Tethers

by Sara Reinke

  I want to punch him, hit him, hurt him, scar his goddamn face with my fingernails, make him fucking sorry.

  The door slid closed behind her, and she stood, shaking.

  Is this what it feels like to be like Chris?

  She stared numbly down at her hands, forcing her fingers to loosen. She could hear the harsh, labored sound of her breathing.

  Oh, my God.

  She wondered if Eric had thought she’d looked like the devil, just like she’d always thought Chris had when he’d go into one of his rages.

  “Oh, Jesus,” she whispered. She couldn’t breathe. What have I done? My God, all of these years, I’ve tried to put my past behind me, and here it is, tonight in my face—only I’m not the girl I used to be. Oh, Christ, I’m something worse—this time, I’m the monster.

  Kat had worked very diligently to erase any evidence of her marriage from her job. She had told Alex some things, but had kept most all of it, all of her bitter, painful memories private. She hadn’t wanted anyone to know about all of the humiliation and pain she had endured for so long. She’d always kept her mouth shut, and spoke only vaguely of Chris when questioned.

  The memories of his rages had always seemed too fresh.

  Eric had found out by accident, really. And somehow, after that, she’d been able to confide in him every once in awhile small pieces and fragments; the memories of another woman in another lifetime. The one I used to be.

  The day Eric learned her grim secret had started out to be such a good day. She had gotten a letter back from a literary agent, the last one she’d sent her carefully plotted synopsis and sample chapters to, and the last one to write her back. The other letters hadn’t even politely rejected her, and so Kat was ecstatic when one finally came in, asking to see her manuscript.

  She’d practically sprinted across the loading dock tarmac, oblivious to the blazing heat that bounced off the blacktop. She was hoping Alex would be working; their shuttle module was parked at the far end, and from what she could tell, it looked as though someone was running a routine maintenance check on it.

  The letter was folded neatly in her hip pocket. She’d meant to show it to him, feeling some strange, incessant need to prove it to him. She knew it was a hold-over from Chris, who had never believed her, never trusted her, and had always scoffed and ridiculed her writing.

  “Hello? Anybody home?” she called, reaching the shuttle. She leaned against the open hatchway, panting slightly from the heat and from her dash. “Alex?”

  There was no answer. Kat frowned and studied the spread of tools and module components around the shuttle.

  Everything looked a hell of a lot neater than whenever Alex would run the perfunctory check of the shuttle. It had always really been the pilot’s responsibility to run the operations checks prior to docking with the Daedalus, but Dylan had never seemed to end up doing it for some reason.

  Kat figured the neat little arrangement of tools was probably just some new method to Alex’s maintenance madness. She walked toward the nose of the shuttle, stepping carefully around the equipment. “Alex?” she called again.

  “Hello, Kat,” someone said from her left, and she jerked around, startled.

  “Chris,” she said, surprised and momentarily taken aback.

  He was standing about twenty yards away from her, on the other side of a high chain-link security fence. Kat felt suddenly happy and exhilarated to see him there, and at the same time, wary, apprehensive and even afraid. She found her eyes inexorably drawn to his hands, even though he wasn’t being aggressive in the least. It had simply become habit to her.

  She was so surprised to see him she didn’t even think about the restraining order that was supposed to keep him at least twice as far away from her as he was now.

  She saw he was holding a bouquet of flowers, daisies and black-eyed Susans; her favorites. The flowers were wrapped in wrinkled green tissue paper.

  “What are you doing here, Chris?” She found herself walking toward the fence, toward him.

  He was smiling at her. “I came to see you. I mean, I just…” He lowered his head, and she could see the color rising in his face. “Jesus, I miss you, Kat.”

  She stopped on the other side of the fence. He reached up and slipped his fingers through the links.

  “You look so great,” he said. “So pretty. You weren’t at home so I figured you might be out here…”

  “You look good, too.” She smiled and tittered wildly, nervously. Jesus Christ I feel like I’m sixteen again. It’s amazing how quick it all comes back…how much I miss him and still love him…

  She touched his fingers through the chain, rubbing briefly, gently, and then pulling away.

  “You going to let me in?” He waggled the bouquet, all smiles. “I brought these for you.”

  She blinked stupidly. “Sure. Here.”

  They walked abreast of one another down toward the gate. She didn’t feel afraid of him at all now, just kind of warm and shy and silly and happy to see him.

  She opened the gate and let him in.

  “It’s so good to see you, Kat.” Chris hugged her fiercely, lifting her off the ground. It might have been her imagination, but she could have sworn his voice choked with tears. “I miss you.”

  “I…I miss you, too, Chris,” she said, but when he went to kiss her she turned her face away.

  “Hey.” He sounded hurt. “Hey, come on.”

  He tried to kiss her again, and she pulled away, shaking her head. “Chris, no. Don’t do that.”

  She knew it was going to start, and suddenly she was sorry she’d opened the gate. She had actually been happy to see him when he’d been on the other side of the fence, unable to touch her. Now, she felt uncomfortable and anxious. She remembered that Alex was somewhere in the shuttle, and probably spying on her, which made her even more abashed.

  “Jesus Christ, Kat, all I wanted to do was kiss you,” Chris exclaimed. “I can still kiss you, can’t I? I mean, you’re my wife.”

  “No.” Kat took a small, involuntary step away from him. “No, I’m not your wife, and no, you can’t kiss me anymore. Chris, please, can’t we just visit like two—”

  “What? Like friends?” he interrupted. “Friends? Fuck no, we can’t just visit like friends. We’re more than friends.”

  “No, we’re not.” There it was, that whiny, cry-baby edge to her voice that only seemed to creep around when she was with Chris. It made her feel weak and ashamed and frightened and she hated it. “Not anymore.”

  “I just wanted to see you, to talk to you.” The color rose in Chris’ cheeks again, but this time it wasn’t from embarrassment.

  “This was…” Kat dabbed at the sweat on her upper lip nervously with her fingertips. “This was a mistake. I’m sorry, Chris. You’d better go. The restraining order—”

  “Don’t start that again,” he snapped, his tone low and menacing. He jabbed his finger at her and she flinched. “Why do you need a restraining order with me? I’ve told you I’m sorry. I’ve told you things are different now—I’m different now. I’m not going to hit you anymore. How many times can I fucking say it? What do you want from me?”

  “I just…I want you to go.” Kat’s throat constricted to a pinhole, her voice forced through this narrow opening. “Please, Chris.”

  “I just wanted to see you for a few minutes, to talk and try and work things out,” Chris said. “You owe me that much. You’re the one who let me in here, so fuck your restraining order.”

  “There’s nothing to work out. Please, Chris, don’t be like this. Please just go, please? Just go.”

  “God, you are such a bitch!” His voice grew loud, nearly a shout. “I come here, I don’t do shit to you, and you act like this. Fuck you, Kat.”

  He threw the flowers at her and they smacked against the tarmac, scattering delicate, slender white and yellow petals.

  Kat jumped at the motion, and felt her face burning, her eyes welling with tears. Had she actuall
y been so excited and glad to see him? Why in the hell did she always seem to forget about all of the bad things?

  “Go away,” she said, quietly, her voice trembling. “I don’t…I don’t want to see you around here anymore. Go away before I…I call security.”

  “Go ahead.” Chris sneered at her, angrily. “Call them.”

  He’d reached out for her then, to grab her, and she’d known his hand would clamp down and hurt her, and then he’d probably hit her, and she’d cried out, frightened.

  “Is there a problem here?”

  Kat spun around, and Chris backed immediately away from her, like a cowed dog.

  Eric Nagel leaned out of a small opened hatchway just behind the nose of the shuttle. He swung his legs around and hopped down to the tarmac. “Hi, Kat,” he said, walking toward them, his gait easy and leisurely. He was wearing old, grease-spotted jeans and a white crew-neck tee-shirt. He was smiling amicably, but Kat couldn’t see his eyes behind his sunglasses. She wouldn’t realize it until much later, but it was the first time the pilot had ever referred to her as “Kat” and not as “Kathryn”. “Everything okay?”

  Kat glanced apprehensively at Chris, and then down at the ground. She didn’t seem to be able to speak.

  “Everything’s fine,” Chris told him. She could tell, even without looking at either, that the two men were sizing up each other. “No problem at all. Just talking to my wife.”

  “Oh.” Eric raised an eyebrow. “Well, I think Kat’s about through talking to you. I believe she asked you to leave.”

  “Do you believe that?” Chris’ hands coiled into neat, stacked fists.

  “Yes,” Eric said. “I do.”

  There was a long pause. Kat stared down at her feet and watched the breeze tug and push daisy petals towards her toes. She didn’t know what would happen if Chris wanted to fight. He was pissed enough to, and even though Eric was leaner and quicker and probably a better fighter, Chris outweighed the younger man by a good thirty pounds.

  “Thanks, Kat,” Chris said. “Have a very nice fucking day.”

  She heard him stomp off, heard the chain-link gate slam shut in his wake. Eric followed Chris and locked the gate behind him.

  Kat sighed and brought her hands up to her mouth. Her fingers were shaking.

  “Are you all right?” Eric took off his sunglasses and tucked them into the back pocket of his jeans.

  She nodded wordlessly. She felt embarrassed and ashamed that Eric had seen how Chris would treat her. She was careful to maintain a cool façade among her coworkers, to always present herself as calm, collected and in control. Now he’d seen her secret, what she was really like.

  “Are you sure?” Eric was standing directly in front of her, but she couldn’t meet his eyes. She was on the verge of tears. “He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

  She shook her head. “No, I…I’m fine. Really.” She struggled to pull herself together, to force some strength into her warbling voice. “What…what are you doing here?”

  The question seemed to surprise him. “I’m running the routine maintenance check on the shuttle. That’s part of my job description, remember?”

  “I…I thought Alex would be…” Kat began. She stooped and tried to rescue the poor dilapidated flowers Chris had brought her. She gathered them into her arms and realized they were a pretty fair analogy for her ex-marriage. She clapped her hand over her face and burst into tears.

  “Hey.” Eric sounded awkward and embarrassed. “Oh, hey, Kathryn, c’mon, don’t…”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry.” He put his arm around her shoulders, holding her at a stiff and uncomfortable distance as he led her into the cool shade of the open shuttle hatch. They both sat down on the edge of the doorway.

  She tried to wipe her tears away, humiliated. “I’m sorry. I just…I’m sorry…”

  He draped his hand against hers, a simple but powerful gesture that drew her voice to silence. “Stop saying that. It’s not your fault.”

  It was like he had known, as if somehow simply from that brief encounter, he’d realized the entire dynamic of her miserable relationship with Chris.

  She looked up and met his gaze for the first time since he’d approached her on the tarmac. “Please don’t tell anyone about this. Especially Alex. I don’t…I don’t want anyone to know how he…Chris, I mean…”

  Eric nodded once. Again, it was like he understood, without her saying another word in explanation, he knew. “I won’t.”

  She could see his bare arms, strange, small, dark marks dotted across the inner curve of his right elbow. They looked almost like bruises, and she remembered that not too long ago she and Alex had held a serious discussion about Eric’s on-again, off-again relationship with free-based narcotics.

  Needle marks. Those are his needle marks.

  But whatever prejudices she had held for him about replacing Dylan or because of his indiscretions with morphine seemed to dissolve immediately, and from that moment on Kat and Eric were friends, bound by that hot, humid August afternoon when they had each shared a dark and brooding secret.

  She supposed that part of her had fallen in love with Eric that day, too, but it was never something she felt like talking about, and sure as hell was nothing she’d ever let Eric know.

  Some secrets were meant to be private.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Kat, it’s been a long day and you’re upset.” Frank offered her a mug of coffee. “Why don’t we call it a night?”

  “No.” Kat shook her head. “No, we’re close. I want to keep looking.”

  He didn’t look convinced, but shrugged in concession. “Okay. What next?”

  “What’s this?” They were back at the Daedalus’ main menu, and she pointed to one of the folders.

  “Let’s see, looks like personnel records, mail transcripts…here’s Eric’s daily flight log, Leia’s daily payload log…”

  “Wait.” Kat pointed. “Click on that.”

  She’d caught sight of a small transmission icon, an earthbound communication sent on the day they’d awakened from cryostasis. She recognized the numerical user identification listed with the transmission. Alex had made a call to Earth from the bridge.

  Frank opened the log file, and Kat found herself watching a grainy video image of Cassandra Horne’s face—Alex’s wife, Cassie.

  “…we’re all right anyway.” Alex’s voice filled the room, recorded as part of the transmission log. Kat was seeing what he had seen as he’d talked to his wife. “Just a few minor course corrections, but Jesus, it could have been worse.”

  “I don’t want you doing this anymore, Alex,” Cassie said. “I mean it. It’s always one thing or another, and now the navigation computer is resetting itself? What if you hadn’t come out of cryostasis?” Her voice grew shrill, choked with tears. “It’s bad enough you won’t be back until after Crissy graduates from college—bad enough to know you’re up there for five years alone with her—but to think that something might happen…? You might not come back at all?”

  Her. Kat felt a sudden chill at that word, at Cassie’s cold, bitter inflection.

  “Cassie, you’re overreacting,” Alex told her in a gentle, condescending voice. “I told you. We’re on course again and everything’s fine. You don’t have to worry about that, or about Kat, either.”

  Kat’s face drained to ashen. What?

  “I’ve seen how she looks at you.” Cassie frowned. “For years now, I’ve seen her.”

  “So she looks at me,” Alex said. “Let her. I don’t look back. She’s a single mom and you know how they can be—every man’s their knight in shining armor. You smile at them crooked and they think you want to marry them.”

  It felt like the blade of a knife jabbed into Kat’s heart. Her breath caught against the back of her throat.

  “Kathryn Emmente is like a guy with tits to me,” Alex told his wife, making her laugh. “She’s nothing, just someone I work with, no different than Eric Nagel
, I swear to Christ. In fact, I would probably rather fuck Eric, if I had to choose. At least he’s pretty.”

  “Stop it.” Cassie giggled, just as Kat’s shattered heart pleaded the same thing.

  Stop it.

  “It’s not always going to be like this, Cassie. I’m going to leave this job, leave the Shinkansan Company. But I can’t right now, not any time soon. These things take time, and there’s a lot to figure out in the meantime. But you know you’re what I want.”

  Kat listened to the familiar words—repeated nearly verbatim to her—in stunned horror. Oh, God…!

  “Kat…” Frank’s voice seemed to come from miles away.

  She stood, swaying dizzily. Suddenly the room felt very muggy and stifling. She took a staggering, clumsy step for the door.

  “Kat!” Frank said, alarmed now. He stood.

  “I’m okay,” she told him dazedly. “I…I just think I’m gonna be sick…”

  She stumbled out the door. She didn’t know where to go.

  She wandered down the hall, struggling to contain her tears. She found herself back in Eric’s room. He was asleep again, and the room was dark. She hesitated in the doorway, like a small child frightened in the night, and then went and crawled into bed with him. She curled up against his back, wanting some kind of comfort and security from his warmth.

  He stirred and rolled over. The light in his bathroom was on, and in the dim yellow glow, she saw his eyes open, sleepily.

  “Kat…” he murmured. He brought his hand up and rubbed his eyes. “What is it?”

  “Oh…!” Kat’s tears spilled. “Oh…oh, God, Eric…!”

  “Hey…” He touched her face, and she had no defense against such a tender gesture. She broke down into hysterical sobs.

  Frightened and awake now, Eric propped himself up on his elbow so he could look down at her. “Kat, what is it? Tell me what’s wrong.”

  She managed to hiccup out the story in between tearful gulps for breath. When she’d choked out as much as she could bear, she covered her face with her hands, ashamed. “Oh, Eric, I’m so sorry I said those awful things to you,” she whispered. “I didn’t…I didn’t mean them…”