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“I see a family,” I blurt out, mostly to push away the intrusive thoughts, the thoughts that might drive me to do something absurd.
Like I almost did in the café.
“They’re trying their best, but the parents are always busy. The little girl is lonely, an introvert, and she finds it difficult to interact with the world. But they’re really, honestly trying their best. And then they came to the park and flew a kite, you know, so they could be a family… but the kite got blown away, tangled up, and then the dad got a work call before they had the time to retrieve it.”
I look up to find him staring down hard at me again, biting down on my lip, his jaw ticking.
“Did I get it wrong?” I ask.
“There isn't anything wrong or right. I just wanted to know what you saw. And now I do.”
I almost swallow the words back, but there’s something so bitter and gruff in his tone. It’s like he’s disappointed with me.
“So why are you looking at me like that?” I snap, without meaning to.
It’s as though all the pressure of simply being close to him, all the emotions fighting to break free, all the on-the-edge explosiveness just erupts out of me. My voice comes out far too loud, far too tangled with feeling.
“Like what?” he growls, gruffer than before.
I bow my head and take an involuntary step back.
“It’s nothing.”
“What, Maddie?” he says firmly. “It clearly isn’t nothing.”
“You were just looking at me like I got it wrong. Like you were disappointed in me.”
“I wasn’t disappointed in you,” he growls. “But yeah, maybe it made me a little sad, that you saw a family torn apart from the inside.”
“Why?” I whimper, forcing my gaze back to his again.
There’s no way I’m imagining this between us, is there?
He’s staring at me so freaking hard like he’s trying to splinter me down the middle.
But then he turns away, looking at the tree again.
“What else do you see?” he asks.
I stare up at his side profile, at his handsome strong features.
The sense that I’m taking a test rises in me again, except I don’t know what the parameters for success and failure are.
He glances at me when I don’t say anything, his lips pressed in a flat line.
“This is what I used to do,” he says. “After… it, what happened. After I was stranded at sea.”
“I didn’t know that,” I murmur quietly, cautiously, as though he’ll retreat if I speak too loudly.
He nods. “I’ve never spoken about this, but I was catatonic for several months after the shipwreck. I didn’t say or do anything. I just… I just was, Maddie. I just sat in my aunt’s basement staring at the wall, hardly even thinking. And then one day she sent me down to the store to buy a pack of smokes – goddamn, I wish she’d cut down on those when she had the chance – and I tried to tell her so. I just shook my head and refused to move.”
“She was testing you,” I say, even softer than before, my voice barely louder than a whisper.
A young couple passes by us, the man laughing loudly. Madden’s gaze snaps to them as though in surprise, and then he lets out a short croak of a laugh.
Without discussing it we wander toward the tree, its leaves and branches casting large shadows across the vivid green grass.
A sense of profound isolation hits me, even if we’re in public. I don’t know why he’s letting me into his unspoken secrets, but I’m scared to freaking breathe too loudly just in case I somehow ruin it, biting down as I fix my gaze on him.
“She wouldn’t quit,” he goes on, leaning against the tree, his eyes taking on a faraway quality. “So eventually I had to go. I was just a kid. I didn’t know how to argue with her, not without words. Anyway, I walked, and then I started looking around at things. Really looking. Looking in a way I never have before. There are stories everywhere if you know how to look for them. That was what I learned. And that’s what I did. I think it was easier than thinking about how nervous I was, being outside, after what happened.
“For years afterward – before I wrote a single word – I would wander around, watching people, simply taking in reality around me. And I would dream up stories, scenarios, about everything I saw. I challenged myself. Five, ten, twenty, once even a hundred… How many different realities did this situation, this item, these people represent? Sometimes I would write them down. Otherwise, I was content to let them exist only in my mind.”
My heart gives a squeeze and – before I can second-guess the impulse – I step forward and reach out, my hand trembling.
