The Debt

by Karina Halle

  He carefully pulls out and then, with utmost care, gently lowers me to the ground. My good leg has a major cramp in it but I resist rubbing it, lest he think I’m hurt. The pain is totally worth it.

  “Didn’t you know, little red,” he says, grabbing my hand and kissing the back of it. “the journey is the destination.”

  He hands me my cane back and we make our way out of the ruins, back to the moors.

  Everything is lighter now. The sun, the sky, my soul.

  I can only hope it stays this way through the rest of the journey.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Keir

  Our hotel for the night is the complete opposite of where we stayed last night. The castle in Wick was, well, a castle. This place seems like it’s run by Basil and Sybil Fawlty, and instead of Manuel the Spanish man servant, there’s a large white cat who watches everyone.

  Still, there’s something comforting about a hotel run by the owners, even if it’s in a place called Scourie, which is barely even a town, just a dot on the map as the North Coast 500 dips toward the south. I wasn’t even planning on us staying here, thinking we could make it to the town of Ullapool instead, but I started to get drained and tired of driving.

  The truth was, I didn’t want to be in a car anymore. I wanted to be with Jessica, locked away in our bedroom. I wanted to make sense of my feelings for her because what I was feeling was started to fuck with me. Only when I was inside her did it make any sense at all.

  But, good intentions or not, we’re both too tired from the journey to do anything but sit and relax. The hotel has a small lounge with a bar that one of the owners tends to when they aren’t running the front desk. There are leather couches, heavy wood coffee tables, red carpeting, a fireplace with ship models on the mantle. The windows look out onto the bay where a few fishing boats are moored. The bar itself is wood-panelled and topped with hammered copper, with one of the biggest selections of scotch whisky I’ve ever seen.

  Naturally, the owner – a tall, scrawny man with an unnerving gaze – suggests a whisky tasting flight. Despite drinking too much last night, Jessica is into it.

  We settle down in the couches with our flight of six different whiskies and stare out into the bay as the rain starts to come in.

  “So,” Jessica says as we move onto the third glass (this one promises hints of fresh cut flowers and lemon cheesecake, total bullshit if you ask me), “tonight we’re here, wherever this is. Where are we staying tomorrow?”

  “The Isle of Skye,” I tell her, “though there are a few detours I wouldn’t mind taking. The Applecross peninsula is supposed to be stunning and there’s another coastal route a wee bit south of here.”

  She hands me the glass, grimacing at the burn as she does with all the whisky. “Isle of Skye. That’s where your mother lives, right?”

  I shake my head. “That’s Islay. An island closer to Glasgow. Lots of this stuff comes from there, the peatier the better.” I take a mouthful, the campfire-like smoke of the peat filling my nose.

  She presses her lips together tightly, almost looking disappointed.

  “Did you think I was taking you to my mother’s house?” I ask her.

  She gives out a snort of dismissive laughter. “No, no. Not at all. I just got the islands confused. Meeting your mother…we’re not there yet.”

  I frown at her, setting down the drink. She’s rubbing her palms on her legs while trying to act nonchalant. “We’re not there yet?” I repeat. “Where is there?”

  She shrugs and reaches for the next glass in line, gives it a faint sniff. Her eyes open wider, clearly getting an even peatier version than the one before.

  “Jessica. Where is there?” I’m not letting her pretend she didn’t say that.

  “Nowhere,” she says, taking a tentative sip. She coughs and quickly passes it on to me. I don’t touch it. I’m watching her closely, daring her to tell me the truth. We have yet to talk about our relationship and even though we’ve never made it official in some juvenile boyfriend girlfriend way, I think it’s been pretty obvious so far that we’re committed to each other. I mean, we’re out here on the road together, we’re not fucking anyone else. So this there business is throwing me for a loop.

  “Were you nervous, thinking you had to meet my mum?” I ask her.

  “Nervous, no.” But she’s looking at the rain running down the sides of the large windows.

  “I’m not that close with her, you know,” I tell her, “but there’s no reason why we can’t stop by. It means adding another day to the itinerary and maybe cutting out a stay in Glen Coe but…”

  “It’s fine,” she says defensively. “Forget I said anything. It was just a question, that’s all.”

  I take in a deep breath, putting my hand over hers. “If you’re wondering if we’re in a spot where we would introduce each other to our families, then yes I think we’re in that spot. Is it too soon? Maybe. Who knows. Honestly it’s something I haven’t put much thought into. Maybe it’s because I rarely see my mum, maybe it’s because I already met your sister. When it comes to us, I’m not sitting here checking off the milestones, hoping that each step brings us closer to the goal.”

  She turns her head at that, studying me. “What is the goal?”

  I sigh. “There is no goal. A lot of people view relationships as happening in little stages. The goal is that you get to feel secure in your commitment. For some it ends with a family, children, marriage. For others it just means that they know who they are coming home to each night. But I don’t think in goals. Maybe I did once, but not anymore. Not with you. Just to have you with me was the goal and I already have it. Whatever happens next doesn’t matter so as long as you’re there.”

  It’s one of the biggest lies I’ve ever told.

  Because there is a goal for me. A big one. It has nothing to do with getting approval from family or even hearing the words “I love you.” It’s being able to tell her the truth and have her understand. To be honest about every part of me, to stop the omissions and show her what I really am and to still have her by my side at the end of the day, just as she is now. That’s my goal. It’s been my goal since I first saw her at the pub, when I got to know who she really was, not just this victim on TV.

  It’s no longer about the debt I owe her. It’s about being able to come clean and have her by my side.

  The thought hits me like lightening.

  You need to tell her now.

  You need to tell her the truth about who you are.

  I feel like I’m breaking out in a cold sweat. I know I have to do it.

  “You’re really sweet, you know that?” she says, trying another glass.

  I raise my brow. “You’re telling me I’m fucking sweet?”

  She grins at me. “Yeah. You have a problem with that?”

  “Drink up, little red,” I tell her, grabbing one of the glasses we haven’t touched. “You tell me I’m sweet, I’ll show you an animal.”

  We sit there and finish the whole flight. Eventually the rain stops. We head outside, drunk and silly and make our way down to the water.

  The whole time I hear the voices.

  Tell her, tell her, tell her.

  We stop at the edge of the harbor, where the steel-grey water laps against the grass and ferns and the remnants of an old stone wall. In the near distance there are mounds of small islands and inlets, a maze that eventually leads to the open sea somewhere.

  My brain swimming against the booze, my heart is tangled in knots. Because I can see the words coming out of my lips, hear how they would sound to her.

  Jessica, I have to tell you something.

  Sit down, it won’t be easy to hear.

  You’re not going to believe this.

  I have something to confess and you’re not going to like it.

  It was my fault that you got shot.

  The man who shot you was my friend and under my command.

  I was a lance corporal in the British Military. It
’s what I’ve been doing these last eight years.

  When I said I was a nomad, I was fighting in Afghanistan.

  We were sent back. I lost men. It was my fault that Lewis Smith went crazy.

  He told me he would hurt people. I should have done more to stop him.

  I should have done more.

  I’ve been living a lie.

  I am a lie.

  The only thing I know that’s true is the way I feel about you.

  I’m falling in love with you.

  I am in love with you.

  Please forgive me.

  Suddenly she reaches over and grabs my hand, bringing me out of my thoughts, the words having yet to come out.

  I lick my lips to say something, anything. My heart starts to kick against my ribcage, a chill running over my shoulders as I ready myself.

  “I have to tell you something I haven’t told anyone else,” she says suddenly, her tone grave.

  I blink at her a few times, not expecting this.

  She sighs loudly before giving me a sour smile. “I just…we were talking about the steps in a relationship and I honestly don’t know what I’d even call us. A relationship, I guess…we haven’t defined us and I guess that was bothering me a bit. Not knowing what would happen to us when we got back to Edinburgh. If this trip was just a fun, one-time thing and if we’d part ways.”

  “No,” I tell her. “Definitely not. The opposite.”

  “That’s what I want,” she says. I breathe out in relief. “But…I’ve been in relationships where things don’t follow the steps or maybe they did and then quit. I’ve been defined with someone. And it ended in ugliness. I should have realized it would be different with you and in a world of not knowing what’s next, I guess I just needed that. When you said we weren’t going to your mother’s, I felt stupid for assuming that we were. That we were there. That’s really what I meant earlier.”

  She breaks away, leaning on her cane as she stares off at the boats bobbing on the water. A set of dark rainclouds are coming in from a distance and will probably hit us in the next few minutes. I want to tell her we should head back but I have the feeling she’s not done talking.

  “I did everything right with Mark,” she goes on. “He just wouldn’t commit. Maybe because he was sleeping with his assistant, who knows. It doesn’t matter. Months ago, maybe in May, I had plans to leave him. I wanted to escape, a chance to find what I wanted, needed, with someone else. Or just be by myself.” She pauses for a few beats. “And then I got pregnant.”

  My stomach twists. I open my mouth to say something but can’t.

  She looks at me over my shoulder, her jaw wavering. “I thought it would help everything. Bring us closer together. But the truth was, it made the idea of leaving easier. I was three months pregnant and I never told him. I thought I could just leave and start again with a child. I was a fool. Afraid. I should have told him. It was his right to know. It was his. We were living together for fuck’s sake. If I had told Mark the truth, that I was pregnant, maybe he wouldn’t have let me go to London to begin with.”

  Fuck.

  This hits me like a flash bomb. “You were pregnant when you were shot?” I whisper, my voice choked. The feeling starts to leave my legs.

  She nods quickly, closing her eyes. “Yes. I was. And though the world was one huge uncertainty, I was happy. But that’s what I get, isn’t it? Payback, karma. I’ve had it coming for a while now. I should have told him and we should have stayed together and raised a child and I should have been happy but instead it all changed in an instant. The doctors told me I’d lost the child. Thankfully they kept this information away from the media. I’m not sure how I would have dealt with that, how Mark would have. Maybe he wouldn’t have left me. Maybe not. What does it matter now?”

  I scramble for things to say but all I can feel is cold hard hatred for myself.

  I can’t tell her now.

  Not after this.

  I’m a fucking monster.

  “Am I really the only one you’ve told?” I ask her quietly. I feel like I’ve swallowed glue, a slow, sticky sludge gliding down into my lungs.

  “Yes,” she says, coming back over to me, one careful step at a time. I feel like this moment is ingrained in my head, the vibrancy of her hair pulled back into a ponytail, her jean jacket, the cold water and steel raincloud quickly approaching. The moment when I realized I damaged her more than I thought.

  “I was too ashamed,” she says. “I don’t want to feel shame with you, Keir. I trust you and I want you to trust me. The mistakes I’ve made in the past…I don’t want to make them anymore.” She hastily brushes a strand of hair off her face, tucking it behind her ear, and I know how hard it was for her to admit that.

  My sweet, sweet girl.

  My beautiful mermaid.

  So willing to put herself in my hands.

  You don’t deserve her. End it now.

  But of course I don’t listen. I’m a coward.

  And I love her.

  “Let’s go inside,” I tell her. “Before the rain hits.”

  We’re half-way back to the hotel when it starts to pour again.

  ***

  “Wake up, Keir.”

  The voice of Lewis Smith pops my eyes open.

  I’m greeted with darkness.

  I slowly sit up and look around.

  Jessica is sleeping beside me, her hair spilling over her face, snoring lightly from too much whisky. She looks innocent, beautiful and small, like a fairy nymph that I’ve been lucky enough to capture.

  I automatically reach out for her, to brush the hair from her face, when the voice says.

  “Don’t. Don’t wake her up,” his voice comes again. “Not yet.”

  I look around the hotel room again, piecing together the fact that we’re in a place called Scourie, somewhere in the northwest corner of Scotland. I shouldn’t be hearing this voice at all.

  You’re not here, I say in my head. You’re dead.

  “Am I?” Lewis says and a figure moves out from the shadows, what I thought in passing to be the slight of the closet door is actually Lewis in his army fatigues. The side of his head is covered in blood. It looks like tar in the dim light. His eyes glow with emptiness. The same emptiness I looked into when we last spoke face to face. It had felt like staring across a frozen wasteland, no souls, no life, no hope. Just endless tundra where nothing lives.

  I refuse to acknowledge this ghost. I know it’s my PTSD. I know it’s my mind playing tricks on me, the most elaborate hallucinations worthy of a special effects’ Oscar. I’ve had this dream before, this vision, where Lewis appears to tell me it was all my fault.

  But this time it’s a bit different. He’s never been here with Jessica around and now his figure glides to the end of the bed, staring down at her.

  “She’s beautiful,” he says. “I watch you all the time. The happiness you’re faking.” He reaches out to touch her injured leg which is sticking out of the blanket.

  “Don’t touch her,” I warn. My voice is loud, rough in the room.

  It makes me realize how fucking crazy I am.

  Jessica stirs beside me but doesn’t wake up.

  I stare at Lewis, willing him to go away. His dead eyes give me nothing.

  “She dropped quite the bomb on us today,” Lewis says. “Remember how we used to make puns like that all the time. Funny how that was. Like that was the good old days. I suppose in some ways it was. Until you fucked everything up. Made a bloody mess of your unit. Of your life. Of her life.”

  You’re dead. You’re me. My subconscious.

  “Sure,” Lewis says, slowly coming over along the side of the bed, his eyes never leaving her sleeping form. “You keep saying that and I’ll keep coming back. Unless you have something to say to yourself? No? Of course not.”

  Go away.

  My pulse is racing, lungs starting to shrink. The whole room feels cold and dread has settled in like the clouds.

  I’m c
razy. I’m crazy.

  “You are crazy,” Lewis says. He meets my eye. “So was I. It’s not our faults. At least, it’s not my fault. You know Keir, this has to end sometime. You and her. You and your life. You’ve had this coming. A debt must be paid with your blood and your blood alone.”

  The statistics on the number of veterans who kill themselves is staggering. I can see why. No help from the military, we keep everything inside like we’ve been taught, like we’ve been fucking drilled. They train you for the chaotic situations. They don’t train you for the aftermath.

  This was my aftermath. I was living a lie and haunted by those I’d let die.

  But I wouldn’t let it take me. Not now, not with her by my side.

  “You know there is no happy ending here,” Lewis says. “You know that there is a bomb ticking between the two of you. That one day you’ll have to tell her the truth and that you’re not the man she thought you were. Do you really think she’ll stick by your side after that? You could have told her the truth from the beginning. Told her how you knew her, that you came to say you were sorry. Wasn’t that your original plan? It was. You know it was. Watch her on TV, think she’s hot and pity her, then hunt her down and ask for her forgiveness. And then you lied and fucked it all up.” He pauses, running his hand down the edge of the bed, inches from her. “You could have even told her the next time, or the time after that. But you didn’t. Because you believed this new life you made for yourself. A life where you can start over and run from your responsibilities. A life where you deserve the love of a woman like this.”

  He places his hand on Jessica’s arm. I suck in my breath, expecting her to wake.

  But she doesn’t.

  Because he’s not real, she can’t feel him, he’s not here.

  But what am I staring at then?

  “Take your hand away and leave,” I tell him. “Go.”

  Now Jessica is rolling over and Lewis’ eyes run over her naked breasts as she turns.

  “Go!” I yell.

  Jessica moans, waking up.

  “You love her,” Lewis says. “And I think she loves you. And one day that truth is going to come out and she’s going to hate you and everything you are. The real Keir McGregor.”