When We Let Go by Delancey Stewart (read with me .txt) đź“•
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- Author: Delancey Stewart
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“No. It was Connor. He was digging. He was digging pretty deep, because he was standing in the hole and I could only see the top half of him.”
“Why would he be up there digging?”
“Well, that’s what I don’t know. But like I said, he was way off the trail. I doubt he thought anyone would stumble over him there. So I surprised him, I guess, when I said hello. And he didn’t look happy for the company. Yelled at me to get away, to leave him alone. And he looked mad enough that I wasn’t going to stay around to argue or ask questions.” He shook his head. “I think he was burying something.”
“I just … Connor doesn’t seem like he’d be capable …” the words were out before I considered that he was presently accused of a crime. And that his supposed victim had just gone missing. Maybe he was capable. A chill ran through my blood. I had nothing else to say, but questions swarmed my mind and conflicting emotions filled my gut.
“Anyway,” John brushed his hands together as if brushing away the dark atmosphere that his story had brought about. “He was friendly enough this morning. Seemed worried about you, Mads.”
“Thank you,” I said again. I peered into the other room where Connor and Louise sat with a photo album spread across their laps, laughing.
I returned to my trailer and my half-built house two days later, and was amazed at the changes that had been made in my absence. For one thing, the fallen tree had been chopped into thin disks and hauled off the road. John had told me this, but seeing it was something else. He planned to collect the wood to stack for his fireplace, and I vowed to help him haul it down and stack it for him. I couldn’t pay him back, but I could try.
The trailer looked completely different. Not only had John and Connor installed the thick plastic skirting around the bottom, but they’d shored it up with panels of plywood, digging it in a foot or so around the perimeter to block the snow. I would never have thought to do that, and even the first step inside told me that made a difference. The floor wasn’t as icy as it had been, and the whole place sounded a bit less flimsy as I walked through it. I felt better, like I’d been pulled back a few feet from the edge of whatever precipice my life perched above.
The power had been restored the day before, and the trailer was a toasty sixty-seven. I celebrated by making some coffee and checking my phone, now that I could charge it again. There was one message besides the one from Adele telling me that the diner was closed until the power was back. And it was a doozy.
“Maddie. It’s your brother. I need to talk to you. I’m coming up to see you on Friday. Just wanted to let you know. Hope I can remember how to get up there.”
Cam. Was coming here.
After judging and ignoring me for three years, he couldn’t just send me an email. He was coming. In less than a week. I let that idea roll back and forth in my head as I paced around a few times.
I owed him an apology probably, but I felt like he owed me one, too. Somehow I didn’t believe that was why he was going to come all this way, though. There was something else, and I doubted it was good. I wondered if Jess would be with him.
My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of tires on the road outside. I pushed the curtain aside to see Connor getting out of his car, walking toward the trailer. The sun poured over his shoulders, lighting his hair and giving him that ethereal glow.
The sight of him sent my heart racing and my palms sweating. What I couldn’t figure out was whether my reaction to Connor was attraction or fear.
After I’d shared lunch with the Trenches, and with Maddie, I went almost reluctantly home. The big house suddenly felt less like a refuge and more like a prison. Where the dark wood and smooth rock had once felt masculine and refined, now they seemed oppressive and confining. Where the lack of traffic up my little private road had once seemed a necessary luxury, now it felt isolating.
My laptop sat on the end of the long wooden dining table, and I slid into the seat in front of it and stared at the last chapter I’d written in my current book. There had been times in the past when I’d returned to my own words and read them with a sense of surprise, not quite remembering when I’d actually written them. Writing had been as natural as breathing, as walking. But now it was torturous, and I couldn’t find the connections I once had to my work.
Not since my sister had been here, actually. Though her presence had been distracting in some ways, there was something comforting in knowing someone else was nearby. It seems fundamental and silly, but I guess I liked knowing I wasn’t alone. And in the year since she’d been gone, I’d been more alone than ever.
I sighed and leaned back in the chair, closing my eyes and remembering the way it had felt to sit next to Maddie at the fire in the Trenches’ little house. I recalled the sound of her soft laughter, the feel of the fire dancing warm on our backs and her hair glowing in the light. Her image reassembled itself in my mind, and I imagined her sitting at my own fireplace, mentally placed her there behind me.
And then, with the strength of my own imagination sitting at my back, keeping me company, I wrote.
For the next two days, fueled by the imagined presence of the one person I most wanted to actually be near, I wrote more than I had in the last two months. And when the deluge of words began to taper, when the creative impulse I’d felt so strongly withered to a gentle pulse, I closed the laptop and slept. And when I woke up, I showered and got into my car without thinking. I needed to see her again.
Maddie’s trailer looked significantly more sturdy now than it had before the big storm had come through, and I was selfishly pleased—both that I’d helped make it so and that maybe she would think of me a bit next time the rain and wind came in and she stayed warm.
Though how warm and safe could she really be in this thing?
As I approached the front door, it opened, and Maddie stepped out, appearing on the top step with her hair arranged on top of her head and her cheeks pink. She glowed and I resisted the urge to pull her into my arms. We weren’t there. I didn’t even know if we were going there exactly—there was certainly enough in my life to keep her from wanting me the same way.
“Hi,” I said, my voice sounding loud in my own ears. I hadn’t planned out what I wanted to say to her, hadn’t really thought of much beyond seeing her again, and now I wished I had something to give her, some reason to be here.
“Hey,” she said, and a hand lifted to push a stray lock of hair behind her ear. She didn’t meet my eyes and the way she crossed her arms over herself gave me a sense that she was wary of me, worried maybe. “Thanks for all the work you did up here,” she said, her head turning to indicate the fallen log we’d cut up. “You and John. You saved me.”
“I was worried about you,” I said simply. “But I’d do all that work again if it meant another afternoon at the Trenches’ place.”
She looked at me quizzically and then laughed. “Oh! For the soup! It was amazing, wasn’t it?”
I hadn’t meant the soup. I’d meant her, but I just smiled. The soup had been good too. I stepped back, moved toward the picnic table, hoping she might sit with me for a few minutes. The temperature had come back up and the sun had dried the forest, but there was a definite feeling of fall in the air. “I was a little worried before that,” I said, and I slid onto the bench. Maddie stepped down from the trailer, walking nearer. “The way you left the other evening … I thought maybe I’d scared you, or …”
She shook her head and I watched the loose tendrils dance around her face.
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