Everything was quiet, the house all shadows, but as I hung up my coat, I saw the fire flickering in the library and made my way down the hall.
Sophie sat on the couch, still in her clothes from the funeral, drink in her hand and eyes on the fire. She didn't look at me as she moved her drink from the arm of the couch to her chin, speaking before she drank.
"Welcome home."
I waited a beat, bracing myself for a fight. "I'm sorry," was all I could say.
"You should be."
"Sophie—"
She leveled me with her eyes. "How could you do that? How could you just leave?"
I didn't answer right away. "I'm sorry. I know it was wrong. I tried—"
"I don't give a fuck whether you tried or if you're sorry, Wade. This? This was one of the hardest days of my life, and you should have been here. You should have fucking been here." Her voice wavered, and she took a breath. "You let us down. I know you're hurting, but what you did … I don't even know if I can forgive you. I can't tell you it's all right because it's not, not by a long shot."
I folded my arms. There was nothing to say except, "You're right."
"And Elliot … Elliot seems to think this is in part because of her. Please. Please tell me she's wrong."
I watched her for a moment. "I can't. She's part of it. Not all of it, but she's part of it." The truth burned my throat as it left me.
She looked back at the fire, her lips flat as she shook her head. "Unbelievable," she muttered.
"You asked me a question, and I gave you an honest answer. Don't diminish my pain."
"I'm not. I'm saying that you're selfish, and that you should have endured your pain like I had to, like Sadie had to in front of all those people. I had to tell them all where you were, what you were doing, make excuses for you. Do you think it was easy for Elliot? Do you think she's just been fine with you here? But she showed up. She did what she had to do just like the rest of us, everyone but you. You ran away and left us all here to handle this without our biggest support, without the strongest of us. Or I thought you were. Guess I was wrong." She took another drink.
"You're drunk."
"Fuck you, Wade," she said, edging hysteria. "Fuck you. Leave me alone."
"Let me at least—"
She held up a hand. "You've done quite enough. So, please. Just go."
I felt it all inside of me, the explanation, the excuses, the words that meant nothing because my actions had failed me. I was too tired to fight, too bare to push back, so I gave her the only thing I had to offer her: her wish.
20
No More
At the edge
Of no more
Is where we find
Our truth.
* * *
M. White
* * *
Wade
I was awake long before dawn broke, lying silently in the cold, in the dark.
My mistakes haunted me, my regrets too many to count, and yet every decision was justified in my mind.
I contain multitudes, Whitman wrote, and I understood the sentiment more deeply than I ever had before. I'd left the funeral because I'd needed to, because I couldn't contain the emotion, didn't know what I would do, what I would say. I left to save them from myself, even though I hurt them by leaving.
There was no answer, no choice I could have made to change the outcome. I would hurt them no matter what. It seemed to be the state in which I existed now, a dead end where I could only be wrong, where I could only damage everyone around me, even when I tried to remove myself from the equation. The fight followed me wherever I went; I couldn't escape.
I dressed when the room began to light in hues of gold. My uniform was stiff, formal, unnecessary today, but I had no suit and no interest in buying one, and when I looked in the mirror to knot my tie, I saw myself as if from the outside.
Cold eyes, hard jaw, brow that gave nothing. Broad shoulders, square and sharp, where the yoke of my pain sat. Strong hands, callused and rough, used for making a mess of my life.
I didn't know that man any more than I knew the boy who had stood in that spot seven years before, a lifetime, the span of a space that was too wide to bridge. I was a stranger to myself. And I'd lost everything I'd ever cared about.
The stairs creaked as I walked down them toward the sound of my sisters in the kitchen. They stopped speaking when I appeared in the entry, their grey eyes as cold as mine when they landed on me, accusing without breathing a word.
Sophie turned her back to me with a snap and click of her heels, coffee cup in hand as she moved to the sink. "So you actually showed up. Sadie, how long do you think until he bolts?" she asked flatly.
My eyes narrowed.
"Twenty minutes, tops," Sadie answered, equally flat.
My gaze fixed on her, but she wasn't looking at me, just picked up her coffee and took a sip as if I weren't there.
"I said I was sorry," I prompted through my teeth.
"And I said I didn't know if I could forgive you."
"You can't be serious."
Her eyes told me she was when she turned around. "What you've done is inexcusable. There's nothing you can say to me that will change that, no explanation that will make it all right. You left when we needed you the most. Why you left doesn't matter."
"You make it sound black and white," I growled, trying to keep my composure. "You didn't seem to mind that I've taken care of everything since I walked into that hospital. Hospice. The funeral. The will. The endless paperwork and lawyer meetings. You were perfectly happy to stay out of all of that, and I shouldered it alone. In fact, you expected me to handle it all without your help. You didn't even offer, Sophie, so don't be sanctimonious about me leaving yesterday when you haven't been present for weeks."
"This isn't about me." Emotion edged her voice, shaken by my words. "You should have been able to hold it together long enough to be there. To be present. You can't ever get that back, that time, those moments. Life is hard. We have to stand up and live it anyway."
I took a sharp breath, chest heaving. "Don't tell me about life being hard. Don't tell me that with your privileged life that you have any idea what it means for life to be hard. This? This is nothing. We didn't lose Dad to an IED. We didn't see him shot or his body shredded from a mortar. I know life is hard. I've seen it. I've heard the song of the dying. I've been standing up and living it since I left home."
She took a deep breath, eyes shining, arms folded across her chest. "Then why couldn't you do this?"
"I don't know!" I yelled, hands fisted. "It's too much, too close. I'm sorry. I told you I'm sorry last night, and I'll keep saying it. I don't know what else you want from me. I don't know what else to do."
"Well, I told you last night that you've done enough." She blew past me to the peg where her coat hung. "We're going to be late," she said in lieu of a request or a demand.