Watching the Sky Cry

by J. B. Hartnett

  Her words gutted me, because I empathized in a way I wished I didn’t.

  “Lee had a choice,” Miles told her evenly.

  “I’m so sorry, Miles. I’m so sorry. She wasn’t sick then; we had no way of knowing—”

  “Miles,” Quentin interrupted.

  But Miles continued over him. “Eventually, you knew, Ardie. Eventually, you would’ve heard about her, about what she did to us. What she did to my brother.” His anger was building, but somehow, he kept it just barely under control. “So, why this big dinner? Why not just call me on the phone?”

  “Because I want you to have the family I denied you, and this,” she said, looking around the table, “is your family.”

  “And where’s dear old Dad, huh?” he asked her.

  “Miles,” Quentin interjected again. “According to Dad, she’s in and out of it, but she’s regressed to a happier time, and that time is when she was with Lee at the place in Bodega Bay.”

  “Fishing,” I whispered. Uncle Lee had gone to see her…with Quentin’s Dad, Pete.

  “Fishing,” Aunt Ardie confirmed. “When she was more lucid, she kept asking when Lee was coming to her with their baby. And Pete asked Lee, and me, if we would be willing to give her that peace…before…”

  “Before she dies,” he finished.

  “Yes,” Aunt Ardie told him.

  We were all emotional. It was truly awful to witness this, let alone be a star player.

  Then Miles wrested his hand from Aunt Ardie in a quick snatch. He pulled both of his hands down his face, coming to land gently on the table. Eyes so bright, so startlingly blue, were revealed, anchored in regret, reflection, and an awareness we all knew, whatever it was, he’d just come to understand.

  “Dad never accepted me,” he said to Quentin. “I thought it was…something else.”

  Aunt Ardie lost the composure she’d been fighting to hold onto and was crying her eyes out. She excused herself to the kitchen, and Dad followed, leaving Mom, Billy, Quentin, Miles, and me alone.

  “That’s why Lee sent you away,” Miles said to Quentin. “That’s why he didn’t want you to be with Rylie. Perfect opportunity to make sure we didn’t get any closer to the truth.”

  Quentin said nothing, which I took to mean he agreed.

  Miles reached over and grabbed both my wrists and stared right into my eyes. “Because of me, you and Quentin never even had a chance. But you have it now.”

  “There’s no blame here,” Mom told him, surprised by his intensity. “These things, they happen.”

  Her words were meant to ease him, but they didn’t. Instead, he squeezed harder. “Billy and I talk, Rylie. He told me about your husband. It killed me, but he made me promise not to tell my brother. Said you needed to heal. Told me to trust in fate, so I did. But how could I not tell the one person I was sure could bring you back from hell?”

  “No… it wouldn’t have mattered back then,” I began to protest, but Miles kept a firm grip, not letting me go.

  “No?” His eyes grew wider. “You watched your husband die, yeah?”

  “Please,” Mom tried to break through to Miles, who was relentless.

  “Miles.” Quentin tried to pull my hands free, and, at the same time, my mom ran into the kitchen to call out for Dad.

  I shook my head, hoping it would just end. I didn’t want to hear anymore.

  “And before that, you sat for what? Two months, watching machines breathe for your husband and begging him to open his eyes? Did I get that right?”

  I knew, or assumed, that somehow my brother and Quentin were trying to ease Miles out of whatever he was dealing with, diffuse the situation instead of inflaming it more. But the more they tried, the harder Miles squeezed, and the wrist I’d broken in the accident all those years ago was feeling the pressure.

  Dad came in, the kitchen door swinging back hard as it ground on its hinges. I quickly looked at my dad and shook my head, pleading with him not to interfere.

  “Miles…” Billy tried to get him to let me go, but his hands were like a vice.

  “My mother’s fuck up and your uncle’s fuck up hurt so many people…and it almost cost him his life,” he said, motioning his head to the side. I had no idea who he meant…Billy, Quentin? “First, she tried to end it; then he tried himself.”

  “Wha- what are you talking about? Who’s life?” I asked and received no answer. “Who’s life?” I asked again.

  Just then, Aunt Ardie walked in with a tray of teetering coffee cups and slices of cake, seemingly oblivious to the situation. Miles’ body was shaking from head to toe, his eyes rimmed with red as the anger turned to rage. For him, I was simply a focal point, but not there, not really. I was just caught in the crossfire.

  “Quentin was never the same, Rylie…never the same. I was seventeen, almost didn’t get there in time…so much fucking dirt. I had to remind him every day you’d be coming back. Not to give up.”

  I was so confused, so many questions, and, without warning, he pushed me back so hard, my wrists nearly snapped. I cried out as searing, sharp pain shot up my arm from my wrist. Dad yanked Miles back, gripping him by the shoulders. Quentin caught me in his arms, and, finally, when Miles looked at me again, it was as if he was seeing me for the very first time.

  “Oh God,” he said, lunging forward. “Rylie.” He slumped back against Dad and Billy, this grown man reeling with the weight of it all. Mom held Aunt Ardie tight to her side as Billy and Dad led Miles from the room.

  Quentin released me and stood completely still, staring at me.

  Like I was invisible.

  But I’d misunderstood his embittered stare. Of all the ground covered in the last two hours, one piece of information stood out above the rest.

  “I know you need to check on Miles,” I said, “but I have questions…lots and lots of questions.”

  “Yeah,” he said, but it was a kneejerk response, one without any thought.

  “What was he talking about? When he was seventeen? What happened when he was seventeen? You were fourteen.”

  Quentin didn’t touch me or attempt to hold me, soothe me…

  “Six years is a long time to live with someone,” I whispered, holding my wrist to my chest.

  And still, he said nothing.

  “Long enough to love.”

  Mom came up behind me and tried to intervene. “Rylie, not now, baby. Let’s all take a deep breath and—”

  “So much pain. So many lies,” I whispered. But it was what Miles had said before, something that just sank its teeth in.

  “You knew,” I said, though I wasn’t really surprised. “You knew about Nick…everything, every detail… you knew I was coming back here, and still, you played along. Why did you do that?”

  “Because you weren’t ready. Instead of telling me right away, you hesitated. And you still hesitate, even now, and you know it.” If I wasn’t mistaken, it sounded like he was accusing me.

  So if honesty is what he wanted…

  “You’re hesitating, too, Quentin.”

  I stared at him, hurt by his brutal honesty that also had an audience. There was nothing more to say, not then. I needed a minute without the thickness of drama, and he needed to take care of his brother. So I walked out of the room, brushing past my parents and my aunt, to the front door, past Miles and Billy, and down to the river to make my way home.

  My wrist was likely just sprained.

  Much like my trust.

  And my heart.

  SEVENTEEN

  I appreciated the enormity of what Quentin and Miles, Aunt Ardie and Uncle Lee, were going through, but when a deafening roar began to inundate my ears and numb my body, the siren call of anxiety, I knew my first priority had to be me. I’d survived, but the journey from one life to the next was not without its setbacks. I needed to absorb the events of the evening and shake off the feeling of disconnection that loomed. So I made my way home along the river, a trail dark, but familiar, alive with the sounds of a
summer night, croaking frogs and chirping crickets as they hummed to a murmur of running water.

  My place of peace and solitude.

  My savior.

  But I couldn’t help but cry as I walked. Not because of the throbbing pain in my wrist, that pain was secondary. I wondered when life was going to stop being so complicated for me. The more I thought back to everything of the past year—moving north, leaving my old life behind—the more those emotions came to the surface.

  By the time I reached the house, I was all cried out. I knew Quentin would show up at some point. We’d talk, like we always did, and we’d probably work it out. But I hated knowing he’d kept things from me.

  I had questions that needed answers.

  And that’s when I knew, those twenty years we’d been apart were more than just necessary. For me, they were vital.

  I iced one wrist, which was quite swollen, and made my way upstairs to have a hot bath in my giant, porcelain tub. Something, anything that would calm my mind. I undressed and slipped into the steaming, hot water, surprised at the comfort in the simplicity of a bath. Then I closed my eyes and let the tumult of thoughts whirl around me. I only watched them, observed them. I didn’t grab hold of any of them and try to make sense of it all. I just let them go.

  Eventually, the sound of the front door opening and closing in the quiet of the house took me from my drifting thoughts. Footsteps on the stairs, then a hand on the bathroom door handle, I knew my brother would never invade my privacy like that.

  But Quentin would.

  I kept my eyes closed as the door opened, then shut. My chin barely rested above the water line as he stopped at the edge of the tub. His creaking boots and the shift of his jacket heralded his touch. And just then, his warm breath escaped cool lips as they pressed to my cheek in a gentle kiss.

  “I needed to be sure,” he said. “Once I told you…I didn’t want you to change your mind. I couldn’t tell you anything without telling you everything.”

  I’d tried to prepare for this moment, and the words I’d rehearsed in my head came back to me at once. “You said…you asked me to be sure. How could you even ask me that if you knew.”

  He didn’t answer, and I didn’t give him the benefit of looking in his direction. I kept my eyes closed as he moved around the room. I heard the thud of his boots on the tiled floor. The familiar clink of his heavy buckle. The whoosh of his jacket, his shirt. Cupboard doors opened and closed, and then, I felt the water rise as another body joined me. His hands went under my arms and turned me in the tub, pulling my back against his chest.

  I couldn’t help but let everything go, falling against the one man I thought might just be strong enough to fight anything: life, death…

  Anything.

  “I remember the first day I met you, Rylie. My brother called me a pansy for spending all my time with a girl, but I was younger. See, he and Billy were fast friends. They had each other,” he said. “And when they were off doing whatever it was they did, I’d wait to see you. Sometimes, I’d wait for hours, but I never cared how long. I knew, in the end, I’d be rewarded with my own personal sky.”

  “Quentin…” I sobbed as he pulled me tighter to his body.

  “I always thought I’d be able to move on from that dream, and I did try,” he told me. “I had my fair share of women, but you stole my heart that very first summer and took it with you each time you left. Nothing,” he squeezed, “and no one has ever come close. And when you got married…” he said, “I decided it was time to let you go.”

  I wanted the explanation; I wanted the truth. So I waited for him to finish.

  “Then I met Alyssa, who was nothing at all like you. Nothing. She was…rigid, complicated. A cold beauty that always felt unreachable, and that appealed to me, because I knew I’d never be in it completely. So I accepted her advances, ignored everything inside me that told me it wasn’t right, and, instead, convinced myself it was all I’d ever have.”

  I wondered, briefly, why he hadn’t just waited to see if he’d meet someone else. Someone better suited. And, as if he read my mind…

  “I’m okay with being alone, but having a life you share is better.”

  And then I could hold my tongue no longer. “But you said you always wondered what it would be like…shopping together, waking up together. I remember you saying that.”

  “I didn’t love her.”

  “But you spent six years with her,” I argued.

  “I spent six years trying to forget you were married to another man.”

  At that point, I think I was finally beginning to understand, he’d never stopped loving me.

  “And the house? What about the house?”

  “I told her I wanted the income from renting.”

  “Did you have a mortgage?”

  “No,” he said. “And since she’s an agent, she listed the property and handled it as a rental. She had a place. I kept shit there. She did the shopping, and not once did I go with her. Her dad had the cooperage. Miles and I invested in it and for a while. It was a good distraction.”

  And still, the questions about this doomed relationship kept popping into my head. But he cut me off at the pass.

  “Rylie…” he said, turning me in the tub so I could face him. “It was over before it began, because she wanted more from me and I wouldn’t give it to her. And it wasn’t just because I didn’t have you. It was because, when I was fourteen, I needed something to live for, so I made a plan. I needed hope. I needed…light. And when I was eighteen and that plan didn’t work out, I never made a new one. I kept waiting for something to happen, but I had no idea what exactly that was. And one day, Miles watched me fall. And it wasn’t the first time.”

  “What do you mean, fall?” I asked.

  He looked right at me, but somehow, just as his brother had done that night, he looked beyond me. “I had nothing but memories and no interest in making new ones. Christmas was always hard, since that’s when I’d remember you. Remember the time we went down to the river, and I convinced you to get in the water. We laughed, remember? Teeth chattering away, but what I remember is how alive I felt when I was with you, and how empty I felt that night.”

  “Quentin,” I whispered, fresh tears finding their way to my cheeks with every solemn memory he recalled.

  “I took off my boots, then my socks…my jeans, everything. First I lay in the grass and looked at the sky, thinking I could get that feeling back. Be transported to that night with you at my side. But it wasn’t enough. So I stood up and went to the edge of the river, and, eventually, I found my way to the deepest spot I could find.”

  That’s when his eyes refocused on my face.

  “Miles found me.” Quentin’s gaze dropped from mine. “All night long, I fought against my body telling me to get out, at war with my mind telling me there was no point in getting out.”

  “Oh my God, Quentin…I can’t…” That’s what Miles meant. “You almost died. When Miles said that tonight—”

  “Spent a week in the hospital. Refused to see Alyssa. Finally, Miles took me to his apartment in Santa Rosa. Got my shit, sold the business, and gave me things to do every day. I had to make coffee. Wash the dishes. He made me mail a fucking letter or buy batteries. He made shit up so I had something to do every single day. And all that happened three years ago.”

  Billy used to do that. He’d send me a quick message telling me to go buy milk or suggest a new flavor of Pop Tart I just had to get before they ran out.

  I sat rocked back so I could see him, water sloshing between us and over the side.

  Three years.

  “Three years,” I said, more a question than a statement.

  “One day, Miles came home and said he bought a bar. Said he’d sold our share of the cooperage. Then he explained how, two months before, he’d received a call from Billy. And how he’d watched his sister, my sky, sit with her heart in the balance of life, watching the life of the man she loved end. How she was there w
hen he took his last breath. How she insisted she wash him and dress him…like she’d been doing while she kept vigil for two months. And Billy told him he hoped she’d find her way back here, where she was once happy. And when and if she did…she’d need me. And so I had a purpose again, Rylie. I had a reason to breathe, and a new plan. Because, even if the woman who had my heart, my eternal love, didn’t choose me, I could be there to help her rise from the ashes and once again be my sky.”

  And now, I understood why he’d lied. Why he’d kept all of this to himself. And I believed that, eventually, when the time was right, he would have told me everything.

  Everything.

  “You’re my hope, Rylie May.”

  And though I didn’t say it, I knew, at that very moment, I was in love with him.

  ****

  The next afternoon, with my faith in the man I loved restored, I went to the buses. That was the story I’d planned to go with when I arrived. But, truth be told, I was there to see my parents and Aunt Ardie.

  I couldn’t imagine what she was going through, and I hoped I never had to experience something like she had first hand.

  Life already had its turn with me.

  Quentin kissed me goodbye that morning and promised we’d see each other later. A promise another man used to make each day before he left for work. But I ignored this memory and chose not to think of it as some kind of foreboding omen. Instead, I saw it as a promise and walked along the road toward downtown.

  I was glad we’d been given privacy by my family and his. So much was happening around us, but we both agreed, we needed to keep what was flourishing separate from the family drama. And so far, we had.

  Miles sent a text to Quentin asking if he could cover his bar shifts for the next few days, and Billy had offered to accompany him to say goodbye to his mother.

  With all these thoughts weighing heavy on my mind, before I knew it, I was on the porch at Aunt Ardie’s house. Dad must’ve heard me outside, unable, or maybe unwilling, to actually knock on the door.