Through the Mist

by Ferrell, Cece

  I reached up and placed my hand against his cheek. When I opened my eyes and took in his face one last time, I could already see the faint hints of transparency start to seep back in. What we just did must have exhausted his energy, and he was starting to fade out again. He turned his head, placing a warm, tender kiss to my palm before wrapping his hand around mine and squeezing it. He looked back into my eyes and nodded his head.

  “I love you so much, Archer. I will always love you,” I said, another sob racking my body. “There is so much I want to say, but I can’t find the words,” I whispered, my body shaking.

  He pulled me into his arms and ran his hand soothingly along my spine. I shivered with the pleasure of his touch, goose bumps appearing all over my body.

  “Try, Rosalind. Please just try. I need the words. I don’t care if they’ll wreck me,” he whispered into my ear.

  I shook my head and gripped him tighter. My hold on him started to give way and I knew that soon, very soon there would be nothing left to hold onto but air, the memory of his body, and all the feelings I couldn’t escape.

  “Fuck. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m hurting you. I’m sorry that there isn’t a future for us. And most of all…” I stopped, breathing deeply, nearly gasping and trying to get a handle on the chest-crushing, soul-decimating pain running through my body. “Most of all I’m sorry that I still love Dan. I hate saying that to you, because you deserve so much more. But I owe you the truth, and the truth is part of me still loves him and wants to try to make things work. And I’m sorry for that, Archer. I really am.”

  “Ros, stop. I know you love me. I know this isn’t easy, for either of us. I know you love him. I also know there’s a tie connecting our hearts together, and nothing will sever that. Not time, not death,” he whispered in my ear, somehow knowing exactly what I needed to hear to walk away and let him go.

  He tightened his embrace, holding me for what felt like forever. I clung to him with my face buried in his chest, taking in his scent, knowing I would never smell anything better again in my life. We both pulled back and looked at each other one last time. He leaned in, placing a kiss first on my lips, then on my forehead, before he let go of me and stepped backward.

  He faded more with each footstep away from me he took. I raised my hand to wave. He waved back as his face broke into a broad, beautiful, breathtaking smile.

  His eyes were bursting with love, and I laughed through the tears still falling, grateful I was able to see this smile one last time. His smile didn’t waver before he faded completely, disappearing forever. I tried to comfort myself with this final memory of him.

  Thirty-Four

  Somehow Dan and I were able to wrap everything up that we needed to in that week. It wasn’t as difficult as I had expected to train and pass over all my preparations for the program and the showcase to the new coordinators. I would miss the children I had taught but tried to console myself with the fact that I would get to meet more when I started things in Santa Barbara. I couldn’t replace those kids, but what other option did I have? Dan said that most of the project was wrapped when he had returned home the night that everything fell apart. Everything he wasn’t able to finish in the last week he could do remotely.

  Saying goodbye to Marie and the book club ladies was far more difficult than I had anticipated. These women were one of the biggest reasons this island had felt like home to me, and Marie had become so incredibly important to me. She was my best friend and mom stand-in all at once.

  I knew we would stay in touch, but my days wouldn’t be the same without her stories, her kitchen filled with delicious foods and warmth, and her beautiful laugh. The ache from walking away from her was almost as bad as the one that Archer had left in his wake.

  In that last week, I hadn’t seen or felt Archer once. I both hated it and was grateful for the distance. We had said goodbye, I didn’t think I was capable of anything more than that. I grabbed my purse from the kitchen countertop and took one last look around the first floor of the house that I had fallen in love with. It felt stupid to be sad over leaving a place I had been in for a year, but I was attached all the same.

  As Dan and I made our way to the front door, ready to cross the threshold and leave for the last time, something crashed to the floor behind me.

  “What the hell was that?” Dan asked as he turned around. I could already see it was a book lying open.

  “It’s just a book. How about you go ahead to the car, and I’ll be there in a second after I put it back.” I was already walking toward it.

  “Okay. Man, that was strange,” Dan muttered to himself as he left the house.

  I bent down and grabbed the book, flipping it over to see what book it was, making sure not to lose the page it had fallen open to. I knew there was a reason for it landing on the page it had.

  City of Glass.

  I walked over to the kitchen island, setting the book down and skimming over it. A passage instantly jumped out to me. I sighed deeply. He knew. He was aware of how much I loved the book series, knew the quote would resonate with me.

  “Oh, Archer,” I whispered. I left the book open on the island and made my way back to the front door. As I stepped out of the house, I turned around and took one look back. “Even after this life, I will love you too.”

  I closed the door behind me and walked away, somehow strong enough to not look back.

  Thirty-Five

  Knock. Knock. Knock.

  “I’m coming, I’m coming. Hold your damn horses!” Jos shouted while making her way to her door.

  I couldn’t help but smile as I stood on her front porch waiting. I’d decided back in Washington that I would just wait until I got back home to surprise her.

  Home.

  This place surely didn’t feel like home anymore to me. I knew what that felt like now, and home was back on an island, traipsing around with a ghost.

  Time. You just need time, more than a day back here.

  Those were the words I kept repeating in my mind, hopeful that one day soon I could convince myself of their truth.

  “What. The. Fuck!” I turned back toward the door at the sound of her voice. Damn, I had missed her so fucking much. I barely had a chance to shoot her a grin before I was pulled into her embrace. “Seriously, bitch! What are you doing here and why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”

  “I wanted to surprise you,” I replied, still stuck in her death grip.

  “C’mon, we haven’t talked in like three weeks.” Jos released me from her hold before grabbing my hand and pulling me through her door. “How’s everything? Did Dan finish the project?” she asked rapid-fire before turning back to me.

  One look at me and the smile melted off her face and was replaced with a look of concern. I knew then that the thin veneer hiding my emotions was completely transparent. Jos always read me so well, I shouldn’t have been surprised. “Ros, what the hell happened?”

  I tumbled down onto one corner of her sofa, sinking into the soft cushions and pulling a throw pillow onto my lap.

  “What didn’t happen?”

  The minute the words were out of my mouth, I knew I had fucked up by not planning out what I wanted to say before I had even knocked on her door. I couldn’t just tell her what Dan had done. It wouldn’t have been fair to reveal his indiscretions without admitting my own, but Jos would jump all over that and be pissed I hadn’t told her sooner.

  I just wasn’t ready to go into details about Archer and me, and I wasn’t sure that was a truth I could or would ever admit in full to anyone. I couldn’t lie because Jos read me better than anyone out there. She would know I wasn’t telling her everything. I decided to go with as close a version to the truth as I could stand to tell.

  “Did Dan come back with you? Is this just a visit?” I knew she was going to hit way too close to the truth if I let her keep asking me questions.

  “Yeah, Dan’s back too. The project is pretty much done.”

  “So what’s
wrong? Why do you look like someone killed your kitten?”

  I winced as I braced myself to say the words I was already regretting. “Everything is fucked, Josie. I’m going to say this and I want you to let me just say it and not interrupt, got it?” Jos rolled her eyes at me but nodded her head in agreement. “Okay. Dan cheated on me. He fucked someone he worked with.” The words rang out like a shot.

  “What in the actual fuck, Ros?” she screamed before clasping her hands over her mouth to prevent any other words from slipping through. I threw a dirty look her way that said, You promised, without having to say anything. That was the beauty of our friendship. Words weren’t always necessary. She got the message.

  “It was just the once, and before you ask, yes, I believe him. He’s fucking wrecked. But that’s not the only issue.” Her eyes widened at that. “I cheated on him too.” I forced the words past the sudden lump in my throat, pushing the confession past the ache that threatened to close off my airway and vocal cords.

  “Ros, you’re kidding, right?” She jumped out of her seat and sat next to me, wrapping her arms around me, but not so close that we couldn’t see each other’s faces.

  “I wish I were. And before you ask, it was just some random guy I met and it was only once. I told Dan though, so yeah, we both fucked up pretty bad. But he still wants to work things out and I want to try too.”

  The final words came out with a gush of air from my lungs. Relief and anxiety all twisted up together in my gut, the perfect cocktail of my undoing.

  “God, there’s so many things I want to ask you. I want to know everything about this guy and how it all went down. I still can’t believe you.”

  “I can’t, Jos. I really don’t want to talk about it. I met him at a really weak moment and I made a mistake. I’m never going to see or talk to him again, so I just want to move past it.”

  My tone brooked no argument and my words were close enough to the truth that I could tell Jos bought it, even if her natural desire was to keep badgering me with questions. It hurt to say what had happened with Archer was a mistake, but in some ways, especially for what it meant for my marriage, it was a mistake.

  “Okay. Maybe not today, but one day soon you will give me all the details about this. My question right now is, do you want to work things out with Dan? After all of this, don’t you think it’s a sign? Maybe you should just cut your losses and walk away?”

  I sighed and grasped the pillow tighter. I wasn’t sure how to answer that honestly without getting into all the details about Archer, how to tell her how conflicted I was feeling when I’d left so many pieces of my shattered heart behind in another place, with the ghost of a man who wasn’t the one I’d made vows to love and honor eternally.

  “Yeah, I do. We’ve already decided to go to marriage counseling. We need this if we’re going to be together and we should have done this a long time ago. Jos, I can’t help but think that if we had tried to fix all of these things before we left, none of this probably would have happened.”

  I had been thinking about that a lot over the last couple of weeks. Ignoring all the issues between us had left our marriage wide open and vulnerable to any threats from the outside, left us too weak and alone to fight them off. And in they’d come in the form of a sexy co-worker and an irresistible spirit.

  Realizing all of this, admitting my role in all of it to myself had been devastating. I could withhold some of the facts from Dan, but I couldn’t hide them from myself. Revealing the true nature of my betrayal would only hurt Dan more, and despite his role in this, he didn’t deserve it. I would have to learn to live with only the pieces of my heart left.

  While regret plagued me, I still couldn’t bring myself to regret Archer. If anyone ever asked if I could go back in the past knowing what I do now, would I change anything, would I keep it from happening knowing I could have a whole heart, I knew that I would rather live in fragments having known the kind of love that existed between Archer and me.

  Thirty-Six

  “Okay, so last week we met briefly to get acquainted and lay out what our goals and expectations were for our sessions. Now that that’s out of the way, I’d like for us to dive right in this session. We’ll start with talking about how you both are doing and how the last week has been. Usually I find that starting the sessions with that often segues into the bigger issues we are trying to resolve. Ros, how was your week?”

  Dan and I had been back in Santa Barbara for nearly three weeks. It had taken us a couple of weeks to finally get into marriage counseling with a counselor recommended by a friend. Neither of us had been in any kind of therapy, so we didn’t know what to expect.

  In that time, we had barely spoken to one another. Everything between us was so awkward. We walked on eggshells around one another and the air practically vibrated with the tension humming between the two of us whenever we were in the same room, something we both had been avoiding since returning.

  We also were sleeping in different bedrooms. I couldn’t bring myself to touch him, to initiate any kind of intimacy whether physical or emotional. Dan didn’t seem eager to breach the void between us either.

  So here we were, sitting in a comfortable if sparsely decorated office of a well-regarded marriage counselor, someone we were hoping would salvage the wreck our relationship had become, and I had no clue what to say.

  “Umm, it was okay, I guess. I’m just trying to get back into the swing of things here.”

  “And how is that going for you?” Susan, our therapist, asked.

  She adjusted her tall, willowy frame in the armchair she sat in across from us, crossing her legs and tapping out what I assumed was a quick note on her iPad before looking back up at me with a warm smile that was meant to put me at ease.

  “I’m not sure, actually. I feel this strange mix of things. It feels like nothing and everything has changed all at the same time, if that makes sense. I’ve been gone for a year and life here went on without me, and I’m not sure how I fit into things anymore because everything is different. At the same time, everything looks the same and there’s a feeling of… I don’t know… comfort, I guess? Familiarity? This place. It feels like home and it feels foreign.”

  “That’s understandable, Ros. You’ve gone through two moves in a year and a lot has happened during that time. We will delve a little more into these discordant feelings soon.” She turned her body slightly to Dan, giving him the same smile she had given me. “Dan, how was your week?”

  He just sat there staring at his hands that were hanging between the space of his spread knees. And we waited. Susan didn’t interrupt or ask him any questions, she just sat back and gave him time and space to gather his thoughts, like she could see the tumult going on in that head of his.

  Eventually he sat back, resting his hands on the armrests of the chair he was sitting in. It hit me then that we were sitting in two different chairs, separated by a small table where a tiny potted succulent and a box of tissues sat. I didn’t know why that struck me as strange, but for some reason it did.

  “I don’t know. It wasn’t good. Nothing’s been good lately. I wish we were past all of this shit, you know? I feel like a stranger in my own home. Sometimes I just want to reach out to Ros, pull her in my arms, kiss her. Then I think of what I did, how bad I fucked up. I think about what she did, and I start to feel sick to my damn stomach and then the urge dies. I’ve been throwing myself into work, hiding out in my office, doing everything and anything to take my mind off the fact that this shit is fucking killing me.”

  He spat the words out like he’d tried to swallow them down but they tasted so bad that he couldn’t stomach that.

  “Ros, have you noticed this? How do you feel about what Dan said?”

  How did I feel? I didn’t think I could even put into words what was running through my head, all the discordant thoughts.

  “Confused. Of course, I feel the distance between us. But this didn’t start recently. This has been going on for a
long time. Every project, every month Dan’s gone, the distance grew a little bit more until everything fell apart in Washington. By that point the divide was too vast.”

  I hesitated, waiting for the strength, the courage to say the things that I had been avoiding over the last year.

  “I didn’t notice that things weren’t working between us, that they hadn’t really been working for a while until we started to prepare for the move. Things had always been this way from the start. It was our normal, it was my first real relationship, so I thought this was how it was supposed to be. I loved Dan and I knew how much his career meant to him. But as we prepared for the move I realized how much things weren’t working for me.”

  I stopped trying to gather the last of my thoughts, and turned to Dan.

  “I jumped at the chance to move because I thought it would give us more time together, time we needed to reconnect. The opposite happened. It wrecked us.”

  Dan just continued to stare at me, his anger and pain impossible to hide, practically radiating from him.

  “No, Ros. We ruined us. We did this together. And I… I don’t know if we can fix it. Half the time I don’t know if I want to fix this.”

  I couldn’t break his stare, and I couldn’t say another word because Dan was right. In a hundred different ways over all our years together, instead of creating something, building a strong relationship and a life together, we’d been putting on a good show, avoiding the real hard work that was necessary to create something lasting.

  He was right, our denial of truth and reality had destroyed us. The thing that broke me apart even more was the fact that I wasn’t sure if the damage was repairable either.

  Thirty-Seven

  Knock, knock, knock. Knock-knock-knock.

  I groaned and flinched against the brightness of the sun glaring into my eyes. I didn’t know who was at the door, but based on the insistence and cadence of the knocking, they weren’t going to just go away on their own.