That’s the problem with this thing in my head. It doesn’t need an anniversary or a song or a familiar face. The most ordinary, unrelated thing can drag me under… like a woman laughing in a room full of men I trust with my life. Before I knew it, water was closing over my head. It’s so goddamn hard to swim back up.
“Are you okay?” She turns to look at me.
“Yeah.”
She holds my gaze, and I can see her turning the word over in her head. She doesn’t believe me.
I walk to the railing and stand beside her. The weight in my gut doesn’t go anywhere.
“The guys seem nice,” she says after a while. “Really nice. Not what I expected.”
“What did you expect?”
“I don’t know.” She looks at her hands. “Less. I expected less… I guess.”
I don’t follow up on that.
“When did you leave the service?” she asks.
“Over three years ago.”
She nods, slow, and waits.
“It was after Simon died.” The valley is very still below us, seemingly waiting for me too. “I couldn’t keep my head straight after that. I couldn’t pretend it hadn’t happened. So I retired, came here, his town. Some of my men followed.”
“Does it help?”
I don’t answer fast. A cloud moves overhead, and the shadow of the ridge starts to creep across the valley floor.
“It’s—” I stop.
I don’t have a word for it. Is this even just guilt? It’s not even a feeling anymore. It’s weight. It’s load-bearing, and everything in my life sits on top of it.
“It doesn’t get lighter.”
I drag in a breath.
The rest of the words are right there, sitting behind my teeth, and I can’t hold it back anymore. It’s been eating me alive for three years, and she’s standing here with her eyes on my face, and the dam is cracking.
“Simon didn’t want to enlist.” I hear myself say. “I talked him into it.” I press my thumb into the compass tattoo on the outer side of my wrist, the same exact one on Simon’s. We got them freshman year of college, drunk and already feeling like soldiers. “He’d found out that a woman he knew was pregnant with his child. He was still figuring out what that meant, what kind of father he was going to be. I sat across from him and told him the army was the answer. That we’d serve, save money, come back better men.” I dig my thumb harder into the ink. “He wasn’t sure. He said so. But I kept talking.”
The wind breezes through the valley below, and a flock of birds fly across the orange sky.
“After a while he said yes. Because I managed to talk him into it. We served. And then he died.” I don’t look at her. “And Sara doesn’t have a father. She will never have one. Because I kept talking.”
Thea is very still beside me. I can hear her breathing.
“Kilian.” Her voice is quiet, but not soft. Her fingers curl around my forearm. “It’s not your fault.”
I don’t say anything to that, because what do I say? Every day I look at Sara, I see what I took from her. Simon was a good man, and he would have been a good father. She got me instead, and no matter how hard I try, it doesn’t feel close to enough. It’s like a debt that has no bottom.
“You can’t force a grown man to do what he doesn’t want to do. Not really.” She turns to face me fully. “Simon heard you. He thought about what you said. He had every reason to say no, a child on the way is a big one, and he still said yes. That was his choice. You don’t get to take that decision away from him.”
I stare at her, and the words are a wall I can’t get past.
“If you carry all of it as your fault,” she continues, “then you’re saying his decision didn’t matter.” She holds my gaze. “Is that who Simon was? A man who couldn’t think for himself?”
No, Simon wasn’t that. But knowing it and feeling it aren’t the same thing.
