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Stranger is the Sail Ch. 01

By: SirThopas



I'm tempted to slap the "novella" label on this one, but it's the most LW-type story I've written in some time, so what the hell.

Tuesday, March 15

RACHEL JOHNS

The snow melted early this year. That's a nice surprise.

Winter isn't quite done with us yet. I'm sure of that. She's always got her secret little plans, just like any of us. Schemes and wishes and a hoarder's dreams, carefully made and kept. Every one. Like a bunch of chubby, helpless children made with gentle love. And what can we do but keep them safe and help them to grow?

Winter especially likes to play the trickster. Her plans are always a little more cunning, and just a little bit meaner, than anybody else's. Even today, with the sun calling down and fresh birdsong floating from every tree, there's a whispered chilly breeze sliding across every willing surface. It feels like a warning. Like there's something more to come.

Still, it's nice to be seeing green at all, this far ahead of April's fabled showers. It lifts the soul right up, and makes you forget the creaking in your joints. Makes you feel energized, almost like you've been exercising.

Ben disagrees with me. But then he would. That man sees the world without a lick of poetry. Can't carry a tune, either, so there you go. He worries that this early thaw will be bad for crops. Well, maybe. It might indicate a hot, dry summer or, conversely, a late frost might still be in the works. But that doesn't matter much to me, and I can't make myself take it seriously. After all, no matter what the weather does or doesn't do, men around here always find some way that it's going to be bad for crops. If they ever found a time when they couldn't talk about that, I'm not sure they'd have anything to talk about at all.

And why should we care? We haven't been farmers in...oh, twenty years, now. Ben can talk and worry until his heart stops; it just doesn't affect us anymore.

Twenty years. Wow. Has it really been that long? Twenty-one summers since Kevin moved away, and left us on our own...and one more year for us to admit to the obvious.

That was a hard time, though. He was my baby boy. My youngest child. You know, it takes a while for a woman to learn how to find value in an empty nest. A lot longer than it takes a man. And maybe it takes her a while to find value in herself, too, when her babies have all gone. Maybe she never really recovers.

And Kevin leaving was doubly hard. It forced us off the farm. Even then, a generation ago, we were too old to manage everything by ourselves. Without Kevin and Michael around to help, it was just too much of too much.

I didn't really mind leaving. I still don't. Oh, I miss the scenery, the summer's green smells, and the eternal, peaceful calm, but I'm glad to be rid of all the attendant work. And I'm doubly glad to be rid of the damn animals. Having three males around was animal enough for this woman, thank you. Everything else just seemed like punishment.

Ben minded, though. He still mourns the loss. He was always so proud of that land. Almost like it was another child. His first-born. The apple of his eye. And decades later, enough time for our Michael to have married and raised a child in, he still doesn't know what to do with himself. He looks for excuses to work, or for other farmers to talk to about weather. Poor man. He's a wrinkley old orphan at sea, landless and lost and terribly unimpressed. All he knows, all that he values, is dirt. Dirt that he can stand on. Dirt that he can plant in. Dirt that he can live off of. And I'd give it him back, if I could. Even if it meant more goddamn cows.

I can't give it back, of course. We're stuck here. Nothing to say about it. Castlewood's a nice place to end things in, though, if ending things is what you've gotta do. It's not so small that there aren't children about, which is nice, but yet it's not so big that folks like us start to feel overwhelmed. Heck, we'd been driving in on weekends for years, so we were unofficial residents already.

Castlewood was always our one-stop for church and groceries. The steak house is the only real restaurant for miles. And of course Kevin and Michael went to school here. Once they got their cars, they were here all the time. I imagine that a great deal more of their happiest teenage moments took place in Castlewood than out on the farm. That's how they knew that they had to go.

Ben used to drive in to meet his friends at the bar, too, when he was still drinking. But that was before even the boys' time. They never had to see that side of him, thank god. He got it from his father. It killed that old bastard not so long after our wedding. Hurt Ben some, too. It took a little of his youth from of him, weakened him a bit. But he reigned it in of his own accord, and took control for no reason other than that it was the right thing to do. I'm proud of him for that.

Yeah, we've changed over the years. But the town sure hasn't. One church, one bar, one school, and one stop sign. That's Castlewood, the very last of the places in my life that I will call home.

I may not miss the farm like Ben does, but I do like sitting out here on the back deck with my coffee each morning. It faces away from the town and we're on the outskirts, as it were, so it feels like I'm out here all alone. Alone, but significant. Like back on the farm. Like at church. And that's what I'm up to, now. Sipping on the black, watching that breeze tickle the taller grasses. The only thing that gives my little illusion away is that damn stop sign.

Don't even know why it's out there. Nobody ever pays it any mind. Why would they? The amount of traffic we get in Castlewood on any given week is probably about the same as your average dead end alley. There are only a handful of people who visit, and most of those are transported residents or their spouses. The two lane that intersects the road into town I honestly don't know anything about. Comes from nowhere, and goes there again. I hardly ever see a car go by while I'm out here.

You speak of such things, though, and they do arrive. Adrian Burke's silver LaCrosse is cresting the hill on the other side of that stop sign right this minute, making its way into town. I cradle my coffee cup and watch him come.

Adrians a nice guy. Didn't grow up here, but his wife did. Laura Burke was a Dole, born and raised, and a pretty one at that. Her parents are good people, locals with a history. Well-liked and well-respected. Laura, too. She was a very popular girl. Beautiful, really. When she went off to college a lot of the local boys took it pretty hard. You would have laughed to see them. For weeks after she'd moved away, they just hung around their homes like sulky children. Without their mischief to keep it talking, the town spent a quiet June. I think even the pastor and sheriff were getting antsy for them to start misbehaving again, by the end of it.

I shouldn't pick on the boys that way, though. It wasn't just them. Some of the older fellows pouted a bit, too. They never really said anything. Just sat around in groups and, whenever their wives walked by, complained about the lack of rain. It was raining just fine, and we all knew what was really going on. Men.

Adrians the right one for her, though, and I'm glad they found each other.

You can tell these kinds of things. They just fit. She found him in college, and that was that. They live in Des Moines, now, which is a good three hours drive from here, but they do come visit. Usually, they come by on holidays...don't think Adrian has much family of his own...and sometimes on the weekend. Today's a Tuesday, though. I can't figure why they'd be showing up on a Tuesday.

They're really cruising, too. Must be doing ninety, or more. That's real odd. Don't know if I've ever seen either one of them speed, even once. Wow. I don't even think they're going to slow for the intersection.

Oh, geez. Here I am holding my breath. Silly woman...

No. Maybe I'm a silly woman, but I'm worried. Something has to be very wrong.

See, most people around here ignore that sign. They treat it like a landmark, or a welcome mat, and nothing else. But Adrian Burke always, always brakes for it. Doesn't matter that you can see for miles when you crest that hill, or that there's never anybody else on the road. He always slows. Hell, in the winter he stops entirely. A city boy thing, he likes to say. Rob Dunham jokes about it. "You can always tell when Adrian's driving," he says, "because he yields to oncoming breezes."

Today he's looking to blow right through that intersection. Like the Devil Himself is on his heels.

Is that a truck on the two-way, too? Talk about a rar-

Jesus Christ, that semi! It's gonna-

Adrian!

ADRIAN!

J.B. MATTHEWS

The heart concedes a beat, and I kick at the brake. Makes no difference. I never had a chance at stopping. A truck this big just doesn't slow too easy.

I get jerked hard against the seat belt and it hurts, but only a little. I'm not the one in real danger, here. It's them, in the LaCrosse.

The little silver sedan folds and collapses around my grill, looking for all the world like a paper toy. The sound is sickeningly concussive. I keep to the brakes, but it takes us god knows how many feet to finally come to a stop. I can't breathe. I can only stare.

The LaCrosse is destroyed. My hands are shaking. Move, I tell myself. Move. But I can't make myself undo the seat belt. Or open the door. Move.

I shouldn't even be here. I shouldn't be anywhere near this place. I'm supposed to have reached some wind turbine field... forty minutes ago, now. Got lost on the last run before a four day break.

This is supposed to be my weekend with the kids, too, and Makayla says if I have to cancel one more time I might as well stop coming altogether. I don't set my goddamn schedule. She knows that. And all I want out of this life is that little bit of time with my children. To be a part of their growing up. To know them, and to be known.

But nobody gives two shits about me. Not Makayla, not her new husband, and not the courts. She's been so damn angry ever since the divorce, she's likely to take the kids to her mother's for the weekend just to spite me. Probably leave that jackass of hers to break the news. The kids call him Dad sometimes. Doesn't that just break your heart? My children call him Dad.

I'm hurried and I'm desperate, but I'm also a careful guy, so I wasn't speeding. At least I can say that.

In fact, I was cruising down the road and trying to guess at the name of the small town to my right when the LaCrosse showed up out of nowhere, right in my face. No time to react. I hit it hard.

My fingers finally find the release on the seat belt. I can't see into the demolished sedan, but flecks of dark, foreboding blood have splattered out as far as the crumpled hood. The silence hits me. The lack of screams, or cries for help.

Oh my God I just killed someone.

BEN JOHNS

Basement's dusty and humid. Cluttered, too.

We've got two decades worth of crap down here. Can't seem to talk that woman into throwing anything away. And on the rare occasion that she does agree to tossing something, I end up finding some quiet excuse to keep it. If she notices, she doesn't say a word. There are piles upon piles of it down here, though, providing good living to the insects. Most of it is genuinely worth keeping. Honest. But it does raise a stink.

Some people would disagree, or call us hoarders or whatever. But there's always a reason to hold on. Michael's old comic books, Kevin's tricycle. The tent we bought for that trip to Wyoming...the one that broke the first night out. Never even used it again after that, but here it is.

These things are useless things. These things are my life.

I'm actually looking for the old vacuum, though, right now. The new one's making a noise, and the brush roll ain't spinning. Thought I might be able to use the old one to try and fix it. They're not the same model, but it is the same company. At least it'll give me a purpose for the afternoon. Something to do with myself.

But Rachel's scream gives a purpose of its own.

I come running, such as I can, but she's just standing on the porch with coffee all over her jeans and her hands over her mouth. I reach out, worried she might be burnt.

And then I see the wreck.

Jesus Christ. Is that Adrian and Laura's LaCrosse? It's ruined. Been t-boned almost out of existence.

Are they in there?

Oh, God. Are they dead?

The door to the cab of the truck opens, and a scraggly middle aged man falls out. Lands on his hands and knees, looks disoriented. Could be he's hurt, or just scared. He vomits all over concrete, then smears it with his hands as he struggles to stand. Don't people sometimes vomit after a head injury? Seems like I remember reading something about that.

I look over at Rachel. She's just shaking, eyes wide. Probably in shock. "Go call for help," I tell her. "I'll see how bad it is." She doesn't move, so I grab her by the arm and turn her around towards the house. "Go!" I yell, and push, hoping that if I'm forceful enough it'll reach her. It works; she goes sprinting past the screen and towards the phone. I hope she didn't get burned by that coffee.

It's a good distance to the accident, and I'm an old man. By the time I get there, the truck driver is crouched over the LaCrosse with his hands reaching inside the wreckage. He looks stricken. Some of his vomit is trapped in his beard, and there's blood on his forearms. I don't think it's his blood. He looks up at me with horrified guilt.

"I'm so sorry," he says, and I doubt if anybody's ever said anything more honest in the history of this world.

"Are they alive?"

"It's just one guy," he says. "I...I think he is."

I look over his shoulder and see Adrian Burke. The air goes out of me. He's dead. Or dying. Has to be. His entire head is wrong. Just...wrong, like maybe his skull's been ruined. Eyes are wide open but not moving, probably not seeing a thing. The left one is clouded deep crimson red, and rapidly swelling. His face is littered with oozing cuts from the glass. Looks okay below the shoulders, but who can tell? He starts shaking spastically, and the truck driver's hands slip as he tries to hold him still. Adrian's lips are moving, but I don't think he's trying to talk. Looks more like a seizure of some sort.

There's so much blood. Always used to see a lot of that out on the farm, but its different when it's an animal. You get to where you don't hardly see that. But this is a man, a good man, and he's dying right in front of me.

"Adrian," I say, and I wish that I hadn't. It doesn't help anything...just makes it more true.

He starts shaking harder, low guttural sounds coming out of him, and the truck driver tries to find an angle that will let him both restrain and support. I move in next to him, close as I can. Gently, like birthing a calf, I take Adrian's broken head into my hands. I don't know what else to do, except apply the softest amount of pressure possible and hope that I can keep Adrian's fractured skull together until help arrives.

"I'm so sorry," the truck driver says again. And what do you say to that?

RACHEL JOHNS

I could just slap myself. Stupid, stupid woman!

Everybody wants to believe that they will something other than useless in the event of an emergency. But Ben had to scream at me to get me moving, and then I stood around useless while the ambulance rushed in from the county hospital and the men kept Adrian still. Worse, it isn't until the paramedics had shown up and managed to get Adrian into the ambulance that I notice half the town standing around gawking at us.

I look at them looking at me, and that's when it finally occurs to me that Bill and Amanda Dole probably haven't been told.

"Ben," I whisper, "they're not here. I don't think they know."

And I may not be thinking clearly, but he is.

He hurries off without another word, and twenty minutes later the Doles are in a car and on their way out of town. Bill's driving and Amanda's on her cell phone, talking animatedly to someone. You've never seen paler, more fearful faces. I tell them to call me when they know more. Amanda says she will. I'm already making plans in my head to come out and join them.

Bill pauses to ask Ben a question about the route, and Amanda leans out of her window a bit to give me a hug. She's crying. But then who isn't?

The townsfolk are gossiping. They're quiet, respectful and mournful, but we're all so used to calm. People like us aren't equipped to understand these things, without talking. Rob Dunham's voice sails over my way.

"What on earth was Adrian doing in town on a Tuesday?" he asks. "And where the heck is Laura?"

AMANDA DOLE

It took us three hours to get to the hospital. Three silent, impossibly-built hours that went by at half speed and stretched out like the highway we rode on.

So can someone tell me how in God's name Bill and I still managed to get there before the trauma helicopter?

When the lady on the phone from Hamlin County Hospital told me that Adrian was getting airlifted to Mercy in Des Moines, I figured that he would for sure be there within the hour. I mean...what's the point of airlifting if it doesn't reduce the travel time? Yet here we are, almost four hours since Bill Johns first hammered on our door, and he's still listed as "in transit."

I'm told that, when he does arrive, he'll be delivered directly to the trauma center and taken immediately into surgery. The overweight and bored-looking bitch (well, that's what she is) at the nurse's station won't divulge any more than that, nor will she explain to me why they can't seem to get him there any faster.

Well, she can stonewall me, but she can't stop me from pushing. "Do you know exactly what his injuries are?" I ask for the third time. "Is he even going to make it to the hospital? Can't they operate on him during the flight?" She gives me the kind of look that teachers save for particularly troublesome students and sighs. I glare back, give her a look only another woman could hope to read, and think 'Listen, lady, this is my family we're talking about. I stand before you, desperate and old, with sweat stains growing under my arms and breasts. I'm begging for any morsel. I'm a thief of small details. That's what I am to you.'

"Ma'am, I assure you," she says, no longer attempting patience or concern, "both the county hospital and the transporter are well equipped to care for a patient's immediate needs. Your son-"

"Son," I say again. "My daughter's husband."

"...is being given the best possible care, and that includes taking our time to make sure we do things correctly. You'll know more about his injuries as soon as we know more about his injuries." She purses her lips, turns, and tries to look busy.

"Well, I don't see how doing things correctly can involve nobody knowing any goddamn information!" I snap. She clenches her jaw, but stubbornly continues looking busy.

I glance over my shoulder, through the glass door, to where my husband stands shading his eyes with his hands, scanning the sky. Oh, Bill. You're getting so skinny in your old age. Old men should be fat, like babies. And you should be sitting down.

I look back. "Listen," I say in softer tones, "can you please just-"

There's a rhythmic thudding sound behind me, and I spin around. Bill is hammering on the glass, pointing up into the sky. I hurry out, hopeful.

"There," he points.

"I don't see anything."

"It's right there. Here it comes."

"Bill..."

"Trust me," he cups his hands over his eyes again. "It's there."

I wrap my two chubby arms around his one, and lean my weary head on his shoulder.


Stranger is the Sail Ch. 01



I always trust you, my love.

BILL DOLE

The helicopter lands, but things do not rapidly improve. The men do get out with what I might call good speed, and they do remove a stretcher, but then everything seems to stop. They spend minute after incredible minute just standing there, hanging over it, not going inside. They don't rush to contact the doctors. They don't appear to worry about how long they're taking. They just move around the prostrated figure with a cold lizard's methodical slowness. On the other side of that door is a hospital full of equipment that can save lives, but these unaffected fools go nowhere at all.

Does that mean that it's already too late? Is Adrian dead? God, if he is...

Amanda is talking, and I realize that I'm not listening to her. But she's only trying Laura's cell phone again, leaving yet another message. I add that to the list of questions currently ruining my heart.

Where is my daughter at?

Amanda sighs as she hangs up the phone. "Still no answer," she says.

I keep my eyes on the paramedics. "Do you think her absence has something to do with Adrian showing up on a Tuesday, speeding like all get-out?"

"I don't know. I hope not." she looks over at me, and shakes her head. "But something has to be wrong."

Behind us, the nurse opens the door. Although I'm sure Amanda has more than gotten on her nerves, she has a look of soft pity to her now.

"I'm supposed to ask you if you'd like the chance to say goodbye," she says. I glance up at the helicopter, nod, and Amanda starts crying again.

Wednesday, March 16

RACHEL JOHNS

The truck driver is sitting with the Dole parents when I get to the waiting room. He looks awful. Sickly. Like he'd happily up and die, if it were as easy as all that. I'm not sure how much the Doles know about the accident, if they know that Adrian was at fault, but they don't appear to be shunning the scruffy man. That's good.

It's nine in the morning, and although the trauma center waiting room is divided up into a series of compartments that each have fold-out couches with pillows, I can see that none of these people slept last night. Amanda gets up, wobbly but smiling, and hugs me.

"Do you know anything?" I ask. "What have they said?"

Amanda nods, then swallows hard and looks to Bill. He stands up, weak with age, and shakes my hand. "Well," he says, "he's not dead. And if he does make it, then you probably saved his life. There ain't much for promises, right now. The surgeon came out and talked to us...when was that, Mandy?"

"Sometime after four."

"After four," he agrees. "They'd just finished up with him. He's got...let's see here...his skull is fractured right about here," he points to the space just under his nose, and then draws his finger around to the right side of his face. "It continues here," he traces just under his cheekbone on the other side up over the ear. "They put plates in to hold it together. The bone's cracked up quite a bit around the eye sockets, and his jaw's broke in two places. It'll be wired shut for a good while. His clavicle is broke as well, and he cracked a few ribs. Uh..." he looks to Amanda for help.

"The last thing they did was go in and take out all the glass," she says, more to him than to me, and he snaps his fingers.

"That's right. The glass. He had a lot of it buried in his face. They took it out and stitched him, though they say that he'll scar up quite a bit. They had to leave a big piece in his eye."

"The right eye?" I ask. "It looked terrible."

"Yeah, the right eye. It's gone."

I stare at him in horror, and he holds his hands up.

"I'm sorry. Not gone, gone. He just won't ever see out of it again, is what I mean to say. They're going to wait until the blood clears out and then try and remove the glass. If they can, and it doesn't shrink up or anything, it can at least stay in. Otherwise, if it does...shrink...he may need a prosthetic. They...they, uh...." He sighs. "I'm sorry. I'm very tired. We all are. It's hard to remember some of it."

"I understand," I say. "I understand completely. Has he...been awake at all?"

"No. No, and he won't be for some time. That's on purpose. I guess they have him in a...a chemical coma, is what it's called. They have him down until he's stabilized and healed some. They thought that, maybe in five or six days or so, they'll try bringing him out of it. If..." he trails off.

"They told us to be ready for the possibility that he may just pass on," Amanda said. "There was a great deal of swelling in his brain. They drilled a hole into his head to relieve it, but..."

I close my eyes at that. I had an uncle on my mother's side that was in a motorcycle accident. He survived, had some swelling in the brain, and was never the same afterward. His whole personality changed. It slowed him down. He struggled with simple motor skills and tasks, forgot things. It ruined his life.

Wait a minute. It occurs to me that something's wrong. Something's missing.

I open my eyes, look around the room, and frown.

Where's Laura?" I ask.

They share a look with each other, and Amanda sighs.

Thursday, March 17

BILL DOLE

Doctor says the boy is definitely gonna make it. Now is the time for prayers to be answered, I guess. Wish I'd known. I've got a list I've built up over the years, full of names and guilt and sadness. Oh, well. I guess I should just be glad to know that He can sometimes be counted on to come through.

Still no news on whether or not he'll keep that eye. And they tell us that brain damage should be looked at as a certainty, but they won't tell us how severe. Well, I won't hear it anyway. I choose to hope against hope that someday we'll be able to look back at this thing and wonder. Wonder at how lucky we were, how such a close call somehow had no lingering effects. Wonder at the Good Lord's giving hand.

He has answered my prayers and made me greedy. This beggar's list has a new addition: that my daughter's chosen husband should both live and live well. This favor I do ask of my God, from whom I've never sought anything more than good crop-growing weather. For whom I have lived and for whom I will someday die.

Amanda is sitting at the computer, checking her e-mail. She slouches toward the screen and squints. I ran up to the house yesterday and grabbed some essentials, but I forgot her reading glasses and my heart medicine. Stupid old man.

She goes through her messages slowly, methodically. I can't imagine who they're all from. Probably not worth reading. Yeah, a letter used to be harder to send, but it also used to be something special, too. Like a lot of things, I guess.

I dunno what's stranger to me...the fact that they felt the need to place a computer in the trauma center waiting room, or the endless cycle of traffic that revolves around it. You'd think people had enough to worry about, in here, without trying to wrestle with one of those damn things. But they filter by it with the unrushed adoration of believers before a blessed relic. Don't seem to get too much pleasure out of the experience...seems more like an obligation, or a twitch, than anything. But they always go back for more.

The dumb things are everywhere, these days. I guess they even use 'em out on the farms now, for all sorts of stuff. Use 'em to keep track of...ahh shit, who am I kidding? I don't know what they use 'em for. I just know that Wayne Youngblood's always bitching about his whenever he comes into town. Now there's a man who managed to keep up with the times. Almost my age, and yet he can speak the same strange language as the new guys. Knows all the right words, nods at all the right moments. Absolutely nothing passed him by. And I suppose I envy him for that. I'm a time capsule waiting to get buried, and I know it. I couldn't go back to farming now, even if I had the money to try. Obsolete is my only remaining state of being. I am in it.

Still, that computer Amanda keeps taking her turn on is going to end up being just as obsolete, and it'll get there much quicker than I did. So I guess we'll call it a draw.

I finally talked Rachel and J.B. into going home. Rachel was clearly exhausted, and J.B. needs to get away from here if he's ever going to get over all that guilt. It's eating him up, hollowing him out. He quit his job over it. Said he couldn't drive those things ever again. Don't know what he'll do. Anyway, he's got kids to see. I promised to keep him updated.

He really seems like a nice guy. In some ways, he reminds me of the Logan child. What was his name? I forget. That's a sad story, too. The kid was supposed to be helping his father work the fields...oh, must have been thirty years ago. He begged off it and went out with friends, instead. Dad's tractor flipped, and by the time they found him he was gone. Asphyxiated. Just couldn't breathe under all that weight, though I guess it took him a while to go. Probably died hoping his son wouldn't blame himself for it all. But he did.

The elder Logan passed on the last Sunday in May. His son, showing a patience not usually associated with youth, waited a year for the day to be right again. And then he hung himself from the closest tree.

Phillip. The boy's name was Phillip.

Terrible. Mrs. Logan is still around, but she's a quiet old bird. There was a daughter, too. Wonder whatever happened to her?

Amanda gasps. I turn to her. She waves and calls out for me. I don't have it in me to run, but I do hurry.

"What is it?" I ask. "I something wrong?"

"Look," she says, pointing at the screen. "This e-mail. It's from Laura!"

"What's it say?"

"Just read it."

I start reading, leaning over her shoulder, and the world gets a little bit colder.

Oh, Laura. Oh, no.

AMANDA DOLE

What has my daughter done?

We're going to be needed, Bill. Even more than I thought we would.

Adrian will need us the most. His whole life is blown apart. And Laura will want our support. Maybe our understanding, or at least forgiveness. And I'm not sure we have enough left in us to care for both of them.

Oh, Adrian. Is that why you ran? Why you came to us? Is there something you thought we could do? Some way we could undo what had already happened?

And what will we do? Tell me, Bill. What will Adrian do? What is even left to him, now? Here we were, hoping they could put him back together, and it turns out the biggest piece was yanked away before he even got into his car. My daughter took it right out of him.

Laura. What will you do, honey? Your decision-making record is not exactly looking stellar right now. Selfish, stupid girl!

Should I be mad at you? I am. Ashamed? Yes. Disappointed? Quite a bit.

But defensive? Sympathetic and sorrowful? I feel these things, too. Is it wrong for me to want to hold and help you through this nightmare you created? To try and make it all go away, so you can sleep peacefully when the sun disappears each night?

It doesn't matter. This whole thing is out of my hands. And it should be. I can't even pull myself together enough to answer my own questions. I ask and I ask and I know nothing at all.

I read the e-mail again:

Hey Mom.

Was wondering if you could do me a favor.

I had to go on a trip to Florida for work. There are some problems with our Tampa office, and I was asked to take care of it. It's supposed to take a couple of weeks. What a drag!

I've been gone for three days now, and I've called home several times, but Adrian never answers or returns my calls. Could you possibly try and get ahold of him? I'm sure nothing's wrong, but he was kinda moody all last week. When I tried to talk to him about it, he acted a little crazy.

Things are pretty hectic here, so I may not be able to check my cell or e-mail for the next week or so. If you talk to Adrian, tell him I said I love him.

You know I love you, too, Mom.

Laura.

Yes, Laura. I do know. I know quite a lot.

I know that Principal Financial is having a hard time. Everybody is, these days, of course. But your employer's difficulty is perhaps a little more pronounced because they recently closed several of their East Coast offices. I know about that.

See, when the biggest employer in Des Moines...one of the largest in the state...is hurting that badly, word gets around. People talk it to death. In this part of the country, a large company's survival becomes life and death for everybody. And you'd be surprised how many people in and around Castlewood have a cousin, or brother, or whatever working there.

So I know that your company's Tampa office has, in fact, been closed for several months.

I also know that Victor Casey was back in town last week for his brother's birthday party, talking about a cruise he'd booked for himself and a woman he was seeing. A cruise that left today, from Tampa. He was meeting her at the airport Monday evening, and they were going to spend several days in Tampa before the cruise left.

I know that Victor Casey still wants you. In fact he used to ask about you all the time...right up until about six months ago, Laura. He just stopped asking, quite suddenly, and until now I just hoped that he'd found someone else to desire.

I know that what I told you when you were in high school is still true: no matter how you feel about Victor Casey, he's trouble. And he's cruel. He plays games, and he takes no responsibility for the outcome. He never loved you, and he will always be wrong for you.

Laura, honey...I also know that adultery is a sin. A terrible and cruel one, at that.

And so do you.

Friday, March 25

AMANDA DOLE

Ten days since Adrian's crash shook my world apart.

Has it only been that long? It feels like forever.

I almost think that I was born into this body, exactly the way that it is now. A ravaged, ugly, old woman. The weight of motherhood already on me, with hips spread and breasts fat and tired. The lines etched in and varicose veins painted on by divine hands. Knuckles swelled upon bony fingers. A tiring sight, I'm sure.

And perhaps I've lived out my lifetime right here, in this hospital. All that I've ever really done is go from waiting room to Adrian's bed, and back again, for centuries without end. Except when I need to eat, or pee, nothing ever changes.

Ten days? Ha. Maybe a thousand. Maybe a hundred thousand. Surely not ten.

And I'm not sure how much longer I can stand it. I'm not made to be a martyr. I'm too selfish.

Hurry, now, Adrian. You need to wake up, so we can start to heal. All of us. You need to stop hiding, and come back to this world to deal with the problems that have been given you.

I know it must be scary. It's been ninety-seven long hours since they started trying to bring you out of the coma. The saline-like drip that was keeping you under is long since gone, the drug flushed from your system, yet you still refuse to react. It's not because they don't try to force you out. I wince as they push down hard on your fingernails with the pen, pinching sensitive areas until it must hurt. But you don't show a sign of caring. You just lay indifferent, restful. They talk to you, ask you all sorts of questions. I talk to you, too, telling stories about your life. You never admit to hearing them.

"Can you grab my hand, Adrian?" they ask. Of course you can't.

"Do remember how beautiful it was outside, the day of your wedding?" I wonder. Of course you don't.

The night orderly tells me that's not uncommon for chemical coma patients to be slow in returning, especially head injury ones. He says that it's nothing to worry about. But even I can see that the people here are getting nervous. Don't you know, children, that you can't fool an old woman? If I haven't been here forever, then that means my memories are real. I've given birth, raised children, and weathered storms. I am incarcerated in the world of men. So I know what this life is.

When I think of those things, I miss my husband. They're going to keep me here, Bill. They're going to keep me here forever. I know it. They're going to keep saying tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow until I get so used to waiting for it to come that I stop asking altogether. Until I just accept that it never will. Come and save me. I know you can.

How I wish you had stayed.

No. that's not fair. I won't accuse you of abandonment. I had to force you to go home, to take care of things. That doesn't mean that I wanted it, or that you did. It just had to be done. We couldn't both stay here forever, insulated in our pain and ignoring the outside world.

And you ARE coming back for me. You'll be back tonight, staying for the weekend. You would never abandon your love.

Not the way Laura has.

Our daughter. I've got my nightly conversations with her to keep me company. The ones she never responds to. Endless e-mails and voice mail messages, each deposited into the bank account of my dwindling patience, and never a word from her in response.

In fact, it's that time now. Time to dial the number and hope against hope. I step out into the waiting room and turn on my cell phone. Are you ready, Laura? Will you answer, tonight? Surely your trip must have ended by now. So where are you? Are you sitting at home, nervously wondering after your absent husband, scared of what I might think of you if you ask me about him? Do you think he's left you?

Have you listened to my messages? Read my e-mails?

No. You can't have. Even if you're capable of the lies, of betraying your husband and home and parents, you still wouldn't be capable of that. You couldn't know that he was injured and just sit at home, hiding from the world to save face.

I rub my eyes and look down at the phone. I have six missed calls.

Immediately flipping to the call log, I rub my thumb across the screen.

From Laura! They're from Laura! And there are messages!

My fingers are shaking as I hit the redial. I can listen to the messages later. Right now I have to speak to my daughter. My lungs tell me that I'm holding my breath and I force a release.

Hold it together, Amanda. These are the moments that turn the story.

And it turns, as Laura answers her phone.

"Mom?!" She yells into my ear. "What's going on?!" She sounds frantic. Lost. It's easy to feel sympathy, to forget what brought her to this. But I don't.

"Laura, honey. You have to listen to me. Adrian was-"

"Is he awake yet?! Is he...does he know what I..." Laura's voice falls away. Of course. Of course she would know by now. If she read one e-mail, or listened to one voice mail, then she would have rushed through them all. Oh, my little baby, what a thing you face now.

"He's not awake. They had him in an induced coma, but they're having trouble bringing him out of it. Where are you right now?"

"I'm on the interstate. I'm coming, as fast as I can-"

"Don't get yourself hurt, honey. We're not going anywhere, and I couldn't handle you getting hurt, too."

"Mommy." She doesn't say any more, but I can hear that she's crying.

"I'm so sorry, baby," I tell her. And I guess that I mean it.

"You don't know," she says. "You don't know what I've done." And then she hangs up before I can tell her that I do know.

I dial the house phone. Bill answers, sounding tired. All the stress, driving, and loneliness is taking its toll on his health. And the next few days won't help with that.

"Bill!" I don't even try to stop myself from shouting. "I talked to Laura! She's back, and she knows everything! She knows about the accident! She's coming here now!"

There's a huffing breath. "I'm on my way," he says simply. And then the line goes dead.

Saturday, March 26

BILL DOLE

The two of them hang together like vines helping each other up the side of the barn, twisting and knotted. They cry it out, like women tend to do. There's a lotta noise, and some words, but nothing that makes any damn sense. With all the sobbing and whatever, I'm getting a headache, but I know enough to hold my peace.




Stranger is the Sail Ch. 01



Laura looks devastated. What a goddamn mess this is.

I saw a doctor on TV once...psychiatrist, or 'chologist, or whatever they are...talking about men and women. She was a sight. Here's this jagged, fiery-looking lady, telling an audience of women that men are scared of female anger and are jealous of female strength. And those fat women all just bobbled their heads like it was windy or something. Tellin' 'em what they wanted to hear. A woman talking to women about how men think and feel. What a joke. At least when men talk to each other about women, it's just to acknowledge that we can't figure 'em out.

There's wisdom in admitting to what you don't understand.

Women, though, got to think they know it all. Anyways, I wasn't ever scared of no angry woman, nor of a crying woman either. It makes you tired, yeah, all that noise and tears. But it don't scare you.

Two crying women is extra extra, though. Shit. It's just unpleasant. I'd honestly rather be in church.

Both of them seem to want to shoulder the blame for all this. Well, they can both have it as far as I'm concerned. I'm really about done with patience and sympathy for anyone here who isn't named Adrian. All this weeping and trying to measure their guilt isn't going to help that boy one iota. In fact it'll hurt. If he does ever wake up, God willing, the last thing he's going to need are a couple of women so wrapped up in their own feelings that they spend more time talking about themselves than caring for him.

"Bill," Amanda says at last through tears and snot, "can you get us some Kleenex?"

I raise my brows. Run an errand while you go on and on? Well, that's about that, isn't it?

"No," I say.

She gives me that look that women like to give men. "William! Please! We're a mess here."

"Well, fuck, then I guess you'd better stop crying."

"Daddy?" Laura at least has the wherewithal to look timid. Maybe it's just a technique. They've each chosen their weapons based on a lifetime of experience getting their way with me. But there's nothing new to their assaults, and I'm ready.

"Bill," Amanda says my name like it's a warning.

"Look, I know you have all sorts of stuff to deal with. Laura, I'm sure you feel more than awful. I guess you ought to. And really, I do, too...though I'm not sure why. But if you two don't set aside the past, quit all this sob storying and tear farming, and start planning for tomorrow instead, then it won't matter whether Adrian ever wakes up or not."

Amanda frowns. "How can you say that?"

"Because it's true. He's gonna need a strong support system when he comes around, if he comes around, and that isn't gonna be what he gets if all you can do is go on and on about your damn selves. Make no mistake, that's what's going on here. You two are standing in the trauma ward, thinking about yourselves. So, okay, I'll get you your Kleenex if that's what you want, but if you don't stop this ridiculous shit right now then I think you both ought to leave."

Now, I don't do this kind of thing very often, because I'm usually okay with leaving it to the women to solve the people stuff. I trust my wife's judgment in that department most of the time. It's just that right now she happens to be one of the people down in it. Maybe it's because I don't like to do this, but when I do speak up, she tends to listen.

"OK, Bill." She nods, and wipes at the tears. "OK." And then she goes to get the Kleenex herself. She's a strong woman. Not many of them can stand to listen to a man talk tough, especially when they're all wound up about something. Amanda has the rare gift of logical thinking.

My little girl, on the other hand....she was always a firecracker, and packed with one hundred percent pure female reasoning. Everything had to be emotion. Everything. Love, anger, stubbornness, compassion...Laura owned them all, before she was even out of diapers. She was capable of having terrifying conflicts with other girls that I couldn't even see happening. Strange feminine smoke-and-mirrors stuff. Amanda would tell me about them after the fact.

Don't get me wrong, I love her fiercely. But Laura took me some getting used to. They should offer new fathers some kind of training on raising little girls. Even up into her teens, I was having to count on her mama to play go-between. I just couldn't make any sense of the girl's thinking. Her emotional state was so exhausting, it's like it ruled her. I don't think my wife ever thought that way. My ma neither. She was even quieter than Dad was. Stoic, really.

So Laura, my little long-haired firecracker, is watching me now with a sort of defiant hurt, like I'm being unreasonable. But I can see that it's something else that's driving her. It's like the time in high school when she had a party while Amanda and I were down in the city. That damn Casey kid was screwing around and he broke the railing on the deck. Laura played outrage when we called her on it, but in the end it was just her defense against her own guilt and shame. When she cracked, she cracked hard.

"Daddy," she says quietly, "how can you talk like that? How can you ask me to...to be there for him? How am I even going to be able to look him in the eye? And why do you think he'll even want me around?"

"Come here, honey," I let her wrap her arms around me. It will make it easier to get her to listen. Hugs are useful for that sort of thing. "I think you need to consider that maybe Adrian won't remember. Some level of memory loss is extremely likely. And maybe he shouldn't remember. It ain't gonna help him any, to know the truth. And I don't know what's going to happen when he wakes up, but I know that his head was hurt pretty bad. He's not going to be capable of a lot of things. He...he'll need a lot of help just getting by. For the rest of his life, honey."

"This isn't helping," she's starting to cry harder again. "I feel so awful."

"See, this is what I've been talking about. I know you feel terrible. But these are things that happened to Adrian. Not to you. Not to me. He's family, and he's going to need us in ways we can't even imagine, yet." I grab her shoulders and step back, looking her in the eye. "Were you aiming for a divorce, Laura? Did you intend to...leave him, when the time came?"

"What?" She stares. "No! No, I love Adrian!"

I can't help shaking my head in disgust. Pointing out the contradiction of her words and actions isn't going to help anything. "Well, if you go telling him all the truth about what you've done, he's probably going to want to be rid of you. And who could blame him for that? I certainly wouldn't. But he'll also hurt, and hurtin' is something he doesn't need piled on top of him."

"I hurt, too, Dad. This is tearing me apart, and-"

"And who gives a shit?" She gasps at my language. I understand. I never cuss in front of her like this, and I'm really piling them up tonight. "Yeah, you hurt. But you made that hurt. You lit the fire on all of this mess, and don't go playing like you didn't. But you're missing the real problem in all of this. Tell me, Laura...if you go unloading your shame on that man, telling him near everything, and he throws you out of his house...who is going to take care of him then?"

"Daddy."

"It's the rest of his life, Laura. The rest of his life."

She's sobbing heavy, now, but that's okay. Maybe this'll be the end of it. "How can I live with that? How can I live with it every day?" she asks.

"Goddamn it, how can you not?"

Amanda comes back in, but she's smart enough to hang back. Looks like she washed her face. She opens her mouth to speak, but I wave her off.

"What if he knows?" Laura asks. "What if he remembers?"

"Baby, bad as his head got hurt, he'll be lucky if he remembers his name. And so will we."

She just shakes her head.

"Daddy," she says. "I think he was coming to get your help. I think he knew."

"Just remember what I said, hon. We have to do what's right for him, now. If he doesn't remember, then we leave it that way."

AMANDA DOLE

Bill keeps trying to get through to Laura, to make her jettison her guilt in the name of protecting Adrian, but he's just wasting his time.

Oh, my love, you want so badly to find a way through this mess. I know you do. But you're just a man, and men are born for work. Functional, helpful, maybe even essential, they keep this world alive. But they don't understand it. And they don't understand women. They just can't.

Right now, the things you don't understand are working against you.

You don't understand what it means to not know what you want. Not really. Men love goals and accomplishment, so even when they're uncertain they still look for the signs of success. You don't know what it means to want two completely different things with equal and unignorable pull. How a woman feels when she is happy with a man like Adrian Burke yet drawn to another the way Laura is drawn to that jackass Victor Casey.

I doubt if you really understand how a woman sees a man, either. So you don't see any of the reasons that you are not getting through to your daughter. She is horrified and filled with guilt right now, yes. And she just had the shock of almost losing the man she's built a life with...a man she loves. But that doesn't mean she no longer feels the pull. It just means that she's that much more confused and lost. And, somewhere inside of her, the idea that spending the rest of her life being punished for a momentary lapse of character is too much is going to start festering. It'll grow, digging into her emotional core like fingers into sand. It will point out to her that her growing unhappiness is connected to Adrian and not to Victor. It will tell her things she wants to believe. It will tell her that Adrian is better off without her. It will tell her that the accident didn't really have all that much to do with her affair. That it wasn't her fault. And it will tell her that, someday, her parents will understand why she had to leave her invalid husband behind.

And it won't wait long. A woman in emotional turmoil is a weapon against herself. It will move faster than you can possibly imagine.

In fact, it will start to lean in and tell her these things

right

about...

now.



Stranger is the Sail Ch. 02



In my old job, I used to come into contact with people who had suffered major head trauma in a car accident fairly regularly. I think the genesis for this story came out of the heavy use of car accidents as a plot device in LW stories...they tend to either cause some minor injury that is rehabilitated as a background part to the larger story, or put people into a coma that they later come out of without much real damage. I thought that a touch of tragic truth was worth injecting.

I purposefully chose the style of writing used in this story because it sounded really fucking hard, and it has been. If the results have been somewhat convoluted or confusing, I apologize.  



Sunday, March 27
LAURA BURKE

He's awake. Oh, God, he's awake. 

The doctors all come and go with the same haphazard timetable, but their expressions show obvious relief. I don't think they were all that convinced he was going to wake up at all.

Adrian isn't talking yet, and his face is hauntingly expressionless. It makes him seem more lifeless than when he was asleep, somehow. But he watches us as we move around the room. His pupils follow any motion put before them. Especially mine. He stares at me all the time, almost passively. I can't stand it. What is he thinking? What does he remember? I feel like I'm being judged, or carefully studied, every second that I'm in that room, but he doesn't so much as frown. Or smile.

God. What if he doesn't even remember who I am?

The doctor says it's too early to tell. His awareness right now is minimal but growing fast, like a protracted version of someone who wakes up from getting way too much sleep. But it's still possible that the damage is extensive. Without exactly saying so, without committing themselves in any way, they seem to be setting me up for the possibility of permenant disability. Am I going to spend the rest of my life as a caregiver to a man who was broken by my selfish stupidity? Is that what I'm going to get up to, every morning? The tattered remnants of a man I murdered, who refused to die? 

I'll do it. I promise you, Adrian, I'll do it. Every morning, forever, without fail. I'll be there for you. I'll make this as right as I can. 

Just don't hate me for it.




RACHEL JOHNS

Amanda called this morning with good news. Adrian's awake.

It was sweet of her to think of me. I mean, I would have been hurt if I had been kept out of the loop for long, but I still feel appreciation for it.

They don't know much about the condition his mind is in, and they still can't make a decision about his eye. It's just too clouded with blood, still. But they're going to decide one way or another in a few days, when he's had a chance to wake up more. Seems weird to set a timetable on a thing like that. Ben says that just means that they want to get their decision to the insurance company as quickly as they can, so they can start sorting out the payment. Maybe he's right. 

Everybody down there is busy gossiping about what he may or may not remember, what he may or may not know. I guess he keeps eyeing Laura, frightening her senseless with his stare, but with his jaw wired shut and his mind still plenty fuzzy from the medication there's no real knowing what it means.

If you ask me, they ought to tell him anyway. All this nonesense about protecting him is just code. You don't help a person with lies. It doesn't work like that.

I'm sitting out on the porch with a glass of water, thinking about the way the world moves. Thinking about my boys, and looking at that empty four way with the one stop sign. Thinking about the time Michael rushed into town because the girl he was seeing thought he'd been fooling around, and was out dancing with Victor Casey.  

Laura's still a wreck, Amanda tells me.

Well, goddamn it, she should be.




Sunday, March 28
AMANDA DOLE

"Show me your left hand, Adrian," the nurse says. They do that...stick his name into every other sentence. These children with tired faces and blue scrubs talk to my daughter's damaged husband like he's some child brought in with a cough.

Adrian raises the hand up a few inches, watching his own limb move with the deeply sunken eyes of a starving man.

"Good, Adrian," the nuse smiles. "Show me right."

He does. 

"Excellent. We're making real progress here. I'm very impressed. I'll check on you later, okay Adrian?" He smiles at me as he leaves the room.

I guess it should feel a lot more reassuring than it does. Each new day brings its own new positives. They even think that Adrian will get to keep his right eye, now. It'll be uselessly blind, and it'll probably always be watery and red. But, still, his own eye. Not a prosthetic. 

There's no kidney damage from the potent antibiotic they had to put him on, either. I didn't even remember hearing that was a possibility, and nearly got into something of a shouting match with the doctor about it. Bill assures, though, me that it was mentioned at some point as a possibility. I take his words like the river takes water, but I still don't remember. Too many things being said out loud, not enough of them put into writing, is what I think. How am I supposed to keep track of all this? Are they so scared of lawsuits, anymore, that they hesitate to even diagnose?

The neurosurgeon is the only one who seems pessimistic. He keeps talking about the unique needs of people with brain damage. How they can experience swings of emotion, or periods of irrationality. Memory and behavioral changes are "probable." I can see Laura just crumbling every time he comes around. It's a wonder she doesn't just melt right into her seat. 

Well, this idiot can say what he wants. He doesn't know Adrian Burke. That man will surprise them all. 

He has to.

I worry a lot about the future in a way that I haven't had to in some time. It's a hell of an experience. You get to be my age, you like to think you've earned the privilege of relaxing. Of having that...word...not mean so damn much. Future. It should be so unimportant. I thought I'd seen all my worst problems come and go. Even the things I do worry about...cancer, or Bill's heart...don't seem nearly as horrific now that we've outlived the hills. Now that I feel so heavy, and tired all the time. Now that I'm old. 

Let these aches be forgotten, and the Lord take me home. 

But now? It's complicated, isn't it? I want my daughter to be happy. I'll admit to hoping that she suffers the minimum repercussion for her actions, in spite of how angry I am. And I will feel no guilt for doing so. But Adrian is family, too. He didn't deserve any of this, and it horrifies me to think of what she's put him through. I can't understand it. It's like finding out that your child is a violent criminal. They can put the evidence down right in front of your eyes, but they can't make you see it. They can't make it real.  

Adrian is falling asleep again. His eyelids droop, and he doesn't fight them. It doesn't take very much to exhaust him right now. The nurse smiles at me across the bed and body and soundless machines, and then he leaves. 

I reach out and touch my son's cheek, and I let myself feel a little pity.

I hope you never find out what's been done to you. I hope you never remember how badly she let you down. How she ran away. 

How she ran to the arms of another man.

And I hope that, if you do find out, you are good enough a man to forgive my daughter for these sins.

I hope I can, too.




Wednesday, May 5
54 days after the accident 
ADRIAN BURKE

I thought maybe it would feel weird, sitting in a car. I thought I'd be scared, or...desperate. Like I had to get out before it was too late. But I don't feel any of these things. I just feel sad. 

I thought it might help me remember something, too. The doctors said that might happen...that it might bring some kind of sense memory out. It hasn't brought me anything at all. 

I can half see my reflection in the window. I don't care for that, so I roll it down. There's a stranger in every mirror these days, and he's trying to look just like me. I'm not worried. He always fails. There are too many scars on his face. His jaw sits all wrong, like a broken toy. His right eye is the biggest give away, even though most people might think it looks almost normal. I see it for what it really is: a mortician's bad joke. 

And he's so thin. Thirty pounds lighter than I am. Surely...

Laura glances over, probably wondering about the window, and I give her a smile. She attempts a return, but her muscles don't move that way anymore, so she goes back to watching the road. 

That feels strange, too. I should be the one driving. Maybe someday.

I'm so lucky to have Laura. Now more than ever. If I had to go this alone... 

I think a little more about that stranger. It's not just the way he looks that bothers me. It's all the medication that he's on. All the doctor's appointments he has to keep. The difficulty he has with short term memory. The way he butts up against simple math problems, fumbling uselessly like soft tissue in a car collision, or fails to process most of what he reads. That son of a bitch has no place pretending he's me. Not Adrian Burke. I'm a financial advisor, goddamn it, and a closet science fiction nerd. My whole existance is wrapped up in the things he can't do.

I shake my head. The wind feels good on my face. It feels like time is rushing past me, accelerating by the second. Like I'll grow old and die in a blink of an eye.

Laura's birthday was on Tuesday. I asked her parents if that might have been why I was headed to Castlewood...if maybe we were going to plan a surprise for her. They kind of said that it was possible, without seeming certain. Well, Amanda said it was possible. Bill just always looks at her with a tightness around his eyes and doesn't answer any of my questions. He looks pretty worn out. I suppose this has been hard on the two of them, too. 

Anyway, Amanda claims that we'd discussed the idea but hadn't set anything down for sure. Doesn't seem like I would have driven all that way without some kind of certainty.

Oh, well. Surprise, Laura! I hope you like it. It's sort of like the man you married, only uglier, stupider, and broken down. Happy birthday. No gift receipt included.

I reach up and trace my scars with my fingertips. I am so sorry, honey.

I asked Laura about that weekend, too. She wasn't travelling with me, so where was she? I'm trying to find some piece of the puzzle that allows the rest to become clearer, you know how it is. But she said she was called off to work, and I kinda remembered that anyway, so it doesn't help.

She looks at me again. "I'm going to start the AC," she says. I nod and roll up my window. After a time, I close the vent that points at me. The air that the car provides may be cooler, but it doesn't make me feel the way the wind does. 

I glance out the window again. The stranger is still there. I wish him great harm and terrible, and smile. He smiles, too, like it's funny. Like he's wishing the same on me.

"Too late," I say.

"What?" Laura asks.

"Nothing. Just being stupid."

She's quiet for a moment. "I'm glad that you're finally coming home," she says for the tenth time. "Doesn't it feel good, Adrian? Getting out of that place?"

I nod. So does the stranger. "I just hope that you still think I'm worth keeping." I try to make it a joke with my voice, but she flinches. "Listen," I tell her, "it's okay. I know I look different. I know that I'm going to have some...weaknesses. But we have to be able to talk about all that. We can't just ignore it. Be honest with me whenever you can. I promise to do the same. And sometimes, honey, you just have to let me joke about it a little."

"Okay." She's tearing up. She grabs my hand and holds it. "I love you so much."

"I love you, too. As long as I have you, I'm still lucky."

We lapse back into silence, and I start testing my vision and processing by seeing how many words on the billboards I can read before they go by. My top score, after a few miles worth of tries, is one.

Fuck. What am I going to DO with my life?

One of the billboards has a picture of a baby on it, and the sight of it punches me somewhere soft.

"A baby," I blurt out. "We had a conversation about having a baby!" 

Laura gasps, and her eyes go wide. "What?" Her hands grip the steering wheel.

"Sometime before the accident, I brought up the idea of us having a baby. You..." the rest is a haze. "I remember that we didn't end up deciding to go for it, but I don't remember why. Do you...do you remember that?" 

She frowns, taking a long time to answer. "I remember that," she says softly.

"What was said specifically? Anything that might explain what I was doing?"

"Not really, no. We just agreed that it wasn't time yet. I was putting in so many hours at work, and you wanted more time to get ready financially, so..."

I look at the stranger, and he shakes his head. For once I agree with him. That story doesn't quite sound right to me. But without the memory, what do I know after all? "How did I act, though?" I ask her. "Was I upset? Disappointed?"

She shakes her head, looking more confident now. "You didn't seem concerned about it. Like I said, we pretty much agreed that we needed to wait a little while longer."

I try to imagine the talk, and I can't do it. There's a vague sense that the conversation was different from what she's saying it was. That it was not a pleasant one for me. But that's all. It doesn't mean she's lying. Hell, maybe I hid my disappointment from her to spare her feelings...or to avoid an argument. I guess it's possible. "It was a mistake, I think," I tell her now. "We shouldn't have waited."

She's quiet for a moment. "Why do you say that?" she asks in a small voice.

"Because if there had been a baby at home that needed us, then I don't think anything could have made me run off to your parents' house like that. Not a birthday party, not anger...not anything. I would have stayed home, and not gotten hurt, and not had to be put back together again by all the king's men. I would have been whole, and I would have been a good father. Now, what kind of father could I hope to be?" I'm surprised at how quickly the tears come. "I can't be anybody's dad, now."

She sniffles, and wipes her hand across her face. "Adrian..." she seems ready to say something, but trails off and shakes her head.

"Hey," I tell her, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to..."

"I love you," she says quietly. "I'm so, so sorry this happened."

"I love you, too. More than you'll ever know." I glance at the stranger, but he just looks sad. "And it's not your fault."




Thursday, May 6
LAURA BURKE

Twenty-four hours down, the rest of my life to go. 

I'm doing my best to be positive, to make this really work. But Adrian isn't helping matters. He's trying so hard to be independent, to be himself, and it's just not happening. It's way too early for that. It's making him mad.

This morning he didn't understand where he was when he woke up. Gave us both a bit of a scare. Short term memory is getting better, but his brain is addled from the collision. 

He did break into the most heartbreaking of smiles when he saw that he was home, in bed with me. I almost wanted to tell him about the affair, right then. Sick, isn't it? But nothing he could do to me in anger would match the guilt I felt right at that moment.

I'm folding laundry, now, trying to think of something we could do for the weekend, when I realize I haven't heard from him in a while. I don't know why...maybe its this new fragility...but I get nervous enough to go looking for him. 

He's standing in the center of the kitchen, lost in thought. Who knows how long he's been there. I lean on the entryway and watch him, waiting, knowing that he'll only ask me after he's done his best to work through it on his own. Knowing that he'll fail.

Finally, he sighs, and says something garbled. He doesn't always realize that he's slurring his words when he doesn't concentrate on what he's saying. I keep pointing it out, but he keeps forgetting. The doctor says that might pass with time. Might...what an enormous word that is.

I give him my warmest smile and softest tone. It's like taking care of a child. "What, honey?" I ask.

He scrunches up his face in irritation. I know what he's thinking: it's bad enough that he has to ask at all. I'm sure it drives him crazy to have to repeat the query.

"Where do we keep the milk?" he says slowly.

"In the fridge, dear." 

A nod is all I get. He doesn't say thank you, or anything that might be interpreted that way. That would be acknowledging his failure. He just turns and opens the fridge. The milk is front and center, but it still takes him a few moments to locate it. I turn and walk down the hall. He doesn't want me to see him struggle like that.

Going back into the bedroom, I hear the humming of my cellphone on the dresser. I have a new text. I start to pick it up, but then I see the screen and freeze.

It's from Victor.

I haven't spoken to or heard from him since I decided to check my voice mail, as we sat nuzzled into each other in the airport waiting for our flight home. That eye blink of a moment felt like more of a betrayal than all the intimacy, the lust, the emotional pull that I had allowed to fester. I was sitting nuzzled up against my lover when I finally learned of my husband's crash. 

I stare at that name for a moment. Victor. Then I delete the message without reading it.

I'm not going anywhere, Adrian. I'm not.




Friday, May 7
ADRIAN BURKE

Laura doesn't think I can see that she's constantly walking on egg shells around me. But I see it. I see every little moment of her nervous, lonely sorrow. I see it and I understand.

Last night we were watching television, and I guess I must have been squinting at it. I'm still getting used to the change in vision...besides, the talk too goddamn fast on TV. I can't keep up. Laura was sitting on my right hand side, my blind side, so I suppose she figured I'd never notice that she spent most of the time looking over at me...staring, really....with her heartbreak in her eyes. But I saw her. The TV fed me her reflection. Like she was the stranger, or something. I didn't say anything. I didn't want to know what she saw.

And I'm not gonna say anything to her about it now, either, because then she'll just start faking happiness all the time. She has a right to some sadness. She's lost a lot, too. She's a widow, don't you know.

It rained this morning, so I couldn't go on my walk. Too bad. That's one of the highlights of my day. Honest. I'm getting pretty good, getting some strength back. Yesterday I made it more than a quarter mile before I had to turn around. Needed to rest afterwards, though. Today, I wanted to try for a half.

It won't always be that way, Laura. I promise you that. I don't care how hard I have to push, or how much it hurts to get there. I am going to be me again. Someday, I'm gonna be able to walk all the way to Castlewood if I want to. 




Wednesday, May 12
LAURA BURKE	

Adrian is hunched over the packet the doctors gave him, counting using his fingers. He gets as high as four, pauses, then curses. Closing his fist, he starts over. The second time he manages to reach five, but it all drops as he tries to transfer from one hand to the next. For a long moment he looks at his hands, flexing and unflexing them, studying the knuckles. Then he starts over again.

"Honey," I say, "why not give it a rest? The doctor said you should try to put in forty minutes a day. It's been two hours."

"Gonna have to push hard, if I want to be anything besides a stockboy at Walmart for the rest of my life. If I ever want to get off this fucking medication."




Stranger is the Sail Ch. 02



So that's what this is about. The medication. I put my hand on his shoulder. "Pushing too hard can't be good for you. You'll fatigue yourself."

"Good." He looks up and smiles at me. It still jars me a little bit every time, to see that my husband has a new face. "If I push past my limits, then I'll start to build endurance, right?"

"Maybe." I'm not smiling back. I'm studying how he looks now, trying to find as many traces of his natural appearance as I can. I've found a good number of spots on his face that still look like they used to. I can fix my eyes on one of those safe spots, and for a moment I see my husband as he was. Most of the pieces are still there, really. It's only the big picture that's changed.

"Ok," he sighs, closing the work book, "what would you rather do?"

I shrug. "There's a sidewalk arts thing going on at the outdoor mall. We could check that out."

"Sure," he gives me a wink, and stands to get ready.

"Don't forget to take a pill box."

He doesn't answer, but I know he'll bring it. Adrian is desperate to get away from those pills. They've been affecting his ability to...perform. In fact, we haven't had sex once since before I left on my trip. It's bothering him a great deal. I suppose he sees it as an affront to his masculinity. Men are so silly about such things.

He called the doctor about the problem Monday, but I guess they're very hesitant to switch medication so early on. Mood meds are a tricky game, and when they find something that works they get real immobile about it. We're just supposed to stay in contact with them, wait it out a bit, and see how it goes. Easy for them to say. They aren't the ones going on two months without sex.

Of course, for Adrian it's been quite a bit longer. I shouldn't complain.

I hear his voice from down the hall. It's a little slurred, but he's been getting much better about that. 

"Honey," he calls. "Where did I put my shoes?"

I smile to myself, but it doesn't stick around long. "You're wearing them, dear," I call back. I get silence in response. Then something hits the wall, hard. I go running.

"Adrian?!" I call out, getting no response. "ADRIAN?!"

I push into the bedroom and see him sitting on the floor, staring at the wall. There's a hole there where his foot went through. 

"Are you okay?" I ask, but he won't answer. He won't even look at me. He's embarassed.

Even with medication, these mood swings that the car accident deposited in my sweet man's heads are enough to scare me. I crouch down, cradle him against my breasts, and hope they don't last forever. 




Monday, May 17
MELINDA BLAKE

"Hey, buddy! Last time I saw you, I thought it looked like you'd lost a ton of wieght, but I see I was wrong! You must be eating like a king!" 

Rodney shakes hands with Adrian, laughing, and Laura gives me a welcoming hug. 

"It's been a while," she says.

"Yeah," says Adrian. "I'm actually a little hurt that you didn't pop by and see me in the hospital." He's smiling, just ribbing us, but his smile fades when he notices that we're not smiling back. "Did I miss something?" he asks.

"Adrian," Laura says gently, "Rod and Melinda came up three times. You and Rod watched some superhero movie together the second time they came up."

"Oh," he frowns. "Was I still in a coma?"

"No, dear. You were awake. You can't watch a movie in a coma. I think you talked sports with Rod for an hour the last time, too."

He looks embarassed. "Sorry." He looks away. "I don't remember a lot from the hospital stay."

"Well, that's too bad," Rodney laughs, "because you got a phone number from a gorgeous nurse who looked absolutely fresh outta college."

"Rodney," I give him a look. I swear, sometimes that man can be so inappropriate. I won't pretend I don't often wonder why I put up with him, but I suppose most women wonder that about their men.

"It's true!" Rodney smiles. "Just smitten with you, I swear it. Slipped the number into your hand and winked, and then just left the room. And lemme tell you, Ade...I really think he was your type."

Adrian punches him in the arm, and we all laugh. 

"Anyways," I point out, "we woulda been up more, but Laura didn't tell us about the accident until almost three weeks after it happened. We honestly just thought you two had stopped returning our calls."

Rodney snorts. "She means she thought your wife wouldn't let you hang out with me anymore."

"Really? Three weeks?" Adrian glances at Laura, who seems suddenly very interested in whatever she has for us in the kitchen. 

"It was a pretty emotional time, Adrian," I say gently. "Somehow, I doubt we were a priority...you know? She was probably too busy worrying about you." But something about the way Laura looks at me, and not at him, stays with me. 

"Speaking of priorities," Rodney quips, "what's for supper?"

"Give me five minutes and I'll show you," Laura takes the chance to hurry off. Neither of the men seem to notice how eager she is to get away. What a strange start to the night.

"I'll just go see if I can help her," I say, excusing myself.

Behind me, I hear Rodney sigh. "Oh, thank god. They're gone." The two of them chuckle about that, and then go outside. Right, I think...like you'd ever make it without us. 

Laura is stirring something in a crock pot, looking a lot more tired than she did a few seconds ago. She looks up as I come in, but doesn't speak.

"Everything alright?" I ask. 

"Yeah. It should be ready soon." I give her a look, but she pretends not to read it. She knows damn well I didn't mean the food. Alright, girl. I can play that game, too. Better than you can, even.

"Adrian seems to be doing well," I say.

She sort of shrugs, almost like when you're trying to jerk an insect off your arm. "He's doing better than they thought he would," she admits. "But he's pushing himself too hard. He seems determined to exhaust himself."

"Uh-huh." I pretend to examine the contents of the crock pot. "You seem pretty stressed out, though. I'd say you look more exhausted than he does."

"Do I? Must be the cooking." He smile is forced. "Haven't done much of it, the last few months. I was worried I might have lost my touch."

Something in her looks just about to break. I return her forced smile exactly as I received it. Time to tear down that wall. "Laura, if you need someone to talk to, you know I'm here for you."

Her face scrunches up and she sobs. "I'm pregnant," she cries. "Oh, god, Mel, I'm pregnant! What am I going to do?"

Now that it's out there, she sort of sags against the counter, putting her hand to her forehead. It brushes the stirring spoon on the way up, and smears bean dip above her right eyebrow. A tear drops onto the counter, but she does look a little relieved to have finally said it out loud.

I glance down the hall. The men are still gone. Good. They tend to really screw up moments like these. 

I give her sympathy and congratulations in equal measure by saying, "My goodness, what a year you seem to be having," and pulling her in for a hug. Then I step back and look at her. "Adrian doesn't know yet, does he?"

She shakes her head. "I can't tell him. I can't."

"Well, maybe not yet, anyway. But soon, I'd think. How far along are you?" I take a napkin and wipe the bean dip off her forehead, playing mother to the mother.

"I...I think about ten weeks."

"You'll be showing any day now, then. It's amazing you aren't already!" I don't point out that suddenly her loose-fitting relaxo-pants and top suddenly stand out in a new light. "You'll have to tell him something..." I trail that off, looking for an explanation.

She almost looks defiant for a minute, then looks away. "He doesn't deserve that."

"Oh, honey," I laugh. "I'm sure he'll be thrilled. They always are. They even think that it's something they did." And then I slip on two oven mits and carry the crock pot into the dining room to cover for the fact that she needs a few moments alone.

And to give myself time to try and puzzle out what it is she's not telling me about this pregnancy.




ADRIAN BURKE

After Rod gets done showing off his new truck, we go back inside for supper. "Yeah," he grunts as we find our seats, "from what they're saying on the news, I guess I got rid of that Technica at just the right moment. Know what I mean?"

I shake my head, and his wife rolls her eyes. "Rodney," she says, "it's the new model that's faulty. Yours was six years old."

"Well," he pouts, "it's the last one I'll ever own, anyway. You ask me, that company is done for."

"Let's talk about something else," Laura says, and they all seem a bit sheepish for a moment.

"Why?" I ask. "What's going on?"

Rod looks at his wife apologetically as he chews, then says, "Oh, I guess something's wrong with the Technica. They've been in a bunch of accidents lately."

Each of them finds something interesting to look at that isn't me. Silly. "I don't see why that makes it something we can't talk about," I point out.

Rod shrugs, but still nobody says a thing. After a moment, he looks at me with a new twinkle growing in his eye and says, "How about we talk about how much the Hawkeyes suck instead."

"Now wait a minute," I warn. "Talk about car accidents all night if you want to, but leave the Hawkeyes out of this."

That sets off a round of football talk between us while the women look bored. Then we move on to other topics, and more laughter.

It's nice spending time with people who are still so carefree. Reminds me of what my goal really is, and why it's worth fighting for. It reminds me of how happy we used to be.

Laura seems a bit subdued, tonight. As much as she was looking forward to this evening, you'd think...

Hey. I wonder what those looks Melinda keeps throwing her are about.




Wednesday, May 19
ADRIAN BURKE

I stumble a little, catching myself on the coffee table and straining as I set the free weight down. It slips out of my sweat-sheened palm about ten inches off the floor and thuds into a rough landing. I wince and try to wipe the sweat off my brow. My hand is no less wet than my forehead, so it doesn't help much. 

It's a good thing Laura is at work; if she'd seen what just happened...

Whatever. I'm not pushing myself too hard. I'm pushing myself just the right amount. They can think I'm cheap glass fragile, if that's what they want to believe. I know better. I'm getting stronger all the time.

Standing up and shaking my head to keep sweat from stinging my eyes, I stretch and then head off to shower. A glance in the mirror brings a small smile to my face. The stranger is nowhere to be seen. I'm up fifteen pounds, my hair is all grown back, and the scars all over my face no longer look so angry. It's a bit twisted up, and still a little gaunt, but it's definitely my face. I'm looking at me.

What a difference two weeks at home has made. I'm pretty sure there have been more improvements in the prior fourteen days than in the last six weeks of my hospital stay. I even have a job lined up. Gas station cash register work, but who am I to complain? It'll be good just to be working again. Plus it's just up the road...about five blocks from here...so I'll be able to walk. I start Monday. It'll knock me off disability, but I'd rather earn my pay, thanks. 

Besides, Laura's only been back to work for three days and I'm already climbing the walls with boredom. I can't spend the rest of my life as a house husband. No way.

Cash register work is a fine start, I think. I've been doing what I can to get ready. I mean, obviously I want to do a good job. But I also don't want to get shown up by a bunch of high school kids. Last night I spent hours practicing counting change. I'm pretty slow, still, but I don't screw up or have to start over unless I'm feeling pressured. Laura says that it won't matter...most people use debit cards, now, not cash. I'd forgotten those even existed. Think I'll practice some more tonight, anyway.

Coming out of the shower, I examine myself. Somehow, I came out of the accident with almost no damage below the shoulder line. Nothing visible, anyway. I reach down between my legs, run my fingers along the shaft, and then give it a few soft pulls. No response. One last hurtle left to jump.

I finally have an appointment Tuesday to see about getting a new behavior med. Supposedly, this one won't leave me impotent. God damn do I hope that it works. With the one I'm on, yeah, my mood is stable and all that, but no one and nothing is gonna make the little guy stand up. Hardly a decent trade-off, if you ask me. 

Hell, the pill doesn't even work all that great, to be honest. It does make it hard for me to get upset, but when I do...holy shit. I almost can't control myself. There was an incident at the hospital that proved that. And apparently a week or so after we got home Laura had to restrain me from hitting my head against the wall over and over again because I was mad at myself for some small thing. The doctor said it's a result of my injury, and it must be true...I never used to get upset like that. Ever. 

Still need to get that hole in the bedroom wall fixed. And the one in the hallway. 

The phone rings. I rush out to answer it.

"Hey, honey," Laura sounds tired. She sounds that way a lot lately. "How is your day going?"

"Not bad. I worked out, read part of a book, thought about house chores that need doing. Been missing you, mostly."

"Me too. I'm used to being with you all the time, now. I miss it. Listen, though...I do need to stay a little late tonight to get caught up. I won't be later than six-thirty. I promise."

"Oh," I try to keep the disappointment from my voice. "Okay."

"Don't forget that Mom is stopping by in a few hours to check up on you. Make sure to let her know if you need anything."

"She doesn't have to do that, Laura. In fact I wish she wouldn't."

"It's just this first week on your own, hon. We want to make sure everything is okay. Then she'll be going back to Castlewood, and tha'tll be the end of it."

"I'm not a child," I snap. "I don't need a babysitter."

There's a pause, and I know she's trying to word her response so that it calms me and prevents another hole in the wall. "I know that," she says slowly. "We all worry about you, but it's only because we love you. Nobody thinks of you as incapable."

I take a deep breath, trying to calm the anger. It doesn't work. "Fine," I say.

"Ok. I've gotta go, honey," she chimes.

"Bye. I love you."

I shake my head as I hang up the phone. They don't just worry because they love me. I know that. And I am looking forward to showing them that they don't need to worry at all.




Thursday, May 20
AMANDA DOLE

I'm pretty sure that I hide the upsurge of anger and disappointment I feel when Adrian tells me that Laura is working late for the second night in a row. He doesn't seem to notice, anyway. 

I help him make supper and clean up afterwards, I make a few phone calls. Then I find flimsy excuse to stick around until Laura gets home. Adrian doesn't seem concerned. Why would he be? He may remember that there were all sorts of "late nights" in the weeks before the accident, but he doesn't remember that they were all lies.

Adrian is in the kitchen counting coins when Laura's headlights flash across the living room wall. I jump up and head out the front door, waving my arms, trying to get her attention before she opens the garage door. Stopping and rolling down her window, Laura frowns. 

"Mom? Is something wrong? Why are you still here?"

"Don't open the garage door. I don't want Adrian to come out here and overhear us."

She bites her lip. "What's going on?"

"Shut off the car and come out here. I'm too old to be leaning over to whisper."

For a moment her expression tenses, and I almost expect her to open the garage door and leave me standing there. But then, with a sigh, she kills the motor and climbs out of the car.

"If this is about me working late," she says, "I'm sorry. There's just so much-"

"Don't you lie to me, girl!" I snap. "Unlike your loving husband, I happen to know all of your sorry little secrets. Now, I don't know what the hell you think you're doing, but I called your office tonight and was assured by several people that you did not stay late. In fact, you left a little early...about three hours ago. So don't lie to me about it."

She stares at me, looking for all the world like the little girl I caught sneaking cookies out of the kitchen a quarter century ago. "What are....Mom, I..." she licks her lips, and forces an indignant expression. "What exactly are you accusing me of, here?"

"You're not stupid, Laura Burke, and neither am I. So stop talking like we are."

She looks ready to go on denying, moving her jaw almost like she's chewing on something, and then she just sags against the frame of the vehicle. "Alright," she says. "Alright. I went and talked to Victor tonight," she hangs her head. "But we just talked!"

I'm not sure what she expected...hell, I'm not sure what I expected...but we're both taken by surprise when my arm flies out and slaps her, hard. "Of all the stupid, selfish, MEAN goddamn things to do..." I realize that my hands are balled into fists, held out in front of me, and I step away. I almost want to cry. My daughter is doing this thing. MY daughter.

"Mom," she says, crying now. "I'm not seeing him. I swear it. I had to talk to him about...about the baby."

I stop breathing.

Baby? What...a...a grandchild? A beautiful, tiny, stubby-armed little innocent creature?

And it's VICTOR'S?!

"Are you sure?" I ask, voice quaking.

"Mom, look at me."

I do, and suddenly I see it. We've all been so fixated on Adrian that it was right there in front of our faces, and we never noticed. She's gaining weight. She's wearing loose-fitting blouses that hide the bulge, but won't for much longer. I also see, for the first time, the deeply-etched bags under her eyes.

"Oh, baby," I gasp. "Oh, my Lord, baby...my grandchild!" We fall into a hug, two weeping women. 

Oh, Bill. Why didn't I make you come with me? 

Finally, I push her away from me. "And you're sure it's Victor's?"

She looks at the ground. "Yes."

"Shit."

"Yeah."

The more I stew on that, the more it upsets me. My grandchild will have that son of a bitch for a father? It will have his eyes? His proclivities? 

Will he want to know it?

"You went to see him tonight....why?"

"To tell him. I thought he had a right to know."

I stare at her. The newfound compassion is gone. "Had a right to know? HAD A RIGHT TO KNOW?!? You stupid bitch! What rights does he have in this house? How can you feel an obligation to that man? What about Adrian? Were you thinking about him? About how this would effect him? Or were you only thinking about yourself again?"

"I just...I'm trying to do the right thing, and I've fucked up so badly already-"

I jab my finger in her face. "I think you were planning your escape."

"MOTHER!" She looks devestated. 

"Dammit, Laura, if you-"

"Hey," a male voice calls out from the front door to the house. "What's going on out here?"

Oh, no.




ADRIAN BURKE

Thought I heard voices out here. Didn't expect it to be Amanda and Laura, though. That family doesn't yell at one another. I wonder what had them all riled up?

Stepping out into the dark, squinting with my one good eye, I walk over to the two women. Laura looks sheepish and tearful. Her mother looks strangely terrified. I suppose she's embarassed that I just caught her yelling at her daughter.

I only caught Laura's indignant yell and the start of Amanda's response, but I think I understand what this is about. I noticed the change in her expression when I told her that Laura was working late again tonight. I didn't say anything, and I guess I should have, but there it is.




Stranger is the Sail Ch. 02



"Hi, Laura," I say, keeping my voice jovial, as if I didn't realize what I'd interrupted. "How was work?"

"Good," she mumbles, letting me draw her in for a hug.

"Do me a favor, will you?" I ask. "Head inside. I want to talk to your mom for just a minute before she goes."

Laura hesitates for only a second, breathing ragged, then squeezes me harder. "Okay," she says, and shuffles off.

Once she's in the house I turn to Amanda. "I appreciate what you're trying to do, but I don't need it," I tell her. "Really."

She blinks, studies me, and very slowly says, "Okay." It almost sounds like a question.

"I know that Laura got pretty far behind at work because of me, and I really am a lot more capable of taking care of myself than any of you realize right now. I don't need to be babied. I don't need someone to help me cook my dinner, or do do the dishes. I can do those things. And I don't need you to lecture her for working late hours. If being a few hours late getting home so she can get caught up at work will make her life easier...well, I can give her that, right?" I make sure to look her right in the eye to drive home my point. "I can't give my wife very many things, anymore, Amanda. But what I can give her is my lack of dependency. Let me at least give her that."

She looks like she's about to cry. "Okay, Adrian. If that's what you want. Okay." We hug, her squeezing me tightly, and I thank her.

"Why don't you go say goodbye to your daughter," I suggest, "and I'll pull the car into the garage."

She glances at it. "Is that a good idea?"

I almost laugh. "Pretty sure I can still coast a sedan twenty-five feet into an empty two car garage."

She smiles and pats my cheek. "You're a good man, Adrian." Then she goes off to tell Laura goodbye.




LAURA BURKE

The rest of the evening goes by quickly. I don't think Adrian even notices my frayed nerves. We're laying in the dark a few hours later, though, and I can't sleep. A storm is making noise in the distance, and I'm running a question over and over in my mind. 

"When will you tell him?" 

God. I don't know. If I wait a few more days maybe I won't have to. Maybe he'll realize it for himself. At least then I won't have to say the words.

I'm trying to fantasize a way to make everything all better...something I do every night...when suddenly Adrian sits up and starts talking, jolting me. I didn't even think he was still awake.

"When I asked you about the baby talk," he says, "you mentioned that you'd been working late hours. Right?"

My body goes cold. He's putting pieces together, still. I had hoped that he was done reclaiming memories. "Uh...yes. We were in the process of reorganizing because of the slow economy, and I was a part of that process."

He's quiet for a long moment. He doesn't lay down, or look at me. He just sits there in the dark, staring at the wall. Finally, he says, "I was angry." He says it with certainty, and sadness. "I was angry and scared."

I hold my breath. "Why?"

"I don't remember. I just remember that, after we talked, I was upset at you. And very, very scared."

I swallow my urge to sob and say, "I don't remember any of that."

He shakes his head. "You said we agreed about waiting to have a baby, but we didn't. You wanted to wait, and that hurt me." Finally he turns to look at me in the dark. "Why did you lie to me about it?"

"I was...scared," I say honestly. "And I was ashamed. I've been angry at myself for that talk ever since I found you in the hospital. The truth is that you were right about the time being right, and I knew that, but I was stressed about work and feeling a little pressured. If I could do it over again, I would go back and be exactly as excited as I should have been the first time. I'm ashamed of myself for doing otherwise."

"I guess I've noticed that, in a way. You feeling ashamed. But why was I so scared? What was I scared of?"

My mouth is dry. I imagine, dear husband, that it was that exact moment when you started to become suspicious of me. I imagine that you left that conversation halfway down the path to knowing that I was sleeping with somebody else. I say, "Maybe you were scared that I'd never be ready to have a baby." Suddenly it hits me...is now the moment? Do I tell him I'm pregnant? I could fib a little about how far along I am, and he doesn't remember yet that we weren't sleeping together...maybe it would-

"No," he says. "No, it was something else. Something about that conversation scared me." 

I bite my lip. The moment is gone, as fast as that.

"I love you," I whisper, because I don't know what else to say.

"I love you, too," he says. Then, after a moment, "If you remember something that might indicate why I was scared, you'll tell me, right?"

"Of course I will."

"Thank you."

He lays down, and I can almost feel him drift off to sleep. I wait a little while, though, to be safe, before I let the tears come.




Monday, May 24
ADRIAN BURKE

I check the clock for the fifteenth time. Eleven forty-seven...a little over four hours to go.

I breathe deep, look back to the line of costumers, and try to focus.

Mistakes are not inevitable. I realize that. But it's important to me that the first day go well. I don't know why, really. Maybe it's because the kid training me looks like he's seventeen years old. If I'm going to fuck up, I'd rather do so on my own than under the disinterested gaze of some high schooler doing sixteen hours a week for his summer job. Or maybe it's just one more thing I'm trying to prove to myself.

So far, though, everything has been okay.

There was one issue, earlier this morning, but it had nothing to do with the job itself. It was just a reminder that I have new limits...ones I'm not used to. 

Some fat cheeked, flush-faced guy in a station wagon popped in to ask for directions sometime after nine. Seems he came all the way up from Florida to visit family and got himself lost. Now, I've lived in this area my whole life, and I recognized the name of the street he was looking for. I even knew that it was nearby. But I couldn't for the life of me think of how to get there. Worse, as I tried to focus I suddenly realized that I couldn't remember the names of ANY streets, anywhere. So I just stood there like an idiot, mouth open, with nothing to offer. Thank god for that kid.

"Where did you say you were headed?" he jumped in.

"Crestmoor Drive," the fat man responded.

"Oh, hey, you're almost there!" the kid smiled an easy smile. The kind that you can only manage when you're young and nothing terrible has happened to you yet. "You just take a right on 50th and you'll see it. That's about...whaddya think Adrian? Maybe four blocks away?"

I forced a smile and managed a weak, "Oh, yeah," then made a mental note to start relearning all the street names in the surrounding area. One more thing I need to accomplish.

Can't believe that guy drove all the way up to Des Moines from Florida. How long would that even take? What on earth was he thin-

Florida. Something about...

LAURA! Laura went to Florida!

That's where she was when I left for Castlewood! She had gone to Florida for work, and I was furious! But why? Why would that make me so mad? Did it have something to do with the baby talk? Was it about that?

And why on earth has everyone been lying to me about it?

Oh. Oh, god.

Now I remember. Now I remember everything.




LAURA BURKE

I can't go through with this. I don't care what anybody says, I just can't do it. I have to get out of here, and I have to do it right now. If I wait any longer it'll be too late. Adrian is going to come walking into this house any second now, and-

"Calm down, honey. We're here for you."

Mom says this without emotion, without a smile or a reassuring pat on the back. No optimism betrays itself in her voice. Instead her vocal chords sound metal-heavy, as if they've been dipped in steel. Her face may as well be carved from rock. 

Dad doesn't look any better. They're here for me, alright. They're here to make sure I go through with it. They're here to make sure I don't chicken out.

And who can blame them? Isn't that exactly what I want to do?

The door opens, and Adrian walks in. Mom and Dad greet him warmly, and I try to smile. His expression, curiously, is one of suspicioun.

"Why are you all here?" he asks. Mom and Dad look at me. I open my mouth, and nothing comes out. Closing my eyes, I try again. Nothing. Oh God somebody please do save me from myself.

"Well, first of all," Dad jumps in, "we were excited to know how your first day of work went."

Adrian doesn't answer. Something's wrong. He studies my father for a moment, then my mother, and then me. I don't know why, but something in his expression terrifies me. Finally, he says, "Why are you really here?"

I try to start over, to get this over with, but when I attempt to meet his gaze I can't do it. Please let this go well. Please let him be happy. 

With a glance at my mother for strength, I come right out and tell him. "Honey, I've been trying to find a way to say this almost since we got back from the hospital. It's been difficult...after everything, I was so...I just thought that maybe it was better to wait while you had time to...to heal. But I'm pregnant. And I..." his face hardens, clouding over like a summer storm, and I almost lose my nerve. But faking my way through this, playing my part right, is now my only hope. "...I know it will be hard for us, but I think that it's a...a wonderful thing. A gift, really! We're going to be parents! And maybe this will be just what we need to give us a way forward."

"Just think!" My mom jumps in, eyes wide and voice shrill. "You're going to be a daddy!"

Adrian doesn't respond. He just looks at me with that same dark contenence. That foreign, unforgiving stare makes me want to throw up. For God's sake Adrian...say something!

But then he does, and I immediately wish I could take it back. Not just the silent wish that he'd speak, either. I wish I could go back in time ten minutes, grab my purse and keys, and head as far away from this place as possible. His two words take all of the air out of me and replace it with poison. My unthinking body, programmed for efficiency, carries the poison like oxygen throughout my blood stream, until it saturates and destroys everything that I am.

"I remember," is what he says.

My parents share a nervous look. "Ahh...remember what?" my dad asks, but we're all sweating now.

Adrian doesn't acknowledge him. He just stares daggers at me and shakes his head. "I loved you," he says quietly. "I loved you so much. And it didn't even matter. It didn't matter to you at all."

"A....Adrian?" My voice sounds hoarse to me, like I've been screaming for hours. "What are you talking about?"

He closes his eyes. "I was worried, because it seemed like you were growing more and more distant from me. There were the long hours at work, about which you would tell me almost nothing. There was the lack of intimacy, and your strangely quiet demeanor. I worried that our relationship was losing its spark. I worried that you were getting bored with me." He opens his eyes again and stares up, above my head, squinting with the effort to remember. "We had been planning on starting a family this summer. I mentioned that to you, in the hopes of getting some kind of positive response. What I was really doing was looking for some small sign that you still loved me." His face twists into a sneer, the scars making it look particularly horrifying. "Imagine how it must have felt, to have you brush the idea off, like it was completely unimportant. Like I was suggested going to a movie you had no interest in seeing." His hands are balled into fists. He takes a step forward, and I can't help but gasp. My father stands up, mouth open to speak, but there's nothing anybody can say. It's too late. "But I still loved you!" Adrian snaps. "I still wanted to be with you, for the rest of my life! So when you told me about your little work trip to Florida, and made it clear that you didn't want me coming with, I did a little snooping." His sneer is slowly melting into a tragedy mask, his anger becoming a manic whirlpool of sorrow. "And I found out about you and Victor. Oh," he shakes his head, "I learned it all. But not until four hours after you'd left to go on your little trip. I tried to reach you....to stop you. I called your cell phone over and over again. But we both know you weren't going to answer my calls. So I did the only thing I could think of...I went to your parents' house to get their help." He's shaking. The light in his eye is wet, glassy madness. "It really is a shame that I didn't die there. It would have made things easier for all of you. Laura could be with her true love at last, and you two," he waves at my parents, "could have been spared the indignity of having to lie to me for all these weeks. Everybody could have paused for a moment's grief, and then gone on to their happy ever afters. All I had to do is die."

"Adrian, wait a minute!" Dad's cry is loud. Louder than I think I've ever heard him. "We're as disgusted by Laura's mistake as anybody, but she DID come back and she DOES want to make your marriage work. Nobody here is anything but grateful that you pulled through this thing. I mean that."

"'Pulled through?'" Adrian laughs. "Does it look to you like I 'pulled through,' Bill? I'm a half-blind disaster. And if I'm really, really lucky, I'll get to spend the rest of my life working at a gas station earning minimum wage."

"You're getting stronger and smarter every day," Mom insists. "And you can still save your marriage-"

"By what? By agreeing to raise some other man's child? By deciding to live out a lifetime of wondering, every time she steps out the door, if my wife is leaving to fuck her boyfriend?" He throws his arm out, fist clenched, and as it swings back it collides with the wall, leaving a new hole. "Why would I want that?!"

Mother shakes her head, trying to ignore the display of violence. "Not somebody else's child, Adrian. Yours. You would be the father, not anyone else."

"That's a bad joke."

"Stop it!" she snaps. "A father isn't a...a donor. A father is someone who reads books, who changes diapers, who tells stories and enforces rules. Not someone who gets some tramp pregnant and then leaves."

I wince, but I don't argue.

"Is that so?" Adrian turns and stumbles a bit. He's behaving almost like a drunken man. "Genetics don't matter? So how about a compromise, then? When the baby is born, we give it up for adoption and then adopt someone else's unwanted child instead."

My dad makes a face. "Adrian, you're embar-"

"NO! I will gladly 'be the father,'" he sneers again, and its even uglier this time, "of a child that isn't of my blood so long as Laura will 'be the mother' of one that isn't of hers. Can you do that for me, Laura? Is that an acceptable scenario?"

I can't speak. I'm horrified. I just jerk my head no.

"But why not? If we give it up as soon as the baby is born, then you're not the mother yet, right? A mother is someone who reads books, changes diapers-"

"It's different for women," my mother snaps. I wonder if she sees the look Dad gives her.

"Horseshit," Adrian growls. "Bill, you told me once that your grandfather was a violent man who beat his wife and children, and demanded exact cleanliness in his household. Did your dad beat you?"

"My father was a quiet and gentle man," he says somberly.

"Was he obsessed with cleanliness?"

"He...cared for it a little more than most."

"Then, did you at least beat your daughter?"

His eyes flashed. "You know that I didn't."

"What about cleanliness, Bill?"

Dad blinks. "I...it's unimportant to me, I guess."

"So it's the genetics that have lived on, then, is what you're saying. Not the lessons." Adrian sways a little, eyeing us each in turn, smiling like Christmas morning. "A father's lessons might last a lifetime...his influence lasts for maybe two. What lives on...what gets carried on...is this," he slaps his chest. "THIS!" He slaps it again. "So tell me again why I should want to raise and care for that son of a bitch's child."

My parents look at me, but I'm still speechless. I know I'm bug-eyed and breathing hard, but I can't make myself act. Finally, my mom says, "It's Laura's child, too, Adrian. I know that must count for something."

"It used to," he admits.

She shakes her head and turns to me, as though to say, 'well, what can I say to that?'

"It doesn't have to be the only child," my dad says. "There can be others."

"Adrian!" I manage to say at last, but when he turns to me again all I can manage is a weak, desperate, "please."

He roars, quite suddenly, ripping the lamp away from the wall and smashing it against the front door. My father moves to subdue him, and my mother in turn grabs Dad's arm to try and keep him away from harm. Adrian turns wildly around, presumably to smash something else, but he stumbles over his own feet and ends up falling against the wall. Putting his hands to his face, he slides down to a crouch.

My parents look over at me for guidance, which seems almost funny. I touch my hand to my belly and shake my head. 

"Leave him alone," I say. "There's no reason for us to go on causing him pain."

Adrian is crying, struggling to his feet, and I feel like throwing up.

"I'm leaving," he says quietly. "I'm leaving tonight." Stumbling, he runs to the bedroom and slams the door.

"I understand," I call after him. "And I'm so, so sorry."




ADRIAN BURKE

They're talking out there, whispering in clipped, urgent tones. I can hear them as I pack my bags. 

Well, Fuck them. Fuck the three of them. Every one of...I mean...when they tried to talk to me into...FUCK!

I can't even think straight enough to...uh...

My wife...my WIFE...is out there with some son of a bitch's child in her belly.

God, her belly. It's gotten bigger! I had noticed some weight gain, but...it was right in front of my face the whole time. She just paraded it around in front of me, and I was too trusting to even notice. Too stupid to get a clue.

And there it is. The real problem. What a joke I have become. They think that's what I am, anyway. I know that. But I'll...

Wait. What was I doing?

Packing. That's right. I have to pack. I have to...

This isn't my suitcase. It's Laura's travel bag. Goddamn it, Adrian! Focus!

She just took my whole life away from me. How am I supposed to focus on anything except that? What am I...

His kid is in her belly. 

What am I looking for again? Suitcase. My...




BILL DOLE

"Adrian? Are you okay in there?"

He doesn't answer me. Some shuffling noises pass through the closed door, and some heavy breathing, but that's all. I glance at Amanda and Laura, who both look frightened. I guess I am, too. The boy's been in there for forty minutes, now, without a word.

"I'm coming in," I tell him. "I'm gonna use a hanger to unlock the door, so don't panic, okay? I thought I could take you to a hotel or something, so you can get away and clear your head. Does that sound alright to you?" 

Still no response. With one last glance at my wife and daughter, I start fishing the hanger into the knob. When I hear the click, I throw open the door and look inside.

Adrian is hovering over his suitcase, breathing heavy like a long distance runner. He glances over at me and looks surprised. 

"Hey," I say. "Did you hear what I-"

"Oh," he says quietly. "Yes."

"Does that sound okay to you? Going to a hotel for the night?"

He blinks, and his mouth moves slowly. "Okay."

Something isn't right, here. "Do you, uh, mind if I check your suitcase for you? Just to make sure you didn't forget anything?" As screwy as his emotions are right now, the last thing I want is for him to forget his medication. I'd heard stories about how head injuries can effect temper, but I'd never seen anything like the display he just put on for us. It was almost like there was a different person in there with us.




Stranger is the Sail Ch. 03



Tuesday, June 8th 

LAURA BURKE

"Good morning, Adrian," I set down my coffee. "How'd you sleep?" 

He barely glances at me, yawning as he shuffles into the kitchen and starts making his breakfast. His shoulder pops audibly as he reaches up to grab a cereal bowl, almost like someone is snapping their fingers, and I wince. He doesn't react to it. He's been working out so hard these last few weeks, I'm sure that it's a stress injuriy. I don't really know that he does anything, anymore, besides lift weights, do his mental exercise sheets, and go to work. And I don't need to hear his joints pop to know how hard the effort's been on him. I only need to look at him, and I see it.

His face has somehow taken to presenting constant strain without actually revealing any definable physical change, like a house surviving a hurricane or a body dying from internal injury. His brow is permenantly creased, like someone who lost their glasses and can't see without them. Bags are digging deep pits under his eyes. 

The pressures that he's putting on himself are going to cause damage, if he doesn't learn to let his body and mind do at least a little healing from time to time. But then, he's fixated on his goals. He wants out, to dump the lying, cheating bitch and get on with his life. Leave mine to me. And who can blame him?

"Do you need me to wash the sheets?" I ask. "That bed hasn't been cleaned in ages."

"I can do it." He eats his cereal on his feet, pacing across the lanoleum as he chews. "But thanks." 



"It's not really any trouble. I have the day off, and I'll be doing laundry anyway. Let me do it for you."

"It's fine, rea-" he suddenly turns to look at me. "Did you and Victor ever..."

I look away. "No. I...we never...did that."

"That's good." He goes back to pacing. "I should have asked before I started sleeping there."

I try to think of something to say, but all I can come up with is: he took me in OUR bed, Adrian. Not the guest room. The one you shared with me for all those years. Not the one you sleep in now. 

"Please," I manage at last, "just let me wash them for you."

He stops pacing and finishes chewing the bite in his mouth. "Yeah. Alright. They could probably use it. Thank you, Laura." Then he goes back to walking and eating. 

That's about as good an interaction as we've had, lately. I can't imagine what goes through his mind. He hates that I had the affair, and that I'm going to have Victor's child. He's nearly died twice, now, and I suppose he sees both of them as being because of me, too. But that's about all I know. He hasn't made any effort to discuss our situation since coming back after the overdose, and if I even try to bring it up he leaves the room. 

His actions do make one thing plain: he's itching to get out of here. Even when he eats his breakfast, he can't sit down. He has to walk, to keep moving. Adrian desperately seeks the experience of forward motion.

And eventually, he'll either reach the point where escape is possible or he'll kill himself trying.

As soon as his breakfast is done, he puts his bowl in the dishwasher and heads upstairs to shower. I may have the day off, but Adrian works an eight today. He's been grabbing shifts every chance he gets, working in excess of forty hours a week. I don't know where the money goes, but it isn't going into our account. I suppose it's his escape fund. As difficult as numbers and money are for him, now, I wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't just stuff it in his sock drawer.

I'd be lying if I said I didn't mind. With just my income to live on, our resources are starting to dwindle. Maybe he's on the way out, but in the meantime he's eating our food and living in our house and not contributing to our finances. At this rate by the time my baby is born I'll be broke. If he's going to abandon me, does he really have to ruin me first?

He gets about halfway up the stairs and then pauses. "Oh, hey," he says, "I forgot to tell you. Melinda called last night. She wanted to know if we were available to come over later in the week."

I blink surprise...not at the offer, but at his relaying it. "What did you tell her?"

"That we'd talk and that you'd call her back. She's off today, too." He turns to go, then hesitates and turns back to me. "Do you want to go?"

I swallow. This is almost miraculous, compared to the treatment I've gotten the last two weeks. Not just conversation, but he's asking my opinion on something. "Do you?" I ask back.

He shrugs. "Might be nice to be around friends."

"Okay." I smile at him. "I'd like that, too."

He nods, then turns and heads upstairs. "We'll call a truce," he says.

I finish my coffee...decaffeinated because of the baby...and wonder. What was that all about? Is he starting to come to terms with everything? Is his anger fading as time passes? Does the initial impact of learning that the person you love let you down get buried under the endless mundane, until suddenly you're ready to heal again?

Is it possible that I could still save this marriage? Or is he just making the most of a bad situation until he can get away?

I put my hand on my stomach and close my eyes. Little one, if I can find some way to give you a loving father, I swear that I will. No matter how painful the struggle, I will endure it. You deserve to have a daddy, and I want you to have everything you deserve. 

But I cannot promise a thing. My hopes are just embers on the end of the devil's cigarette. Watch now, as he flicks them away. 





Friday, June 11th

MELINDA BLAKE

Rodney and Adrian are standing outside in the front yard, talking about that truck again. Or I assume that they are. Rodney tilts his head and says something, and Adrian laughs loudly, head back and arms crossed. He's put on weight. I'm glad to see that.

I turn away from the window, to where Laura sits on the sofa. She's put on weight, too, of course. And she does seem to be having a good time. Still, I wonder...

"Those boys and their toys," I shake my head, smiling. "I wonder if they ever really grow up, or if they just get quiet enough in their old age to give the impression that they have."

"I think it's cute," she sips her water. "I'm glad to see them looking so happy."

I raise my eyebrows. "Has Adrian been having...mood issues again?"

Her eyes dart away from mine. "He's been upset."

"With you?"

She blinks. "Why would you think that?" But her cheeks flush a little, and I can see her physically fight the urge to bite her bottom lip.

"Honey, you two have been here for nearly two hours, and he hasn't said a word to you. Even when you were bragging about his new job, he only talked to us...and only to add onto what you'd already said. Maybe that's reading too much into it, but it just seemed like maybe there was a fight going on."

She waves her hand dismissively and drinks more water to buy time. Still, when she puts the glass down the best she can do is to say, "No. Everything's fine." Then she gets quiet for a while.

I fill in the empty space by talking about the baby...well, about shopping, really. For furniture, for clothes, for whatever. I even offer to come with, to help her spend some money. Really, what I'm doing is fishing. I'm looking for any sign that my suspicions are correct...that maybe the baby is part of whatever Adrian's upset about.

And Laura confirms them. She lets me go on about it until the men start walking towards the house for supper. Then, she suddenly sits up and says, "There's plenty of time left to shop for the baby," she says. "I'll worry about all that later."

I smile and say, "Of course," and change the subject.

So the mother doesn't want to talk about the baby when the father is around.

I wonder why that would be?





LAURA BURKE

Melinda takes the hint and acknowledges it without verbalizing a thing. But then, of course she would. I swear, that woman treats every conversation like it's a mission of espionage. I know that she annoys some people with her double-speak and her gentle prying, but I see value in it. She tends to be pretty insightful, for example, about things and people. She's pretty quick at deciphering conversations, grabbing small details that go unspoken and building a clearer picture than another listener might. 

I wonder what she's figured out about Adrian and I.

Dinner is going well. Adrian even turns to look at me and smiles, at one point. Miracle of miracles. We're all laughing and talking over each other, telling stories and bitching about people in our families, until Rodney stands up and it all just falls apart. 

He taps his fork against his wine glass with that look on his face...the one that says he's got a good joke worked up that he can't wait to share. Melinda turns and gives me a horrified look that I can't make sense of. Then she reaches out to grab him. But it's too late, and he starts talking.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he says with a questionable mock British accent, "let us speak about the making of babies." He glances at Melinda's hand tugging at his sleeve and harrumphs. "I can see that my wife is eager to hear more, but then I should have feared as much. Babies, my good people, are medically defined as being tiny versions of very old people. Usually, they are created by two individuals, or in some cases animals, who love each other very much, mostly for the purpose of forcing their friends to buy them gifts. They are also universally known as a way for a man to make his male friends miserable, by causing their wives to start talking about procreation as though it were a pleasant experience. Now, in spite of all of this, I truly must congratulate my boy Adrian here. It was no small task for him to pass on his unfortunate hairline and too-flat feet, I'm sure. We, the people who know you, didn't think you had it in you to do such a thing. Well done, lad."

Sitting back down, he looks around the table and smiles, expecting the usual laughter and come-backs that would follow his speech. He sees Melinda's irritation, what I suppose is my own horrified expression, and the dark cloud that we've all noticed descending on Adrian's face, and his smile fades. "Did I say something wrong?" he asks.

Suddenly, Adrian starts laughing. His shoulders shake violently, and he contorts with amused pleasure. The laughter grows, like a blossoming flower, until the volume is terrifyingly exaggerated and he almost can't breathe from the force of it. "Not at all!" he says at last, wiping a tear from his eye. "Not at all. It's just that you left a few things out of your little speech, Rod. Let me fill you in."

"Adrian," I beg. "Don't."

"First of all, you congratulated the wrong person. Turns out I didn't get anybody pregnant. Laura's child won't have my hairline, or my feet, because I am not the father. In fact, I have yet to pass anything on to anybody, and may never get the chance to do so." 

Rodney frowns confusion and looks at his wife. Melinda doesn't return his glance, though. She's looking directly at me, squinting. I can almost see her putting the pieces together. She bites her bottom lip and tilts her head, and after that I can't stand to look at her. Instead, I lock my eyes onto my near-empty plate.

"I don't get it," Rodney admits, still flabbergasted. "Did you two use a donor or something?"

"Sort of," Adrian chuckles again. "See, while I was in a fucking coma, lying in a hospital in Des Moines, Laura was on a cruise ship off the coast of Florida with her boyfriend, fucking the time away. It's a real romance of a fairy tale...she loved him in high school, but her parents thought he was a bad influence. They kept her away from him as best they could, but apparently true love will find a way. A classic tale, right?" He sneers at me. "In fact, as it turns out, the only reason I was even IN Castlewood the day of the accident was to try and get her parents to help me convince her that she was making a mistake. Well, I learned my lesson. You can't stand in the way of true love."

"Adrian!" I snap.

"It's okay, Laura. I had no business trying to convince you that you were making a mistake. In fact I had it all wrong to begin with. The mistake in question was my own. I should have just walked away and left you to your newfound happiness, while walking away was something I could still do." He sighs. "I should have just let you be together. I mean, who knows?" He looks over at Melinda and Rod. "Maybe they've been seeing each other the whole time. Maybe I was always just a joke, and now it's time that the joke was over."

"Adrian!" I yell, slamming my fist down on the table and causing Melinda to jump. "You're not a joke! You never were! And yes, I did make a terrible mistake. But for a period of months...not years. I love you! Only you! I failed you, I betrayed you, I cheated on you. But I do love you. More than anything." I glance up at the host and hostess, and see the horror on their faces. "I'm so sorry," I say, to no effect. It's become such a useless phrase, lately. Seems like I say it all the time, and nobody even notices or cares. Might as well talk about the weather.

A silent moment mocks my apology, and then Rodney asks, "What will you do, Adrian?"

Another laugh, this one cold and humorless, is his response. "What are my options?" he asks back. "I can't even take care of myself. Oh, most of the time I'm able to do alright, now. But if I become stressed or agitated, all reasoning goes out the window. If I'm angry, forget about it. Let me tell you what happened the night I learned the truth. Laura and her..." he snorts, "...parents, the people I trusted most in the world, the people who were all the family I cared to acknowledge, were sitting around trying to convince me that Laura was pregnant with my child. That's how high their opinion of me was. But unfortunately for them, earlier that day something happened that caused me to remember everything. I remembered the suspicions. I remembered the lies. I remembered the desperation. And I remembered how my wife had shut me out of her heart and out of her body for week upon week upon week. 

"Oh, the looks on their faces when they realized that I knew the lies, even before they told them to me! It was pathetic!" He takes a deep breath. "I decided to leave. Right then and there, I was going to be done with them. Why put it off, right? So I went to the bedroom to pack a suitcase, but I couldn't think straight enough to recognize the suitcase. Then, when I finally got that right, I couldn't make sense of what I was putting in it. I was angrier than I've ever been in my life, and it completely closed off my mind from itself. I looked at things and didn't know what I was seeing. I packed that fucking suitcase to the brim with socks, and had no idea what I was doing. But that wasns't enough. Then, I decided to prove to everyone that I could care for myself. I decided to administer my own medication."

Melinda leans forward. "What happened?"

"I took my medication."

She blinks. "Oh." She looks relieved.

"You're not listening," Adrian smiles, his red eye looking droopy and glassy. "I opened that fucking container and I took my medication. I took all of it. Because my reasoning was reduced so completely by the stress that I didn't even know THAT anymore."

Rodney folds his arms, looking scared. "Jesus," he mutters.

"Oh well," Adrian shrugs, "what's a little more hospital time, anyway? But the point is, when I'm at my absolute best...I can almost get by. So long as getting by doesn't involve budgeting, or stress, or complicated problems, or emotional situations, or..." he shakes his head, his shoulders sag, and his voice gets quieter. "What else am I supposed to do, except stay?" 

Melinda reaches out and puts her hand over his. "There are assisted living programs-"

"Sure there are. But how much of my life do I give up, before I've given up the best of it? How much independence and freedom do you give up before it's too much? No...no, I will get away from where I am, and I will do it soon. But I have to do it by returning to that place where I can care for myself."

Melinda nods. "If there's anything we can do..."

"I know. Thank you. And I'm sorry I ruined your party." Adrian stands up and yawns. "I...uh...I'll be in the car. No hurry, though. It's a nice night." And then he leaves.

For a long moment there is silence. I can't decide what's worse...the idea of sitting here now that my friends know what I've done, or being in the car with Adrian's equally silent hatred.

Rodney speaks first. "I'm, ah...sorry I...caused that to happen." I shrug my shoulders. I know I should speak, but I barely feel like I'm alive at all. He continues. "Is there...anything more to the story?" he looks over at his wife. "Adrian obviously has his side of things, but..." Melinda gives him a 'stop prying' look, which he doesn't seem to read. "I guess it would just be nice to know."

I shake my head. "Most of what he said is exactly right. I ran into an old flame. I...I felt something for him. Things with Adrian had started to fall into routine, as they tend to do, and I enjoyed being with Victor. I felt excited, and exciting, in a way I didn't feel with my real life, when I was with him. And I was selfish. I enjoyed the rush of juggling two men. I enjoyed being that important to two different people. So I threw my life away for selfishness, immediate gratification and a high school girl's fantasy. I knew I was taking the chance on hurting Adrian...I just never dreamed I might hurt him this much."

They stare at me. Rod looks deflated. 

"I think you should go," Melinda says softly. I look at her and nod. The preacher's daughter loves intrigue and gossip, but right now she looks like someone who just spent an entire day carrying bricks up a steep hill for a boss that she hates.

She will probably try, but she will never quite manage to see me in any light other than this again. It will eat away at our friendship, until it vanishes altogether. Add that to the things I've lost.

I go to find my coat.





ADRIAN BURKE

I expected Laura to stay a while, and try to put a gentler spin on the story. I don't know why...I guess I figured she would want to protect herself, and comiserate with her closest friend. 

So I'm laying in the backseat, yawning and trying to get comfortable. But she's in the car and backing down the driveway before I can even do that much. 

"Sit up, and put on your seatbelt," she says in a lifeless voice. It's emotionless...not hurt, not defiant. Not loving. Just...dead. 

"Oh. Yeah. Sure." Now that it's over, I guess I'm a little embarassed at my outburst. There wasn't any reason to do that...not there, not in front of people we both count as friends. It didn't accomplish anything at all.

I wish Rod hadn't given that damn speech. He said that stuff about passing on genes, and it was like a heat lamp went on inside me. I watch Laura driving, but she doesn't move except to turn the corner. She never even looks back at me in the rearviewmirror.

Is it silly, that I feel the urge to say something to her? Not an apology, necessarily, but something to acknowledge that I know that I hurt her? I suppose it's just the fragmented shrapnel of a loving marriage, landing all over the place. I mean, she did this thing to me, yes, but a love that dies easy wasn't love to begin with. It was convenience, or maybe just the determination to be with somebody. I don't know. We had love. Really. So the death throes go on and on and on.

I don't say anything, though, because frankly, what would I say? 

Halfway home, she breaks the silence. "You didn't have to do that. You cost me my only remaining friend tonight, you know. My parents are ashamed of me, my husband hates me, and people at work are annoyed with me because I can't focus. Now I don't even have Melinda. I'm all alone." She hits the wheel with the palm of her hand. "I need to have someone, for Christ's sake, Adrian."




Stranger is the Sail Ch. 03



At any other time, I would have asked her about the baby's father. Now, I just say, "I know. If I could take it back, I would."

She breathes. "Why did you do it?"

"Partly because I lost my temper."

"What are the other reasons?"

"There's only one other reason," I admit. "But I don't want to talk about it."

"Well, I DO, goddamn it! I want to talk about it! What was the other reason you had to lash out at me back there?"

I look out the window, and for the first time in weeks I see the stranger. He's watching me carefully. "Because I'm so sad," I tell the both of them.

She doesn't talk for a while, but I see her wiping at her face a few times. Personally, I don't know if I have any crying left in me.

"Well," she says, "if you wanted to hurt me, then you did a good job of it. I hope that at least gives you something you can feel good about."

I glance at the stranger. His face is twisted, angry and terrible looking. His mouth is opened up wide, with too many teeth crowding it's cavern. He looks hungry. I blink my eyes a few times, look again, and I just see me.

"It doesn't," I say. "I don't feel good about it at all."

She lets out a sob, then takes a few deep breaths as she struggles for control.

When we get home, she falls into her chair at the table and sits staring at the floor. I walk past, headed for the bathroom. This night is ended. I just want to sleep.

"You don't have to shut me out all the time," she says. "You can...you can leave me, when the time comes, but while you're here..."

I almost don't answer, but something occurs to me. I stop and turn around. "I do have to shut you out, Laura. I'm sorry. It's the only defense I have, right now. If I don't, then...tonight was the result of me trying to find a way to stop keeping you at arm's length. The more we're around each other, the worse that's going to get." I start to turn back, then pause. "Listen," I say, "I really am sorry about what I did back there. I just...anyway, I'm sorry." 

She doesn't say a word. She doesn't even blink. She just stares at the floor and puts her hand over her belly. After a while, I can hear her whispering something to the unborn child within. 

She's still sitting there when I go to bed.





Saturday, June 12th

LAURA BURKE

The dream is a simple one, but strange. 

I'm back in my old room at my parents' house, the way it was when I was a child. Mom and Dad interact with me the way I remember them doing when I was very young, though they appear to be the same age that they are right now. I respond to them as if this is all perfectly normal, but I too am my actual current age. My belly is obscenely, surreally swollen with pregnancy. I am an adult woman sitting on a child's bed, calling it my own, bloated with impending childbirth. 

"Sweetie," Mom asks from the doorway, "have you finished your homework yet?"

"No," I say irritably. "I'm watching for the wind to come."

"Oh," she says, giving me a reproaching look. "Just remember to get it done before bed."

"I will," I turn away from her to stare out the window. All that I can see is water. Calm, reflective, peaceful water. This house is on the ocean, and we need for it to find land. 

I scan the horizon, frustrated. Then, in the distance, an unusual blurring appears in the air. I don't know how else to describe it. The water turns choppy, the clouds seem to quicken, and the mysterious haze moves swiftly in our direction.

I blink my dream eyes and smile. The wind is coming.

"Mom!" I shout. "Dad! It's here! The wind! It's here!"



"Good!" my father calls out from the basement. "Now go get Adrian! Quick!"

"Adrian?" I ask. The name is familiar, but I can't put a face to it. Who are they asking me to get? And why?

"Yes!" Mom shouts, running into the room and shaking my shoulders. "Adrian! Get Adrian! Hurry, or we'll miss the wind!"

I can't make any sense of what she's saying, and her fingers are hurting my shoulders. "Why do we need Adrian? Who is he?"

Mom recoils from me in horror. "What do you mean, who is Adrian?" she asks, taking small backwards steps to increase the distance between us. Then she looks out the window, and panic spreads across her face. "You have to get him. Hurry! It's almost here!"

I turn to look out the window, and I feel a kicking in my stomach.

"I felt the baby," I say.

And then I wake up.

Sitting up, breathing heavy, I squint at the clock. Six-thirty. So early.

Memories of the night before return to me, unwelcome and disappointing, and I want to scream. I wonder if they had anything to do with that dream...

I try to remember what it was about, but the details of the dream are already fading, escaping me, so I don't think too hard about it. It was upsetting, but that's about all that I can recall.

There won't be any more sleep, now. I'm a part of the day. I head downstairs to make coffee and get some breakfast.

The refridgerator hums, the eggs sizzle, and I almost burn my hand because I'm not paying close enough attention. 

Melinda will be gentle about it. I know she will. There will still be occasional phone calls, maybe even a few meet-ups, and she will still send Christmas cards for a few more years. Oh, she'll complain about how we never have time to see each other anymore, how lovely it is to talk to me again, and then we will make tentative plans that never get followed through on. 

The preacher's daughter was my last friend. What does that say about me?

As I turn to get a cup for my orange juice, I see that my cell phone is blinking. Curious. Who would have called me between the hours of eleven and six? I flip it open.

It's not a call. It's a text...from Victor. 



"Missing you," it says.

That's funny. The only person left in this world who is bothered by my absence is the one person I wish I'd never met. 

Is that completely true? I doubt it. Even now, I feel a thumb stroke against the strings of my heart when I think about him. We don't control who we fall in love with...or who we lust after, either. But there's no future there. Not for anybody.

This is the first time he's tried to contact me since I met with him to talk about the child. I don't know what I expected to happen that day. I guess my fantasy was that he would beg for the chance to be a part of his son or daughter's life, would plead for the chance to help raise it, and I would turn him down and live the rest of my life with Adrian at my side. What an incredibly stupid girl fantasy to have. So stupid.

Instead, Victor shocked me by offering to pay for the abortion. And the way he said it...like the way someone offers to pay for lunch...took the breath right out of me. For the rest of my life, I will never have any difficulty conjuring up the exact image of my child's father's face as he offered to fit the bill for it's murder. The way his smile became a promise, or the way his lids drooped slightly. Like he was flirting.

I left immediately, and I threw up in the parking lot before coming home. 

"Missing you." What a joke. Am I supposed to respond to something like that? 



Here I am, all alone. Adrian will never accept this baby, and Victor doesn't deserve it.

I delete the text and close the phone. Then I eat my breakfast without tasting a thing.





Monday, June 14th

ADRIAN BURKE

"Do you have a minute?"

"Of course," she says. A smile grazes the corners of her lips, but apprehension flickers in her eyes. It's a very conflicted expression. "Why?"

"I think we need to talk about what happens next." 

Laura's smile droops, and the conflict becomes simple fear. "Oh. Okay."

She turns off the television while I take a seat in my recliner. I've been thinking about this conversation, and what I want it to be, ever since our dinner with the Blakes. But now that it's time, I find myself strangely nervous.

I lick my lips and begin. "First of all, I want you to know that I am sorry for the way I've behaved these last few weeks. It's taken me a long time to get my emotions in check well enough that they don't affect my decision-making, and I'll never really be done with that. But I don't like it, and I'm done doing things just to hurt you."

She nods, but she looks very sad. "I'm sorry, too-"

I hold up my hand. "I promise to be brief, and I do promise to listen to what you have to say afterwards." Here comes the hard truth. I hope she's ready for it. "So please understand that I'm not trying to hurt you, but simply to move on with my life, when I say that it's time for us to talk about divorce."

She sucks in air, like someone just surfacing after nearly drowning, then emits a small, almost inaudible moan. "No," she says.

"I'm sorry, Laura. But you had to realize that the ending of this story was decided the moment it began. Even before I learned what you had been up to, there was no twist that was going to prevent us ending up right here. I love you, I really do. But there is no happily-ever-after for us to have. And that's what I want to have, someday, with someone. So it's over."

She shakes her head. "I can't accept that. There has to be something that we can do! There has to be some way for us to make it through this." She leans forward. "All you have to do is tell me what it is, and I'll do it!"

I shake my head. "Laura..."

"Please, Adrian! Please! Just think for a moment...what would we have to do, to save our marriage? What would I have to do, for you to want to be with me again?"

I close my eyes. This is not how I was hoping she'd take this. "Laura, I'm moving. I'm going to Chicago, and I'm never coming back to Iowa again."

She stares at me. "Moving? Why?! Why would you do that? What's in Chicago? And what's wrong with Des Moines?"

"I don't remember this place, is what's wrong with it. My life right now is shit, and I want nothing more than to experience a fresh start. If I can't remember this place, then what significance does it have for me? A bunch of streets, a couple of landmarks. Who cares? I don't remember their names."

"But you could learn-"

"To do that, I would have to want to learn. My wife betrayed me in this town. She cheated on me, and she threw me away. I nearly died here, twice. The less I remember about Des Moines, the better."

She shivers. "Chicago," she whispers. "When?"

"A little under two weeks. I've saved some money up from the gas station, and Rod's brother said he'll let me stay on his couch until I can find a job and a place to live."

"Oh." Then, she squares her shoulders up. "What if I was willing to move, too? What if I wanted to come with you?"

Outside, the wind blows, causing the house to groan. "You would have to wait," I tell her. "It would be some months yet, before you were ready."

She frowns and opens her mouth, as if she's going to ask a question. Then her eyes go wide and she puts her hand to her belly. "I'm not giving my baby away," she says. "Don't ask me to do that." 

"I'm not asking you to do anything, Laura. Not to give up your child, or to move to Chicago, or anything. I'm just leaving. So stop asking questions and let me go."

Her face folds up and a tear drops down her cheek. "I don't want to," she says.

"I'm sorry for that. But it is happening."

Another tear falls, and she wipes at her face. "You would be its father, Adrian. You know that. And I don't care what you say...it's an innocent, a blank slate. If you would only stay until it's born, you would see that. You would change your mind." 

"Raising a child isn't enough. It's not the same, and we've had this discussion."

"Well, have it again!" she snaps. Her chest rises and falls, hyperventilating in her attempt to control her tears. "Because you're wrong! You're WRONG, Adrian! A father is someone who cares for a child, who nurturs it. Who reads bedtime stories and goes to parent teacher conferences and goes to soccer games. Why can't you be that person? WHY?"

I open my mouth and "Fuck you," comes out before I can even think. Then I throw my hands up in a placating gesture and say, "No. Wait. If you want to have that conversation again, then fine. I've been thinking about it anyway. What if Melinda had done this thing to Rodney? What if she was the one pregnant with another man's child?"

She flinches. "Melinda would never do that to Rodney."

"I suppose not. She's too devoted to her husband to do what you've done to me. But pretend she did it anyway. Okay?"

"Okay." She sounds small, but also skeptical...or maybe nervous about what point I might be making.

"Now lets assume that Rod either doesn't know the child isn't his, or forgives her and stays to help raise it. The birth is difficult, but Melinda pulls through it, and they have a little girl. Eight years go by, things are going as well as they can for the little family, and then something terrible happens. Let's say a car accident. We're no strangers to those, right? Rodney is in a car accident, not of his own making, and he dies." I wave my hands in the air. "Where is he?"

She frowns. "I don't understand what you mean."

"There's an eight year old girl grieving at his funeral, but she doesn't have his eyes. Or his nose. Or anything. Whatever it was that made Rodney Blake who he was...it's just gone. It won't be carried on. And that little girl will grow up and remember him as her father, but when she has children of her own it will be somebody else's genes she's passing on. The lessons and stories and adventures that they shared will exist as memories, then as stories, and then not at all."

"Are you saying that little girl doesn't deserve to have a father figure in her life?"

"Sure she does. But why does that become Rodney's responsibility?"

"It's not about responsibility! It's about doing the right thing!"

"Small difference."

She shakes her head. "The difference is bigger than I could ever tell you."

"Let me turn this around the other way. Pretend-"

"ADRIAN!"

"JUST FUCKING DO IT!" I'm up on my feet before I realize what I'm doing. We stare at each other, both a little shocked. I need to maintain control, or I'll end up doing something stupid. "Please. One more time. Pretend." I sit down. "Pretend that the child in your belly really was mine, okay? Pretend that you hadn't shut me out of your life just before the accident, and I happened to get one past the goalie. Okay?"

She nods, looking sad. "That would have been nice."

"Now pretend I died in the accident."

"Adrian!"

"Just do it. So OUR baby is in your stomach and I am killed. You grieve, you mourn, and then the baby is born. Like you said, it deserves a father figure, so eventually you remarry." I shake my head. "Do you then see your new husband, this presumably caring man, as the child's father? Am I then just a sperm donor and a memory? Or do you take comfort in knowing that a part of me lives on through my daughter? Hmm?" I wait, but she doesn't answer. "Tell me, Laura. If things had ended that way, instead of this, would it matter to you at all that you could see me in your daughter's smile, or in the way she thinks and talks? If I had died, and we had a child together, would you see my face framed in hers and find my mannerisms in the way she behaved, or would you just see her as this new man's child? Who is the father, then, Laura?"

She sniffles and looks down. "I...I can't."

"Tell me."

"She would always be your daughter," she admits it like a boxer hitting his face on the mat.

"Hm. So I guess DNA counts for something after all, doesn't it? Laura, if I'm walking to work tomorrow and I get hit by a car, where would you look for me then?" I look away as she starts sobbing. "There wouldn't be anywhere to look, and you know it."

"We could still have children of our own," she insists.

I can't help snorting. "You know, here you are shitting on me for being cavalier about your child, and you're just as willing as I am to write it off as a mistake. 'Oh, whoops, sorry about the bastard...let's just surround it with real children and then maybe when people look at our Christmas card pictures they won't notice.' Disgusting."

Her head lifts, eyes afire. "That's not what I meant and you know it. I mean that this doesn't have to be the entirety of our family. We can have more-"

"To what end? I may not be any good with numbers anymore, but I'm not stupid. We must be in a pretty bad place financially, and it's not going to get better. I'm not going to suddenly start making forty thousand dollars a year again. You're not going to win the lottery. I'm surprised you haven't brought up the idea of selling the house and moving into a smaller one, yet." She looks away and blushes. "Oh. That was coming up pretty soon, here, wasn't it?" She nods. "Well. There it is. We're broke. I'm broken. When I get angry or frustrated I can barely control myself. Why would you want these things for your children, Laura? You can give them better than that."

She shakes her head, but after a time she says, "Go, then, Adrian. Just go. It's what you're going to do anyway." And then she stands up and walks back towards the bedroom. 

The door closes. Outside, the wind picks up again, and the house complains about it. 

"You're right," I say. "It is what I'm going to do. I just hoped that you would understand why."





Wednesday, June 16th

ADRIAN BURKE

My finger bumps against the plastic side of the container, and I drop the pill on the counter. Carefully, I pick it back up and drop it into the pocket labeled "Friday." Then I carefully double-check each pocket before standing up and looking to Laura.

She leans down and does a quick inspection, then gives me a small smile and nods. "Perfect again. That's three weeks in a row." With that, she turns and heads off to get ready for work.

That has to be hard for her, confirming my success. It's one of the last hurdles I face to getting out of here. But she has never tried to undermine or fight my efforts to grow. I don't think she holds out hope for reconciliation, anymore, but maybe she thinks it's a small step towards redemption.

So I can dose my own medication, now. Cross it off the list, Adrian. It feels good.

There are some things I'm simply never going to get back. My talent for numbers is lost, as is the decoding ability needed to be anything but a remedial reader. I've made improvements, but I'm more like a high school dropout than a college educated professional. 

Emotions will always be a tricky and volatile problem, too. I can learn all sorts of calming techniques, but I can't control them completely. And I doubt if I'll ever be able to get control of my actions when they overwhelm me. It's a strange experience...it's like I'm two people. After I'm done doing something mindlessly destructive out of anger I am perfectly capable of stepping back and viewing it as an observer. I can shake my head and realize that what I just did was mean, or stupid, and then the next time I get mad I might just do it all over again. 

Whatever looks I had going for me before, those are out the window forever. Between the lightly pocked scarring and the red right eye, I imagine a lot of people mistake me for a drug addict of some sort...especially when I get fatigued, and start slurring my speech. Not much to do about that.

But for the first time in months, I'm thinking about the future and feeling excited. And hopeful.

"Congratulations."

I turn around. Laura is standing in the doorway, dressed for work. She must have walked back in and I didn't even notice. Too lost in my own thoughts.

"Thank you," I say, and smile at her. Then, impulsively, I ask, "Can you tell me about it?"

She blinks. "What?"

"The affair. Did...what was wrong with our relationship, Laura? Was something missing? I'd just...I guess I hadn't thought about it much, but lately I've started to wonder."




Stranger is the Sail Ch. 03



Laura, to her credit, doesn't shy away from answering. "I wasn't happy," she admits. "I should have been, and I knew that, but I wasn't." A look of dark amusement crosses her face. "Ironically, the only thing I want in the whole world now is to be able to go back to that time and stay there forever. I thought that I was unhappy then, but..." she looks away.

"Did you love him more than me?"

"I don't even think it was love. Maybe I loved the carefree excitement that I associated with our time together, but I never felt anything for him that I would describe as love."

"Oh. What about the..." I brace myself. "What about sex, Laura?"

She rolls her eyes. "He was good, but so were you. Honestly, it wasn't about sex to me...not ever. It was about escape. And it turns out I got exactly what I wanted, doesn't it?" 

I shake my head. She looks so tired to me, now. "Thank you for telling me," I say.

She nods, turns to go, and hesitates. "I really wish you would stay," she whispers.

"I know."

Her shoulders sag a bit, she nods her head, and with that, she's gone.





Friday, June 27th

LAURA BURKE

I am an idiot

Doing an fool's dance to a fool's song, 

and even though I know it, I continue on and on.

Adrian is leaving me today. I may never see him again. So what do I do? I run away.

I couldn't stand to sit and watch him pack, and in my suddenly-frantic desperation I fled. Worse, I called Victor.

"Can I see you?" I asked, my voice bizarrely calm. It almost seemed to be coming from somewhere else, like a ventriloquist's act.

"Sure," he said, sounding amused, "come on over."

When I got to his place, he greeted me warmly. No questions about the baby. He did seem eager to get all romantic again, though. I guess the belly doesn't bother him. 

Well, it bothers me, goddamn it. 

When I tried to talk about the future, about what might happen next, he withdrew. That's when I noticed the pictures on the counter. A new ones, of him and some woman. Cuddled together, skin to skin, smiling stretchy white smiles as light as the air. When I asked about them, he seemed relieved and told me he'd been seeing her for a few months. 

I pointed out that he texted me just fifteen days ago to tell me how much he missed me, and he just laughed that off. "Oh," he smirked, "you know...I was drunk."

"And what about just now, when you were getting all grabby?"

Another laugh, another smirk.

After that, I couldn't leave fast enough.

I don't know why I even went. It's certainly not that I want Victor. In fact, the more time passes the more angry I am at myself for ever wanting him. But after everything that's happened, after the emotional rollercoaster of the last few months, the idea of going it alone as a single mother is more terrifying to me than the idea of being with an asshole like him. And even as much as I hate him now, when Victor first opened the door to let me in...when his eyes studied my figure...I felt something.

Stupid, stupid woman.

I guess the truth is I just don't want to have to see Adrian leave. If he's home when I drive off, and gone when I return, then it's like he went to work. Or to a movie. Or to see a friend. If I have to say goodbye....

It's been a strange couple of weeks. Everything about the divorce has been very amicable. Easy, even. And he's been in such an incredibly good mood. Nicer and gentler and easier to talk to than he has been in weeks. Like some stranger living in my house. 

My house. Yes, I get the house, and with Mom and Dad's help I might even manage to keep it. They're going to move to Des Moines so they can be close and help out with the baby. That's one more concession they're having to make for me...Mom doesn't mind it here, but Dad has always hated the city.

Considering how brutal the last few months have been, and how miserable my time with him has been, you would think that losing Adrian wouldn't bother me this much. Ever since the weeks leading up to the accident, there was always some barrier between us. My affair, his injuries, my secrets, his discovery, our combined anger...I can barely remember what our marriage was like when it was good. But somehow I still want to keep him. It's like I'm losing something important, something essential, but I can't quite place what it is.

Turning onto our street, I see that he and Rodney are still loading up the truck. They look close to being done. Shit. I really didn't want to see this. I pull over to the side of the road, about a block down the road. Fine. I'll watch you go, but you can't make me say goodbye.

Settling in to wait, I turn on the radio. My station is playing some god-awful happy song about how great Friday night is, and I'm not inclined to agree just now, so I scan the dial. Passing by a hard rock song with a whiny singer and a hip-hop song about sex, I get stopped by a strange singer with a gravelly voice. 

I turn up the volume. What is this? He sounds like he gargles razor blades and heals the cuts with whisky. The music underneath him is sparse and melancholy, but it seems almost amateurish. It doesn't fit with my tastes at all...I like pretty voices, I guess, and simple lyrics. A year ago I might have liked that Friday song. But something about this one is mesmerizing right now. 

At first I have a hard time understanding the words, but as the music swells and the singer begins almost howling he becomes a little clearer. I turn it up even louder as he leans into the next line and I try to focus on the words.

"You can't steer a ship with your faith," he cries, his open-throated howl sounding for all the world like my broken heart. "And the wind still pulls me far from the mast,
But if you cling to the rail now,
You're safe.
As long as I'm here you'll be safe." 

Oh. 

He's her sail. The man in the song is her sail.

Something comes at me...something from my dream. The one I'd so quickly forgotten. It's my mother, shaking my shoulders, telling me to get Adrian before it's too late. Before we miss the wind.

And with that, I suddenly know what I'm losing. 

I'm all cried out. Honestly. But I can't help misting a little as I replay the words in my mind and watch Adrian climb into the cab of the pickup. The engine starts, and the brake lights shine red. I can just make out the sight of him putting on his seatbelt.

I'm lost at sea.

I have been for a long time. I just didn't know it. I grew listless, directionless, and I made bad decisions. But somewhere deep down, I was terribly lost and frightened. And now the wind may be picking up at last, offering to take me home. But it just doesn't matter anymore. 

I'm losing my sail, right when I need it the most.





-----



Well, there it is. It's taken most of a year and somewhere around 140,000 words, but the first part of my story is finished. And even though it's just the events of the first summer, it does feel a little bit like mission accomplished.

Unfortunately, though, I've been pushing in too many directions at once. Between writing, work, living, and weight lifting, I've managed to overextend myself. So now, my wrists, back, ass, and wife are all suggesting that I need to take a break before continuing on. I suppose that's the order that I listen to those things, anyway. So that's what I'll have to do.

As of right now, I'm figuring on taking the rest of summer off before starting to work on the final draft of The Lunatic. Even when I get started, that story does threaten to be as long as Hallelujah if I don't end up making some changes to it, so the writing process will be an endeavor. 

There are a handful of Tribute Tales that I've started and discarded along the way, and maybe I'll finish one of those and put it up in the meantime, but in general they got left behind because they weren't good enough to keep around, so I'm skeptical.

In the meantime, I'll just keep hopping on here from time to time and hoping there's something new that's good to read. You know how it goes.