Eduardo's Arc

Chapter 12 of 60

Eduardo drove the last nail into the shingle and climbed down. The roof was patched. The house still leaned. He sat on the top porch step and looked at the broken siding, the cracked window frames, the boards he had not yet cut. The work would take years. He needed to know if he was doing it for himself or for her. He remembered the last time he had stood at Kiersten's door. He had told her he would never come back. She had shut the door and he had heard her crying through the wood. She had not asked him to leave forever. She had asked him to put in the work and come back the right way. He had heard the difference then. He had chosen not to hear it. He washed his hands at the pump and drove into town. He had heard of a fortune teller who kept a small shop near the market. He needed an answer he could not give himself. He needed to know if going back the right way was still a road, or if the road had closed. The shop was one room. On the table sat a small structure built from tarot cards, stacked into a leaning triangle of painted suns and towers. Behind it stood the reader. Fortune was not a person. Fortune was an animal shaped like a tarot card, with four legs and a long tail. The wheel on its face turned slow when Eduardo sat down. "I need to know if I should go back to her," Eduardo said. "Or let her go." Fortune looked at him. The wheel stopped. "You already know," Fortune said. "You came here to be told something else." "Tell me anyway." Fortune tapped one card on the table. "She asked you to do the work. You told her never. You cannot take back never by knocking. A door shut twice is a wall." Eduardo's throat tightened. "So I let her go." "You let her live," Fortune said. "That is not the same as letting her go. You keep working. You do not send it to her. You do not carry it to her gate. If she ever comes to look, the house will be standing. That is all you get to give." Eduardo stared at the card house on the table. One breath would drop it. "And if she never comes." "Then the house is still standing," Fortune said. "For you. That was always the point." Eduardo paid and walked out. He drove home in the last light. He thought about what needed to happen in order for this relationship to happen again what was the right thing?