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There were times when Ellie lost track of herself.
On occasion, Dina would catch her mind fluttering while she sorted laundry, going motionless with still eyes until she was nudged. Ellie’s face between present and elsewhere was a ghost without a haunt. But she would continue stacking the clean shirts anyhow.
Occasion became more common than not.
When she hunted, she returned with only a dry mouth and matted hair, unable to prop an explanation for her empty hands. When she ate, she couldn’t bear more than a few bites and dissection of her dish. When she fidgeted, she couldn’t be pulled by anything other than pinching her tattoo, cracking her knuckles.
And when Dina was on top of her, strumming her like a harp, ringing the noises she loved from her lips, Ellie’s strings would eventually snap, and her voice would shutter closed.
She could never finish when she got worse.
All these signs had culminated on the farm like how to tell passing seasons. Dina had learned what to be wary of and note, always terribly erudite for the sake of love. It was her first language. She knew the indications of Ellie’s lows and highs, her inbetweens and when she had one foot in the grave.
One foot out the door.
Dina stood in the entrance to the kitchen, witnessing Ellie almost tread the exit adjacent before halting.
It wasn’t unusual for Dina to wake without Ellie beside her. Sometimes, she would find her pawing through art materials or the cupboards, needing time alone to create or eat. Her tentative guitar might waft upstairs. If they were low on food, she would slip into the night with a note on the counter and a bag packed.
But Ellie had no supplies but a gun strapped to her thigh, and there was a note longer than previous left behind her.
Dina gaped at the piece of paper on the countertop, unable — unwanting — to push past the frontier Dina, in letters too big for her to stomach. They shouldn’t share space with the butterflies Ellie roused on her good days.
“Ellie.” Dina didn’t look away from the letter. “Where are you going?”
She didn’t turn.
“Ellie?” Ginger as her voice, veering breakage, she stepped closer to her, extending a hand for her shoulder and seeing her nearly flinch from behind. “... Hey.” Dina massaged slow circles into her. She was whittled to her bones. “What’s wrong?”
She craned to take her in from the side, needing to meet her eye however vacant the reciprocation.
Ellie turned slightly. Angled like that, moonlight tinted her cheek gaunt. Dina felt like she was trying to prompt last words from a corpse. “Just going for a walk.” Her voice was gutted. A criminal caught in the act, guilty verdict penned to her name. “I’m alright.”
Dina peered through the screen door. The high grass was coated in dewy frost, frigid with cold and yellow hue fading. “Without a jacket?” Her fingertips brushed Ellie’s collarbone from her palmed shoulder — her shirt, though long-sleeved, was thin, far too worn to fend off night’s wind.
“Why not?” She swallowed, throat bobbing with her averted stare. Dina saw her crumple in on herself. Ellie jostled the hand off her shoulder, slouching when the touch was gone and blanking at the expanse outside, mouth agape but breaths shallow. There had been so much hair in the shower. At this proximity, Dina could tell that hers was thinning.
“Because you’ll freeze to death — ”
“Yeah,” Ellie surrendered, cutting her protest short, “okay.”
Dina’s brow cinched; she had an etched wrinkle between them from how often her worry fronted. “Okay?” She chewed her cheek, inspecting her. “Come lay down. It’s late.”
Silence purled. She remembered when it was rare to hear such a thing from Ellie, a running motor with quips for gasoline, whirring as long as she was awake. To receive something intimate as quiet from her was inimitable. It was to know her, to fluster her into a hush, to be savvy in what made her tick.
Now, it only raised questions, scarcely relief.
Finally, Ellie murmured, “No.” She put her hand back on the handle. Her knuckles clung to the skin harshly, veins a chilled blue on her pale complexion. “I need some air.”
“Then I’ll come with you.” It was a common dance: Dina catching Ellie in the act. Ellie toeing around the tension points with excuses. Lies. “Let me get JJ and — ”
“No,” she repeated, “I’m going alone.”
It was like a stake in her heart to see her erect wall after wall. Dina looked between the door and her, and she couldn’t help but wonder why the former enamored Ellie so. “Take a coat, then.” Her honey jar was emptied. There was no sweet cover for her words. Later, she would regret how her frustration diluted her caring. “You’ll get sick.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Please?” She loathed her desperation.
Ellie didn’t turn her head, only her void irises on their lonesome recognizing Dina’s from the side. She watched her bite her lip, work her jaw, and relinquish her grip on the door handle, her something that bubbled under the surface thinly veiled. Her anger and ache were too blurred for Dina to distinguish and soothe. After all, talking to someone’s back was like scolding a brick wall, and Ellie had already turned to walk inside. She swiped the note off the counter as she passed. It scrunched in her fist.
Dina blinked a couple of times, one for each little shock. One, her perplexion. Two, Ellie’s gall. “Hey,” she called, following her. Dina’s gait was swifter. The space Ellie had put between them bridged quickly given her pause in the kitchen doorway.
Ellie glanced behind. “What.” Spoken without a question’s pique.
“What?” she echoed. “Ellie, you know what — ”
“Enlighten me.”
“Wow.” Dina bit back a sour laugh. She raised her hands in affront for a moment, trying to gesticulate what was meant, but hell if she knew. The words died in her mouth as she considered them as did her hands falling at her hips. Ultimately, she settled, “Where were you going?”
“On a walk.”
“With no bag?” Dina retorted. “No coat? Just because you’re immune — ”
“Fuck’s sake.” She pivoted on her feet to face Dina wholly. “What does that have to do with anything?”
Dina felt her forehead creasing and resolve wavering. Ellie had a way of making it dissipate. “Just…,” she trailed off, looking away to garner some sense of comfort from her house. It was starting to feel less and less like a home. “Let’s go to bed. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”
She reached for the paper in her hand to discard it. Ellie jerked it away. She responded instantaneously, “I’ll throw it out later.” Dina regarded the shift in her eyes, from fight to defense, and looked to the note.
A heartstring went taut. Denial trailed.
“... Can I see it for a sec?”
Ellie raked her teeth over her lip. “Why?”
“Why not?”
She mulled the question with a brief shrug. “It’s not important — ”
“Ellie,” Dina adjured, and she hated the taste. Her name shouldn’t carry such rot. “I worry.” She reached again, only for her wrist this time. Ellie permitted the touch, yet that passive pliancy raised anxieties that her hand might slip through Ellie’s skin, as a ghost was untouchable.
“... I know.” Dina saw her gulp. “This won’t help.”
Her suspicions thickened in her lungs, taking residence where deep breaths ought to be. She ran her thumb over a freckle on her forearm. It was her favorite to trace, to brush her lips against, to ground herself with a gentle touch. Lowering, her thumb followed the rest of her hand’s unclasp to pinch the paper from her hand.
“Okay,” Dina said because it had to be.
Ellie didn’t fight it.
Dina smoothed the note, moving into better light to read it; she noticed Ellie’s switchblade left on the counter. Her hands quivered. She wanted to believe it was from the weather.
Dina,
Don’t come looking for me. I don’t want you to have to see it. I’ve already put you through so much, and I know I’m doing more by doing this. I’m sorry.
I can’t wake up screaming anymore. Every time I close my eyes, I see her. I can’t get her face out of my mind. I keep pacing, wondering if she’s coming to finish the job. I couldn’t live with myself if something happened to you or JJ because of me.
This is wrong, but I’ve never been right. You know that.
I should’ve died a long time ago. I was supposed to. At least it would’ve fucking been for something. And Joel stole that, then she stole Joel, and I can’t remember his face now. It’s covered in blood. I don’t know if I’ll ever see him without it again. I don’t wanna see red anymore.
I love you. I should’ve done more to show it. Please don’t dwell on me. Find someone who can take care of you and potato (he can have my blade).
Bye. - Ellie
Everything was in her periphery except the signature left like a stab wound. Bye was written so plainly, so irrevocably that she couldn’t fathom Ellie breathing near, having almost left, already dead-set with a gun.
A second later, and —, chorused in Dina’s head, lingering unfinished like an inkling with no fruition. A sob stuttered in her chest, but she pushed it down with her wet eyes. She rubbed them dry to peer at Ellie over the note.
She stared back.
“No,” Dina sniffed and shook her head, clearing her throat of a cry. She vetted the words one last time before setting it on the counter.
Ellie just kept eyeing her.
Dina pondered something to say, something concrete. She knew there were no words raw enough to comfort her and none profound enough to heal her, and she wasn’t a problem to be fixed. If she could be strong enough for Ellie to lean on, maybe she wouldn’t feel like she had to fall anymore.
But at the end of the day, they were themselves, only now they were women instead of girls, and their silence tense instead of comforting. Dina didn’t opt for head over heart, but if it was what Ellie needed to stay upright, she would assume that role, lover however necessary and herself second. That would never change.
She enveloped Ellie tight — so fucking tight — and whispered, “We’re going back to Jackson. There are some old-world therapists — ”
Her torpid, waif body stiffened in the embrace. “We don’t need to go back.” Ellie’s voice was pitted, crackling with strain.
“Well, we are, so.”
She broke Dina’s hold to appraise her up and down, and she squeezed her eyes tight, shaking her head. “This — ” Ellie motioned to the room and looked into her again. She gazed at Dina with such longing. To decipher her expression was an esoteric gleaning. “This is everything you’ve ever wanted.”
Dina gasped, “But not without you.” A sob bubbled past with tears down her cheeks, sniffing to take a breath. She burnished a palm over her face. “I…” She remembered her baby upstairs, sound asleep. “We want you here, or… wherever here is. That doesn’t matter, Ellie.”
She watched Ellie’s obstinacy flit from her. She was defeated and open to Dina’s ministrations. But this was never a fight she wanted to take part in. Her knuckles felt bloodied with how utterly eviscerated Ellie was, listless and lackadaisical.
There had to have been something she could’ve done.
Dina sighed. “Come on.” Took her hand. “Let’s lay down.” Led her away from the door. “We can talk to Maria about it when she visits next.”
The switchblade and letter laid alone, but not forgotten, on the counter.
—
Ellie’s heart caterwauled against her ribs, and she felt as though they’d shatter from the sudden lack of lethargy. She ascertained that Dina could feel it from where she embosomed her, a hand limp with drowsiness in her tangled hair.
Despite the hunger in her gut, the exhaustion in her skull, and her blood running cold, there was only one need burying itself like a bullet in her head.
I have to leave. I have to leave. I have to leave.
But she couldn’t.
She heard Dina’s breaths slow to unconscious and JJ sucking his thumb. When she was sure they were asleep for a few minutes, breath held, she allowed an exhale.
And a stifled wail.
Ellie cried, and cried, and cried into the night until her stomach lurched. Nothing came up but the choking taste of acid. She coughed into her pillow. She held onto the fabric of it like a moth to a flame, a daughter to a father, and bawled quietly until she went red in the face.
There was so much red.
She tried to burrow herself into it as she hadn’t all those years ago at the hospital. She had pushed him away, and she wanted to yank bunches of hair out of her scalp for it. Searching, pleading, begging with her weeping, she pressed her nose to the fabric for some semblance of him.
All she got was salt in her mouth.