Chapter 19: Waiting on a Woman


I squeezed through and shut the door behind me, letting the pale light of day and a few scattered candles make a shadowy path to the large front windows where she was standing. The walls were still that same cabernet red that I had helped her to finish painting years before, and she looked so good, even with her back turned, standing in the middle of it all. Her blue flannel shirt, her worn out jeans and white socks, all seemed to fit in just right again.

There was a sigh that flooded between the lyrics of a song playing, something jazzy; something icy to match the weather. I was focused on the way she held her tea cup off to one side, with her arms crossed, dark hair in a tangled mess as it draped off one shoulder, and the shift of her legs from one foot to the other. Even without seeing her face, my mother was right, she looked miserable.

I inched my way through the room and landed a foot behind her before whispering a soft, "Hey."

Roxanne shifted weight again and glanced back quickly, barely replying, "Hi."

"You okay?"

"Yeah." A single pause, a deep breath. "I'm okay. Just a little shaken that's all."

Touch her. Hold her. Let her see that you're still here.

"Are you tired?"

This one she seemed to have to think about, and before she answered, she eyed me quietly. Almost as if she were curious as to whether I was suggesting that we go to bed together.

"I can't close my eyes actually. The tea isn't helping either."

Let me help, I wanted to say, Let me read to you, sing you to sleep. I'll do it. Anything.

Instead though, from out of nowhere in particular really, I heard myself saying, "Do you wanna take a walk with me?"

There was silence. We both moved our eyes out of the windows, where the light was turning a hazy sapphire from the grey, proving the day was coming on quicker than expected. Roxanne stayed quiet for what felt like a lifetime, staring out of the icy glass and tapping her wedding ring against the porcelain blue of her tea cup, probably taunting me.

Without warning though, she looked back and with a light smile said, "Alright. A walk sounds nice."

Headway. I'd made some finally.


The snow crunched under our boots, my pace staggering just short of his, but both of us side by side. I kept my hands tucked inside of my heavy wool coat as the walk lingered into an eventual stroll down the white and aged path beyond the property. It was a silent, wandering turn about the lakeside, with the grey sun rising on one side and the cold air blowing in from the other. All I wanted to do was to talk to him, to say all the things I was thinking, and ask him all the things I couldn't say.

Thank God, I didn't have to be the one to start.

"Weird to not see the sun anymore, isn't it?"

I hummed a, 'yeah' and nodded.

He kept his hands in his coat the same, kicking up small piles of snow as we walked in towards a close, abandoned dock on the lake. I stood out on the very end, hearing his loose breathing behind me, but too afraid to do anything about it. Mort still talked to me though.

"Seems like forever since we were here."

"And then some," I whispered, rubbing my pink nose.

"I think I've actually missed it a little."

Turning my face up as he moved in next to me, looking out over the lake, I agreed, making him smile down in return. And then there was silence, again, so naturally. It wasn't that we had run out of things to say, or to argue about (that was for damn sure). It was that I wasn't sure we knew how to anymore. Lord knows we kept trying though, and I guess they say the third time's the charm, since a second later it was me stuttering for words.

"You never got to answer my question, you know."

His black eyes, like coffee in the snow, rose and fell with mine.

"Yeah," he replied gently, "That's why I wanted to take you for a walk."

"To tell me what happened?"

He nodded, "To tell you everything you want to know."

"Well I would appreciate not knowing every little detail of it."

His brow crossed down at me, already set in to defend himself.

"There are no 'little details' of it, Rox."

"Come on," I sniffled, "Do I look like I was born yesterday?"

"No. I just can't understand why you're still so determined to believe that something serious happened between me and Catalina."

Hearing her name made me cringe and I shifted weight to another part of the dock, away from him.

"Whatever you're thinking happened, I swear to you a million times over, it didn't."

I crossed my arms and tucked my face inside of my wool hat some more, barely comfortable against the chilly wind. He was behind me, I could feel him even without his arms or breathing close. Mort was right there, probably wishing I would turn around and handle the conversation like an adult with eye contact. But eye contact hurt more than I wanted to admit.

"You asked me if what you saw was the aftermath of something else or an interruption. Right?"

I nodded without turning my face.

"I can tell you right now," his hand touched my back, "She wasn't putting my clothes back on."

I shuddered at his touch and shifted finally to see him.

"So she was taking them off. Okay. Established. And you didn't try to stop her."

When my voice rose, so did his. Appropriately so I guess.

"Yes I did. I told her I could never do that to you."

"And what was she Mort? A hundred and twenty pounds at most?"

"Jesus, I didn't want to hurt her, Roxanne."

"But you hurt me!"

A tear burned at the corner of my eye with the shout, and I turned back around, facing the direction of home instead of him. I didn't want him to have the satisfaction of seeing tears. Tears that he put there and would easily try to take away.

"You have to know," he sighed a distance behind me, "I never wanted to. I never once planned to hurt you."

I forced myself to stay silent.

"You've been hurt more than I could have ever dreamed was possible, Roxanne. All these things that happen to you, to us, and it's still not over. There's a woman out there trying to take our children. There's someone who wants you dead, someone who wants to take you from me."

The deeper his words burned, the deeper my crying came.

"How can you think for one second, on top of every other risk you face being with me, that I had any intention of doing to you what was done to me before?"

Thoughts came of the first time he explained the situation with Amy to me. She'd broken him, same as I was sure I was allowed to feel now, and yet maybe I wasn't. Maybe this was the truth and I just couldn't accept it because I was so prone to pain all the time.

"That girl tempted very little in me. She came to the door, she was an overly zealous fan with big ideas, and she tried to change my mind." I heard his boots coming in close behind me, then I felt his arms consume my entire body, holding me to him, breathing in my ear as he begged me to understand. "But she made the mistake of thinking she could. She didn't realize my mind was made up a long time ago, here, in this exact place. I could never let myself do anything to lose your love, honey. I'd just as soon fall flat on my face and never get back up."

I felt like I was falling. Standing in his arms, wanting so badly to give in, to forgive and to forget. I wanted to turn around and kiss him, feel every bit of him that I'd been missing with my prideful shield. I wanted to get back and never let go again.

But I too often underestimate my own uncertainty with the world around me. I'm used to having the sky fall as soon as things start going right, and because of that inner battle, I had to push his arms away. I had to walk right off that dock and head back down the path, without him on it. I had to let myself cut loose the possibility of falling or being wounded all over again.

And I did.

Mort shouted after me, calling my name, begging me, but never running after me. I thought I knew why, but I couldn't be sure, so I just went on. My boots stumbled over snow and fallen leaves and hidden stones, forming a trail of my own to somewhere I was afraid to go. Simply because there would be no turning back if I ever made it there.

"Roxanne! Where are you going? Baby, come back!"

I didn't make it another three feet, before I saw something fall in front of me. The sky, I thought morbidly, here it comes, just like I knew it would. And yet it was nothing more than a singular snowflake, followed by another, and another that landed right on the tip of my nose. I stopped moving then, at a standstill between an unruly destination and the place I knew deep down I belonged in. The snow fell softly, like floating memories of things that I should have remembered. Maybe if I had, I wouldn't have pushed him away so quickly.

It was the first heavy snow, of our first season spent in North Carolina. I was six months pregnant. I was so happy.

"Don't move," he whispered, stepping back away from me and down the bank of icy grass a little further.

"Mort, what are you doing?"

I laughed and he just smiled, "I want to remember you like this. Stand still."

I did, flakes of white hitting my forehead and nose, dancing in my long hair and falling down on the lazy bump in my coat. And he just stood, hands in his pockets, ten feet away and staring like a fool.

"Memory made yet?" I teased.

He grinned crookedly and began walking back after a minute, kissing the top of my head when he made it.

"Saved forever."

I gasped to come back to reality. The snow was covering me by then, sprinkled all in my hair, on my boot toes and coat. I hadn't realized it till then, but even though we weren't in North Carolina, and we hadn't lived here on Tashmore for five years, we were home, I was home. Home was wherever he was. Home was Italy for the week and a half we spent there. Home was that little bungalow in the Virgin Islands. Home was the cramped balcony on my old apartment in the city. And no matter how hard that girl had wanted to do it, she hadn't taken my home from me. She'd tried. She'd nearly succeeded. But my home cut her off.

My eyes shifted when my boots did in the snow bank. It was falling heavily enough, that when I tried to look back and find Mort, I couldn't see him. So I did what I'd always done when I was at the end of my string, lost and helpless in my life. I started running in the direction I knew he was.

"Mort!"

I shouted and kicked up white dust, my hair and arms flying through the sky that was falling all around me and all at once, like usual. I could barely make out the path leading back to the house, but I followed boot prints in the snow until I saw a figure standing idly a yard ahead.

"Mort, wait!"

And he did. He waited until I slid against the snow feet from him, and until my arms and legs could reach just far enough to wrap around him completely. It was no challenge for him to lift me from the ground and hold onto me, like he hadn't done in too many hours and days. Hours and days that felt like years, or better yet, centuries. His arms hugged me to him tight and I pressed my cold nose into his neck, where those same unruly wisps of golden and auburn hair always laid, where his skin was warm and smelled like cinnamon cookies.

More tears came, as can only be expected, but I found and heard in the quietly falling snow, that I wasn't the only one with an emotion or two to be shed. I pulled back from his neck, stared down at him between snowflakes and pressed my forehead to his. My gaze was fixed firmly to where I saw his eyes just barely glistening from under his wool cap.

"You're crying."

"Go figure," he teased as I wiped his tears off with my mittens.

"You never cry. Why are you?"

He gripped me tighter to his body, walking about in invisible circles.

"Why do you think, Rox?"

"You didn't think I was coming back. Did you?"

He shook his head a little, "What good reason would you have to now?"

I touched my nose to his and let his soft mustache tickle my lips, "Want a list?"

He laughed and squeezed me to him harder, resting my head back on his shoulder and spinning me around right there in that spot. I know we'd been there before, a long time ago, in the middle of a summer neither of us could have ever pictured. My arms hugged his neck and I kissed his jaw, his cheek, his entire face, not willing to move on from there.

"Where am I going to go?" I whispered. "Where else do I have to be, Mort? But right here," my lips came to his a second time, warmer, "With you. You're still all my own right?"

He rolled his eyes with a fierce nod until his mouth hit mine again and finally, after too long, he kissed me. Like ever before it, his kiss could have melted the air right back into summertime. His hand held the nape of my neck, pulling me as closely as he could get me, his lips twisting with a moist spice that hit my tongue seconds later. I couldn't grip him tight enough or feel near enough to any bit of him. It was impossible. I constantly wanted to be closer in that moment.

A breath came between us where all I could think to say was, "Take me home. Make love to me, okay?"

His eyes lit up with a wintry sparkle before he turned for the house and started kissing me again.