Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
“Okay, well, I don’t want it.”
“But—”
“I don’t want it, Alec.” She isn’t firm or coarse or harsh in her tone. She just states it very simply. “You can pay my brothers the two hundred fifty thousand you owe them, but that’s it.”
It takes a moment for me to recall what she’s talking about, but then I have this vague recollection of us stealing from them and they from us and how almost quaint and fun it all was. As if it was all just a silly game.
I nod yet again and say, “Very good.”
“What’s the second thing?” she asks.
I pause, look her in the eyes as deeply as I can, screw my courage to the sticking place, and say, “I’m sorry.”
The fact that the train whistle blares at that exact moment is both startling and comically appropriate.
After the whistle has faded and she has had a moment to digest what just came out of my mouth, she says, “Say again?”
“I’m sorry,” I repeat. “I apologize. For putting you in this situation to begin with. For not being more careful. For… everything. From the start. I’m sorry. I never deliberately set out to cause pain in your life. I just can’t seem to help doing that to people from time to time. I’m striving to change that. For whatever lot of uselessness that’s worth.”
She looks stunned. Of course she does. I would be too if I heard myself say any of those things. But I am myself, so I suppose I have to believe me.
And then she clears her throat, shifts in her seat, and says, “All right. Anything else?”
Hm. That was not the response I expected. I don’t know what I expected, but—“Um… no. No. That’s all. I suppose.”
“Okay,” she says, standing to walk away.
She starts off, leaving me sitting alone, staring out the window at the night-blackened countryside. Seeing my own reflection, I almost don’t recognize myself for a moment. I mean, the approximate shape of me still exists, but the other, less corporeal parts of me feel foreign somehow. Not bad. Just different. I suppose.
“Alec,” Eliza says from behind me. I turn to look. “I’m not a victim,” she says.
“I would not ever imagine you as such,” I tell her.
“No. Hear me,” she says. “I made choices. Just as you did. And we’re both responsible for the people who were hurt in the process. You don’t get to take it all on. You don’t get to be the hero or the martyr. We’re equal partners in the villainy.”
(Ah. I knew we were both the villain.)
“I can’t undo it, obviously, and neither can you,” she goes on, “but I will tell you something…” She takes a moment to, I suppose, search for exactly how she wants to say what she wants to say. “Andra is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. She has altered me. Foundationally. The irony is that she has so fundamentally changed the way I see and engage with the world that what happened before that caused her very existence wouldn’t happen again now.”
I see tears start forming around the corners of her eyes, and it’s strange, because they’re not emerging from a place of unbridled rage but rather a place of pure regret and fear. I’ve never seen this before from her.
“I’ve never been mad at you,” she says with some amount of exhaustion, “not really. I mean, obviously you’re a gigantic asshole who demolishes everything he sees, but who isn’t? So, it’s not you who I’ve been angry with. It’s… I suppose it’s me. Can you understand that? At all?”
I make a small, audible, ‘mm’ sound and then say, “Yeah. I think so.”
“So,” she says, “my priority is to care for myself and my child. That’s it. It’s to take care of us and to try to do as little harm as possible going forward.”
“I understand,” I say.
“And, thus, while I appreciate the apology—and I do, honestly—it’s just not that consequential now. Do you get what I saying to you?”
“I believe I do,” I tell her.
“Okay,” she says, lingering there before offering, “Children change you. They really do. How is up to you. But…” She nibbles at her lip, clearly struggling to say whatever is in her brain. “I don’t know. Let’s just see how we all go, I guess,” she concludes.
I have a mountain of thoughts piling up in my mind. But if I start talking, I fear it could turn into an unhelpful avalanche of words, so I keep them to myself.
“Go get some rest,” I tell her. “We’ll have time to say more after we’ve accomplished a dazzling rescue in Vienna.” I smile. She offers a half-smile in return before turning and striding off to her cabin.
Turning back, I look at my reflection in the window once again. Who are you, bru? Who are you and who are you hoping to become? It’s going to take an awful, awful lot of work if you are to make amends for everything you’ve done in your life.