“It doesn’t feel legitimate when you’re doing it, Lydia.”
“But it is, all the same. You were doing your job. You were saving lives.”
“Saving lives is just a justification, I told you, I told you that.”
“Is it still one when the life is mine?”
That struck him. Though, it did it way harder than she’d intended.
He almost put a hand to his chest, when he heard it.
And only slowly descended into rue.
“Goddamn. You walked me right into that.”
“I take it that means the answer is no.”
“The answer is always going to be no, sometimes. The needs of the many don’t always outweigh the needs of the few. But god, it was never just a justification for you. It will never be, for you. I would have done anything—anythingto prevent you from coming to harm. And I doubt I’d regret a single one of the actions I took to make that happen.”
“Then why do you?”
“Why do I what?”
“Regret the actions you took.”
He went to answer her immediately—then seemed to stop, and consider.
And a second later, it was obvious why. He thought she meant the shooting.
Not all the things that had happened after the fact.
“You mean everything since.”
“Well, you do seem to beat yourself up about it a lot.”
“Because Ilied, Lydia. I wasn’t just some guy you met at a therapy group.”
“No. You were some guy who went to the therapy group to make sure I was okay. Right? Even though you didn’t have to. Even though you’d already done enough. Even though there was no reason to feel guilty you did, and you came to me. And you watched over me, every day since, like some penance for a crime you didn’t commit. Then finally,finallywhen all of this gave you just one tiny thing for yourself, when you realized I wanted you, you tried to cut it out of yourself rather than harm me.” She stopped there, to get back control of her voice. It was starting to quaver. It was starting to fill up with a million emotions that she barely knew how to feel. And when she had it, she finished with the only truth that really mattered about him. The only thing he ever needed to understand. “You would cut out your own heart, before you saw me suffer in even the smallest way.”
And then suddenly, he was holding her.
He was pulling her into his arms, as forcefully as she’d run into his. “You’re right,” he said, against the side of her face. “You’re right, I would. I would, god I would do it a thousand times over, if I thought it would help.”
Though it was the thing he said next that struck her harder.
The thing he murmured, as he stroked her hair.
“Do you know what happens at the end of the filmTruly, Madly, Deeply?”
“Of course I do. A better question would be: why are you asking?”
“He recites a poem to her.”
“Yeah, I know. I know the poem.”
“He says, ‘and your feet will want to march to where I am sleeping. But you will go on living’,” he said.
And she wanted to laugh then. She wanted to correct him, because the quote wasn’t exactly true. It wasmyfeet. Notyour.It wasIwill go on living.
