5. The Box
She helps him move his things into the spare room, not that there's much to put there. She wonders how anyone could get through life and have so little, and remembers Raylan's motel room and figures that some people just prefer it that way. Her house is a chronicle of her life and sometimes she wishes it wasn't.
Most of his stuff stays where it is, boxes and black plastic bags neatly stacked against one small portion of wall. He only takes out the things that seem the most important to him: a radio, some CDs, books. A lot of books. She's never understood his devotion to the written word. She isn't stupid, far from it, but she's never been book-smart, not the way Boyd is. He uses words like they are something special, things to be respected, not just sounds. He rolls them around his mouth as though enjoying the feel of them, the shape they take; sometimes there's delight in his face when he speaks them - hearing them hanging in the air is a source of pleasure.
She doesn't understand it but she admires it. It's why she always enjoyed hearing him talk, not the neo-nazi bullshit and all the other craziness, but when he'd just talk. From her post in the kitchen or out on the porch she'd listen, laugh to herself sometimes when the conversation would stutter to a halt when Bowman stopped understanding what Boyd was saying.
He'd try to make fun of Boyd and his books and his words, but only half-heartedly. Sometimes she thought it was because it scared him a little, this evidence of intelligence; but mainly, though, she thought it was because no matter what Bowman said he couldn't get a rise out of his brother. Boyd didn't care what Bowman's opinion on the matter was; he didn't seem to care much for the opinion of anyone on anything.
She admires that, too.
They don't talk about Bowman.
It is not something that has been decided on, but their mutual silence on the subject - her husband, his brother - is a tacit agreement.
She wonders if Boyd misses him. If there is a part of him that hates her for what she did. Sometimes she hates her for what she did but she'd do it again if she had to.
The first time Bowman had hit her she couldn't quite believe that it had happened. Afterwards, when she was sitting on the edge of the bed, bracing herself with her hands, he had knelt at her feet and begged her forgiveness, arms around her waist, face buried in her lap, and wept. She had stroked his hair like he'd been a child. He was often childlike: full of dreams and ideas and furious at anyone who he thought was in his way - and that person was usually Ava. He'd bought an expensive steak and pressed it against the bruises around her eye and promised her it would never happen again. He always promised that and for a long time she had wanted to believe him.
That was the thing that people didn't understand about her and Bowman: he could be sweet when he wanted and she had been young and for a long time she had loved him.
She has a box of her own. The figurines that have stood on her dresser are something she can't stand to look at anymore. Her house is the chronicle of her life and it is just that: her house, her life.
The porcelain figures are picked up carefully and placed in the box, a final exorcism.
Sometimes she misses him. Sometimes she remembers how nice he could be, sometimes she wonders if things would have been different if she'd had a child, then she thinks about the reality and while she can still remember the tearing agony of it all she's glad there was never a child to be in the middle of all of that.
She should donate the box and its brittle contents but she can't stand the thought of those placid figures adorning someone else's dresser or mantle-piece or coffee table. Her fingers uncurl from the cardboard edges and she watches it fall.
The crash brings Boyd out of his room. For a moment they stand on the landing; he looks at her, she looks at the box, then he steps forward, crouches over it.
'What-' He frowns and looks up. Bowman had probably told him how much she loved them. He would have been so pleased, telling his brother about how he would make everything okay with a tacky piece of crap he'd probably picked up at the store by the gas station. Maybe he has questions but if he does maybe it's what he sees in her face that stops them. He folds the flaps of the box over the shattered bodies, hiding their broken faces, picks it up, heads down the stairs and out the door. She goes back into her bedroom.
Her bedroom. Singular.
She hears him come back in, his catlike tread on the stairs that she has to listen for to hear. He returns to his room, leaves the door open a crack.
Later she makes coffee, pushes his door open and hands him a mug. He takes a sip, watching her over the rim, places it carefully on the packing case that's doing duty as a bedside table. She stands for a while, drinks some of her coffee, leaves him.
She doesn't see the box or its contents again; she doesn't ask what he did with it, he doesn't tell her, and she doesn't much care.