The Sudden Dark

After

She looked at me generously and said, 'You know what I think is funny? I don't think you ever did tell me what you did that got you suspended in the first place.'

'And I don't think I will,' I said.

'Why? Are you afraid it'll make me think even less of you than I do now?'

'Maybe. But I'm not as scared of that as I used to be. Maybe I'm just afraid of me thinking less of me.'

She laughed a little—we both did—but silently. We were sitting at the table of Jess' kitchen, warm sunlight smoothing over us like honey from the wide September afternoon. Daniel was out of the house, and so was Luke. She'd made me a coffee but I'd hardly touched it. I think I was enjoying myself too much, that moment of quiet I was having with her at that table with those cold coffees; a moment of simplicity like I'd imagined we could've had someday back when we were together but never did.

'Was it bad?—What you did?' she said.

I nodded simply. 'Of course.'

'Did it get someone hurt?'

'Yeah. But me more than anyone else.'

'You really don't want to talk about it, do you?' She sat back in her chair and passed a strange look over me. 'I thought you had no shame. You didn't when we were married, I remember that.'

'Cause it's what got us divorced.'

'Amongst other things.'

'Well, then think of my suspension like our divorce: most of it was my fault, and I regret it, but there's nothing I can do about it now. And it doesn't matter anymore. It's from a different time in my life, now.'

She sat quiet a moment, looked down, then looked back at me. 'Do you regret anything from last month?'

I shook my head. She must've known I would.

'How did it all turn out, then? You haven't told me about that, either.'

'I don't know,' I said. 'I know Wayne's alive. I know that neither Maddie or Kit are in prison—other than that, I've got no idea. They're back to their own lives, I can only hope. Maybe they're together, finally, and maybe they're even happy. Who the hell knows.'

'That's what you wanted, wasn't it? To get everyone back to their own lives?'

'I don't know. I don't know what the fuck I ever wanted from all of it. All I did was hear some voices crying out in the night and went to see what was the matter. Some bad people died, and I got kicked around a lot.'

'You did more than that, Max. And you know it.'

'Maybe,' I shrugged. 'And maybe it even did some good in the long run. I know I haven't had a drink since then. Maybe it kicked it from me somehow. Maybe. A lot of maybes.'

'So what have you been thinking about, then?' Jess asked. 'You can't have just been spending the last month sitting around waiting for me to want to meet with you.'

'No, because that's what I've been doing the past fifteen years. I don't know...I've been thinking about a lot of stuff.'

'Like what?'

'Like anything. Like whether or not there's anything I could even do as my next step. Like whether I could try for an investigator's license, maybe, or look into security consulting. Something like that.'

'Well, what's wrong with those?'

I looked down at the table. 'Nothing,' I said. 'Absolutely nothing.'

Jess smiled a little and reached out to touch me on the arm. 'I don't know if you've got anyone in your life to say this,' she said, 'but you're a good man, Max. Deep down. Very deep down, but it's there. I just wish it could be there more often, and wouldn't have to drag itself through so much to see daylight.'