by Roger Bray
“Were you home that night?”
“The night Hazel disappeared?”
Steve nodded.
“I was. I had got back from a job up north mid-afternoon, so yes, I was home.”
“And you didn’t see or hear anything?”
“Nothing at all, I’m afraid. I was probably in bed by a little after eight, reading a book and I think that I probably fell asleep around nine.”
“And where is your room?”
“That’s the thing, it’s around the other side at the back, as far away from the road as you can get. Which I did on purpose because with my shifts I sometimes get in late and want to be able to sleep and that’s the quietest room.”
“You still work?”
“Yep, railroad engineer. Track maintenance, not driving.”
“For Union Pacific?”
“That’s right.”
“You been doing that all your working life?”
“Nearly forty years.”
“You must enjoy it.”
“Oh, I do. Working in the outdoors. It’s what I like.”
“But you were home on the night Hazel went missing?”
“Yes, I was, but didn’t hear a thing I’m afraid. The next morning, I had to go down to Chemult and do a survey on some track down there. I was away for the next week as I recall.”
“What time did you leave?”
“Early probably. Before six I would say. I like to get an early start.”
They fell silent for a few moments, allowing Jim his quiet thoughts.
“Sorry, it’s …”
Alice reached out her hand and gently squeezed his forearm. He smiled and looked up at her, but his eyes betrayed the sadness he felt.
“A damn shame what’s happened to Alex” he said, before brushing his free hand across his face.
“Did the police come to see you after Hazel went missing, ask you anything?” Steve continued.
“They did but I told them exactly what I told you, I was probably asleep. I didn’t hear, or see, anything. You’re asking a lot of questions for someone just helping Alice pick up some paperwork.”
Steve smiled. “Interested I guess.”
Alice quickly changed the subject before Jim could wonder more why they were there.
“How’s Miss. Muir and Moth?” she asked.
Jim smiled at the mention of the cat. “He’s fine, great, it’s coming on a bit cold or I’m sure he would be out here, instead, the fat, lazy lump is asleep somewhere cozy and Glenda, well, she’s getting on now. She’s still getting around, but it’s getting harder for her.”
“Give her my best wishes when you speak to her next.”
“I will. I sure will.”
“Well, we’d better be going, we’ve held you up long enough.”
Alice leaned toward the older man and gave him a kiss on the cheek.
“And thanks for looking after the yard, it looks great.”
“My pleasure,” he said, holding her hand briefly and smiling, “I enjoy it and it keeps me busy, you know that.”
“I do, thanks again,” Alice said, and they made their way back toward the rear patio.
Chapter Three
Alex lay in his bunk, trying to block out Dolan’s thunderous snoring and occasional sulfurous emission and thought through the conversation that he had had with Alice and Steve.
He had explained the whole evening to them as clearly as he could, and he could go over the facts again and again because the events of that evening were as clear in his mind now as they had been three years ago. He felt a little flutter of excitement in his stomach as he had when he knew Hazel was coming over and that their marriage was probably not over, as he feared. He had wanted to give her space and all the time she needed to explain the situation, more to herself than to him. If Hazel needed to put her thoughts into words, he would be her sounding board. He loved her, and he knew she loved him, and tonight was going to be when they got back on track, without any blame or recrimination.
Alex had felt great knowing she was coming.
*****
The flutter of excitement increased at the light tapping on the front door and Alex took a deep breath before taking the few steps and opening it. Hazel stood on the step, her long hair shining in the glow from the porch light, a soft but tentative smile on her face; in her hand she held her car keys and her Motorola cell phone. She rarely carried a bag and the clothes she wore, tight jeans with boots and a tight cashmere jumper, meant she couldn’t carry much else.
“Hi, Alex,” she said quietly, “may I come in?”
Alex hung onto the door handle with one hand and licked his lips, he had rehearsed over and over in his mind what he would say at this moment, but he forgot everything and stammered, “Yeah, of course, yeah,” he said as he vaguely waved his free hand toward the inside of the house.
“You don’t have to ask you know,” he said as he recovered his composure a little, “this is your house too.”
Hazel smiled sadly and rubbed her free hand on his upper arm.
“That’s kind of you to say, but we both know that that’s not completely true.”
Alex slowly closed the door and watched for a moment as she walked toward the kitchen. He followed, unsure but happy she was at least standing in their house, and they weren’t arguing. Her smell that had remained in the house, in her clothes and in the furnishings, it seemed that it had never left and the memories it provoked had made him happy and sad in equal portions after she had left him.
She placed her cell on the counter with her Volvo keys on top and sat down on one of the stools, swiveling around until she was facing him. She looked a little scared and hesitant and she watched as he pulled out another stool and sat down facing her across the corner of the counter top.
Alex looked at her, “Well?”
Hazel couldn’t hold his stare and, after a moment, stared down at her feet before answering, she looked up at him and he could see that she was close to tears. She sniffed and seemed unsure how to start, she tried to relax and start again. Like Alex, she had practiced this conversation in her mind, but now she was at a loss. Her eyes wavered and Alex could see something that Hazel didn’t like to show, uncertainty. He knew that this feeling was not because of him or the conversation. Maybe she was worried how he would react or that this would not turn out the way she hoped or wanted. Alex knew what happened next was everything to her.
“I forgive you,” he said softly, before she could say anything, and Hazel immediately burst into tears.
Alex stood and went to a cupboard, took a box of tissues out and placed them on the counter top in front of her. In quick repetition Hazel pulled five or six tissues out of the box and held them to her face as she sobbed into them. Alex watched her cry, desperate to hold her while the moment passed, but sensing that this was a moment that she needed to have, he let it play out until she dabbed at her eyes and then blew her nose. She screwed up the tissues and pulled out a couple of fresh ones, which she used to dry her eyes. Crumpling all the tissues together as she stood up and threw them in the bin.
She looked at him through tear reddened eyes.
“Thank you,” she said as she sat back down on the stool.
“I mean it, Hazel, I mean it. I don’t know what has actually happened between us, but I love you and I always will; to forgive you is easy because I have never stopped loving you, but understanding all this …” He paused and looked up at her and she could see the confusion in his eyes. “… well, that might take me a little longer.”
She nodded slowly and looked down again, Alex thought that she was going to start crying again but instead she seemed to recover. She took a deep breath and looked up at him.
“I don’t know, Alex; I don’t know what happened either. One minute I’m the happiest that I have ever been with you, with my life and with what we had together and the next I’ve come apart and everything seemed wrong. The only thing I had, the thing that mattered to me was l
oving you. You and I together, our relationship was the only thing I had left and even then, even knowing that and hanging on to it, even then I wanted to drive you away.”
She held her hands up as he began to talk.
“No, I need to get this all out, lay it out and clear it up. I said I was sorry, and I am. I love you, Alex, and that hasn’t changed. It sounds stupid I know, it’s stupid, I know that,” she laughed without humor. “I love you, but I’ve hurt you so much. I know I sound like an idiot, but loving you is the one thing keeping me sane. What’s completely insane is that I couldn’t talk to you about all of this, about how I felt. I loved you so much then and I still do but I wanted to hurt you. I don’t know why, and it wasn’t even a conscious thing. I wanted to argue with you, all the time. But I wanted you to shout and scream at me as well.”
“I would never do that, Hazel.”
“I know that, and that probably made me angrier. I can’t explain it, but for what I did to you, to us, I’m so, so sorry.”
Alex smiled sadly, but with a growing sense of happiness.
“I accept that, unreservedly.”
“Thank you.” she mouthed almost silently as her eyes reddened again.
“So, where to now, where do we go from here?”
Hazel looked down again.
“That’s up to you,” she said. “I want to come back; I want us to be together again. But it’s up to you.”
Inside, his happiness was soaring to hear the words he had hoped for, but he spoke softly and calmly.
“And I want you back, Hazel, it’s all I want, for us to be together.”
She was crying softly again and this time he stood and wrapped his arms around her.
“But I’m a little worried,” he said quietly, “quite a lot actually.”
“That I’ll do it again?” she guessed.
He nodded, and she pulled back a little so she could look into his eyes.
She shook her head, “Never, ever again, Alex. Never, I will never hurt you again, I promise you.”
Satisfied, he smiled again and hugged her closer before asking.
“When?”
“Tomorrow, there’s no reason why it couldn’t be tonight but it’s getting late now, and I owe it to Nicholas to tell him to his face.”
“I could come with you, now this evening?”
She looked up and brushed her hand against his face.
“That might cause problems, I want the opportunity to talk with him, he’ll understand, I’m sure but we could be talking for a while. I don’t want to go in and tell him and walk out again that wouldn’t be fair.”
“And what if he tries to talk you out of leaving him?”
“He will, I’m sure, that’s why he and I need to talk this through, so he understands, or at least I can try to make him understand.”
“Could he succeed, in talking you around?”
Hazel shook her head, “No, Alex, no he couldn’t. This is going to sound stupid as well …” She laughed, “… I may as well get all the stupid things I’ve done out into the open now. When I talk about it, talking to you now, I can’t believe what a fool I’ve been, I hardly understand it myself but, even at the beginning I knew that he and I wouldn’t last and that I would return to you.
“Pretentious of me, I know, expecting you to take me back, thinking I could walk back into your life and you would accept it. But I knew it from the start and have been preparing for this from the start. So, no, I’m ready for this conversation with Nicholas and ready for what he might say. You may not agree but I haven’t done the right thing to him either.”
Alex didn’t agree but didn’t want to provoke an argument, so he let it pass and returned to his own concerns.
“You’re sure you don’t want me to come with you? I could wait outside, all night if I had to.” He smiled.
She smiled but shook her head as she put her hand on his arm.
“That would put pressure on me to hurry it up. It’s going to be a cold night out there, I can’t expect you to sit there all night waiting for me. So, thank you but no. I’ll go and speak to Nicholas, tell him that it’s over, and I’ll be back in the morning.”
He didn’t want to let her go at all, certainly not to return to her now ex-lover’s house and break up with him. How would he take it? He was rich and had a reputation for getting, and keeping, what he wanted. Hazel was a strong-willed woman, but Alex didn’t trust Nicholas Rowe one bit, but now he didn’t want to argue with her, that was the last thing that he wanted to do. He knew her enough to understand her need to do this in her own way and in her own time. Alex was grateful that it had come to this. It felt as though a cloud was passing him by—his own nightmare was over. He would have Hazel back and they would be together again.
They sat close together and talked for an hour about stupid, unimportant, mundane things: Alex’s neighbors and Moth the cat, the paper boy, Frankie Morris, from a few streets away who needed a trip to the emergency room after coming off his bike and breaking his arm.
They spoke about anything and everything to try to take away the thought of her impending departure. To put off the inevitable moment and bring some normalcy back to their lives.
But whatever they spoke about did not mask the fact that Hazel would soon have to leave and go back to her lover. Even if he was now an ex, and she was only going to tell him that their relationship was well and truly over.
Whichever way Alex considered the situation, he knew that it was weird and a bit disconcerting and he couldn’t quite shake the feeling that he was experiencing a hollow victory. He didn’t consider that this would finally be over until she was back in their house, and he was sure she was happy with that decision.
He had never considered Hazel as his in a possessive way, as his wife or his partner or his lover. She was her own person and had her own life to lead, but he wanted, with all of his being, to be a part of it and that she wanted what he wanted, for them to be together. When they first met and before they got together as a couple, he had first considered her a friend, which was unusual for Alex. To take to someone so quickly and especially a girl. Although outwardly confident, certainly good-looking, and friendly, Alex always found it difficult to talk to girls. He managed the conversation all right, at a basic level, but inside he was in turmoil, continually critiquing himself.
You idiot what did you say that for, what does she mean by that? Should I ask her to the dance? Is she laughing at me or with me?
His attempts through his teens and early twenties to talk to girls were never straightforward. He seemed to sabotage himself with his doubts and he often despaired that he would never be able to have a real conversation with the opposite sex and was destined to a life of loneliness. Through all his doubt, he never once considered that maybe the girl was having the same conversation with herself and that they were both as hopeless as each other, a maelstrom of juvenile doubt and hormone driven stupidity.
Until Hazel.
With her he talked. They talked together for hours about his ideas, about her ideas. About what he wanted to do, and equally, what she wanted to do. That’s how it started. A chance word, a smile leading them to talk, leading to a new-found confidence and friendship which in small steps, developed into a relationship before either of them realized what was happening. He’d heard people talk about partners who were the “center of their lives”, only for them to split up months later. Alex and Hazel developed on such a slow burn that it surprised both them and their friends. What had developed was deeper than they could have imagined and even after infidelity, they were still devoted to each other.
Had she never returned to him, if they weren’t having this conversation he probably would have got over it, in time. He might have even met someone else; maybe, maybe not. Whatever may have happened he knew that his life would be a lot less if Hazel wasn’t with him. Some part of him would be missing and unrecoverable. A part of him unresolved. He had felt that empty space and had hated it complet
ely. Now he felt himself refilling, recovering an inner calm that he had always felt when Hazel was around. It was like letting go of a big breath that he had held fearing what letting it go might cause.
She had only been gone for a few weeks, but he now knew that his life would always be better with her in it.
Finally, she looked up at the café clock on the kitchen wall; she gathered her cell and car keys and stood.
“I need to go,” she said softly.
He nodded and stood up from the stool and slowly walked to the front door.
The porch light was still on from her arrival and as he opened the door she silently stepped through and stood on the step.
Hazel turned and smiled at him, she shivered and wished that she had put on the coat she kept in the back of her Volvo, but she hadn’t thought about getting it out. The heating was good, and the car would warm up quickly once she got in.
“Don’t come out, it’s cold, you’re sniffling enough as it is,” she said and placed her free hand against his chest.
He stopped and opened his mouth to argue but before he could, she placed her warm fingers on his lips. Smiling, he nodded before taking her hand and kissing the tips of the fingers.
Still facing him she stepped down to the lower step and lightly brushed his cheek with her fingers as she stepped back again. Pursing her lips, Hazel blew him a kiss as she turned and walked toward her car, which she had parked on the street.
Alex waited and watched as she stepped onto the driveway and walked toward the road. Belatedly he raised his hand to his mouth and blew her a kiss which she didn’t see, and he stepped back inside closing the door behind him as she reached the corner.
He knew it wouldn’t take long, a minute maybe a little longer, for Hazel to get in the car and start it up, on cold days she waited for the heater to warm up before she drove off, but he was surprised when he went to turn off the porch light eight minutes later to see Hazel’s car still parked behind the shrubs, the headlight partially visible. He watched through the curtained window to the side of the door and waited another minute, expecting, with some degree of excitement, to see her walk back toward the house with some story of a mechanical problem.