James would parade me like an accessory for public view, but the doors to his personal world, to who he truly was, remained firmly locked.
“I understand,” I whisper.
“Try again tomorrow.Things might have changed by then.But not to worry, we’ll take good care of him,” she says with one last, kind smile.
“Thank you, Doctor,” I reply.
My reason for being here leaves the room with her.
The silence rushes in to fill the gaping chasm this horrifying event has torn open between Matthew and me.I see him take a sharp, unsteady breath, wiping a hand roughly across his chin.His expression is still a hard, impenetrable mask, but the stress is clear in the tense line of his shoulders.
He drops his hand.His eyes, now cold as ice, find mine.“Ready?”
His single word is not a question.It’s a dismissal.
An ending.
Too tired to form a proper answer, I just nod in defeat.
Without another word, he turns and walks out, leaving me to follow in the silent wake of his fury.
The walk to his car is a blur.He keeps a half-step ahead, a short distance that feels like a mile-wide canyon.
He doesn’t look back.
He doesn’t slow down.
When we reach his car, he unlocks it remotely, leaving me to open my own door.
The silence on the drive to his house is so tense it feels like a third passenger.I sit rigidly, staring out at the glittering lights of Madison as they streak past, but I don’t really see them.All I see in my periphery is the rigid profile of the man beside me.His jaw is a hard, unforgiving line.His hands grip the steering wheel at ten and two, his knuckles white.The hand that should be holding mine looks like it could punch a hole through the dashboard.
A dozen apologies, a hundred explanations, rise in my throat.But they all die there.The wall he’s erected is too high, too solid.There are no words that can scale it.
He pulls into his driveway and kills the engine.Without a word, he gets out of the car, the slam of his door echoing in the quiet night.
He doesn’t come around to open my door.
My body feels heavy and slow as I get out on my own.He lingers at the end of the driveway, his back to me.Once I’m out, he walks to the front door, unlocks it, and steps inside, leaving it open for me.
I walk into the foyer to see he’s already thrown his keys into the bowl on the console and is halfway to the living room.I reach for the door, pull it closed, and turn the lock.I start to follow him, but the sharp throb in my feet, an ache I’d ignored, now screams for attention.I stop in the archway between the foyer and the living room, leaning against the frame for support.Bending down, I slip off one heel, then the other, a sigh of pure relief escaping as my bare feet meet the hardwood.Straightening, a shoe in each hand, I continue into the living room.
Matthew is standing in the middle of the vast space, his back to me, his shoulders rigid.He lifts both hands and runs them slowly, agonizingly, through his dark hair, gripping the strands at the back of his neck.
My heart aches at the sight of his distress.
“Matt…?”My voice is barely a whisper.
He drops his hands but doesn’t turn.His shoulders rise and fall with a long, heavy breath.
Then, slowly, he faces me.
His eyes are dark with a turbulent storm of pain and fury.“Do you have any idea where my mind went, Amy?”he begins, his voice a tight rasp.“When Helen told me you ran out of the café in a panic over James?When you didn’t answer your phone, call after call?”He takes a step closer, his voice laced with a cutting edge of accusation.“Do you have any idea the things I imagined?And then to walk into that hospital and see you covered in his blood?”He shakes his head, a look of recalled terror on his face.
I take a half step toward him.“Matt, I’m so sorry.I never meant to scare you.But what was I supposed to do?I heard him collapse.Then the line went silent.I couldn’t reach him.”
My apology doesn’t seem to register.
His eyes remain hard, his focus narrowing on me with a chilling intensity.“So you ran to him,” he says in brutal assessment.
