He opened his eyes and slammed on the brakes. The truck continued to lurch toward the petrified deer, staring at them from two feet, then one.
Madeline thrust both hands against the glove compartment. She screwed her eyes shut, bracing for contact. The truck thudded to a stop, sending pain through her body from the shock of motion curtailed too abruptly. When she braved a glimpse, the deer stared at them indifferently, antlers mere inches from the unbroken windshield, before huffing and sauntering away.
Gregory peered at her, exhilarated, wild-eyed, laughing. Madeline clicked off the music, before he clicked it on again, louder. This went on for a bit, Madeline switching the radio off, Gregory switching it on again.
“Gregory!” she yelled when she’d had enough of the little game. He left the radio off, but he laughed again, sliding his foot from the brake to the gas pedal as they resumed their drive toward town. As he sped up, undeterred by their near collision, she realized that he was a thrill seeker. A daredevil. Of course he would do anything she asked. Daring him was not the way to test his love for her.
The forest thinned as they approached the paved road. Its smoothness beneath the old truck did little to calm Madeline. She angled her body toward the window, and the pale bluffs beyond, refusing to look at him.
“Oh, don’t be mad,” Gregory said.
“You could have killed us,” she said.
“But I didn’t. Let’s not start worrying about things that didn’t happen.”He brushed his finger across her smooth cheek, an affection she found hard to resist.
In town they feasted on crab and sea urchin and local wine. Satiated, they walked along the ocean, naming the waves so they belonged to them. She decided not to test him. She simply let them exist in the moment, not worrying about the past or the present, whether he loved her as much as she loved him, whether he would continue to love her as they grew old. They watched the sun set over their ocean. Gregory kissed her knuckles, and told her for the thousandth time that he loved her.
It was dark by the time they headed back to the mountains. Madeline rolled down the window, letting the wind ruffle her short hair. In the past she wouldn’t have trusted how perfect the moment felt. She would have corrupted it with a test. Covered his eyes and made him drive them home based on her instructions. Or made him tightrope along the guardrail. Her mind devised a dozen different tests, only their whole day together had been a test, the kind that could actually prove his love. She just had to let them be, and in her letting them be, he’d done nothing but love her. At last she accepted that his love was absolute. Limitless.
At first Madeline assumed her eyes were watery from the wind against her face. She was not a crier. When she closed the window, the tears intensified rather than dried. She found herself overcome with happiness. Each tear that trickled down her cheek was warm with love.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, his face a kaleidoscope of worry.
“I’m just so happy. This was a perfect day. I love you.”
There are infinite meanings to “I love you.”I appreciate you. I want you. I need you. I resent you. I’m afraid you’ll leave me. I’m afraid I’ll leave you. I am used to you. I am used to our love. I think you’re special. I think you’re clever. I am glad you’re here. I like our routine. I like our life together. I want everything to stay this way. In their time together, Madeline had exhausted every meaning except the simplest one:I love you.No qualifiers. No distrust. Just pure, mutual love.
“I love you,” she said again, and laughed like the meaning of the phrase had just struck her.
Gregory glanced over at her, dubious until he read her face and understood what she really meant.No more tests. At last, I trust you.
She leaned across the console and rested her cheek on his chest. He bent to kiss the crown of her head. She shut her eyes and clung to him hard. His breath was hot across her scalp. It was only a second. Between life and death a second is enough. One moment the smoothness of the road beneath them disappeared as the truck became airborne. The next, it thudded as it hit the valley floor below.
Her head had missed the steering wheel, which had crushed Gregory’s sternum. A piece of glass from where his head had broken the windshield was embedded in her cheek. Otherwise, she was uninjured.
“He saved me,” Madeline said to Alice. “His body protected mine.” It was a test she hadn’t meant to initiate, one that proved for the last time how absolute his love for her was.
It took all of Alice’s energy to remain still through Madeline’s story. Her back muscles were so tense they vibrated. The story had taken hold of her body and refused to let go. That was what she feared most, even more than loving someone who did not love her back. From the moment you treasured how perfect your love was, it could disappear.
“It was an accident,” Alice said, wanting to deny the essential truth of Madeline’s story. “You can’t blame yourself for an accident.”
“I don’t. I just wish I’d allowed myself to trust his love. If I had, if I’d believed all the times he showed me how absolute his love was, maybe he’d be alive today.”
The tension rose to Alice’s shoulders. This was why Madeline had summoned her, to rewrite the past, to reconcile her loss.
“I can’t bring him back,” Alice said. “Once someone you love is gone, nothing can replace that, not a story, not even another love.”
Tears welled in Madeline’s eyes. “True love is never gone.” To Alice, that seemed more a curse than a blessing, the way love outlasted the body, the way it forced you to want something you could never have again.
“Why now?” she asked. “You’ve been living like this for ten years. Why are you ready for love now?”
“I don’t have much time left,” Madeline said so plainly that Alice could not determine whether this prospect scared her. The flames flared against her skin, and in the burst of brightness Alice saw the woman she once was, a woman in love. “I need to forgive myself before it’s too late. Not for his death. For distrusting love.”
Madeline hugged her body as though trying to protect it from whatever disease was moving through it. Sure, she was old, small-boned. To Alice’s untrained eye, though, she looked like one of those old women who subsisted off loneliness more than food and lived to one hundred just to prove the world wrong. Looks lied all the time. Her father ran every morning. Except for sunspots on his arms and cheeks, he presented as a decade younger than he was. He appeared strong and energetic, while his heart was slowly giving out.
“Do you... How much longer...did the doctors give you an estimate?”
“None of us know how long we have,” Madeline said. The soberness of her face sent a chill through Alice. “I have to let go of this guilt while I still can. I’ve been afraid of it for so many years. I can no longer live in fear of myself. Of love.”
