I can’t find the invoice. There isn’t even a receipt. The kindness happened before the cat did.
My eyes go hot. The walls come in a little. The apartment is full of men and hardware and kindness and it is suddenly the smallest room I have ever stood in, and my lungs put in a request for air that isn’t in here.
“I’ll be right back,” I hear myself say.
Somebody says my name. I’m already at the door.
The new lock is smooth. The new door swings without a sound, very pleased with itself. And the first person to ever use it is me, going through it, down the hall, down the stairs, and out.
So much out because I can’t stay there.
Not with that kindness.
Not with them.
The street doesn’t help. The street is cars and noise and people who all seem to know where they’re going, so I keep moving, and I don’t pick a direction, my feet pick it, and I let them, because they seem sure and I’m fresh out of sure.
Left at the corner. Past the coffee place. The blocks go by and my breathing doesn’t fix itself and I don’t stop.
There are trees at the end of this street. There have always been trees at the end of this street, the little urban forest preserve with the trails I’ve never once used, and I couldn’t tell you a single thing about what’s in there.
They look like the only quiet left in the world.
I go in.
Chapter 27
Elara
The trees don’t ask me anything.
That’s the whole appeal. The trail is dirt and roots and dapples of light, and nothing in here wants to know if I’m okay, and I walk until the street sounds give up behind me.
There’s a fork in the trail and my feet pick left like they’ve done it before. I don’t ask. Asking feels like it would break something, and I’m rationing what’s left of me.
I don’t know how long I walk. Long enough that my breathing stops being a problem and starts being just breathing. Long enough that the crying happens and finishes somewhere in there. I don’t know if I have any more tears anyway.
And then the trees open up, and I stop.
A clearing. Wide and round and quiet — real quiet I haven’t heard in forever except in my dreams — and near the middle of it, a big black stone.
I have never been here. I know that.
But it doesn’t feel like the first time.
I’m too tired to argue with a feeling, so I don’t.
I’d probably lose anyway.
I cross the grass and sit down on the stone, and the top of it is worn smooth, like somebody has been sitting on it for years, and I put my face in my hands and the crying comes again before I can stop it. Not pretty crying. The other kind. The kind you only do where nothing can see you but trees.
When it’s over I’m scraped out and light, the way you get after, and the quiet comes in to fill the space.
I can’t sit still in it, so I get up and walk. Around the edge of the clearing, along the tree line, back. I’m not going anywhere. I’m just moving, because moving is the only thing today that hasn’t asked anything of me, and my feet keep tracing the same circle like they’re following a line I can’t see.
My thoughts drift, replaying the complete disaster that was this morning because it’s all I can do. I don’t know when I start humming.
I don’t notice until I’m already into it. It’s not a song. It’s a piece of one — a few notes that I keep repeating. I don’t know the rest. I never have… Or maybe I don’t remember. It’s been with me as long as I can remember.
