The Keeping and the Kept

Life was full of possibilities, alternatives, roads-not-taken.

What if you'd gone to another university, chosen a different major, settled in the neighboring city? What if you hadn't gone to that bar on that night and seen that blonde, the way she smiled, the carefree toss of her head when she laughed? What if she hadn't laughed? What if you hadn't sat next to her, heard her careful voice, the steady way she laid her thoughts out for you, one after the other, like shining pearls on a string? And what if you hadn't followed that string, buying her a drink, and the next, and the next?

When you've got your happily-ever-after, your son and your wife and your white-goddamn-picket fence, all those thoughts became academic, mere thought experiments to toy with and drop just as easily. Better yet, you used them to justify the existence of some divine fate (though you didn't and never had believed in God) and used it to think of your life as blessed in some grand, cosmic way. Mark and Elizabeth: two lovers written in the stars, their collision as inevitable as celestial bodies falling farther and farther into the other's gravity well.

Then the unthinkable happens. The worst of all what-ifs. The black swan event that no one ever really believes will happen to them, because if they did they'd never risk having a child in the first place.

The drive. The seat belt. The dog. The swerve. That hideous, wet crack against the car window.

It was no one's fault, they all said, wringing their hands in the aftermath, but that was bullshit. There was almost too much fault to go around. What if he'd driven more carefully, taken his time, minded the rain? What if she'd double-checked the seat belt, tugged it high and tight? What if that damn dog had eaten rat poison and choked on its own vomit, long before it ever stumbled onto the highway in front of their car?

What if he'd chosen his son over an animal?

All of that wasn't bad enough, no. All of that was still normal, traumatic grief talking. They might have gotten through that, whatever the statistics said about marriages where the parents had lost a child. Might. But there was more.

Once Jacob was gone and Mark was drowning in the void of his absence, untethered from everything he once thought of as an anchor, the first of the what-ifs that sent Mark diving to the bottom of a whiskey bottle was the thought of:

What if we'd never had him?

And the second thought, the one that kept him plunging recklessly, heedlessly after some insensibility of his own weakness:

What if that would have been better for us all?

Mark surfaced months later, too exhausted to fight his loathing any longer, but even though he'd come to peace with his wretchedness it was too late. He'd lost everything: first Jacob, then himself, and finally Elizabeth. And all those signs he'd taken as breadcrumbs along a dark forest path hadn't been leading him to a golden castle, but rather to a poisonous, stinking bog. Now he was trapped, alone. All that remained to cling to was the least of his successes from before, the career he loved only because it gave him the money and prestige necessary to make his family and their home and their magical, fated life possible.

It wasn't enough to satisfy him, but it was enough to keep the darkest, deepest what-if—the pistol in a lock box under his bed—farther from his thoughts.

Time passed. Life lived on, in its way.

Then.

Then.

Then the miracle.

Jacob, in the attic. Jacob, on the stairs. Jacob, in the living room, his wooden toy plane in his hands, going vroom-vroom in that lispy little lilt of his, even though his little tooth had grown back. Or had never fallen out at all.

Jacob—not alive, for he had no body and couldn't be touched—returned. Present. Full of thoughts and feelings and laughter and sorrow, each emotion shining from those big winsome eyes against which Mark was always powerless.

Then.

Then.

Then came Elizabeth. Her fist in his face, her hand in his hand, her smile—that same smile from that first night, wide and thrown back and unguarded and overflowing with the wonder of life—her laughter.

And suddenly, after years and years of thinking that the only answer to a what-if could only be the worst one possible, leading to the darkest of all futures, suddenly Mark found himself thinking: what if this is how it all comes back? What if all of this has been a test?

What if I can make it come back?

Because it did come back. At first it was only in bits and pieces, a performance put on for Jacob's benefit. He and Elizabeth playing their parts during the hours they allowed themselves, splitting him as though their separation had been a planned uncoupling and not a violent derailment of everything they'd wanted. She took the days and he took the nights, and when they overlapped they were civil to each other and devoted to Jacob. What glances they shared were out of the corners of their eyes. Never direct.

It wasn't enough. Whether it might have been enough for Elizabeth—who had a new partner and surrogate children to care for—was a what-if Mark didn't want to linger on. But it wasn't enough for him.

He justified quitting, and justified wedging himself into a part of this new routine where he didn't belong because Jacob was his son too, and no one—not even the universe itself, it seemed—had the power to keep them apart. If he was being selfish, it was for a good cause. Hid dad wasn't right about many things, but Mark wanted desperately to believe him when he said a boy needed his father. Whether that boy was dead or alive wasn't the issue. Elizabeth had no right to object, no right to separate them, not when she'd been the one to—

No. That wasn't fair. That was exactly the line of thinking that had made Jacob shatter the house apart around them. As it had shattered in the months after his death, when their guilt had first driven them apart and then driven them mad. If she was at fault, he was too. And if Jacob was willing to forgive her—forgive them both—he had to as well.

Forgiveness. Could you imagine the grace required to forgive the murder of your own child?

Mark couldn't have. He didn't. Not for years. No forgiveness for parents who had been so careless, so carefree, as to cause the death of their son. Only their son could absolve them, and he had. Never once did Jacob accuse them of stealing him away from them, from his life. He only cared that he was back with them now. That they could play together; make shadow-puppets, make sun-catchers. Go to the beach.

The beach.

It had been their favorite place, their weekend haunt. Jacob, slathered in sunscreen and a long-sleeved rash guard, girded well for the waves with a float-belt and water-wings. Elizabeth, radiant in a white cotton cover-up and a worn, wide-brimmed sun hat, two novels in her bag and a waterproof notebook at the ready. Mark had been king of the cooler, master of sandwiches and lemonade. Also responsible for ensuring any sandcastles they engineered were up-to-code and ready for inspection at any moment.

It wasn't exactly the same. Elizabeth's silk blouse and chinos were ruined by salt, there was sand in Mark's boxers, and neither of them could touch Jacob long enough to toss him—squealing with joy—into the waves, but it was close enough that Mark allowed himself to imagine the most wonderful what-if of all:

What if it doesn't have to end?

It didn't end. The charm of their days that Elizabeth had always broken by leaving wasn't shattered that night. Jacob helped, nudged them along. How else could you explain that song? Their wedding song, long loving notes singing from the speaker, echoed in Elizabeth's uncertain yet passionate voice. He teased her, because that was what he had always done, but even if she didn't sing well, she sang with her whole heart.

She did everything with her whole heart.

Which is why when she kissed him, he didn't doubt that she meant it.

Mark hadn't been celibate in the years since their divorce. He was handsome, he was hurt, and he often took himself to anonymous, crowded bars in hopes that the one fact would help him alleviate the other. But sex was sex and love was love, and the former without the latter was just a physical release that gave him a scant few seconds of blissful blank, before the tragic truth of his memories found him again.

Though tragedy had torn them apart and ripped them to shreds, there was still love between him and Elizabeth. He still knew that a nip to her clavicle would send her shaking; she recalled how to scrape her nails across that sensitive spot above his hipbone. His tongue remembered the salt of her skin, the pattern of veins in her neck, even the little notch in one of her canines when it slid into her mouth.

It wasn't the same. Before, they had always had time. Before, they had not known that loss, loss of their child, and themselves, and each other, was stalking them—minute by minute, hour by hour—through the endless corridors of time. Now they knew. It sharpened their hunger, made them desperate for each other.

Elizabeth whined as he kissed her, a broken plea, and hitched her knee up his side. Once she would have jumped, trusting his arms to catch her, but trust was broken and would take more—even more than a miracle—to make it whole again. Mark couldn't stand it; he wanted it back, all of it, now. He tucked his palms under her ass and tugged, groaning in grateful relief when she followed his lead and allowed him to lift her. She was such a light burden to bear.

He walked her backwards through the shadowed halls of their home, from the kitchen, through the foyer, to the living room. Jacob was asleep upstairs—if he slept, if he stayed at night—and they had both always been so cautious not to wake him. The sofa would have to do for now, but what if, what if...?

Elizabeth wasn't a passive passenger, mouthing at his throat and the corners of his mouth, all teeth and tongue, less like she wanted to kiss him and more like she wanted to eat him, take him back into herself after so many years of separation. He knew the feeling. He knew.

The coffee table wasn't where he remembered; he grunted and felt Elizabeth slide in his grip when his shin collided with a bang. She surfaced, blinking wildly.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah," he closed his eyes against the pain, thankful that it hadn't affected certain other parts of him, but he'd have a bruise tomorrow for sure, "All good."

"Oh," she said, a bit blank. Then a grin erupted. "Do—do you think," she was laughing, breathless and shaky, "Do you think Jacob heard?"

"Somehow," Mark replied, "I don't think he'd mind if he did."

"Me neither," Elizabeth wiggled free and stepped onto the sofa, towering above him, framed in a soft halo of light from the lamp near the window. Her tousled hair gleamed like a crown. Her hands lifted slowly, tracing his face, the lines that had settled into it over seven years and innumerable sorrows. "I missed this. I missed you. So much. So..." her voice broke.

Mark pressed his face to her sternum, between the softness of her breasts, and breathed her in: her sweat, sea salt, and the faintest trace of her jasmine perfume, the one he'd gotten her for Christmas, eight years ago. She'd worn it ever since.

She smelled like home.

When he drew back, her blouse and his face were wet. "I did too," he whispered, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I left you alone. I was just...I was weak, and I was angry—"

She shushed him, bending her face to his, kissing his tears one-by-one. "I was too. Weak, angry, guilty...you were right, I should've checked, I should've—"

He couldn't let her finish that sentence. He stole it off her lips. No more sorrows, no more regrets. If this night was proving anything, it was that they didn't have to be prisoners of the past for one more day. One more night. One more moment.

He folded his arms around her and gently, gently lowered her to the sofa. It wasn't big enough for both of them—her neck bent awkwardly, his legs hung over the arm—but it was what they had and it was enough.

Neither of them wanted anything more.

But Elizabeth's past wasn't so easily done away with, and Mark couldn't wipe it from her memory as easily as the yielding press and give of her body did to his. Demons weren't the only thing she needed to be freed from. Though calling Smith a 'demon', admittedly, was probably a bridge too far. He'd been there for her as Mark couldn't have been, after all.

What really hurt Mark wasn't Smith's pain, or imagining what his daughters would think of their stepmother's defection. Maybe that made him a monster…if he wasn't enough of one already.

No. It was the cry Elizabeth gave, sharp and torn with bitter, bitter regret, almost as agonized as the one she'd shrieked in the aftermath of the crash, when Jacob's eyes weren't opening and her cellphone was broken and the passenger-side door was welded shut from impact. It was hearing her go through another sudden, violent loss—of loved ones, of family—and knowing that once again, though there was enough guilt for everyone to have seconds, he was responsible for it.

As he watched her drive away, too numb with remorse to reach out a hand or say a word, Mark saw all the possibilities, the alternatives, the roads-not-taken and worse, those yet-to-be-taken.

What if he'd been a better man? What if he'd been satisfied with what they'd already had?

What if she'd pushed him away?

What if she never came back?