Page 70 of Brave
It was both the hardest and the easiest thing that she had done. It was also the most important.
Now, they both could be free.
* * *
“I don’t want to go home,” Cynthia said unexpectedly, as he was helping her into the car in the hospital parking lot.
“Okay,” Carlson agreed. Not knowing what else to do, he took her to his house. Two days later, he drove her back to her mother’s for the very last time. The only thing she took with her, was her backpack and the contents of her wallet. Everything else, she left behind. Just like at the hospital, she then walked without a backwards glance. It was Carlson who left a note on the kitchen counter for her mother to find whenever she got home. He had no idea what it would take to fix what had gone wrong in that relationship, but he knew it was beyond what he could do. He made a mental note to get in touch with a family therapist just as soon as the weekend was over.
Her decision to move in with him should have been one of the happiest milestones in their relationship to date. But right from the beginning Cynthia was acting strangely. She was distant, quiet. He offered his bed, but she took the couch instead. Those first few nights were the hardest. All night long he lay there, torn, wishing she were lying close enough for him to wrap his arms around her. Offering her comfort, gaining comfort from her in return. Maybe even doing something to silence that niggling voice in the back of his head that was starting to wonder if she was only here because he made it easy for her to run away from what problems still remained. She’d said goodbye to Pony and her mother. She hadn’t said goodbye to him yet, but this silent distance she was putting in between them made him wonder if she wasn’t thinking about it. Then she would be free to start completely over somewhere new.
A less selfish man would probably want that for her, but he just couldn’t bring himself to help her say that last goodbye.
In the morning, he got up, readied for work at the base, and made them both breakfast. When it came time to kiss her goodbye, he kissed her on the forehead. The less contact he had with her lips, the less it would hurt when she left. Or at least that was his thought. He didn’t know how true it was, it already felt like a knife in the chest because as he was walking out the door, he thought he heard her say, “Siri, where’s the tutorial on how to use my phone?”
He simply didn’t know if she was still going to be there when he got home that night.
At lunch, she dutifully texted him pictures of her peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but he didn’t feel relief until he recognized her sandwich was resting on his plate and that was his dining room table underneath it. A few hours later, she texted again to say detectives were there for her interview.
He called her. “Do you want me to come home?”
“No,” she said. “I—I’ve got this.”
She was still there when he got home that night. She met him at the doorway with her phone in her hand and a shy smile. “The library called. I got the job.”
He felt like a fraud trying to smile for her. “Congratulations!” That knife hit his chest all over again, when her nervous smile relaxed into a real one.
He took her out to celebrate, subway sandwiches and ice cream cones, followed by a trip to the mall for two good work outfits and a trip to Goodwill for everything else. If she was going to leave, she needed to at least have clothes, shoes and a coat to keep her warm.
“I’ll pay you back,” she promised, which actually pissed him off a little.
“I don’t mind doing this for you,” he replied, trying not to sound as insulted as he felt. “I can buy my girl the things she really needs, when I think she really needs them.”
“But I don’t need you to buy me things. I need you to make me be self-sufficient.”
So she could leave all the faster.
Shit.
She slept on the couch again that night, and he slept in his room where the weight of the elephant living between them was positively stifling. His eyes hurt the next morning, he’d gotten so little sleep.
As he passed her on the way to the coffee pot, he thought her eyes looked a little red too, but that might have been from crying. She promptly ducked into the bathroom to shower, and he couldn’t be sure.
She burned the breakfast—toast and eggs—but she had it on the table by the time he was ready for work.
“Pony was the one who did the cooking,” she said apologetically.
“Tastes just fine to me,” he replied, and ate every bite.
“I’ll make dinner too, if you want,” she offered in the car as he drove them both to work.
Carlson made a mental note to pick up Tums on his way to get her again, but it didn’t matter what she made. Good or bad, he was going to eat every bite. Who knew how many more nights they’d have together before she left.
And then he found out.
When he picked her up at the library, she met him on the steps with several sheets of computer paper. “Will you take me here?”
The papers were addresses of rooms to rent. The one she’d circled was a fully furnished house. How she’d found one in the DC area for only $500, he had no idea. But he drove her out to it, stood quietly beside her as she met the two elderly women who lived there, and even shadowed them through that small, albeit pleasantly decorated townhouse on a quiet street not far from a busline capable of taking her to Deanwood, the store, even Black Light, if she chose to keep going.
