I was left without words as Sophie and Sadie brought lunch in on trays, so I sat at his side, his words settling into my mind as I fed him.
Stop running. I had no choice. I was here. She was here. But I didn't know how to face my past. I'd been running for seven years, and there could be no full stop. There would be no sixty-to-zero, not without slowing down first or my brakes would catch on fire. But I thought about that crack in the wall again, and looking through it, I found the smallest hope.
We talked about nothing and everything, taking every small second where we could. And when he was finished eating, he fell asleep. When we left the room, we stood in the hallway without purpose, as if the hours of the day had been reset to mark the times when we could be by his side.
Dad would be asleep for an hour or two, and I didn't want to sit, didn't want to wait in that quiet room, didn't want to be still. I loathed the unscheduled time, the lack of structure I'd become so accustomed to missing, throwing me off kilter. I longed for the action of my body to distract me from the things I couldn't change, so I pulled on my coat and opened the door to find peace.
Instead, I found Elliot.
She wore her blue peacoat and yellow hat again, her eyes dark and wide with surprise at meeting me on the steps of the house.
"H-hi," she breathed, eyes moving behind me to the door. "Is everything okay?"
"He's fine, just resting."
I didn't offer more, and she looked away, the color rising in her cheeks. "Oh."
I cleared my throat, not sure what to do or say, caught in the stretch of the moment. "The girls are inside," I offered after a second.
She smiled politely. "All right, thank you."
But something came over me as she moved to walk past. "I'm going for a walk, if you'd like to come with me."
She stopped, her gaze meeting mine with shock, and I was sure mine reflected the same thing. "That would be nice," she answered softly, sweetly, and something in my heart thumped and rattled like a loose bolt with every beat.
I said nothing more, just started down the stairs and she followed. I wanted to be near her, but I was afraid of her, afraid for my heart. Indecision and uncertainty slipped over me like a fog as we walked quietly through the city and into the park.
The silence wasn't companionable; it was heavy with years and words between us, and it stretched on so long, there seemed to be no breeching it gracefully. It was the collective story of us in a twenty-minute span of footsteps.
We ended up at the Glenspan Arch, a place we had been a hundred times, what felt like a hundred years before. The small river ran gently next to us, and I could hear the steady hiss of the cascade just beyond the arch.
"Do you remember the first time we came here?" she asked, the words gentle and hesitant as we approached the stone bridge, nestled in the arms of the forest.
"You'd never been anywhere in the city, which was weird, considering you'd lived here your whole life," I mused. Once I'd met her family, I'd understood completely. They were self-serving, uninterested in participating in life outside themselves, and they'd do anything to drown out Elliot's light, to cull her spirit.
Those thoughts I kept to myself.
She nodded, smiling as her eyes drank in the world around us. "I thought we'd stepped into a fairy tale."
In a way, we had. I'd kissed her in the shadows of this archway, surrounded by the echo of the stream. I'd held her hand along this path, my world illuminated by her. It was a dream, a myth, a story from a long time ago.
"Do you come back often?" I asked, pushing the memories away, wondering why I'd brought us this way, although in the back of my mind I recognized that anywhere we'd have gone would have brought the past back to me.
Elliot shook her head. "I don't have much time these days, not without the kids. And bringing them here wouldn't really be relaxing." She chuckled. "I've come a few times to write, though."
Finally, ground I could stand on. "Sophie told me you got your Lit degree. Congratulations."
"Thank you. I don't know if I would have gone, if it weren't for Rick. He's always believed in me, even when I didn't believe in myself."
"He does that. Decide what you'll do with it?" I asked as we slipped into the cool shade.
"I haven't had much time to think about it."
I made a noncommittal sound through my nose, which did little to hide my disdain at the thought of her family. "Because of your sister's kids?"
She nodded, face tilting down to her shoes, sending a wave of regret through me.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to judge. It's just …"
She smiled at me, lips together. "It's all right. I know how you feel about them. But those kids are the center of my universe right now. Mary needs the help, and I'm not sure what I want to do. Not much I can do besides teach."
"You could write."
"I do write."
"You could submit."
"I knew what you meant," she said lightly, her words echoing off the stone. "Those words are part of me, a real part of me, not fiction. They're my thoughts, my beliefs, my pain and joy. To subject my heart and soul to judgment is … well, it's terrifying."
"I can understand that."
"Maybe I'll be brave enough someday."
"You are brave. You're one of the bravest people I've ever known."
She laughed. I frowned.
"Braveness isn't always loud. Sometimes it's silent. There's braveness in sacrifice and kindness. It's in doing a thing that needs to be done, even though it's hard, and even though it hurts."
We stepped out of the arch and into the soft light of the forest, and she turned her face to mine, though I couldn't meet her eyes. If I met her eyes, I might say more, might say too much. And I couldn't do that. I told myself it was in the interest of self-preservation and not because I was afraid of her, of what it might do to me if I opened myself up and let her back in.
After a moment, she looked away.
"I suppose I don't really see myself that way."
"No, you never did. But that doesn't change the fact." The subject was dangerously close to the truth of my heart, and I turned it to something safer. "Dad's doing well today. We read to him, and he's able to speak better than he has yet. Longer sentences, more articulation. But he's exhausted. It's a lot for him."
"For all of you."
"For all of us. You're a part of this, Elliot."
Her name, a word still foreign, though familiar as if it were my own.
"The nurse will be here in a couple of hours," I continued, "and I think Jeannie and Lou are bringing dinner again. Will you be staying?"
She nodded as we approached the cascade. "If it's all right."
I pulled her to a stop across from the waterfall with my hand cupping her elbow, frustration and agitation mounting. She still wanted to disappear, as if she held no power. She didn't know she held all the power over me; my heart was in her hands as it ever was.
In her face, I found surprise tinged with regret and want. A mixture of wishes and apologies hung on her breath.
"Please, stop," I demanded.