by Lindy Zart
She slapped her palms against her closed eyelids and groaned, her stomach churning in protestation of the information she now knew. Beth pressed hard against her face, a hitched breath all she could form as she tried to shove the knowledge she’d learned through the back of her head and out of her mind. She felt sick. And sad. Hopeless. All for a man she didn’t know, and after last night, wished she’d never met.
Beth turned to her side, one arm hugging her midsection, and pointlessly tried to erase him from her brain. She thought of flowers, their silky petals, their scent, and somehow, her brain tripped to an image of him, lying in a meadow of sunflowers. Eyes closed, skin reflecting the sunshine. Still and somber. Dead or alive, Beth didn’t know.
She counted instead, but only made it to thirty-one. Beth swallowed, her breath catching at the number. When her attempts to drive him from her thoughts did nothing but pull her further into despair, made him an even brighter beacon for her to dwell on, she went over facts in her head, something she did to calm herself. Some of them were already written down on paper, paper she’d stared at in disbelief as the night grew and turned into dawn.
Beth tucked herself into a ball as her heart pounded faster. He was only thirty-one years old. She took a breath, her body shaking, and took another. You barely know him. Get ahold of yourself. It didn’t seem to matter that she’d physically known Harrison Caldwell all of one day. All Beth could focus on was that she did know him, and that made him matter. He was a person. She tried to swallow and couldn’t. He was a person and that made him important.
Never married, no children. There had been a woman—Nina Hollister—who’d been with him for years, and when he lost everything, she went with it.
He quit playing football five years ago.
Rarely seen in public for the past three, said to live in the Midwest, but that was unconfirmed.
Her mind tripped over the one fact she couldn’t compute, not yet. She’d blinded herself to it. The truth was a dark taint, an oozing blob of black she couldn’t outrun for long. And how did Harrison feel, living inside of it? Breathing in the darkness, choking on it. It was true that with the advancement of science and medicine, what Harrison had wasn’t as life-threatening as it once was, but it was still there, working its evil magic. Destroying.
If Beth thought about it, dwelled on his reality, she wouldn’t leave the house all day, and she would never return to Harrison’s home. And that would be wrong, that would seem like she was judging something she didn’t understand—plus there was the issue of being sued. Little things she’d noticed yesterday made sense where they hadn’t prior, and it put an ache in her throat.
Beth uncurled from where she was lying and left the bed, her legs and arms sore along with her heart. Heavy. Sad. Flashes of him pictured and cataloged throughout the years besieged her as she stumbled to the bathroom. His happy brown eyes as a child, the determination in his jaw as a teenager. How he exuded confidence and drive during college. The cocky flare to his grin as his professional football team won and won and kept winning. When Beth’s eyes were too exhausted to read, she watched clips of games, something she hadn’t had any desire to do before. Harrison made it interesting, his movements graceful and strong, his form fierce and unconquerable on the football field.
He wasn’t good at football—he was brilliant.
She brushed her teeth, staring at her puffy face and eyes in the mirror. The more recent photographs showed a broken man. Physically struggling, but also mentally, emotionally. Bitterness honed into his features, glaring from his eyes, thinning his mouth. Beth spit out the toothpaste and cursed, putting her weight on her wrists against the countertop.
She mashed a finger to her short nose and made a face at herself. “Stop feeling sorry for him. You have work to do. Get to it,” she told her image.
Resolved to separate her emotions from her job, Beth spent the morning going over her notes, jotting down questions, rereading articles, all with a stiff face and a sick sensation in her gut. Even the two cups of coffee, hot and robust, fell flat against her taste buds. When it was time to go to Harrison’s, she stopped in front of the door that led to the attached garage, her instincts telling her not to go. Nausea grew. Beth inhaled and exhaled. She’d told herself the same thing yesterday, but for different reasons. And she’d gone.
Beth left the house.
The drive took hours at the same time it took seconds. Hills and trees, all bedecked in glittering white, surrounded her. She could feel her heart pounding, powerful and filled with dread. Her fingers tightened and relaxed on the steering wheel, again and again. The sky was blue and cloudless, but she knew there was snow in the forecast again for later that day. Yesterday she was afraid because she hadn’t known what to expect—today she was afraid because she did.
Everything was different. The house took on an ominous cast. The windows were eyes, the door a mouth posed in a shriek of horror. The landscape turned barren. Tree limbs became arms, reaching for her, reaching for life to steal and keep as its own, until it was dead like the tree. It was all twisted, warped.
It was worse inside.
The walls cried with sorrow. Their pain could not be covered up with memories. Memories for no one to witness, or enjoy. She imagined Harrison coughing up blood, and that blood seeping from the corners of the ceiling to drip down its length. Pooling on the floor, alive and venomous. His skin broken out in oozing sores, red and angry and vengeful. Beth had a perverse impulse to check the cupboards and refrigerator, to prove there would be paltry supplies, barely enough on which to survive. He was waiting, biding his time. He’d given up.
She understood then—the house was a coffin, and he was the corpse within.
Beth stood in the foyer, imagining unseen disease crawling along the walls and floors, heading straight for her. She wanted to turn and flee, and she couldn’t.
Harrison found her like that, still as stone, unable to move, her eyes continually shifting over her surroundings. He wore a red shirt that clashed with his hair, and black jeans. White socks covered his feet, but no shoes. His eyes seemed blacker, bleaker. Older. Like they had seen his destiny and knew there was no way to bypass it. She stared at his face, seeing beyond the skin and into his insides, picturing the rot. What was it like, living with something that was slowly destroying him? Did he hurt all the time? Was he currently in pain? He had to be exhausted, mentally and physically. The thoughts he must have…
What was it like to meet his demons and know they could one day slay him?
“I wasn’t sure if you would come back.”
“I told you I would.” Her voice lacked strength.
Understanding tightened his features as he studied hers. “But you thought about staying away.”
“Yes.” She clenched her hands into fists, an unconscious motion, the action that of someone illogically afraid of the unfamiliar. Beth loosened her grip, immediately feeling bad.
His eyes dropped to her hands, a muscle bunching in his jaw. “You can’t catch it by touching things.”
“I know that.” Beth’s voice was a whip, sharp and striking. Her mind went back to the coffee she drank the day before, the mug she used. Stop being crazy, she told herself. It didn’t change her thoughts. She didn’t know him as a man, as a person, and therefore, she couldn’t trust him.
Harrison’s expression scorned, even as it said her reaction was one he’d endured before. “What’s changed from yesterday? I’m the same. You’re the same.”
“It’s not the same,” she denied. Weakly. Shamefully.
Shadows shifted over his features, drifted into his eyes. “And now you know why I’m here, without a television, without contact with the outside world. You’re the embodiment of every prejudice I got tired of dealing with.”
“I’m sorry, I just—I’ve never known anyone before with…it.”
“That you know of. Most people don’t announce it.”
“I’m sorry,” she said again.
Hi
s upper lip curled, telling her what he thought of her remorse.
Beth took a deep breath and continued. “You said you hired me because I didn’t know who you were.”
“Yes.” His eyes went back to her hands and stayed there. “And that’s true.”
“But that isn’t the only reason, that isn’t why you specifically contacted me. You tricked me.” The words sounded petulant.
“How did I trick you?” His gaze hadn’t left her hands. He seemed fascinated with them.
“You must have researched me. How else would you know about my degree, that I was freelance? How else would you know that I had no idea who you were? How many others have you done this to?” Her pulse was out of control, in tune with her thoughts.
Harrison’s gaze finally lifted, and it was bitingly blank.
“You lied by omission. You had me sign a contract under false pretenses. What is this—some kind of sick game to you?” Beth had gone too far. She knew it as soon as the words left her mouth, as she watched the color leave his skin. What she said was cruel, and she stunned herself by it.
“I’m s-sorry,” she stuttered. “I don’t know why I said that. I didn’t mean that. I shouldn’t have said it. That was mean to say.” Beth shook her head. “I don’t know what to think, what to do.”
“Nothing.”
Beth blinked. “What?”
“You think nothing. You do nothing.”
She laughed shakily, running her eyes along the bare walls and empty spaces. Looking everywhere but at Harrison, and then she did, and she couldn’t turn her eyes past him. “You make it sound easy, like my world wasn’t just rocked by being introduced to yours.”
Other than a flicker in his eyes, Harrison had no reaction. “Would you have said yes to writing the book if you knew who I was beforehand? If you’d known what I have, would you have even considered working for me? Would you be here right now?”
“I don’t…” Beth looked down, swallowed. Her throat had a lump in it that seemed to grow as he spoke. “I don’t know.”
Harrison stepped closer, a thoughtful look on his face as he casually crossed his arms. He was mocking her. His stance, his expression. Calling her a fool without saying a single thing. “Let’s look at it this way then—who in their right mind would agree to write a book about a person they know nothing about? Who would sign a contract on nothing more than assumptions and promises? Who would show up at a stranger’s house in the country, knowing nothing about the person inside?
“I could have lied about having money, about needing someone to write my story. I could have been any kind of monster, and you willingly stepped into my lair.” Harrison’s chest raggedly lifted and lowered, belying the calm he’d strived to exude, but his eyes were unwavering from hers. Drinking in her unease, sinking into her soul. His look demanded an answer.
“You’re right. It was stupid of me,” she said quietly.
He expelled noisily, swiping a hand across his mouth. “Not stupid. Desperate. Hopeful. I understand them both.”
Beth looked into his deep eyes, the disquiet fading from her bearing as she did. He looked harmless, a shell of the man from the pictures. She tried to put herself in his place, but her brain refused. It was too close; he was too close. A sick man stood before her, talking to her, his breaths already counted beforehand by some invisible plague. A man who couldn’t fight fate. It was messed up, and wrong.
Strangest of all, she wanted to touch his face, wipe the hidden pain from it. Beth clenched her fingers, then locked them before her, making sure she didn’t reach for him. She couldn’t stand others hurting. It made her heart cry. And Harrison would probably deny it until he no longer could, but there was a crack in him, and it was full of an unhealable ache. She felt it, in the air, in his words. It reached for something, anything, to ease it, and there was Beth. Standing so close, feeling more than she should.
He dropped his gaze. “I hired you to write a book. My health should have nothing to do with that.”
Beth straightened. “What do you want me to write about then?”
Harrison lifted his eyes to hers, and they were laced with emotion, dark and light and raw. “Me. I want you to write about me. I am not what’s destroying me. I am me.”
Beth’s shoulders slumped. Never had she heard truer, rawer words. He’d opened his chest and given her a tiny chunk of his heart in telling her that. The book—he’d told her to read his favorite book because she couldn’t write about him if she didn’t know him. Him. He showed her the trophies because he’d earned them. Harrison Caldwell. There were hints of the man before her, shown in the emptiness of rooms, and broadcasted in others.
Guilt crawled up her throat, heated her face. She was as bad as every gossip in town, basing opinions on some truths, but not all, and not the important ones, the ones that should matter. She was prejudiced like all the others she told herself she was different from. Beth knew what it was like to have lies told about her, misconceptions that hurt. In every tragic tale of her and Ozzy spewed about around town, she was the villain.
Look at the man, she told herself, and when she did, she had to look away. His expression was calm, but his eyes were stricken. She couldn’t bear to see it, and Beth wasn’t ready to wonder why.
“You would think, with how long this has been around, that people would be more open-minded about it, or at least act accordingly. This isn’t the eighties or nineties anymore, and yet, not much has changed as far as preconceptions. I’ve hired others who’d known, before I moved to the area. Many refused, some wouldn’t come to my house, others would, but they didn’t last long. The few who actually agreed wanted to turn the book into the disease.”
He made a sound of frustration, swiping fingers through his hair. “They wanted the story of my life to be about something I might eventually die from. What kind of a book is that? That isn’t what I want. I had years and years of life before I was diagnosed. I want to be remembered for what I was, who I was, before.”
Harrison swallowed and shifted his eyes to her. “Can you do that for me? Will you write my story?”
“Do I have a choice?”
He fisted his hands at his sides as he angled his head away from hers. He seemed to fight to speak, his voice rough and graceless when he finally did. “If I tell you that you do, what will be your answer?”
Beth’s breaths came faster. “Are you saying you’ll let me out of the contract?”
“Yes. Today.” He looked at her, and she swore his eyes were painted in sadness. It humanized him, turned him from an arrogant man to one with vulnerabilities. It made her see him clearer, and that made him more dangerous.
Look away, Beth.
“Today is your one chance to rip up the contract without fear of retaliation. Walk away now, if that’s what you want.” Harrison angled his face away, but not before she saw his jaw harden. “I’ll be in the reading room.”
Beth watched him leave the entryway, a seemingly invincible man brought down by an unseen adversary. The reading room. He’d named the welcoming room full of his books the reading room. His sanctuary. The one place in the house that she knew had the care it took to make a room more than walls and space, to make it a haven.
His footsteps were measured, his trek stable. It was a façade. His personality demanded action, not the slowness with which he moved. Did he hide how tired he was? Did the side effects of medicine, if he took it, cause his muscles and joints to ache? Did he take medicine? How far had it progressed since he was diagnosed? Was it still in the beginning stages, or much worse?
Beth had endless questions, and she didn’t know how to ask a single one.
The door was right there, a reachable escape. Two steps and she could open it and go. She would be free of any obligation to him. And what would Harrison do? He would sit in a structure full of lost hopes and dreams, alone, his story untold. It wasn’t her problem, and yet empathy kept her where she was. Empathy, yes, but what else?
She lowered her
head and covered her face with her hands, her eyes tightly shut. She tried to breathe normally, but her breaths came out shallow, raspy. If she stayed, she was agreeing to submerge herself in a reality she didn’t know, didn’t understand. If she left, she would feel like she’d abandoned him to his undesired fate. He had a story to tell, and he was asking her to tell it. Maybe this was her chance to do something meaningful, no matter how altered she became in the process.
Because Beth didn’t think she could write his story and not be affected by it.
With a sigh of resignation, Beth dropped her hands. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t go. Beth lifted her head and pulled back her shoulders, turning new eyes on the situation. Her decision was made, and determination stiffened her spine. Once Beth committed to something, there was no giving up. His story was worth something, and she would write it. Beth would not give up on this, on Harrison. It seemed interlocked with her writing dream, a quest that, if accepted, would change her world. Beth was ready for a change.
THREE
TODAY SHE DIDN’T bring her laptop, knowing there was three-quarters of a book waiting for her to read it. The story of a boy losing his mother at the age of seven took on a different meaning. It became real, formed depth. And Beth knew when she picked up that book again, she would read words different from the ones she’d read yesterday. The story changed because the person reading it altered the way they saw it. Perception was a powerful tool.
Harrison stood with his back to her, looking outside much like she did the previous day upon first entering the room. “It’s snowing again.”
She was surprised by the comment. He didn’t seem the type for idle conversation. Neither was she. She wanted to know about a person’s childhood, what scared them, what is was about the first person they fell in love that made them do so. If they preferred candy to chocolate, or the opposite, and why. Beth wanted to know what made a person the way they were, what gave them their individualism, what scars they carried, what life was to them. What dreams they had.