The Honeymoon was small but sweet. Little rosebuds sprinkled across the bed each morning or the rattling floral teacups into which she would pour a bleary eyed hot chocolate. Warm milk and powder out of a ceramic cookie jar. They weren't upset when it was cut short. A burst pipe in his workplace flooded the kitchen and bled through the floor and into the offices below. Decades lost in a fizz. But things weren't particularly difference once they arrived home. A new set of nicknames, novel at first. Children too far away to worry about. Her friends had all paired off. Those who had come to her wedding alone had left hand in hand. She was supposed to be the last unmarried.

She had not known at the time, that the wedding had conjoined them, no longer two but a dyad. Invited out, spoken to as one. Whilst any marriage is impervious in it's beginnings, theirs was not a marriage which invited intrusion. An aunt had gifted her a bottle of brandy and two glasses to drink it from. She would drink two glasses through the day and share a third when he arrived home. And she came to quite like it. In the evenings they wound down deep into each other's arms. He was hardly wordy when he did have the energy.

Work did not welcome her, when she gathered up the whim to return. Too much had happened without her, far too much to catch her up. Better she stay put and try not to make a mess. But perhaps it was her who'd changed, when she was young the boys around her kept their voices the way they were, it was only those with extended absence who dropped immediately into a sombre and self-conscious growl. Perhaps she was too close to the issue. He still appeared very much the man she had married well after the perishables of their wedding registry. Only she couldn't remember now, why she had wanted to marry him. But she had, and she was from the old world. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Don't look your gift horse in the mouth. A stitch in time. She'd always thought it was the number nine, peeling slowly off the face of the clock.

--

Minutes dilate in frozen traffic. Phenomenological time. The world spins by for the waiter at a speed relative to the waited for. Four years melt exponentially into fifteen. When I came in they had known eachother for thirty years. I never meant any harm.

Thirty six. She worked at a book shop then. Freckled brunette stirring her third sugar into a mug of peppermint tea, balancing Fitzgerald in the spare hand. Stepping into a cliche of my own conjecture. Smitten. I still don't know why she let me ask her out. Her hand lain heavy, two rings bolted to the table. The story thus far bled out of her with all of the restraint of a burst appendix. All of the pain. Her husband was still there, but for today he was out. And for all I knew I was in love. I had more tea at home, and brandy to stir in. The evening had only just begun. She had three teas, stretched sideways across my garage-sale couch, with two shots of brandy in each. I sat opposite, legs twining amongst hers. She hadn't stopped talking since lunch. She asked for a blanket, I lifted the sheets off my bed and threw them across her on the couch. I pulled myself under the blankets, and she turned around and placed her head over my shoulder. Eyes closed.
"You want to know how I met him?"
I told her sure.
"He threw a kitten into a lake."
Pardon?

"Our parents lived on opposite ends of the street. In what was essentially a swamp. The rent was cheap on account of there being no plumbing yet. Both of our parents, his mother, my dad, worked long shifts, and liked cheap. He was a year older than me, and already in school. He'd learned about rafts or something, and was determined to make one. My house backed into a big lake, and he got it into his head that he was going to cross it. Every day he'd run over and fetch twigs and sticks, and eventually firewood and old planks, patching them together with haphazard knots. I usually came along to watch and to play with his cat, a bulbous tabby named Charlie, but I never came in with him, I was terribly scared of water, still am. I can still remember the lake stirring in the shadows late at night. It never stayed still, concealing all manner of horrible things."

--

One day he was sure he'd done it. The neighbours next to him were building, he'd spent months gathering sizeable planks. With so much rope as to make the wood difficult to distinguish. He was so confident now that she was invited, but said no. He led Charlie aboard in her stead. And for once, the raft did not collapse as he placed first a leg, and then increasing weight until he was confidently kneeling inside it, bobbing wet in the marshy green. She placed Charlie on the raft with him, to protect him. They set sail beautifully against the mid evening sun. Knees dipping in and out of the water as they sailed. Charlie, terrified, clambered up his back, heavy and sharp on his young shoulders. He'd done it. He'd recall, years later knowing not what was next. But only that, after this, it was within his grasp. He pushed on until he was only just smaller than her pointer finger, before he realised he could not push back. The water became reeds and the raft stopped moving, try as he might, it would not move. She felt her father, his mother behind her, yelling out at him. Stay there. Don't panic. Her father rushing indoors. Charlie screached, leapt off of his shoulder and straight into the marsh. She followed quickly after. Searing white, too cold to feel. The pins and needles sprang across her young skin. As if the pins were on the inside bustling to get out. Weeks later, her father found her curled into a ball before the television, a static channel, high volume filling the room with a rumbling contralto. He jumped in after her.

They shared a room in the hospital. Pale green and off-white, a curtain they could draw between them. The words "Children's Ward" written clumsily across the door with a whitebord marker. She hated him when she had the chance, for he spent most of his time asleep. During the day she glued herself to the windows, soaking whatever sunlight she could seek out. Nights she shivered. Found the nurse call button and stacked layers of blankets, a wriggling puddle of warm sweat.

--

As she spoke she was the most beautiful person I'd ever seen. Nuzzled into the crease of my inner shoulder. Too close to focus. Speaking slowed to a drawl.

"One night I just couldn't do anything. I sat there fidgeting for hours and then I just stood up. The night was so cold, and so dry. I felt my skin icy and apart from myself, and I pulled over the curtin and slipped between the covers and into his bed. I pushed my arm under his back, like it is now, and it was simmering numb when I woke up."

She pushed herself up and kissed my cheek, and fell asleep. I never found myself asleep. Tidal, wavering heavy, with her weight pressed against me. In the morning she was gone. The kettle freshly boiled, a linger of floral perfume still on my clothes. Back in her bookshop a middle-aged woman, glasses with sunglass lenses flipped out, stood in her stead. I hadn't even asked her name.
"A red haired girl with glasses suggested a few books yesterday, is she coming in today?"
"Not today."
Great.
I bought a book to say I meant no harm. The Hunter Works. A tattered dark green cover, regal yellow lettering.
On the way home I bought some coffee and cured meats. Passed a man I was certain was her husband, face turned down to the sidewalk, I barely saw him. I had forgotten to lock my front door, but nothing appeared missing. I made lunch in the window light, and began the The Hunter Works. Still my mind wandered to the woman. Luring in men for what? A shoulder to lean on. A body to keep warm against. Gone as soon as she'd come, didn't even finish her story. To her I must be just some other idiot. Board, warmth, tea.

I never spoke to her again. Only two years later did I see her again. Holding hands with a slight man in a blue polo shirt, tucked in haphazardly. They walked straight through me. Was he her husband, or just another sucker like me? Perhaps she'd left him, for whoever else.

--

In time he must have found out. Came home too early and found her missing. Or one of them thought it meant more. Traced her back to their suburban home. She opened the door and things got loud. Her husband stormed down, socked him in the jaw with a clammy fist. Only half closed. The pain was sentiment. She saw it as her opportunity to strike. Suddenly aghast, she told her husband to drive him to hospital as she rushed indoors. When he made it home she wasn't there, fifteen years.

--

Charlie, when they pulled him out. Looked like a drowned rat. Dark brown, limp, shiny from the water but scuzzy from the struggle. A nerve let out and he swiped his paw, enough to startle her father into dropping him. They didn't reach back down.

Next Chapter: Out Again.