers curled around the handle. He turned his chin to his shoulder, and sent her no more than half a sideways glance. His voice had softened. "Checks and balances, Bess. We all need someone to keep us in line."
When the door thunked shut, Elizabeth slumped into the chilly embrace of the leather cushions and let her head fall back to rest against the top of the couch. With her eyes closed, she pinched the bridge of her nose and then took a breath that rolled to the bottom of her lungs and burned along the curve of her ribs, like a flame fizzling its way along a fuse. The fire didn't die out though, once the pain had gone. Instead, it caught and flared—wildfire coursing across the inside of her skin. Why did Mike have to bring up Operation 'Bare her Soul to the Public'? Why couldn't Russell be his normal snarky self, rather than condescending to her with his concern? Why couldn't the both of them just be wrong?
She pressed her fists into the cushion beneath her, and pushed herself up from the couch. The carpet bristled beneath her bare soles as she squeezed through the gap between the seat and the coffee table and then ambled past the armchairs and towards the window that looked out onto the car park. The branches of the black walnut tree gyred in the breeze, a snarl of grey-green veins against the slate-rucked sky. Though the air of the therapy room held the stagnant warmth churned out by the radiators, she gathered her cardigan around her and folded her arms over her chest—the ache the pressure brought to her ribs not entirely unwelcome.
Mike was right: she couldn't hide what had happened, or at least not for long, and so the best option was to come out and talk. But that didn't change the fact that she didn't have a clue how to put it into words. And Russell was right: people would have their worries, some of which would be well-founded, and she'd have to learn to listen to them and to use them as a support network. But that didn't change the fact that she didn't want people's perception of her to alter, nor did she want to become a burden or to have them stifle her with their concerns.
One step at a time. Great in theory, when you wanted to move forward. Not so great when you wanted to go back. And more than anything, she wanted to go back. Reaching the state she had to require an inpatient stay felt like a loss of innocence, not only for her but for all who knew her. It brought to life a situation that, though always a possibility, felt as remote and hypothetical as Code Night Watch. After all, who really believes that they or the ones they love will descend into the murky depths of mental illness, any more than they believe that the next twenty minutes would see them descend into nuclear holocaust?
Until it happens.
And once it happens, you can't return to that blithe innocence of before. Possibility becomes reality. Probabilities shift. Some things you can't unlearn.
Following Code Night Watch, a recurrence of the situation became not a matter of 'if' but 'when'. As much as DoD might have liked to, they couldn't pretend it hadn't happened. As much as they all wished, they couldn't forget that moment when they saw their children for the last time and knew they'd never grow old. Those endless minutes would forever haunt them.
So, no, they couldn't go back to a time when mutually assured destruction was a hypothetical possibility. No more than she could wind back the clock and free her family and colleagues from the knowledge that she could—and would—cross over the cusp between mentally well and unwell before losing herself in its maze of shadows.
Still, she'd give anything to return to how things were before.
She didn't want people to worry about her, she didn't want them to police her, she didn't want them to look at her as though she were a different person. Not quite his wife. Not quite their mother. Not quite his sister. Not quite their colleague or friend or boss. A person in pieces. Repaired. But, with the cracks ever visible, not quite robust enough to touch.
After Code Night Watch, with no option to go back but unable to live in that limbo waiting for the next STRATCOM call, they had found a way to move forward: the agreement to de-alert. It provided them all with the reassurance that such a situation was unlikely to reoccur, and with time, things had settled back to normal. Or almost. They would never forget what had happened, but the mushroom cloud no longer lurked on the horizon. The probabilities shifted down again, even if the fear remained a little higher than before.
One step at a time. Going back was impossible, and perhaps wishing for it would only tangle her in a web of wanting that would stop her from moving forward. For weeks, she had wanted nothing more than to leave the clinic; now, she was more at risk of sabotaging herself into staying so that she needn't face her fears of how things might be when she returned home. What she needed was a way to de-alert. But how, exactly, does one de-alert when it comes to mental health? How was she meant to reach a state where people were no longer on edge around her and where they treated her the same, or almost the same, as before?
With a gust of wind, the branches of the black walnut tree lurched and strained, and the crows that had been roosting in its upper reaches sprang into flight. Their wings beat the air like fans cut from shadows, and they climbed up to wheel in loose circles over the car park.
Elizabeth's skin prickled, and she pulled her cardigan tighter, though little of the chill seeped through the window. Instead, it crawled up from inside her, like the memory of a shiver recalled from her bones.
***
2002
The sea of grass seethed and swarmed around her. The fronds scratched at her calves whilst her bare soles pounded the earth. Ahead, the branches of the black walnut tree crackled across the night and glowed in the pallid light that unspooled like a ribbon of milk-yellow silk from the moon.
The ribbon wrapped around her. It yanked her towards the cusp.
Her fingertips scrabbled, and her nails tore at the grooves in the bark. Her toes curled into the soil, whilst her heels jutted like the roots of the tree out over the abyss below.
"Take my hand." Fingers reached out. A tremor gripped them as they begged for her own. "Take my—"
But the soil beneath her disintegrated into sand. It avalanched backwards and ripped her away from her hold. She tumbled over and over whilst the sky above ached into endless blue. She landed on her feet. She raised one hand to shield her eyes from the sun whilst she squinted and recoiled.
The Humvee prickled into focus, as though each nanometer of it were a pinprick of light and one by one those pinpricks ignited. Mitch climbed up, and he hung from the door. His lips curved into that easy-going smile of his, but then, like a wave rippling out from his lips, his features morphed until it wasn't Mitch but Will. Only the smile remained the same. Then that faded too. "Mom and Dad are dead, Lizzie. We survived without them, you'll find a way to survive without me too."
BOOM.
The blast threw her body back, back, back until she slammed into the sand and skidded across the desert floor. She gasped for breath, but sand clogged her mouth, her nose, her throat. It clawed its way down into her lungs. It burned them. It coated them.
She rolled onto her front, and heaved herself onto all fours. She crawled towards the Humvee, groping through the veil of sand, sand, sand. But an arm wrapped around her waist and yanked her back. She wrestled herself free, or at least she tried to, but the grip tightened. And so instead she yelled. Her lips said, "Mitch." But her voice called out, "Will."
"Mickey, it's okay. I've got you."
Her body stilled. Somehow, her feet had found the ground, and she turned around.
"Mickey." Mitch gave her a tender smile. He reached out and tucked her hair behind her ear, and then cupped her cheek and brushed his thumb over the subtle arch of her cheekbone. He stared down into her eyes. Seas of sapphires. "You know how I feel about you."
But she shoved him away, both hands to his chest. "I love Henry, not you."
He staggered backwards. Behind him, the sand poured away like water over the edge of rock, and a chasm opened below. It sucked away all the sunlight, wrenching day into the darkest of night. The black walnut tree surged up from the earth.
Mitch teetered at the edge of the abyss. Eyes full of want and hurt.
She reached for him. Her fingers tremored. "Mitch! No!"
***
Elizabeth jolted upright. Sweat slicked her skin and stung in the bitter air, whilst her gaze reeled in drunken sweeps around the bedroom. A haze of amber from the streetlights outside slunk through the slats of the blinds and bled into the enveloping hush of midnight blue. The edges of her vision pulsed in time with the throb that thudded through her ears and drowned out the soft snuffle of Henry's snore. "I'm Elizabeth to Henry, but I'm never—never—going to be more than Mickey to you." Licks of hot nausea roiled up from the pit of her stomach. She threw the covers aside, not caring where they might land, and she half ran, half staggered towards the bathroom.
She slapped on the light. Dashed across the icy tiles. Wrenched the toilet lid up. Her whole body convulsed and tears scalded her eyes as her stomach squeezed itself inside out. There was nothing there to throw up, just acidic strings of saliva, but the retching wouldn't stop. Every last muscle clenched in her body's bid to purge itself.
An acrid rush of bile.
Relief followed.
With the chokehold on her body released, she gulped in billows of brisk air. At first, it burned almost as much as the bile. But with time, each breath became smoother and shallower than the last, and the pounding of her pulse settled.
She lurched over to the sink, flipped on the faucet, and the gush of water fizzled through the room. One hand scooped her hair into a bunch and held it back whilst the other cupped water to her lips. She rinsed out her mouth two, three times, jammed the faucet off, and then wiped her hand down against the towel that hung from the metal loop. Her lips she dried with a nudge to the strap of her tank top that slipped towards the curve of her right shoulder.
A bottle of TCP antiseptic stood at the back of the bathroom unit, its shallow neck and white plastic cap reflected in the bottom left-hand corner of the mirror. She snatched it up, along with the packet of cotton wool pads that leant against the wall, and then began the ritual again. The smell stung in her nose, even more so in her grazes and cuts. But, at the same time, it soothed too. Little kisses of pain to chase the dream away and remind her that she wasn't a ghost.
Footsteps stumbled across the carpet of their bedroom and then padded onto the tiles—that distinct soft sound as bare feet tacked to and then peeled from the ceramic.
She stopped. She didn't look at him though, just waited for him to appear behind her in the mirror. His fingertips gripped her hips, his body pressed against hers in a wall of warmth, he rested his forehead to the back of her head, and with eyes shut, he inhaled her.
Each time he did that, it felt as though he were praying. Maybe he was: a silent prayer of gratitude to God or to all those saints who brought him as much comfort as that grimy, saliva-sodden teddy bear brought Alison. Something about it irked her. No— It made her want to scream. There was no God, and if there were, He was the kid who throws rice to the pigeons; He was the firefighter who starts the fire; He was the confectioner of arsenic-laced marzipan; and He sure as hell wasn't the one who brought her home.
But, if it brought him comfort, she wouldn't take it away from him, no more than she'd wrench the toy from Alison. And at least in that moment of silence, whilst he frittered away words into the unknown, it lit up her body with the red hot glare of a flare and it gave her a brief respite from the soup-fog that suffocated her in numb and confusion.
Henry placed a kiss to the crown of her head, and then eased half a step back, close enough that his heat still hung next to her, far enough to allow a veil of chill air to fall between them. He peeled up the hem of her tank top to form a bandeau, exposing her lower back and stomach, and then took the TCP-dampened cotton wool from her and dabbed at the cuts that streaked her flesh in a meteor shower across her spine whilst she braced herself against the edge of the basin.
She stared past the reflection of the woman who she supposed was her, and watched him in the mirror; though it felt like she was looking through a pane of one-way glass, watching him and someone else in a separate room. With a slight pinch in the middle of his brow, he examined each cut before he cleansed it. It looked as though he were recalling every inch of the flesh he had known, loved, caressed, and he couldn't fathom how it had come to be anything other. Each mark an affront. An attack on something he held sacred. Graffiti over the sanctuary of a church.
She cleared her throat, but her voice still clagged. "Did you tell Will?"
He kept his gaze on her cuts, and shook his head.
She glanced away, towards the The Little Mermaid tumbler that now served as a toothbrush holder nestled in the right-hand corner against the wall, and she nodded. Probably for the best.
Then her gaze drifted back to him again. "You think he's right, don't you?"
He chucked the cotton wool pad into the bin beneath the sink, plucked a second from the packet, held it to the top of the uncapped TCP bottle as he turned the bottle over, and then clunked the bottle down on the side and returned to swabbing her abrasions.
She shook her head, and set the ends of her hair quivering. "But it's not the same."
He stooped in for a closer look at one of the cuts, his hands resting on her hips—maybe to steady himself, maybe for an anchor of a different kind.
"He's deliberately endangering himself, choosing to fly towards conflict and disaster, all for the sake of some ego trip." She paused.
The silence grew stagnant.
With a sigh, she shook her head to herself—another wisping of her hair against her shoulders. Then she stilled and locked gazes with her own reflection. She gave a firm nod. "I have a desk job."
"Is sitting at a desk what earnt you a half ton of shrapnel in your back?"
She glanced over her shoulder. "It's not that bad."
He squeezed antiseptic into the cut he'd been examining.
It seared through her flesh—battery acid would have been kinder. She winced, and her grip on the sink tightened until her knuckles blanched and almost pierced through the skin.
He straightened up and met her gaze in the mirror. His eyes were full of concern, but the darkness that lurked beneath said that some part of him had meant it to hurt.
She forced her hands to relax, and as her gaze dipped away, pulled by the tug deep within her chest, her voice softened to no more than a murmur. "It could have been worse."
The silence between them strained beneath the weight of that implication.
Henry returned his attention to her back, his touch a little rougher than before, the clench that ran along his jaw palpable. "And God forbid one day it is worse, what do you want me to tell the kids? Your mom's dead, but that's okay, because she had a desk at Langley."
She glared at him.
He ignored her. "Though I suppose I'll only have to explain it to Stevie. Alison will probably forget about you, and as for Jason, well, you'll just be the woman in the photographs."
Her grip on the sink tightened again, though this time for a different reason.
He shrugged. "Hell, maybe you think it'll be character-building. After all, it served you and your brother so well, losing your parents so young, one of you risking your life for the greater good, the other one risking his life to appease his narcissistic ego."
"Don't you fucking dare." She spun around to face him.
He recoiled, his hands held up, the cotton wool pad slotted between two fingers. The darkness had fled his eyes, and shock overwhelmed his expression.
"You don't get to talk about them." She jabbed a finger at him. "You don't get to use them." Her voice cracked, and only fuelled the wildfire that blazed through her. "You don't."
He nodded, the rest of him still frozen.
She continued to glower at him for several hour-long seconds, until the flames simmered to a perpetual smoulder, and then she turned back to the mirror and hunched over the basin again.
He gripped his brow, and massaged the furrows deeper. "Elizabeth... I... That wasn't fair. I shouldn't have—"
"I'm going to pretend that you didn't." She shot him a look, held his gaze, and then braced herself, ready for the next sting of antiseptic.
But it never came.
Instead, he tossed the cotton wool pad into the bin. He stood beside her, his hip rested against the edge of the unit. His gaze raked over her, a silent assessment, as though he were trying to figure out just how far he could push her. "It won't be the only thing that we're pretending didn't happen."
She straightened up, and with her hands still resting against the cool ceramic of the sink and her chin slightly dipped, she shook her head so that her hair fell and trembled between them. "I'm giving you a free pass here, Henry." A sharp glance. "I suggest that you take it."
"It's not a free pass if avoiding the issue winds up with you being dead."
"It's my job." She tugged down the hem of her tank top, and turned to face him. She folded her arms across her chest, as much out of the chill that bristled through the air as the need to keep the distance between them.
"I know you want to make the world a safer place—"
She snorted. "You make it sound like Miss America pageant."
His voice rose. "But you can't keep ignoring the risks."
"Everything in life's a risk."
His jaw tightened, and his voice rose louder still. "And you're not going to placate me with some aphorism." He gestured, as though to bat the comment aside.
She brushed past him and strode towards the once white, now handprint-smeared and blue Crayola-ed, door that led into their bedroom. "You're meant to be my husband, Henry," she muttered. "I shouldn't have to placate you."
She reached for the cold bronze gleam of the handle.
"I heard that Jenny Mitchell gave birth."
She froze, her fingers midair. It felt like time had slammed on the brakes. The hairs at the back of her neck prickled, her skin alight with their static.
"A boy."
"Don't." The word came out lower than a growl.
"How do you think he'll feel growing up without a father?"
"I said: Don't."
"Do you think he won't mind that his father died the day before he was born, never even got the chance to hold him, all because he wanted to make the world a safer place?"
"Stop." She whirled around.
"No. You can't keep ignoring this." He motioned to her, head to toe. His eyes were steeped in darkness, though no shade of black could match what swarmed inside her. "That could have been you. Conrad told me you were meant to be in that vehicle."
Her voice soared to a shout, full of so much grit that it burned through her throat. "But I wasn't. And he was. And I'm the one who told him to take my place."
The darkness drained from Henry's expression in an instant—if only she could find a way to rid herself of the shadows that bound her soul half as quick—and the silence that her shout ushered in stood like a concrete wall between them.
A hot tear trickled down her cheek. Unwanted. Unbidden. She swiped it aside with the edge of her thumb.
A second tear rolled down too fast for her to catch and it tumbled and splashed against the tiles. At his side, Henry's fingers twitched as though thirsting to reach out and touch her. Just as Mitch had tried to, before she shut him down.
Why the hell did he have to say it? Why the hell did he have to say it and then die and change everything? What if she hadn't pushed him away? What if she'd let him— But even knowing what she knew now, she knew she couldn't have done that, and somehow, knowing that only added an extra shade to the guilt, making it deeper. More absolute.
She fought to meet Henry's eye, but her gaze trembled. "He loved me, Henry."
Henry studied her. He gave a curt nod. "I know."
"No." Her voice strained. She raked one hand through her hair, and her fingers lodged in the roots. It was hard enough to say it once; why'd he have to make her repeat it? Her throat caught. "He loved me."
His eyes widened a fraction, he nodded again, the words came slower. "I know."
She frowned. "What?"
"Elizabeth..." He shook his head, his gaze to the floor. When he looked up at her again, it was with a sorry smile. "Mitch adored you." He gave a small shrug. "Anyone could see that."
It knocked her back like a blow to the chest. She stumbled and bumped up against the door. The cold wood bit into her shoulder blades whilst her gaze skittered over the expanse of tiles; it scoured every inch of mottled grey, every crack of white, searching for just a glimmer of sense. He knew and he never said anything? He knew and he left her painfully oblivious? He knew... But that meant she hadn't misunderstood. Why couldn't she have misunderstood?
The tiles gave her nothing.
Her gaze darted up to Henry. "Why didn't you tell me?"
He stared back at her. Silent.
Her eyes narrowed on him. "Were you jealous?"
His lips flinched.
She crept a step closer. "Did you think it might give me ideas?"
His pout tightened.
"Do you seriously think that's what I do when I'm over there?" Her voice sharpened. Another step. "Just spread my legs for whoever wants it?"
When she gestured to the juncture of her thighs, just in case the meaning weren't already excruciatingly clear, his jaw clenched. A slight flare to his nostrils.
"Well?" She raised her eyebrows at him.
His chest swelled with a breath.
And, God, she wished he'd just yell at her. At least then she could be angry at him, at least then she'd be able to lash out, at least then she could find a release for everything inside that felt like a can of soda shaken and fit to burst.
But he didn't.
His voice was soft. His eyes were forgiving. His lips quirked into a sorry shrug. "I didn't want you to lose your friend."
Silence, just silence.
The world stopped, unable to keep on spinning beneath the weight of that.
Silence, just silence.
The air pulsed, its molecules scattered, an order lost that it would never get back.
Silence, just silence.
Then everything inside her collapsed.
Her breath ceased, and she crumpled to the floor. A moment later, Henry was knelt beside her. She shoved him away, then fisted the front of his t-shirt and clawed him close. Meanwhile, the tears tumbled down. And she hated every last one of them. He stroked her hair, hushed her, placed kisses to the bare skin of her shoulder. She hated that too, so she shrank away like a petulant toddler, and then she craved it the moment that it stopped.
Somewhere in that haze, her mind a shamal-stirred sandstorm, the sobs reduced to hiccups and her body shuddered and then surrendered to numb.
When she had quietened, he half coaxed, half hoisted her to standing, and with one hand supporting her own, the other light against the small of her back, he guided her to their bed. He reached down an extra blanket from the shelf at the top of the cupboard, as though he thought that layers of wool would be enough to warm her. But the chill didn't come from the December air; it crawled out from that vacant space inside her.
To lose a friend was one thing, but to lose a friendship felt like part of herself had been chiselled out. Mitch had always been a friend, often a refuge, sometimes a brother, but now she had to trawl back through every look, every touch, every expression. Had she led him on? Had she let him believe? Was there something she could have done differently?
The string of girlfriends—all slim, all sapphire-eyed, all blonde—each discarded with a shrug and an offhand comment. She just wasn't the one. The marriage to Jenny; his reluctance a well-partnered counterbalance to her enthusiasm. The long hours they spent together at Langley; the coffee breaks and canteen lunch dates; his eagerness to join her on assignments. Had she somehow fed the hope that maybe one day she'd be the one? If so, she had robbed him. If only she'd set him straight sooner, he could have moved on and found someone he would love as much as she loved Henry, instead of keeping one eye on her and one eye on his latest distraction.
And what about their colleagues? What about Jenny? Mitch adored you. Anyone could see that. They didn't think...? She didn't think...? Surely?
"Henry." She lay flat on her back, her hands fisted atop her stomach whilst she stared up at the shadows that danced across the ceiling. "Mitch and I... We never—"
"I didn't ask." His voice was gruff in the darkness.
She turned her face towards him. Her hair ruffled against the pillow. He lay on his back also, the whites of his eyes bright amidst the haze of black-blue. "I know, but I need you to know."
"I do. And I trust you." His gaze darted sideways to catch hers.
The look stretched like a silk thread between them.
But as the silence strained, it pulled that thread taut until it threatened to snap and sever that most tentative of connections, to see her drift away, back into that fog of numb.
"Make love to me?" she whispered.
"No." His gaze broke away and returned to the ceiling.
She studied him. She waited for the sting of rejection. But it didn't come. Instead, she nodded. He was right: God and religion aside, sex was something sacred between them, not a tool to be used no more than he could use her parents to win an argument, not a way to distract her from thought or to trick her into feeling something.
"Hold me?"
He lifted the covers and opened his arms to her. "Always."
She nestled against his chest and soaked up his warmth, whilst his heart beat beneath her, as steady and as soothing as a lullaby. It lured her towards sleep, a gentle tug that saw her grip on the night around her loosen until she was slipping from the room, down the rolling slope of sand and into a field where grasses seethed around her. The black walnut tree waited at the other side. Beyond that a chasm. And a question. Fly or fall?
Her eyes snapped open. Her fingertips curled into his chest. "One day it won't be Mitch."
His grip on her tightened. "That's what I'm afraid of."
He thought she meant her.
She thought it best not to correct him.