These Violent Roots

by Nicole Williams

“Andee, wait.” My voice broke as I took a few steps to follow her.

  “Just get back to your big important life already and let me get on with my own.” She didn’t break stride when she reached the door, and the way she slammed it seemed to shake the very foundation.

  Outside the window, I could make out headlights shining in the driveway. They weren’t the same ones as Austin’s, which gave me a moment of comfort before I considered that there were worse types than boys with haughty eyes and one-tracked minds.

  I was responsible for letting some of those individuals slip through the cracks of justice.

  Losing.

  It had become the theme of my life, the stamp of my existence.

  After retrieving the dropped cookies from the carpet, I abandoned the tray on the kitchen counter. Tearing off a chunk of cookie, I popped it in my mouth and chewed absently.

  It was dry.

  When I started toward the pantry door as my eyes welled, I caught myself. I was tired of retreating into a dark, empty hole. I couldn’t stand the thought of spilling another silent tear in a shadowy tomb, waiting for the Ambien or alcohol to take effect.

  Instead of yielding when the invisible hand around my throat tightened, I pushed through it. I fought—the way I did in court—the path that led me to abandoning everything outside of my job.

  Retrieving my phone from the counter, I sent a text to Noah.

  Still planning on being home around 9?

  The typing bubbles appearing so quickly after my message was rare. Noah led a support group in the basement of a Presbyterian church in downtown Seattle on Saturday nights. The meeting ended at seven, but by the time a couple side conversations ran their course and he squeezed in a run after, he didn’t usually make it back to our home, tucked in a tranquil hillside of Sammamish, much before nine.

  No. Sorry. Something came up.

  More typing bubbles:

  It will be late.

  And then finally:

  Don’t wait up.

  My fingers were primed to type in a reply, but my mind couldn’t formulate a response. Okay, have a nice night, Miss you . . . all of the expected responses felt woefully flat and empty.

  After slipping my phone into the back pocket of my jeans, I went about cleaning up the kitchen, dumping what was left of the dough and the cookies into the garbage. One by one, I flipped off the lights in each room I passed through, until there was nothing left but harsh patches of light and dark streaming through the windows from the outside lights. I noticed the light inside the backyard shed had been left on, but the rain and dark kept me inside. Noah could turn it off when he got home if he felt so inclined.

  When I passed Andee’s room on the second floor, I opened her door halfway, following the same pattern with the rest of the doors I passed in the hall. Noah’s and my room was the last door, sidled beside a display case decorated with family photographs. Like most permanent fixtures in one’s house, I passed by the pictures a dozen times a day without taking notice, but tonight, I took the time to examine them.

  Our wedding picture, the barely visible bump hiding beneath the layers of satin. The photos of Andee through the years, great big toothy baby grins shrinking in size every year. The highlights of the rare family vacation, the early years displaying laughter, the more recent years portraying smiles masking the distance broadening between the three of us.

  Finally, there were a few pictures of my parents and Noah’s family. His younger sister’s senior photo was propped in the center. Five years separated them, but there was no mistaking their shared blood. Like Noah, the genetic lottery had rained down upon Natalie, both in beauty and brains. Fair, flawless skin, dark hair, light eyes, and a tall frame that commanded a room when she stepped inside. She’d been intent upon getting her PhD like her older brother, though in social work instead of psychology.

  She had been one semester from completing her undergrad when she chose to end her life.

  Noah had taken the news with equal part shock and acceptance, as though he’d been expecting that call for years. I’d been distracted by a busy toddler and law school, failing to provide emotional support to a grieving spouse. Noah hid his pain well, but I knew it still festered deep inside him, in the fathomless depths he’d never let me come close to exploring.

  Reaching for Natalie’s senior photo, I noticed a collection of fingerprints marked the glass. We had a housekeeper who came weekly to keep up with the main household chores, every month seeing to deeper cleaning tasks such as dusting and cleaning mirrors and photos. From the looks of the impressions, Noah had been picking up his sister’s picture daily. I set the photo back, letting the fingerprints be.

  Once inside our bedroom, I wandered into the walk-in closet that was as large as the bedroom Noah and I had first shared when we were married. Married couple college housing in downtown Seattle had been hard to find, next to impossible given our limited budget at the time.

  We’d gone from digging for loose change to make rent in a four-hundred-square-foot apartment to a slightly more spacious townhouse where we could pay the rent on time after I finished law school, to our first house in Kent—which was a nightmare commute for the both of us—to finally settling in our current home in Sammamish five years ago. It was a sprawling place mixed in with other wealthy families who wanted to partake in the advantages of living close to a big city, while forgoing the drawbacks.

  Peeling out of my designer jeans and linen top, I continued stripping until there was nothing left to remove. I made sure not to glance in the general direction of the mirror, desperate to pretend away the pounds and wrinkles that were a result of age and self-loathing.

  I hadn’t gone to bed naked in years. Not since the days Noah and I would fall asleep after fooling around. But tonight I felt like going to bed without the confinement of clothing; tonight I wanted to wait up for my husband, despite his instructions not to.

  I wanted to touch and be touched and take a short sabbatical into a life where all the pieces fit. I wanted . . . my husband.

  Hours passed before I detected the low timbre of the garage door opening. I could have checked the clock, but I didn’t want to know what time on a Saturday night my husband was making his way home to his family.

  His footsteps roamed the first floor for a while. Then the sink ran for so long I almost peeled myself from bed to see if he’d decided to hand-wash every dish in our cupboards.

  A few minutes of silence passed after the sink turned off—no footsteps, no creak of cupboards opening, no din streaming from the television. It was as if he’d vanished. Checking out the window, I saw the light was off in the shed. He’d noticed something as insignificant as a left-on light and tended to it—yet he embodied oblivion where our family was involved.

  Another minute passed before I detected the steady beat of him climbing the stairs, the echo of footsteps stalking down the hall. Despite every step bringing him closer, each one became quieter, as though he were trying to make as little noise as possible so as not to wake me. It was eerie how silently he could move; I’d never noticed before.

  Noah’s shadow slipped through the opening in the door, those light eyes of his failing to connect with the bed as he glided soundlessly toward the bathroom. He was in dark, casual clothing, nothing like what he wore for running or work, and he was moving differently, as though he’d strained a muscle, which wasn’t an unusual occurrence for Noah. If it wasn’t from the inhuman number of miles or pace he ran them at, it was something he’d strained, sprained, bruised, or, even once, broken at Jiu Jitsu. He’d taken up the sport years ago, and attended classes several times a week without fail. Work, hobbies, family—that was the order of Noah’s priorities it seemed. Once upon another life, it used to bother me, but somewhere along the way I’d settled into an apathetic acceptance of my husband’s priorities.

  Back in college, his physique had fallen into the tall and lanky category, but his body had morphed in the years since. Instead of developing
the standard dad ponch, his stomach remained flat and hard, the rest of his body following the same theme. It seemed the older he became, the more he tended to his body, getting stronger with age.

  My eyes had been adjusted to the dark for hours, so I could see everything he did through the half-closed door after he stepped into the dark bathroom.

  He stripped out of his clothing, moving from top to bottom, his shoes already abandoned somewhere downstairs. His movements were choppy and slow, and if I didn’t know better, I might have assumed he was drunk. But Noah didn’t drink. He never really had.

  So what had he hurt this time? His side maybe? Back?

  Once he was undressed, he hopped into the shower for a few minutes, the scent of his preferred soap drifting into the bedroom. Emerging from the shower, he slid open one of the bathroom drawers and removed a bottle of pain relievers. Instead of opening the bottle and swallowing a few, his fist circled the bottle as he leaned into the counter, head falling as a quiet sigh emanated from him. He let the bottle fall to the floor, his back rising and falling from heavy breaths.

  Seeing him like this had me sitting up in bed. This wasn’t the Noah I was used to—the composed, veiled man he wanted the world to see.

  He must have heard the mattress move because his head tipped over his shoulder, his glowing blue eyes finding me. Even in the darkness, I noticed the hard lines fall from his expression.

  “Did I wake you?” His voice was quiet, tired.

  My fist tightened around the sheet tucked over my chest. “I was awake.”

  Reaching for one of the towels hanging on the rack, he pulled it free and wound it around his midsection before stepping out of the bathroom.

  “It’s late.” He started for his dresser, his gaze leaving me.

  “I know.” My throat moved. “Where were you?”

  He retrieved an old pair of cut-off sweatpants from his drawer, keeping his back turned to me as he exchanged the towel for the shorts. Despite the loaded question that hung between us, my heart quickened as I watched him. My forty-one-year-old husband had the body of a twenty-year-old.

  My body strained in response to a man’s bare body, something inside aching for the relief only intimacy could bring. I hadn’t wanted Noah like this in years—in the kind of way I could taste in the back of my throat, where I could almost feel his hands on me, hungry, his body moving inside me.

  “Where’s Andee? She wasn’t in her bedroom.” His voice was hushed, his movements sharp as he tied the drawstring of his sweats.

  “She’s out with friends.”

  If he sensed the half-truth in my words, he gave no indication.

  “Noah, where were you?” I asked again, consulting the clock resting on my dresser. “It’s nearly one thirty.”

  “After the meeting, I went to the gym, then stopped by the office to finish some paperwork.” Sliding open a different drawer, he retrieved an old college shirt. “I usually come home late on Saturdays.”

  “I know. But I’m never awake when you do to see how late it is.”

  He unfolded the shirt, padding toward the bed. “Why are you awake tonight?”

  Heat flooded my face as I questioned myself—doubted myself. Before I could change my mind, I let go of the sheet. The coolness of it floated down my chest, past my stomach, gathering in my lap. “I was waiting for you.”

  Noah’s face didn’t change; same with his eyes. His gaze remained leveled on mine. “What are you doing?”

  “Come to bed.” I pulled back the covers on his side of the bed. “I want you.”

  Those three words opened up a swarm of vulnerability I did not like to acknowledge was trapped inside me. Want. Need. A request. A plea. An acknowledgment I was not so unwaveringly self-sufficient after all.

  He pulled the shirt over his head, tugging it down his stomach. It was the shirt I’d bought him as a graduation gift following his doctoral, during the money-was-exceptionally-tight phase of our marriage. Back then, it had been loose on him, but now it clung to him as though it had shrunk two sizes in the decade since, or he’d grown by the same two.

  I hadn’t noticed how much Noah had changed.

  Why hadn’t I?

  The answer was there, though I dared not acknowledge it.

  “It’s late,” was the only response he gave as he crawled onto his side of the bed, his back to me.

  “Noah, please . . . we haven’t . . .” When my hand rested on his side, he recoiled. Drawing my hand back into my lap, I pulled the covers over my body. Lying down, I fought off an onslaught of emotions, rejection and shame vying for leader. “I can’t even touch you anymore without you pulling away from me.”

  A long sigh drifted from his side of the bed. “It’s not you.” The bed groaned when he shifted, though with my back turned, I couldn’t tell if he was scooting closer or farther away.

  “When a naked woman reaches for a man, practically begging him to fuck her, and he reacts as if she’s stabbed him through the throat, it says otherwise.” Staring out the window that faced into the backyard, I wondered how many hours I’d spent blinking at that pane of glass, waiting for sleep to find me.

  “Or it might have something to do with an injury said man sustained in a ruthless round of Jiu Jitsu.”

  My head angled over my shoulder in his direction. Noah was sitting up in bed, closer than he normally slept beside me. One dark brow was elevated ever so slightly, his eyes half-closed as though he could hardly keep them open.

  “You’re an extraordinary woman, Grace. No man could say no to you.”

  Something tingled inside my chest, the way it had in Noah’s and my early days.

  “Except you,” I whispered.

  He reached across me, folding the blankets down my body. “I’m not saying no.”

  As I angled toward him, the weight of his body coming over mine rolled me back into the mattress. A gasp rushed from me, nerves firing to the surface from the weight of him above me.

  My arms wound behind his back to draw him closer, giving myself over to the solace of submission, the relief that came with surrender. When Noah held me like this, there was nothing left to fight; all that was left was to succumb.

  He reached between us, tugging at the waistband of his shorts, his legs coaxing mine wider at the same time. A breath caught in my throat when I felt him, ready and wanting. My back arched off the bed, feeling myself close to falling apart at the mere thought of him rocking inside me, his uneven breaths keeping time outside my ear.

  As he pushed inside, my body curled around him, legs winding around his backside, hands digging into his sides. A sharp hiss of air spilled past his lips at the same time he flinched.

  “Sorry,” I breathed, attempting to clear some of the fog clouding my head. Pulling at the hem of his shirt, I stretched it up his back to inspect the injury. I blinked to make sure I was seeing right. “Oh my god!”

  Before I could say anything else, he pulled away, tugging his shirt and shorts back into place. “It’s fine.”

  “No, it’s not fine.” I sat up. “You look like you got into a fight with a steel-plated cyborg.”

  When I reached for the lamp, Noah caught my hand. He waited for me to look at him. “I’m fine.”

  “What happened?”

  A smile formed, the contrived kind I’d grown used to lately, the one that accompanied vague answers and distracted responses. “I got into a fight with a steel-plated cyborg.”

  “Don’t do that. Don’t . . . lie to me.” My voice shook as I studied my husband. He was only a couple of feet away, but the distance felt immeasurable. “What else are you lying to me about?”

  His counterfeit smile faded. “What do you mean?”

  “Where were you really tonight?”

  His leg swung over my legs, dropping his feet to the floor. “I told you.”

  “We’ve been married for seventeen years. I can tell when you’re lying to me.”

  He stared out the same window I spent hours of my
life pondering through, his eyes narrowed. “Why don’t you get it out in the open and say what you’re accusing me of?”

  “No, I want you to tell me the truth.”

  “I was working. That is the truth.” His voice was level, controlled. It was worse than him shouting at me.

  I stared at him gazing into the darkness as though he were communing with it. “Look me in the eye and tell me that.”

  The muscles running down his back pressed through the worn cotton of the shirt I’d gifted him in another life.

  “You don’t trust me anymore,” he stated in the way one might mention what they’d had for lunch that day. He rose from the bed, turning toward the door. “I’ll sleep in the spare bedroom.”

  I reached for him as he left, calling his name.

  He didn’t hear me.

  It wasn’t until the sound of his footsteps moving down the hall faded that I realized it wasn’t me who’d uttered his name, reaching out for him as I promised we would figure this out—it was the woman I wished I was.

  Five

  Noah was gone.

  He’d left before I got up the next morning, and he was already asleep when I got back later that night. He’d gone back to the spare bedroom.

  I couldn’t fall asleep that night, and instead of popping a sleeping pill like I usually did when stress kept me awake, I gave myself over to it, letting the emotion run its course. Dark was fading to light when sleep took me, though it didn’t hold me for long.

  My phone woke me soon after, as the veiled light outside conveyed. I was cursing myself for setting the alarm for so early on a Monday morning when I realized it was a call coming in, not my alarm set to go off in a half hour.

  “Connor? What’s the matter?” I sat up in bed, blinking the sleep from my eyes.

  “I take it from your half-asleep voice you haven’t heard yet.” On the other end, he sounded as if he’d been hooked up to a caffeine drip.

  “Haven’t heard what yet?”

  “Darryl Skovil.” There was a pause. Long enough for me to brace myself for the confirmation that he’d hurt another child less than seventy hours after being set free from the accusation of harming a different one. “He killed himself.”