Page 63 of Broken Country

“She started asking questions again. Your name came up. I’d told her I couldn’t reveal the whereabouts of any of the villagers and she told me, gleefully, ‘I’ve found Beth Johnson. She lives at Blakely Farm.’ Well, Frank caught that, and he said, ‘What do you want with my wife?’?”

I’m listening to Nina with my hands pressed to my mouth. “What did she say?”

“Exactly what she’d told me. She was writing a color piece—whatever that is—about Gabriel Wolfe and she wanted to talk to the people closest to him.”

“Oh, my God. Why didn’t he tell me?”

“Frank was so angry, Beth. He told her to piss off. He said, ‘If you bother my wife at the farm, I’ll report you to the police for trespassing.’ He was wildly overreacting, and you could see her taking it all in. I don’t know what’s going on with you and Gabriel, but whatever it is, I’d say Frank has a good idea of it.”

When Nina has gone, I pace around the kitchen, talking to myself. What does this mean? Does Frank know? Is this it? The end of me and Gabriel? The end of me and Frank?

I pick up the phone and call Gabriel, dialing his number with shaking hands. There is nothing risky about this, the farmhouse is empty, but I still find myself whispering guiltily into the phone as I repeat the conversation I have just had with Nina.

“Obviously I can’t risk coming over. Not today, not until I’ve seen Frank.”

“But how was Frank last night? Wouldn’t he have said something?”

“I barely saw him. He didn’t bother having supper, he went straight out to the pub.”

This, more than anything else, tells the truth. My husband is avoiding me because he knows. He has always known. We have been stuck in this triangle for more than a decade and, even in our best years, Frank feared being cast out. He didn’t ever say so, he didn’t need to.

“What are you going to do?” Gabriel says, quietly.

You, notwe. This is my dilemma, not his. Gabriel can love whomever he chooses. It’s unfortunate he has chosen a woman who is not supposed to love him back.

“I don’t know. I need to talk to Frank.”

“Are you going to be all right?”

I hear the words he doesn’t say:Arewegoing to be all right?

“I’m scared.”

“What are you scared of? What Frank will do if he finds out?”

“No, not that.”

Frank won’t get angry. I’ve never seen him lose his temper. Or perhaps, I haven’t seen him lose it yet. Nina sounded shocked when she described Frank yelling at the journalist. Like me, she has only ever seen gentle, calming Frank, an expert in soothing his brother, who is often quick to rise. When we had Bobby, I was glad I married a man who neverraised his voice at his child. You’d see it all the time, fathers yelling at their children, lashing out with a quick slap or a cuff. Not Frank. In all of Bobby’s nine years, I did not see Frank shout at him once.

“I’m scared of the hurt Frank must be feeling. And of losing you.”

“Yes. I’m terrified of that.”

For a long minute neither of us says anything, breathing together in silence. I am thinking how impossible it will be to say goodbye to Gabriel. Hoping I don’t have to, that whatever it is between us, this crazy, burning obsession, will find its end. And maybe that our ending is not an ending.

“I love you,” Gabriel says. “If this is it, you know I understand. I want you to do whatever is right for you. But—can I say this? These last days with you have made me realize what a fool I was to let you go last time. I always knew that, but now Ireallyknow. We were meant to be together. I just hope we get a second chance.”

Friday Afternoon

I see the smoke, great gray twisting boulders of it, as soon as I leave the house but, at first, I can’t work out where it is coming from. I stand in the yard, confused, as the smoke slants in curls across the sky. My thought process is too slow. We set fire to the fields a month ago, straight after harvest, burned the stubble to a crisp. There’s no other reason for a fire.

When the realization comes it is as if I’ve been punched in the gut.

I run through our fields like a madwoman. Hedgerows blaze with their glorious autumn colors and I barely notice streaks of red and purple blurring past. Over stiles I scarcely see or feel and will not remember climbing. Gates I wrench open and do not bother to close. Several acres of long grass with hidden holes to stumble upon.

Bobby’s tree is burning. I know it before I see it, before I stand at the edge of the field and watch flames curling up its stump and a line of fire streaking across the grass toward the trees. Frank has his back turned but I see the tins of paraffin lying at his feet.

“Frank!” I scream his name, but he doesn’t turn at first. Perhaps he doesn’t hear me, perhaps he doesn’t want to. Perhaps he is so focused on the fire within and without, he has room for nothing else. I can read his mood from here, the fierce governance driving him to destroy the stump with its colossal width, its implied weight, his desperation to burn away a loss that is at the heart of everything.

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