Frailty of Things

by Schultz, Tamsen

  Garret’s feet crunched on the frozen snow. It had warmed up the day before, then dropped to well below freezing overnight and hadn’t quite hit thirty-two degrees yet. As a result, a thin layer of ice coated almost everything, including the snow.

  “So, we’re all set then,” Joseph said as they stopped at the car.

  Kit nodded. “I think so. And please, don’t hesitate to e-mail or call me between now and Saturday if something comes up and you need to make adjustments, or if you think of something you specifically want me to read or talk about.”

  “I can’t imagine picking anything better than what you’ve suggested, but I will keep that in mind. And please, you do the same. If there’s anything you think you’ll need or want that we haven’t talked about today, please call me and I’ll make sure it’s taken care of.” Joseph spoke as he shook their gloved hands.

  After a quick round of good-byes, Garret and Kit were seated in their car, the heat blasting and the seat warmers set to high.

  But they didn’t move.

  Kit shot Garret a curious glance but didn’t say anything. They’d talked for hours about just what this little planned baiting might mean and what it would require of the both of them. Rather than try to keep things from her, he’d made it his mission over the past few days to immerse her into his world. They’d gone over maps of the area, he’d coached her on what to look for when walking into a room, he’d trained her on evasive tactics in a crowd, and he’d impressed upon her just how important it was to have one person in the lead throughout the day. Yes, he wanted her aware, on her toes, and able to take care of the basics of watching out for herself, but after many hours of discussion, he’d finally convinced her that if they did this—if they willingly held her out as bait—she had to allow him to be the leader of their new two person team.

  Truth be told, she hadn’t argued his right to be the leader whatsoever. After all, she could hardly discount his experience, but she had argued about wanting to be more prepared. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise, knowing Kit the way he knew her now, but it seemed that once he’d unleashed her into his world, she’d wanted to devour it whole. She’d wanted to know everything about everything. She had even wanted to go out into the woods and practice things like escaping without leaving a trail or sneaking up on him and catching him by surprise. He’d indulged her a bit, but the truth was, she wasn’t going to learn everything that had taken him over a decade to learn in only a few days.

  And so they’d argued. Their first real fight. He had wanted her to focus on perfecting what he had taught her, what he believed to be the few things that would be most helpful given the situation they were in. She’d wanted to learn more and more. And then, yesterday, he’d found her writing notebook when he was picking up the kitchen. It had been open to a page full of notes on everything he had been teaching her.

  It might have seemed like a small thing, but to him, it wasn’t. And he’d lost it. Not only did she want him to try to teach her more than she could possibly learn instead of focusing on what she most needed to know, it seemed to him that the the only reason she wanted to learn any of it in the first place was as research for one of her books. His stress level had been so high that when he’d found the notebook—and what he had believed to be proof that she was not taking anything about the situation seriously—well, the conversation hadn’t been pretty.

  Kit had denied peppering him with demands to know more, to learn more, for her research and had tried to convince him that she did take the situation seriously. But even then, even as she’d been fighting back in the peak of passion, he’d sensed a half-truth in her words. Knowing that they would both say things they’d regret if they’d kept arguing, he’d stepped out of the house for a while and gone for a walk in the snow—not far from the house, of course, but enough to clear his mind and let his jumbled thoughts, thoughts mixed up with emotions like fear and frustration, settle.

  When he had walked back into the house, he’d found her sitting at the table, waiting for him. Without a word, he had sat down across from her and taken one of her hands in his. They had each taken a figurative deep breath and come back to the table to talk.

  And talk they did. It had been a tough one, not so much because of what was said, but because navigating their shared desires to both listen and be heard was a new dance for each of them—the give and take of a relationship was something they were both learning.

  But in the end, he’d come to realize and accept that she was taking everything he’d been teaching her seriously. The reality was that, even despite her experiences with her father, there was no way she could possibly understand their current situation in the same way he did. He had years of experience to fuel his fear, experiences that had seared into his brain exactly what it looked like when the shit hit the fan. She knew about it all in theory alone. And because she didn’t know it the way he did, she’d defaulted to her usual response to the unknown: researching and attempting to understand everything there was to know about the topic. Because then maybe it wouldn’t be so scary.

  And that was what had been driving them both—fear. Fear of losing each other, fear of dying, fear of the unknown. It had finally blown up between them but, not surprisingly, they’d come through it stronger.

  Now, Kit sat silently beside him as they watched Joseph disappear back into the bookstore. Another minute passed, then he climbed out of the car and walked back toward the door. After squinting at the sliver of space between the door and the doorframe for a moment, he was satisfied.

  “What were you looking at?” Kit asked once he’d buckled himself back in.

  He picked up her hand and gave it a kiss before putting the car into gear and backing out of their spot. “He had the door locked when we arrived and unlocked it when we left, I wanted to see if he locked it again when he went back inside.”

  Kit inclined her head, “To get a sense if he’s vigilant about keeping that door locked.”

  It wasn’t so much a question, but he nodded. “I still couldn’t say for certain if he is always vigilant, but based on his behavior today, and the way he went through the motions of locking and unlocking the door—like he’d done it a million times before—I’d wager that Joseph is on top of it.”

  They made their way through the streets of Burlington and within twenty minutes they were on the outskirts of town. They’d planned to stop at a diner closer to home for dinner, which gave them about forty minutes of driving time.

  “You okay?” he asked when Kit was silent for several minutes.

  In his peripheral view, he saw her nod, then shrug. “It’s funny, I do all these high profile signings and New York City dinners and events, but really, what I most enjoy is meeting people like Joseph. People who love books—all kinds. People who understand that a good book can teach you and touch you and take you someplace you’ve never been before. And not just that, but people who are excited about discovering just what the next book will reveal to them.”

  “It’s been a while since you’ve done a signing like this, hasn’t it?”

  Again, she nodded. “But I think after all this is over, maybe I should change that. Maybe I’ll plan a few signings in smaller towns, maybe college towns. Or maybe I’ll start a new trend of author chats where I can actually talk with readers rather than just to them.”

  She paused and he could tell her mind was working things out. A few minutes later, she let out a quiet laugh. “I guess that’s one good thing to come of all this. I’ve been reminded of what it is that I really like about the literary world.”

  At that pronouncement, he let out his own bark of laughter. Leave it to Kit to find the silver lining when someone was trying to kill her.

  ***

  Kit was nervous. She hadn’t been nervous about a book signing since her first book had been featured on Oprah. But this was different. Yes, this event was more about being bait for Kašović than an actual signing—but it was an actual signing, and what was making her the
most nervous was not the events that had gotten her here, but the man standing against the front wall of the store watching her while looking deceptively casual.

  She’d had any number of friends attend her events before, but having Garret there, inviting him into this part of her life, felt big. After today, there would be no facet of her life that he wasn’t a part of or hadn’t yet had a glimpse into. And in some ways, this was the one that was most important to her. Yes, she wanted him to get along with her friends, maybe even grow to love them like she did and, yes, she wanted him to like living in Windsor, a town she felt rooted in even though she’d been there less than a decade. But this part of her was something that was deeply, deeply personal.

  Her books were so much about her and how she viewed the world, or wished she viewed the world, or hoped she didn’t view the world, that they had no free will—they were not, in her mind, distinguishable from herself. That’s not to say she loved all the characters in her books or only wrote about that which she had lived or wished she had lived, but there was a sliver of truth in every one of her characters. Most of the time that sliver was something she liked or admired about someone, but sometimes it wasn’t.

  Sometimes, it was something she feared in herself.

  And that was what made her nervous about inviting Garret into her world. Because he would know. While most of her readers would never guess or assume that the most unlikeable characters in her books were usually based on herself—she was too nice for that, too kind and pleasant—Garret would know. He would know that she’d dived into her soul, caught one of her fears by its tail, dragged it into the light, and dressed it up with someone else’s name. And standing here in the bookstore in Burlington, Vermont, talking about one such character with her readers, he’d know what no one else, not even her mentor Marco Baresi, knew about her. He’d know one of the things she feared the most about herself. It was all laid bare for Garret, and it was a power she was handing to him uneasily, because never in her life had she been this honest about herself with another person.

  She hadn’t been intentional about it; it wasn’t as if she’d sat down with him and told him all about her writing process, but she knew that by watching her talk, watching her move, watching her expressions, and hearing her voice, he would know.

  It was both freeing and terrifying to have that kind of truth between them.

  Kit spared a glance at him as she engaged in a conversation with a young woman who’d come to the signing. He was still leaning against the wall. He had a faint smile pulling up the corners of his mouth. Just as he knew her, she knew him, and she knew that smile on his face was one of pleasure, not one of courtesy.

  She let her own pleasure at his reaction show in her eyes as she looked at him, and he answered by letting the smile that had been threatening his visage shine through.

  Turning back to the young woman, Kit continued to chat for another minute or two before an older woman stepped up and placed her book on the table. As often as she could, Kit liked to have a meaningful, if short, conversation with each person who came to one of her signings.

  So she spent the next few hours signing books and chatting with readers. When all the books were signed, Joseph brought her a cup of tea and she spent another hour lingering in the store, chatting informally with those who remained. All the while, Garret stayed within sight, only occasionally making a round through the store. And those rounds, she suspected, were more to get his body moving than to keep an eye on things.

  When the last reader left and Joseph brought her and Garret’s coats out from the back, reality slammed into her with the force of a truck. In less than a minute, she felt her energy level switch from the high that always came with meeting readers to something close to panic.

  “You’re fine,” Garret whispered in her ear as he helped her with her coat.

  She swallowed. She wasn’t sure if she was fine. Kašović hadn’t shown up—they hadn’t expected him to, not here. But that meant if he was planning to come after her today, he was most likely going to do it sometime between the time she set foot outside the bookstore and when she arrived at the cabin.

  Hand in hand, they let Joseph lead them through the store and out the back. He chatted the entire time, thanked her for coming, talked about how thrilled he was to host her, and invited her back anytime. She rather liked the young owner, and she really liked the fact that, even knowing that bookstores were going out of business left and right, at his young age he’d decided to make this store his business. That took guts.

  They stood at the back door and she made a promise to come back, her mind even mulling over the idea of launching her next book there. She didn’t want to mention it to Joseph since she’d have to run it by her publicist, but the more she thought about it, the more she liked the idea.

  Finally, Joseph opened the door to the alley where they’d parked. The metaphor of doors opening onto opportunities crossed her mind, but this one felt more like one of the gates to Hades with the drive home being like judgment day. Maybe she’d get a reprieve, maybe not.

  Garret stepped out first and gave her hand a gentle, reassuring tug. She turned and said one last good-bye to Joseph, then made her way, at Garret’s side, to their car.

  Snow flurries had started to come down about an hour earlier, but now it looked to be gearing up for an actual snow shower. Small flakes landed on her black coat as they walked the short distance to the car and as she glanced around, she noted a fine dusting covering everything around them.

  Great, a killer and a snowstorm, she thought. A laugh almost, but not quite, managed to sneak out of her as Garret held the door open for her and she slid into her seat.

  “What?” he asked once he’d climbed into the driver’s seat.

  Kit shook her head. “I think I might be getting a little punchy about this whole thing,” she answered.

  He cast her a sidelong glance before turning the car on and cranking up the heat. She felt a moment of panic burst through her as thoughts of car bombs exploded into her mind. She must have shown some sign of her state of mind, because Garret took her hand, kissed it, and spoke.

  “I asked Drew to have someone watch the car while it was parked. We’re fine in here.”

  She looked at him. He’d had someone watching the car. She let that sink in. Of course he’d had someone watching the car. After their big fight a few days ago, she should have known better than to think he wouldn’t have thought about things like that. And with that realization came the guilt—she should know better than to underestimate him; she should trust that he knew what he was doing and that he was doing everything he could to stack the deck in their favor.

  Blinking back frustration with herself for being so dense, she turned and looked out the window as Garret began driving out of the alley.

  “Kit?” he said, his voice not so much a question but invocation.

  And his intimate tone made her feel even worse. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to panic. I should have trusted you. I mean I do trust you, it’s just that...” She let her voice trail off as he picked her hand up again and brought it to his lips.

  “Kit, it’s fine. I didn’t read anything into your panic about the car. One of the things about situations like this is to say that they are emotionally fraught would be just about the biggest understatement of the century. And while things like panic and fear can be good some of the time, the constant swirl of what sometimes feels like competing emotions can be hard to deal with.” He made a left turn onto the two-lane highway that would take them back to the cabin.

  She took a deep breath beside him. “Is it always like this?” she asked, knowing he’d know what she was really asking was whether it was always like this for him. Whether he felt the same maelstrom of emotions that she did.

  “Most of the time, yes. Not all the time, but most of the time.”

  She stared at him. Then blinked. “You mean every time you and my brother go out and do whatever you do, you subject yoursel
f to the same chaos I’m feeling now?” That had to age a body, she thought. Or make you feel like you couldn’t let yourself feel anything for fear of feeling everything.

  And then everything he’d told her about his place in Mexico and the orphanages made even more sense. They were places where it was safe to feel.

  “Oh, god, Garret,” she said, not bothering to hide the sadness in her voice.

  He lifted a shoulder and rueful smile touched his lips. “It’s not that bad. After a few years, you don’t so much as sift through the emotions, but you do get a sense of the pattern.”

  “Meaning?”

  Again, he shrugged. “It’s hard to explain. But after a while, you can recognize the pattern in the chaos. I could tell, depending on what we were doing, if it was going to be emotionally intense, and while I couldn’t always anticipate what all those emotions would be, I did know that feeling them, that their existence, was something I would have to recognize and dismiss if I wanted to do my job.”

  “So, kind of like a process—like step one is planning, step two is prep, step three is panic, step four is moving through the panic, step five is implementing, step six is, well, whatever step six is—and so on?” she asked, trying to understand.

  Garret inclined his head. “It sounds very clinical, but yeah, that’s about right. You know it’s coming and you know you have to move through it, so you recognize it and keep going.”

  “If you’re going through hell...” she started.

  “Just keep going,” Garret finished the same quote she’d heard a time or two from Ian, who’d had it burned it into his mind from the days he was a Ranger.

  “That sounds easier said than done,” she said after several minutes of silence. The snow was really starting to come down now and Garret had adjusted his driving. They had a good car for the conditions and he was an excellent driver, but the weather would slow them down.

  “Sometimes it is. But for you, it most definitely is, since you don’t have the same experience I do.” He paused, let out another sigh, then reached for her hand again. “This will pass, Kit. I promise you that. I can’t give you a magic tip or skill for dealing with the myriad of emotions I know are battling inside you right now, but I can remind you of what we’ve been working on, of the skills and plans we’ve been making and practicing this past week. If you ground yourself in what you know, it can sometimes help quell the questions and doubts about what you don’t. Do you want to go through it again?”