Eduardo's Arc

Chapter 34 of 60

Eduardo worked the rotted board loose at the corner of the house until the nails came free in his hand. He set the board down on the grass and looked at the wall behind it. The wood underneath was dry. Not black. Not soft. He had expected worse. He sat back on his heels and stared at the clean beam. He had been afraid to open the wall. He had told himself for months that the whole frame was gone. He had built the fear up so he would have a reason to quit. The beam under his hand was fine. The house was not as broken as he had said it was. He thought about Kiersten then. Not the way he used to. Not as a door he had to knock on. He thought about what she had actually done the night she opened her door and waited. She had not thrown him out to punish him. She had refused to keep saving him. She had made him carry his own weight. He understood, kneeling in the dirt beside the exposed beam, that she had given him something. Not a punishment. A chance. If she had taken him back that night he would still be the man who took from her. He would still be lying to himself about the shape of his hands. He put his palm flat against the beam. He said her name once, quiet, and meant it as thanks. Not as a call. She was not on the other end of it. She was in a school in the hills with her own life. She had told him never to return, and she had been right to. He thought about the man he had been. The one who called her a liar to win a fight. The one who spent her sleep and her friends like they were his money. That man was gone from this porch. Not because Eduardo had prayed him out. Because she had refused, and he had finally been left alone with himself. He stood up. He picked up the rotted board and carried it to the burn pile. Then he went to the shed for a new one. He measured it against the gap and marked the cut with his pencil. His hand was steady. He worked until the sun dropped behind the ridge. He nailed the new board flush and ran his thumb along the seam. It held. He stepped back into the yard and looked at the side of the house. One board. Then he looked at the rest of the wall, all the boards he had not touched yet, and he was not afraid of them. He went inside and marked the day on the paper strip. He did not open the closet. He did not need to. He ate bread standing at the counter and slept without dreaming.