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We were engaged, and he died.
It was well past dark already.
A new restaurant had opened in London – one Owen had been going on about for weeks, to the point that Jamie and Hannah could damn well recite the menu by the time they had piled in the car after work to head to the city.
It had been a good evening, in truth.
Good food, though sparse and sparing, which was not Jamie’s particular preference. Fish and chips in a brown paper bag, if she had her choice, but this was Owen’s treat and he was delighted. Presentation. That’s what he called it. Jamie, just look at the presentation. She warned him that if he started rationing out portions like that at Bly, there’d be hell to pay.
A bit too much wine, perhaps. The first bottle had sufficed, but Owen was beaming and the lecture on dessert wine pairings had gone on for ten minutes. The second bottle had found Owen with his arm draped around Hannah, who had damn near giggled under the glow of his sweet-hearted flirtation.
Jamie had slipped out then, when they were caught up in each other. A cigarette or three and the cool night air to clear her head of the noise and chatter. She had passed on the second bottle of wine, knowing well where the night might go if she did not, but still, her head was buzzing.
It was late, nearly midnight she reckoned, and six in the morning was sooner than it ought to be.
She should go get Owen and Hannah, she thought, shepherd them back to Bly, crash on the couch and tease Owen for a bit about mooning over Hannah as he had.
Time for bed.
Jamie turned and headed for the restaurant, digging into her pocket for the keys to the Rover. Sure, she could fancy herself up for a night out when she had to, but fuck, pockets on clothes like this were not made for the breadth of human fingers.
Focused intently on her task, grumbling to herself, she nearly missed the woman sitting on the low step of the doorway beside the restaurant.
“Jesus,” Jamie hissed, as the woman appeared inches in front of her. She jumped back, clutching her chest instinctively, little though it did to protect a thudding heart. “Are you alright?”
The woman, head sunk to her hands, did not look up, did not jump, did not answer.
“Hey,” Jamie said, laying a hand on the woman’s shoulder. She felt the woman shiver underneath the touch, felt the dry sob waiting between her ribs.
Jamie had been this woman, not so long ago. She had settled her body in doorframes that were not hers, in a city that was too large and too loud, just to feel something solid against her skin as the ground shifted mercilessly beneath her feet.
Jamie wrapped her coat tightly around herself, tucking her hands in under elbows.
Without asking, she sat down, budging the woman over with her hip. She lit another cigarette and took a slow drag before offering it up.
The woman glanced at the glow of it and shook her head, then reconsidered, taking it and inhaling deeply.
They sat in silence, passing the cigarette back and forth, the noise of the restaurant filtering out onto the street.
When it was only embers, the woman stubbed out the cigarette on the concrete.
“I killed someone,” she said into the darkness, her voice lower than expected, edged with alcohol and grief.
Jamie shrugged and clasped her hands together, leaning forward onto her knees. “Alright. There are worse ways to start a Thursday, I suppose.”
The woman looked at her, a sharp turn of the head. Too dark to make out her features fully, just the glint of eyes that were too tired for their frame, lips held too tightly.
“What’s your name?” Jamie asked.
The woman did not answer. She had turned away again, staring out into the street, a lone pair of headlights illuminating her face for a moment.
“Well, did they deserve it?”
The woman flinched at the question. “No. Of course not.”
“Killed them in cold blood then?” Jamie said lightly, slapping her palms on her knees and leaning back a bit. “My kind of woman. Remind me not to cross you twice.”
The woman did not laugh. Just bound herself up tighter.
Jamie let the silence sit for a moment, then tried again, her voice a bit lower now, the lightness gone. “Why’d you do it then? Kill them, I mean. Why?”
“It was an accident,” the woman said. Surprised at her own words, it seemed, she sucked in a hard breath, which audibly rattled in her chest.
“It was an accident,” she said again, quieter this time, barely loud enough to catch, “but it was all my fault.”
Jamie could hear the rest of the story, vibrating, waiting behind teeth. She could see it, the guilt and the sorrow, crouched on the woman’s back, consuming her in its hunger and greed.
Jamie said nothing, just let the silence do its work.
“He would have been fine,” the woman said to the sidewalk and the darkness, “if I’d have just let it be. He would have been fine. He was happy as it was. But I wasn’t. I wanted to be – I – I wanted – I wanted. That’s where it all went wrong. If I hadn’t wanted. If I had just let it be. If I’d just figured out how to be happy with how it was, with how I was, who I was, who I had to be with him, for him...”
There was the rising edge of panic there at the end, as the woman’s words tumbled and trailed off. She bent forward and pressed her forehead to her knees.
Jamie gripped the edges of her jacket, white-knuckled, to stop her palms from trying to soothe, from striking up gentle circles along the woman’s burdened spine.
Slowly, breaths still heaving in her chest, the woman sat back up and picked up where she had faltered.
“But, I wanted. I tried not to, but I did.” Her voice was harder than it had been before, the borders of it defined and rigid. “Selfish. I was so selfish.”
Jamie could hear the acid bubbling to the surface below the firmness of the woman’s voice, could smell flesh corroding inside.
Jamie reached for the woman before she could stop herself, a hand, light on the knee.
The woman pulled away sharply, her body recoiling from the comfort offered.
“I was selfish,” she said, her voice fracturing the word with its force, “all along. I tried so hard not to be. But I was, and when I told him, he was so hurt and so angry. I was selfish, and I killed him because of it.”
Lips pinched into a narrow line, brow furrowed, nostrils flared, she turned to Jamie and met her eyes. There was desperation there, behind her eyes, begging to be seen.
“And then I ran. Halfway across the world. I fled, like a coward. I didn’t tell anyone. I let them all think it was just an accident. An accident. A tragedy with no reason, no cause. One of those terrible mysteries of life and god. But it was my fault. No mystery at all.
“I killed him, and I didn’t tell anyone,” she finished. The woman slumped back against the door, empty, and let her gaze slip back to the dark street.
“You told me,” Jamie said, soft enough to ease into the woman’s pain. “Thank you, for telling me.”
The woman chuckled darkly, a brittle sound against the night. “They held me at his funeral, you know? They tried to comfort me, the grieving love of his short life. I killed him, and they kissed my cheeks and whispered sweetly.”
Jamie hummed, low in her chest, to carry the woman from this moment to the next.
“And now I have a new job. Out in the countryside, an idyllic dream. Starts tomorrow. They’re even sending a car. And I’ll be there, breathing in the fresh air, surrounded by the beauty of it all, and he’ll be –”
There is something missing from the end of the thought, something the woman bites back at the last moment, to guard it not from Jamie, but from herself. She swallows hard and pushes on.
“What right do I have, you know? When he’s gone? When it’s my fault? When I killed him? What right do I have to anything good now? What right do I have to anything at all?”
The silence fell heavy after that, and Jamie could feel the woman’s breath held, some part of the woman willing her lungs to obey the guilt that choked her, willing them to stop and let her pay her penance.
Jamie leaned back and stretched out her legs, crossing them at the ankles. She lit another cigarette, took one long breath of it and then just watched its little brilliance in the dark.
Softly, she said, “Sounds to me like he died.”
She felt the woman still beside her. Not an inch of the woman had moved, and yet, somehow, she stilled further, something in the heart of her quieting to listen.
“Everything with any life in it dies eventually,” Jamie continued. “Everything worth anything, anyway. It’s beautiful, death. To be done, to finish what you started. To stay on, to refuse the ending when it comes, that’s an ugly thing, sucks the life out of you and leaves you worse off.”
Jamie paused for a moment then, to study the woman’s breath, unsteady still but surer than it had been.
“Sounds to me like he died,” Jamie said again. “The world took him, not you. The world doesn’t listen to you. Doesn’t care about who said what or who wanted what. It doesn’t listen. It took him all on its own, and not because of you.
“There’s too much talk of happy endings. Endings aren’t happy. The happy bits are in the middle, if you’re lucky, if you’re willing to fight for them, to fight for yourself. Endings are just endings. One thing giving way to whatever comes next. We die a bit every day, I think, if we’re lucky. Bits of us, extinguished to allow new growth.”
Jamie turned to the woman then, though the woman did not meet her eyes in return.
“And as for fighting for yourself, what other choice did you have? You’d have been dead, same as him, if you hadn’t. You see? Sounds like you were dying too, all along, and you’d have just kept on dying if you hadn’t fought for yourself a little.
“It’s alright, to be sad, to wonder what if. But don’t let this be your ending too. It’s his, not yours. Don’t let him take you with him. Been here before myself, know I’m talking about. Make sure you stay until it’s your time. You’re stronger than you look, I’m sure of it. Fight, just a bit longer.”
The silence followed, punctuated only by the shuddering breaths of the woman beside her, tears now streaming down her face unhindered.
“Anyway,” Jamie said, as she rose and brushed her hands off on her knees. “I better go. It’s nearly midnight and the sun’s coming.”
She shifted a bit, suddenly quite overcome with the desire to stay here beside the woman, to stay and shepherd her into the morning, into the light.
But the clock was ticking, and she had to go.
Jamie nudged the woman’s shoe as she passed. “You’ll be alright. I’m sure of it.”
She was paces away before she heard it, the quiet and broken, “How?”
Jamie turned back, her heart a hammer in her chest. “What?”
The woman looked up and met her eyes once more. “How? How do you know I’ll be alright? You don’t know me.”
“Sure I do,” Jamie said, shrugging. “Some plants need pruning. You cut them, clip them down to nothing. And they come back, every year, stronger every time. I know them, and I know you just the same.”
The woman brushed her cheeks hastily with a palm and nodded once.
Jamie smiled softly and walked away.
Dani sat there on the doorstep for a while longer, after the woman had gone.
To passersby, she was alone. But she had not been alone in a long time.
She tucked her knees to her chest and the shadow beside her mirrored the movement. She clenched her jaw a little tighter and did not try to shift away from him.
He would stay by her side for some time yet, his face in every window pane, his hands on her hips, her body claimed.
Her heart in his grasp, waiting to wither and die.
Her hand, clamped around his wrist, making sure he wouldn’t let go.
He was her penance to pay and her burden to carry, and she held on tightly.
She would take steps forward, and he would follow. She would grow, and he would stretch himself to accommodate, to make sure the sunlight could not reach her new heights.
And she would not object, not for some time yet, anyway.
But the words spoken by a stranger in the night stayed with her, tucked inside where he could not reach. And late at night, she would unfold them and smooth them with her fingertips. She would listen as they whispered to her in a voice, which grew increasingly familiar, but she could not quite place.
And little by little, without realizing it herself, she would prune and cut and dig.
Little by little, she would find things worth fighting for, find herself and see her worthy of the fight as well.
Then would come a night, months gone by, when she would tire of the weight she carried. The guilt and hurt and shame of who she was and is and could have been. The guilt and hurt and shame of the fight, of the win, of the losses, of left behind and deciding to stay.
A night when she’d see, at last, the tender shoots growing up from the rubble of her, reflected back in kind and patient eyes, eyes that are becoming home and haven.
And it would feel familiar.
“We were engaged,” she’d say into the darkness, “and he died.”
And she’d mean it, those words. Sad and painful still, but a world away from where she’d started, a world away from the story she’d told herself as she battered her chest and sunk her head to her hands.
A world away from a dark stoop in the dead of night on the quiet streets of London.
And across the embers, she’d let him slip from her grasp, let the weight carried rest at last.
His ending was not hers. In truth, she was only beginning.
The fight and the sorrow, only prologue for what would come.