Page 78 of Absolute Certainty
JAY
I’ll do my best.
Walking over to the sink, he quickly washed the two dishes he and Eloise used for dinner.
Jay had parts of the letter written; it was something he’d done even if the audience might not see it, but he hadn’t dug into the whole thing. Like the ending, it was one of the more demanding parts of the story.
Katherine’s romantic feelings were less explored than Henry’s, but there, nonetheless. Jay often felt the urgency of them; he knew the weight of her pain and the depth of her strength, but he hadn’t explored her headspace as intimately as he had Henry’s.
Eloise ran over to the TV and turned on the gaming console. Jay sat beside her. “If it’s easy, Dad, can we play two levels?”
He looked at her for a beat. Wide-eyed and eager with excitement. Maybe it wouldn’t be the most awful thing in the world if this little firecracker followed in his footsteps. He wassureof the fact that her brain was a more thrilling place than his, anyway. Her capabilities would be boundless—her imagination, unmatched. More than anything, hehopedthat there’d still be a space for real human beings and their inimitable minds by the time she was old enough to tell the stories she wanted.
She could change the world if she wanted to, and if he did miraculously get to a place where he succeeded in the industry, then he’densurethat her journey would be easier than his. Suffering and hard work should never be mutually exclusive. She could work hard without her spirit breaking at every turn.
Pulling her close to him, Jay placed a kiss on the side of her head. “Yeah, baby, we can.”
Two levels provedto be too much, but they still made solid progress in getting halfway through the second. After talking to Maya through FaceTime, Jay put Eloise to bed, sat at his kitchen table, and looked for the letter file.
He read over what he’d written so far.
Henry,
When you said that in your perfect world, you and I would be together, I couldn’t say anything back. Even if you hadn't deflected or mentioned the risks our jobs entail, I don’t know if I could’ve formed the words then and there. We’ve sat side by side in this office for three years, and in the beginning, I couldn’t see through my grief. When Andy died, I never thought I’d find love again. I didn’t think I could ever trust another person with every part of me. I’d lost the two most important people in my life. My mom and the man I was supposed to marry. I never thought I could open my heart to another person, but there you were, every single day, trying to make me laugh when all my wounds were still cut wide open.
I don’t know if I’ll actually give this to you. I think you know how I feel by now—you’re better at reading me. You once swore you knew all my smiles. So maybe you know now. I really hope you know now. I think I’ll leave this in your desk anyway. You rarely open that second drawer because everything you need is in the first one. By the time you find it, hopefully, this Archer case will be behind us, and we can maybe go get lunch again.
That was all he had, but Jay needed a hook. He needed something more poignant and profound—something emotionally evocative that Sahar would be proud of. Outside ofCuts,Jay rarely ever wrote from personal experience. He wrote the stories that came to him, but they were seldom things he’d experienced himself.
What would he say to Sahar if he wrote her a letter? How honest would he allow himself to be if she wasn’t going to see it? He could do it—for the sake of a creative exercise and nothing more. Then, perhaps Katherine’s point of view would come to him.
He remembered the significance of writing something by hand sometimes, how words could flow when he put pen to paper for the sake of notes or messy, untamed ideas.
He went over to the bookshelf anchored to a wall in his living room and pulled out the notebook he often used. Taking out a G2 Pilot .32 pen, he started writing the first word.
Sunshine.
That singular word encapsulated so much of who Sahar was to him that he almost hoped it’d be enough to divulge it all. It was too bad Henry rarely called Katherine anything other than her last name—sometimes, her first.
I thought you were the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen the first time you walked into the coffee shop. I spotted you right away, and I’m pretty sure I stopped breathing. I didn’t take your order then; I was too nervous to. You came once more, then another time, and by your fourth visit, I’dfinally plucked up the courage not to hide in the back. You had the brightest smile on. I could still drown in it. It’s the one you wear every time you walk into the coffee shop.
But there was one day in particular.
He didn’t want to think of that day. That godawful, horrific moment where he was so close to a panic attack that he could taste the bitter nausea in his throat even after all this time.
20
JAY
Five months ago. February
“Hello? Jay, are you listening?” He heard Nora ask before he managed to unfreeze his eyes from the noisy, barely functioning broken printer in the breakroom.
Every word out of every person’s mouth sounded like nails on a fucking chalkboard today. She’d been saying something about Veronica.
Who the fuck cares?
“What about Veronica?” he asked, pretending to be invested, willing himself to pay attention because it was his job.
