The Dance Part 2

Chapter 269 Finding Your Way in the Dark

Matt knocked softly at the door to Lila's room and entered only after she granted him permission. She sat staring out the window across Hoonah's bay. There couldn't be any more shattered souls then she, Matt and Bam at that moment. He could hardly bare to look at her as her sparkling eyes were dimmed by the burden she wore.

"He left."

"Lila, he will be back. You know how he is. When he gets himself worked up, he needs to work through things on his own terms."

"But this just didn't happen to him. It happened to all three of us."

"I know and I am so sorry Lila. I should have never...." Lila cut Matt off before he could finish his apology.

"None of us could have predicted this Matt. Not you or me and certainly not Bam."

Matt walked to where she sat. "I don't know what to say."

"I don't want you to say anything. I just need you to listen. I need to tell you everything that happened."

"You don't have to tell me anything, Lila. It's over. He can't ever hurt you again."

"It's not over, Mattie. Nato's dead and look at what he has done. He now haunts my husband's thoughts. He continues to rape my life even in death."

It was the first time she had used that word to describe what happened between she and Nato. It was a hard word for Matt to hear.

"No one is judging you Lila. You did what you had to do to save yourself."

"Then why is Bam not here?" It was a question that Matt couldn't answer for her.

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Bam pulled his skiff on to the familiar ground of Browntown's beach. It was unusually quiet compared to the days where he and his brothers and sisters occupied the woods. It was the stillness that he needed as he could barely make sense of the chaos in his current world. As he made his way towards their old family home, he saw the ghosts of past memories racing around him. Dancing on the beach with Lila under a large lovers' moon, hearing her laughter as she chased his siblings around the field when they played a game of It, or their time in his old trapper shack spilled over him in waves. Every where he turned, he saw flashes of their life together. Then his mind would turn to the last few days and the images of her with him would creep into his thoughts. He hated himself for thinking she willingly gave herself to him. She had only ever been his.  

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Lila sat for hours with Matt detailing everything that happened to her from the time of the abduction to the minute they found her. Matt shared with her the timeline of their search for her. He listened intently and wiped away her tears. He fought back his own emotions as she explained the events in the cabin and why she offered herself to Nato. She could see how uncomfortable he became when she described what Nato had done to her. At one point, he had to leave the room temporarily to compose himself as he felt every raw emotion of that event. Whether she did it on her terms or his, Matt knew she had spared herself a more brutal attack and in the end, it gave her the leverage she needed to run. He never once judged her decision as it was hers alone to make.

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Bam made good use of his pent up anger with his axe as he began to chop wood for the fireplace at the old homestead. With every swing of his axe, he imagined striking Nato, hurting him as he had hurt his wife.
His pace was steady at first but as his anger built, his swings became more erractic. He was no longer just chopping wood. His axe blade struck the last piece of wood so hard that he split the handle in two. The guttural scream that came out of him startled even the small game and nearby birds. He fell to his knees, his arms holding his stomach trying to stop the pain that poured out of his soul.

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Jill brought a tray up to the room and tried to get some food into Lila but she refused to eat. It broke Jill's heart to watch her sister-in-law work through her emotions. The alienation by Bam appeared to hurt her more than the ordeal of what she went through with Nato. As much as Jill wanted to fix what was broken, it wasn't her place to do so. She stayed the night with Lila,  sleeping next to her in the bed so that she had the comfort of knowing she was safe but most of all loved.

Photograph by Ed Sheeran