Professional Integrity

Between Seasons

She didn't blow dry her hair or straighten it or curl it–none of that. When she slipped from the bathroom, her hair dripping still, he knew she meant to dry it in the rush of wind from road. There was something worshipful about that. If the whole crazy, heady, strange journey had a souvenir, it was every inch of her hair slipping in the air, absorbing the weight of her smile.

God. He was a man well and done for.

Her hair was almost the only part of her he felt safe around. Now that he knew how far he'd sunk, he couldn't help but look at those hands that he'd touched and worry that he'd tainted her. That was what he was, after all. He was the wall from the storm. He was the muscle and blood. He was the dirt of the grave, and the promise of pain, and the ferryman of the Styx, and she was Persephone–and he, with no designs on making her eat a pomegranate, was terrified of putting his mark on her.

But her hair–her hair was a safe Purgatory. There was something less intimate about that. It was the gate to heaven that he could see and touch and turn away from before it burned him.

"Got any ideas where we're going yet?" He asked her.

"Mmm, maybe Chicago. It's been years since I last went." But she paused, something hovering around the periphery of her thought. "You know where I want to go and I'm too scared to?"

"Do tell."

"Mackinac Island, Michigan."

"Where's that? Never heard of it."

"It's way, way, way up north, in the Great Lakes. I think it's actually in Lake Michigan." Her thumbs skated over the soft vinyl of the steering wheel. "It's this tiny little island. It has some woods, and there are no cars allowed, and big rock beaches and the softest grass I've ever touched. I went there last when I was like, oh, thirteen?"

He shifted back in his seat and tried not to watch those supple wrists flex and turn. "Why would you be scared of it? You've already been. Did something bad happen?"

"No." Another pause. She tilted her head as if measuring the weight of her words against the feather of truth. "I don't know. I've never felt rooted in my life. Does that make sense?"

Entirely too much. He felt it in every pore of his skin. "I can imagine."

"So I just kind of... I don't know, I was always happy to run away. I was at my best when I wasn't home. And it didn't matter that there was nothing wrong with home, I just–even when I got older, I'd do this thing where I'd hop in my car at two in the morning. Maybe I'd grab someone, maybe I wouldn't, but more often than not I'd just hop onto a highway and drive until the city lights were gone and I could finally see the sky and breathe. And when we visited Mackinac..." She inhaled deep, as if she were filling her lungs with the tang of Lake Michigan air. "I was just. I was home, for once in my life. It was there."

"I'm not following why you're scared of it."

"Cause that was over a decade ago." Her smile was thin and hollow now. "And I'm terrified that I'll go back and find out it isn't the place I remembered. I don't know what's better: only visiting your home in your mind for fear of losing it, or returning only to find out it never existed?"

He couldn't answer that for her. She realized that, too, because quietly, she reached out and flipped on Hotel California.

Mitsuhide had worked in Chicago once, but it was long enough ago and the family had been homebodies enough to where he honestly didn't know the city with any certainty. She didn't either. They fumbled around their phones until it felt ridiculous, and then she caved and bought a paper map.