Eduardo's Arc

Chapter 3 of 60

The kitchen floor was clean by the time the sun dropped behind the field. Eduardo sat at the table with a glass of water and no company but the sagging roof above him. He had planned to eat. Instead he stared at the wet rag in his hand and thought of Kiersten. He had not let himself think of her clearly in years. He had thought of her the way a thief thinks of a locked door, with resentment. Now he set the rag down and let her come. He remembered the first night. He had been on the phone with her, walking up to the diner where they were to meet. He saw her through the window before she saw him. She was laughing at something the waitress said. He had watched her a full minute and decided, before he ever sat down, that a woman that easy in her own skin had to be hiding something. He walked in already building the case against her. She had only been kind. She had asked about his day and listened to the answer. She had reached across the table and touched his wrist when he made a joke about his father. That night they stayed up until the sky went gray. He told her things he had never told anyone. She told him she felt safe. He believed her, and it scared him. He pressed his palms flat on the table. He made himself keep going. He remembered what he did with her belief. He gambled her rent money and lied about it. He picked fights so he could leave the house. He touched other women to prove she did not own him. He watched her get smaller at the kitchen counter and told himself she was weak. She had carried his grief and his debts and his bad nights for four years. One morning she set it all down on the porch and walked off. He had called her a coward through the screen door. His eyes burned. He did not fight it. She was the only person who had ever looked at him and seen a man worth the trouble. He had spent every day since proving her wrong so he would not have to believe her. She had been an angel at his table and he had treated her like a debt collector. He got up. He found a scrap of paper in a drawer and a pencil worn to a nub. He sat back down and wrote her name at the top. Then he wrote, I was wrong about you from the first minute. I am sorry for every day after. He did not know where she was. He did not know if she would ever read it. He folded the paper and set it under the water glass. The apology was not for her yet. It was for him. He had finally said it plain.