Austen Box Set

by Hart, Staci

  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.

  I followed my sisters out in silence, the wall between us impenetrable.

  There was nothing else I could say, and frustration mingled with my anger over the fact. We should have been hanging on to each other for this. I should have been there yesterday. I should have done a lot of things, but I didn't, and here we were, the three of us riding to the cemetery like silent islands, disconnected.

  The funeral director met our cab and escorted us to the plot. Everything was covered in snow except the dark slash of his grave, dug just next to my mother's. Her name called to me from the marble slab, topped with flowers to match the ones on Dad's coffin. It rested on a platform with a lowering mechanism, surrounded by plastic turf, and as we approached, I heard music playing softly from somewhere, Chopin's Nocturnes.

  We were given single flowers and we filed to the coffin to lay them on the glossy surface. First Sadie, hand pressed to her lips and shoulders shaking gently. Then Sophie, her tears falling silently, streaking her cheeks. And finally me, my heart twisted and aching in my chest. I set my flower next to my sisters' before pressing my palm to the dark wood, imagining him on the other side, hearing him whisper to me to let him go. But I didn't know how, didn't know if I could.

  I didn't want to step away. If the seconds had ticked past slowly before, when he was still alive, the moments we were in were the final, the last, and they stretched on endlessly. It was very nearly done; when I left his side, he would be gone forever. I wanted to scream, to cry, to fight for him. But there was nothing left to fight for, because he had left us with an empty vessel, lying on a satin pillow in a box we would place in the ground and cover with earth. It was insane, a ridiculous, ludicrous tradition, meaningless because it wouldn't help us, and he didn't care anymore what happened to him. We would never move on, we would never forget, and we would never forgive the universe or God or ourselves for the loss.

  But there was nothing left to be done. So I said goodbye, sent my heart out of myself, into the air, and I stepped back, not taking my eyes off the coffin as I took my place next to my sisters.

  Our eyes were all forward, and no words were spoken, the gentle piano music slipping over us as the coffin began to lower slowly, inching down silently, and my tears fell as he disappeared into the earth, taking my soul with him.

  Sophie sobbed, a strangled sound, her body wavering just before her knees gave out. I caught her, held her as she clung to me, her eyes on the hole in the ground, her body wracking with sob after sob, but after a moment, she pushed me away, shaking her head. She didn't want my comfort, not even now, and I took my place by her side again, wounded and alone.

  We stood at the edge looking down, and I felt the loss, felt the quiet absence of him acutely, as if my heart had been waiting for the moment to break entirely. I didn't know how long we waited here, but with the nod of the director, the workers came, rolling up the turf, disassembling the machine that had placed him where he'd rest forever. None of us seemed to be willing or able to move as Chopin played on and the small bulldozer pulled up. The director looked to me for approval, and I gave it to him with the smallest of nods.

  We stepped back as the machine approached with a load of dirt, tipping its maw, the earth falling down to hit the lid of the coffin with a hollow thump. My sisters jumped from the shock of the noise, Sadie reaching for Sophie, Sophie clutching Sadie, and me, separate, solitary.

  It was all I could take. But I endured it through the end, which was really no end, only the limit of what we could take. We turned our backs on the gravesite and walked away to the sounds of a roaring machine on the wings of Chopin, through the winding path of the cemetery to the street, where I hailed a cab.

  The girls slipped inside, but I waited there on the curb, my body shaking with mounting hysteria. The mask was gone, the support that had barely been holding me up fallen, leaving me exposed.

  "You're leaving us again," Sophie said, the plea rough, thorny and coarse.

  "I'll be home later." I didn't wait for an answer before closing the door.

  She trained her eyes forward, her jaw set and lips flat as the cab pulled away. But nothing I could say would absolve me. I needed to think, needed to get away, needed to understand. I had nothing left to give to her or to anyone.

  I was in full uniform, and the eyes of passersby followed me, marking me, judging my behavior, but I couldn't stop moving. I was lost, aimless, frantically digging through my thoughts for the bottom, but there was no bottom, no end.

  I had lost everything.

  And I needed to know why.

  * * *

  Elliot

  The doorbell rang in the quiet house — everyone was gone, busy at work or shopping, and the kids in school, leaving me alo
ne, which was where I wanted to be.

  The day had been spent transferring my grief onto paper, trying not to think about Rick or Sophie or Wade, trying not to think about the cemetery and smell of wet earth. And when the doorbell rang, when the sound marred the silence, I should have known who it would be.

  And yet, beyond all reason, I was surprised.

  Wade stood on the stoop in his uniform again, his face alive and eyes on fire, and I stood in the doorway, frozen to the spot with no idea which version of him I would get.

  "Is everything all right?" I asked quietly, not knowing what else to say.

  "I need to know why," he said, something on the edge of his voice that made me feel like I was wrong, as if he were accusing me of something.

  I had no idea what he meant. "Why what?"

  "Why didn't you choose me?"

  I blinked, pulling away from him in shock. "Wade, I would have always chosen you—"

  "But you didn't. You didn't choose me, and I want to know why."

  "You know why," I offered gently. He was wild, distraught; there would be no reasoning with him.

  He shook his head. "Why didn't you come with me? Why didn't you leave your family? If you had only come with me, everything would have been okay."

  "Please, come inside—" I said, but he spoke over me, his eyes wild.

  "I need to know why you're still here. Why did you have to be here through this? I can't … I don't …." His chest heaved, and I said nothing as my heart broke again for the thousandth time, the porcelain pieces so small that I didn't know how I could keep putting it back together. "Why don't you want me?" he asked in agony, voice sharp. "For seven years I've perfected this mask, pretended to forget, pretended to survive, and now everything's ruined. I'm ruined. All I ever wanted was you, but after I came to you, you showed up to the funeral with him. Every time I wanted to speak, he was there. So tell me, why did you choose Jack?"

  Anger filled me like creeping smoke, filling me up, my face and my heart on fire. "No."

  He blinked at me. "What do you mean, no?" he spat. "You can't even answer—"

  "Stop it, right now." The words were low, the warning clear. "You don't get to do this."

  "You owe me an answer—"

  "I owe you nothing," I shot at him, my back straight and breath shallow. "You did this to us, Wade. You put us here, but you're asking me why? When I've given you everything I have, you ask me why? Three days, and I heard nothing from you, and now you come here and accuse me of being the ruiner? I have questions of my own. Why don't you tell me? Why didn't you answer my letters? Why didn't you give me more time? Why have you treated me the way you have since you've been back, through everything with your dad?"

  He said nothing, the shock written on his face at my anger, and I realized he didn't think I'd fight back. He'd expected me to bear his pain, shooting me down with his words. No more.

  My heart hardened at the thought, forged by my pain at remembering what he'd done, how he'd hurt me. "Why did you come here that night, Wade? Why did you take without giving? And why do you presume to know what I feel, what I think? No one cares to ever ask me anything, you all assume and push and take until there's nothing left." I shook my head at him, finished being a rubber band for him to stretch. I'd finally snapped, and clarity found me with the sting. "I can't keep doing this with you. It's killing me, Wade. You're killing me."

  He shook his head. "You don't understand. You never understood."

  "I understand just fine, and I'm not participating in it anymore. I'll love you forever, but that won't stop me from telling you that I'm through. It won't stop me from telling you that I don't know the man who would do what you've done. I refuse to be hurt by you again." I stepped back into the doorway with my heart a jackhammer, and he panicked, eyes flying wide, stopping the door with his palm.

  "Just tell me why," he begged.

  "You first."

  But he said nothing, his eyes searching mine as if he'd find courage there. In the end, there was none, only the war behind those eyes I loved so much.

  I swallowed hard and nodded. "That's what I thought. Goodbye, Wade," I said gently and moved back, leaving him, closing the door to the vision of him standing there in the cold in his uniform, strong and weak, broken and begging me once again to acquiesce without saying a single word.

  But I'd already bent as far as I could go.

  Displacement

  Displaced by the weight,

  The excess of what we believed

  Spilling over curling edges,

  Kissing the floor sweetly

  As it crawls away,

  Lost to the cracks,

  And gone.

  -M. White

  Wade

  I stood there on her step, staring at the door in the freezing cold, the madness that had consumed me ebbing as the wall I'd built so carefully crumbled, falling to the ground.

  Her questions had hit me in a burst of explosions, each one ripping me apart a little bit more. She was right — I couldn't answer her. I couldn't give her any answers because I was broken. I couldn't be honest because the truth hurt too much to speak. I'd piled up that truth like sandbags and had been hiding behind them for protection.

  I'd given her nothing, but expected her to give me everything. But she didn't owe me a thing, and I owed her everything.

  I turned slowly and walked down the stairs, my jagged thoughts needling me from the inside.

  The whys tormented me, all the whys I'd pointed at everyone else like weapons, holding them in front of me for protection when I should have turned the barbs back on myself.

  Why had I done this to her? Why did I keep hurting her when all I wanted was to love her?

  Why was I so broken? Why couldn't I do the right thing?

  Why couldn't I be who she deserves?

  The whys had been on me the whole time.

  The truth of the circumstance was a relief and a regret. I'd pushed her to this, forced her to fight, backed her into a corner. All she'd ever done to deserve it was give me everything without condition, without expectation.

  I chased the fleeting thought of confessing to Dad, realizing too late that he was gone.

  The pain in my chest was unbearable, the loss so complete.

  There was nowhere to go but home.

  The blocks passed under my feet in a haze until I was standing on the stoop with my hands shaking as I tried to unlock the door. When I walked in the door, I found Ben waiting for me in the living room. His jaw was set and his eyes narrowed.

  I kept walking, passing the entrance to the room, not ready to talk. I didn't know that I'd ever be ready.

  "Wade," he called after me, his voice firm.

  "Not now," I answered as I reached the stairs.

  "Stop."

  The command gave me pause, and I turned to face him, exhausted and drained. "What do you want from me?"

  "Just to talk for a minute."

  I eyed him, and he put his hands up in surrender.

  "I'm not going to yell at you."

  I relaxed only by a degree.

  "But I might say some stuff you don't want to hear." He didn't wait for me to respond, just gestured for me to follow as he headed for the kitchen. "Come on. You need a drink."

  I watched his back for a second before following him, still wary.

  "Sit," he ordered, and I did, at the island bar. He poured us each a neat whiskey and handed mine over, which I took gratefully, sagging into the counter, propped up by my elbows.

  I took a sip, and so did he, setting his drink on the surface. Neither of us spoke for a long moment.

  He was the only safe place I had left. So I told him the truth.

  "I was wrong."

  Ben only watched me, letting me breathe.

  My eyes were on the amber whiskey. "All this time, it's been me. I've hurt everyone I love with my own words, with my own hands."

  "Elliot?"

  I nodded. "I went there today. I needed someo
ne to blame, and I chose her. I wanted to blame her for everything: Dad, my life, us." I ran a hand over my mouth, ashamed. "What is wrong with me? Why do I destroy the things I love?"

  "Because you don't know how to give or receive love anymore. You've been this way as long as I've known you."

  I took a drink, the heat burning a trail down my chest.

  "War never healed anyone, especially not you."

  I shook my head, still unable to meet his eyes. "I don't know who I am anymore, Ben. Do you?"

  He took a long, heavy breath and let it out. "Sometimes I do and sometimes I don't, though the longer we've been away from the war, the more often I feel like myself. But we can't just shake off what we've seen, what we've done, what we've survived. It's a part of who we are now."

  I swallowed, my voice low and shaky. "I don't want to feel like this anymore."

  "Then you've got to change."

  "I don't know how."

  "I do."

  I picked up my drink to take a sip. "Please, enlighten me."

  "You've got to own up. You've got to be honest with yourself and with the people you love. You've got to apologize and make amends." He shook his head. "You're so busted up inside, and still you keep smashing the bits with a bat as penance. To make yourself pay over and over again when all you need is forgiveness. Forgiveness that they'll give you, if you'll only ask for it."

  "I don't deserve their forgiveness."

  "Your sisters will forgive you. They love you, and they need you, especially right now."

  "And Elliot?"

  His eyes were sad. "There's only one way to find out. And if you don't feel like you deserve her forgiveness, then maybe you should think about how you can earn it."

  I considered that as I stared at the whiskey, looking for answers. "For so long, I've just compartmentalized everything. It was the only way I could survive her, survive deployments. You know how it is. You just pack everything away and focus on the task at hand. And since I've been here, I haven't been able to. I can't pack it away because the task at hand is the thing itself. There's nowhere to hide from it. Not from Dad. Not from Elliot. And all of my feelings were displaced. Today I put it all on her, and part of me, a big part of me, expected her to take it. To look at me with those eyes of hers like it was her fault."