“I’m not sure but I know he’s connected more than he lets on. I don’t think he’s the man you knew before. He escalated to special forces pretty quickly after he enlisted, but that’s all I can find of his time serving. I couldn’t find any details of training missions or deployments. It’s like his record was wiped clean. I have a hunch someone important used him to gain access to you and your mother. I wish I knew more.”
“The more questions I ask, the more I have. About her life and mine. About everything I thought I knew.”
“I’m with you, Freya. Even when I couldn't be with you, I was. I’ve been working the possibilities over in my head a thousand different ways. I can’t keep living this way, on the run and without you too. The only thing missing on this mountain is your smart mouth. I saw the look of shock and hurt on your face when you saw me with V on the campaign trail. I knew you assumed I’d left you for her. It killed me that you thought that, but it was safer if you did. It wasn’t true—I’ve loved you from the beginning—I could never be with anyone else, but as long as it kept you safe I needed you to believe it.” A new voice text popped up immediately after the previous one.“Find your way to me, Frey, we have forever to get to.”
I imagined Campaign Barbie at his side with her clipboard and a smile. The soft angles of her face and the way her cheeks lit easily as she watched my Tav. Was she the same woman that’d listened to me through my darkest moments last year, therapist’s notebook in her lap and an array of prescriptions at the ready?
I tried to compare their features in my mind’s eye, but the more I did, the more they bled into one. Was this the usual trick my memory played on me? Dissolving reality in the mirage of my mind to fit my own deceptive narrative? Had I only been looking to create an enemy out of Tav, while all of this time my safety had been his sole priority?
“What about the chalet? The department?”
“Fuck the department. There is no department, there are only bad guys. Very, very ruthless men that will chase greed and power at any cost. Some are from far away places and some are from right in my own backyard. Yours too—your lawn guy for chrissakes—you never thought that maybe…” he huffed. “Well, I wish I’d never left you alone. I wish I'd never taken that contract, that I’d walked away from my father a long time ago. You and me, Frey, you’re the only thing that’s ever mattered to me.”
“What about the gun? You left me alone in the wild without a gun.”
“You didn’t even know it was there until you stumbled across it in the closet. I knew you weren’t comfortable with it, and I knew if I told you the real reason why I had it so soon—because there was a chance we’d been followed up there by some very bad guys—well, I wanted you safe, that’s all I could think about. I knew you were safe locked up in that chalet after I left. I knew Bud would take care of you—if he’d refused to help you, I would have returned. I trusted him more than Bradley, and I also paid him a helluva lot to make sure you were taken care of up there.”
“Tav...I—I wish you would have told me everything. I felt so vulnerable every moment.”
“And now you’ve found your strength. We’ve been through so much. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you more when you lost our baby, but I can be now. I left that life. My father was a pawn to powerful people for as long as I can remember, I won’t be that too. I left to stop a cycle before it consumed us both. ”
Tears sprung to my eyes at his frank admissions. “Maybe it already has.”
My mind lingered on his words about the baby.Our baby.
I knew in my soul that baby was a part of me and Tav, and whatever I’d let Bradley think was only to avoid upsetting him. Tav and I were real, we’d always been real.
But if he brought up our baby now, did that mean I’d made up all of the memories I had of his hushed whisper in my ear then?
I know the baby isn’t mine.
I cringed, unable to shake the darkness those words cast over me.
Like a cloud, the implications hung.
“When you come, be discreet. They’ve been waiting for me to contact you, that’s why I didn’t want to raise alarm bells and do it before now. I’ve been on the move for months, never staying more than a few days in a place. I’ve been living a life on the run, but it sounds like you have too. Let’s do it together.”
I fingered the dark shadow in the background of my photo, moving quickly to tear the section that included Bradley and then zeroed in on the other half of the image.
My smiling face, Tav forever keeping watch over my shoulder.
“What would I call you now?” I finally asked.
“Whatever you want,” Tav replied.
I didn’t answer, the idea of uprooting Bradley so quickly settled over me like a cloud of guilt.
“So there’s no going back for us?” I asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“And there’s no other way?”
“Not that I can see.” He affirmed.
“We were just born into this random excuse for a life?”
He sighed over the recorder. “If there was another way, I would do it for you.”
