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He’s not in Kabul anymore.
And he knows exactly where he has to go.
What he has to do.
“I love you,” he tells Heidi.
“I love you, too.”
Yet another silence, this one longer than the first two combined. Aiden fights to keep his resolve strong.
“I’ll call you later,” he tells her.
“I’ll be here.”
The line disconnects. Aiden sits on the side of his bed, staring at the phone in his hands, his breath stabbing at his chest like a knife. Does he have the courage to do what needs to be done?
Another unbidden image floats across his mind’s eye: his father on the day that he left. Aiden watches him come into his room and close the door, his head down, his broad shoulders hunched forward in defeat. Lisa is screaming obscenities from the hall. He’s there to break the news he’s leaving.“I’m so sorry, Aiden,”he says, his voice as clear now as it was then.“Please understand. I’ve tried everything.”
“Can’t you try harder?”the child Aiden pleads.
“Sorry, buddy. I got no ‘try’ left,”his father says.“It’ll be better this way. You’ll see. For everybody.”
“Please don’t go.”
“Hey. It’s not like we won’t see each other anymore. I’m still your father. I’ll see you every week.”
“Can I come with you?”
“I wish you could. But we both know that your mother would never allow that. You’re the one thing in her life that makes her happy. And you want your mother to be happy, don’t you, Aiden?”
You want your mother to be happy.
Aiden closes his eyes and the image disappears. His father responded to his recent overture on Facebook, although Aiden has yet to reply.
Why not? What is he so afraid of?
“It would be too upsetting for my mother,”he remembers telling his therapist.
“And not upsetting your mother is more important to you than seeing your father?”
Thanbeinga father?
“What are you doing, sitting there?” Lisa asks from the doorway.
Aiden jumps at the sound of her voice.
Lisa laughs. “Somebody was very deep in thought.”
“You have to leave,” he says, his words sliding out between barely parted lips, his voice so soft he’s not even sure he spoke the words out loud.
“What did you say?”
Aiden straightens his shoulders, stares directly into his mother’s eyes. “I said you have to leave.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Lisa tells him. “I’m not going anywhere but to bed.”
“I choose Heidi,” he says as his mother swivels toward the hall.
She stops, turns back. “Then you know the consequences.”
