Tommy is silent and so is Hope. The only noise in the room is Covey scratching at his haunches and making his collar jingle. Tommy looks from Nadine to Hope, then back to Nadine, still managing to look wounded.There was a time, Nadine thinks as she holds his gaze,that I would’ve fallen for that look. But not anymore.
As if he has heard her thoughts, he looks away, turning to Hope again.
Sylvie holds her breath.He’s going to tell her to let us go, she thinks.At last.
“I guess,” says Tommy to Hope, “neither of us wants to tell the truth. Least not the whole of it.”
Hope tries to swallow, but her mouth is dry. She wonders if any of those water bottles are left, but she doesn’t look around for them. Instead, she focuses on Tommy, who needs to end thissiege. Tommy, who is as tired of all this as his hostages are. She thinks of what Bo—Robert—said about surrender. “You just have to wait until they are ready to give up.” They are close, she thinks. This is the razor’s edge of a negotiation. She has to convince him to let go rather than double down. She chooses her words carefully.
“I think sometimes people tell all the truth they can handle. It’s not that they intend to lie. It’s that to tell the whole truth—the real truth—is just too hard.”
She reaches into her pocket, and when she does she sees Tommy’s eyes stray to his gun and Dale bristle. “It’s just this,” she says, and waves the piece of paper in the air like a white flag of surrender. “It’s funny, to share this in a post office,” she says as she unfolds the paper, creased and softened with time and handling. “Because I wrote this letter, but then I didn’t know where to send it.”
She looks at the group. “It’s to my mom,” she explains. “I wrote it after she died. It’s taken me a long time to come to terms with her death. In some ways, I’m still coming to terms with it. Even here, today, talking to you.” She makes eye contact with Tommy, who nods.
“I won’t read the whole thing,” she continues, “because it’s personal. But I will read this one part.” Hope looks at the ink on the page, but the tears in her eyes blur the words. She blinks them away. She reads:
I wasn’t there for you, and I will never forgive myself for that. I broke my promise to be by your side, holding your hand, because I thought I had time when I didn’t. I prioritized strangers instead of rushing to your side. I struggle with that decision every day, and I think I always will. I exiled myself here because of it.And the truth is, I don’t know how to get back. The life I had before is gone. And I don’t know how to build a new one. I don’t want to build a new one without you.
Hope looks up at the group. “For a long time I told myself a version of the truth. A version that was close enough to live with. I told myself it was the job’s fault. That if it hadn’t been for the job, I’d have been there. I’ve lived with that version for a long time. But lately I feel it changing. And I think that’s a good thing. I have to face the actual truth—look at all the facets of it—before I can move forward.”
Tommy’s face softens as he gives a single nod and reaches down to pat the dog’s head. Covey licks Tommy’s hand, bathing it with his long pink tongue. Tommy dries his hand on his jeans and looks at all of them, his eyes traveling past each woman before landing back on Hope. She bites the inside of her cheek to keep from speaking.Let him work up to it, she thinks.One wrong word and he could be put off.
“I guess I know the version you lived with,” says Nadine, and Hope feels the energy in the room shift as her heart sinks. She knows that in any negotiation there is going to be ground lost and ground gained. But this feels like returning to ground zero. She wants to turn around and tell Nadine to just hush already. But she doesn’t.
The other women all shift uncomfortably, like they’d also felt how close they were. But Nadine seems oblivious. She has a score to settle, and here before God and these witnesses, she’s going to speak her mind.
“What do you mean by that, Nadine?” asks Tommy. His face, open moments ago, is now closed again.
Hope glances over at the window where SWAT is on the other side watching and waiting. She makes eye contact with Dale,who is standing just to their left and doing a pretty good job of being unobtrusive, considering he is decked out in tactical gear and holding a rifle. She’s got almost no time left before SWAT does it their way, before they opt for force rather than words. With Tommy unarmed, she’s surprised they’ve maintained restraint for this long.
“She said that people tell themselves whatever they need to in order to live with themselves—a version of the truth.” Nadine looks to Hope. “Right?”
Hope nods.
“Well, today I learned that your version of the truth was that the reason you weren’t with your daddy when he died was because of me. That I didn’tletyou go hunting.” She hops down from her stool and jabs her finger in his direction. “You know good and well that isn’t true.” She turns and points at the ring of women around her. “You tell them that. You tell them it isn’t true.”
Tommy ducks his head, looking up at them from beneath his eyebrows. “You said you wanted to spend the day together,” he mumbles.
Nadine huffs. “So?”
“So I wanted to make you happy,” Tommy says.
“You could’ve told me we’d go out to dinner after you went hunting. That woulda made me just as happy.”
Tommy thinks this over, shrugs. “We were both so busy with work and stuff that we never got much time together, so I figured it’d be better if I stayed with you.”
Nadine crosses her arms and cocks her head at him. “You figured. But you didn’t ask.” There is a long pause as the two of them face each other, each searching for what to say next. Not surprisingly, it is Nadine who plunges ahead. “This was always your problem, Tommy. You never communicated with me. Onesimple conversation. That’s all it would’ve taken. And none of this”—Nadine shakes her hands in the air, indicating where they are, who they’re with—“woulda happened.” She pauses, glancing over at the shreds of the envelope he tore up hours ago that still litter the floor. She adds, “None of it.”
Hope clocks the moment Tommy’s face goes soft again. She has to give it to Nadine; she got them back around. Nadine speaks again, her voice lower now. “After your daddy died, you were so angry at me. Suddenly everything I did was wrong. And you started drinking more and more, and that only made it worse. I told myself you were just grieving, to give it time. And I did. But then...” Her voice fades away. She swallows as a single tear trickles from the corner of her eye and glides down her face.
“But then, what?” Tommy asks, his voice ragged.
Nadine shakes her head. A few more tears follow the first one. She looks at the dog and blinks her way back to composure. She looks at Tommy again. “But then I just couldn’t anymore,” she says.
“It wasn’t you I was mad at,” Tommy says. “I was mad at me for not being there that day. I was mad at Jane for not letting me have Covey.” He inhales, exhales, his nostrils flaring. “I was mad at my daddy for getting himself killed.” Tommy looks up at the ceiling, squeezes his eyes shut. “I was mad at God for letting him die.”
He looks back at Nadine. “I’m sorry I took it out on you. You didn’t deserve that. Every day I’d tell myself to stop, but then something would set me off, and before I knew it I was blowing up at you, smashing the dishes, kicking the walls. I knew it scared you. So I kept trying to get the anger out, but it always came back again. It filled me up inside no matter what I did.”
