Out of the Woods

Chapter Two

Two

“There she is,” Caleb says excitedly as he steps up to the podium, pointing me out to the crowd with his hand extended before initiating another round of applause. I smile politely toward the stage, my head bowed as I weave my way through tables of wealthy acquaintances and well-to-do philanthropists—all the while trying to conceive any other possible explanation for this sudden financial uptick and failing.

Caleb looks handsome standing up there in his black suit jacket…but I do wish he’d have paired it with something other than his favorite dark denim jeans. Though, in his defense, a lot of the men here tonight are wearing a similar ensemble. The tech-guy wardrobe, as Win affectionately calls it. Her husband is in a custom-fit suit, however.

Caleb’s curly, maple-brown hair is trimmed short and pushed to one side, as it has been since I told him I liked it that way forever ago. He’s not switched up his style of glasses either, wearing the same thinly framed, rounded gray metal over his espresso-colored eyes. The prescription has strengthened with the years, but other than that, nothing about Caleb has changed all that much since we were fourteen.

He’s still exactly six feet tall, though his license says 180 centimeters, which would place him at about five foot eleven. I told him to have it fixed, but he was far too polite to correct the sweet older woman behind the counter at the licensing office. He still has a perfect megawatt smile from braces provided by his parents’ superior dental coverage. The same purplish arrowhead birthmark on his collarbone that I love to press my lips to. The same scar on his right hand from a run-in with a Bunsen burner in the eleventh grade that he teasingly blames me for, and that same casual ease about him that at best can calm you down and at worst make you feel jaded. And while my body has filled out after the second puberty of my mid-twenties, Caleb has kept his lean, rectangular frame. He is my steadfast, easy, contented man. Something solid in a world that constantly seems to shift on its axis.

Caleb has always been safe.

As my whole world began falling apart, when losing my mother became inevitable, there was this kind, if a tad dorky, high school sweetheart who promised to never leave me. Who loved me. The girl from a single-parent home who developed an affinity for drinking a little too much and sneaking the occasional cigarette out of her aunt’s packs. The girl with a shocking amount of overdue library books, an unquenchable desire to be liked, and the vocabulary of a sailor who came with a variety of baggage no teenager ought to have.

I’ve known Caleb for over seventeen years now and loved him for nearly as many. Which is why I know in my gut that this wasn’t some surprise last-minute donation, or high stakes bidding on the final auction item that brought my fundraising goal to completion. This check has Caleb written all over it, even if it doesn’t literally say his name.

It’s the cursed roles we’ve been stuck in since the eleventh grade. The gallant knight riding in on his white horse is here to save me once again. And shit, if being the damsel in distress isn’t getting old.

I eventually find my way to the bottom of the stage and a polite stranger from the closest table extends his arm to help me up the stairs while my husband remains unmoving, wearing his classic, carefree grin. Dr. Torres stands to the left of center stage holding the check loosely in front of his lower half, his eyes held on me with warmth and appreciation.

Just as I finish greeting the doctor, Caleb embraces me once again with a subdued smile, pulling me tight against him.

“How?” I whisper into his ear.

“Later,” he answers, using a hand on my lower back to help me toward the podium center stage.

I clear my throat, looking over the round tables filled by guests evenly spaced around the ballroom. I shake myself and perform a smile, however bewildered it may appear. “Whoa,” I say softly into the microphone, which is followed by a faint high-pitched ringing from the speakers. I swallow thickly, adjusting the microphone stand to my height. “I was only gone ten minutes….” I laugh timidly. The guests laugh too, a polite rumble throughout the room, and I feel better for it.

Though I refused her help in all other preparations for tonight, Win did assist me in writing my speech. Mostly, I had planned to talk about my mother. I was going to say how I’d do anything to have had more years with her. How this research, helped with tonight’s funds, will buy more time for families just like mine. And isn’t that all we ever want? More memories with the people we love?

But now, it feels wrong. I don’t deserve the speech that I suspect was bought for me. I didn’t earn it.

My tongue feels swollen, and my palms begin to sweat as I white-knuckle grip either side of the podium. Suddenly, in my mind’s eye, the podium is a bathroom sink at a high school party and I’m looking at myself in the medicine cabinet’s mirror above it. I can see her reflection—seventeen-year-old me. Her lip-gloss is smudged, her hair is askew, and her face is pale. Shame washes over me like a familiar thick fog at the memory. Have I really changed? Have I truly grown from that scared, messy girl?

It took only one hit to my pride for me to give up. To throw away all of my potential. How pathetic is that…

Caleb clears his throat behind me, and the room comes back into focus. I force a deep breath, straightening my shoulders.

“Thank you all for coming this evening to help support Doctor Torres and his team at the ALS research institute of Southern Ontario,” I start, my voice steadier than I’d expected it to be. “My mother, Marcie Green, died from complications of ALS eleven years ago. Since then, Dr. Torres’s team has made massive strides in…” I trail off momentarily as I look toward the photo of my mother on stage. “In their research. The money we raised tonight, and the donations I hope we all continue to make in the future, will only help their efforts.” Mom’s smile. Her proud, happy smile. “God, I miss her….” I whisper before laughing somberly. “And…” I duck my head as I swallow back another wave of heartache. I struggle to catch my breath, as if I haven’t had over a decade’s worth of practice.

When I lift my chin, I can see the general unease across the faces of the attendees. Tilted heads, tilted smiles, tilted champagne flutes. Some well-meaning guest initiates applause and the crowd claps halfheartedly, nodding in sweet, if a bit condescending, encouragement.

I interrupt it. “Truthfully—I could stand up here and say so many things but the heart of it is this…I wish that my mom had more time….” I instinctively bring a hand to my chin as I feel it begin to tremble.

Caleb crowds me from behind, his hand slipping onto my hip, his thumb swiping up and down on my lower back. “D’you want me to?” He whispers into my hair.

I turn over my shoulder to shake my head and allow myself a brief moment to study his face. He’s so familiar to me now that I feel myself having to concentrate to truly see him. As if he was a mural passed every morning on the way out the door or the lyrics to a favorite song I’ve sung along to a million times. Beautiful. Special, even. But known.

What would have happened if my mom had more time? I wonder, noticing the crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes that, I suppose, haven’t always been there. Would we have gotten married so young? Did I jump from one safety net to the next?

My heart desperately misses the answers that I thought I had at nineteen. The confidence to promise forever to a safe-house boy with a kind heart and the na?veté to believe that would be enough.

As Caleb retreats backward, I take yet another deep breath, fastening on the mask I’ve gotten used to wearing as a well-seasoned hostess. The false face you’re granted when you begin taking advisory meetings at the bank and learn to throw around questions like Where are you summering? It’s clean and polished and shiny, has no discernible emotion, and does not leave a lasting impression—at least with the way I wear it. The moment I feel the mask slip into place, I find the missing parts of my speech within the backlogs of my memory.

“Your generosity tonight will help fund research that can give people living with ALS just that; more time to live. More time to discover who they are. To dance in darkened clubs and fall in love with strangers. To make mistakes and find forgiveness. To drive with music blasting and windows down on a long dirt road. To lie under a tree from dawn to dusk with a good book. To work jobs they hate until they find what they’re meant to do. To spend more hours with their loved ones, doing nothing whatsoever at all, and yet everything, at once. The chance for them to feel as if they got to live a full, consequential life.”

Win nods enthusiastically from the back corner, wrapping her arm around her husband’s waist as he bends down to wipe a tear from her cheek.

“If my mother taught me anything, it was to waste nothing. Not time, opportunities, or resources. So, I encourage you all to continue asking yourselves after tonight: What would Marcie Green do? Because the answer is, probably, drink a glass of white wine, give when you’re able, help when you can, and not waste a moment.”

Caleb steps closer and I turn to find him holding two champagne flutes. I can’t help but smile up at him, taking one. “May I?” he mouths, and I nod in response. “To Marcie,” Caleb says, bending toward the microphone as he toasts the crowd.

“To Marcie,” the room responds in unison, followed by a collective sip.

I let the sparkling bubbles fade off my tongue before I speak again. “Thank you again to Doctor Torres and the team at the research institute and to all of you for being with us tonight. Please get home safely.”

Once I finish, and a gentle applause fades out, the speakers begin playing soft jazz as they had the rest of the evening. I look over the crowd as most guests return to their previous conversations while a few stand to collect their belongings for a quick exit.

“You were amazing, baby,” Caleb says, in a cavalier tone that instantly reminds me of who paid my speech’s acceptance fee.

I spin on him, fast enough that my hair swings over my shoulder. “What did you do?” I enunciate each word in a menacing, slow whisper.

Caleb instantly recoils, his brows twisting together. “What? I—”

“Your mother would be so proud.” Dr. Torres’s voice booms as he makes his way across the stage, his hand reaching out to grasp my arm, which he squeezes tightly. “Nice save,” he says, winking at Caleb. “You’ve got a good man here.” He switches hands to hold the check as he drops my arm and clasps Caleb’s shoulder instead.

Caleb turns his attention toward me, his lips pulled into an uncomfortable smile.

“I do,” I reply, as genuinely as I’m able, though I feel my eyes glaze over with the sheer amount of effort it takes.

“Have a good night, you two,” Dr. Torres says. “You deserve it!” he adds, sauntering off the stage, the obscenely large check in hand.

“Are you seriously mad?” Caleb asks in a near whisper, his eyes scanning over my head to the tables and guests below.

“Well, that depends.” I glare at the underside of his jaw until he tilts his chin back down to face me.

“On?” One of his brows ticks upward in challenge. I accept.

“ On how we managed to raise an extra hundred thousand dollars within the ten minutes it took for Bo to find me.”

His thumb scratches the side of his nose, then just slightly above his lip as he looks down, a crooked smirk pulling at his lips. “Would you believe me if I said it was a very last-minute, anonymous donor?”

“No,” I answer with a short sigh. “I would not.” He reaches for my free hand, but I step back, placing it on my hip instead. Then, I bring my champagne flute to my lips as I stare at him unflinchingly over the top of the glass, swallowing every last drop. His fingers toy with the golden wedding band on his left hand, twisting it around his ring finger as he waits for me to finish. Once I do, I wipe my thumb across my bottom lip, and tilt my head expectantly, purposefully keeping a blank expression.

Caleb bends toward me, speaking in a hushed tone. “You worked so hard for tonight, Sar…What was I supposed to do?”

I scoff. He just doesn’t get it. “ Nothing, Caleb. You were supposed to do nothing,” I say, a little too loudly. I only register that because Caleb’s eyes move sharply to the crowd beyond the stage with a hint of panic.

His jaw flexes, the tendon in the side of his neck visible as he begins to speak in a low, ragged tone. “I don’t even really know why we’re arguing at all right now but…” He pauses, crossing his arms. “Can we discuss this later? Without an audience?”

I don’t answer. Instead, I turn on my heels and storm off the stage; knowing that he’ll follow. I make my way across the ballroom toward the kitchens and the familiar darkened hallway where I’d gathered my courage earlier, nearing the double doors where Bo and Win are still standing.

“We’re gonna get going. Our babysitter can’t stay late and…” Win doesn’t finish her thought, gently shoving her purse into Bo’s arms as she bends to take off her heels. I pass them without a second glance, too angry to stop. I hear Bo whistle long and low, signaling that I must look as pissed off as I feel.

When the familiar footfalls behind me stop abruptly, I look back to see Caleb saying a thoughtful goodbye to them both. Rage boils up closer to the surface at the sight of him taking the time to chat with our friends when he should be following me.

Now, on top of everything else, Caleb wins the better friend award too.

Pushing past the double doors, I move into a storage room lined with spare tables and place my emptied champagne flute onto a storage shelf. I forcefully remove my heels and drop them onto an emptied dolly before I begin pacing in frantic circles, rubbing at my chin so forcefully that I’m sure a layer of makeup has come off onto my palm.

“Sarah?” Caleb calls out apprehensively from the hallway. I hear the double doors shut behind him, the sounds of the crowd and music muffling as they do. “Are you back here?”

“In here,” I respond, crossing my arms. In doing so the clasp of my watch—my mother’s watch—gets stuck on the tulle overlay of my dress. Groaning, I begin tugging at it.

“Where?” Caleb replies, sounding no closer.

“The storage room!” I snap, struggling to pull the watch free. Growing hot behind the eyes, I wrench my wrist a little too hard. Helplessly, I watch as the watch’s clasp breaks before it falls onto the linoleum floor. When I bend down to pick it up, I notice that the tulle of my dress now has a small tear in it as well. “Of course,” I mutter to myself, slipping the broken watch into my cleavage for safekeeping.

This dress doesn’t have pockets. The dresses my mom made me always had pockets.

“Sarah?” Caleb calls out again, apparently attempting to start up a friendly game of Marco Polo.

“Oh my god!” I yell, stepping out into the hall with my arms extended above my head as if to wave down a plane. “There’s one open fucking door in this hallway with a woman inside of it losing her mind ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ style. Did you even attempt to move from that exact spot? Get in here!”

Caleb’s nostrils flare as his chest inflates with a deep breath. “Sarah, I know tonight is emotional for you but—” He begins walking toward me as my sharp laugh cuts him off.

“Right, of course, emotional. I’m emotional! I couldn’t possibly be justified in being angry with you.”

“Maybe if you could explain why you’re angry with me?” Caleb asks, moving closer until I’m backed into the room. He shuts thedoor behind him after a quick, nervous glance into the hallway.

“This was my fundraiser, Caleb. Mine. Not yours. Not anyone else’s. I did all of this by myself, and I intended to fail or succeed by myself.”

“By yourself, huh?” he asks, voice verging on mocking.

“Yes,” I spit back.

Caleb huffs exasperatedly, glancing up to the ceiling as he undoes the top button on his white dress shirt, exposing his Adam’s apple and a whisper of chest hair. “All right, sure…” he says, sarcasm rolling off his tongue. “The guest list, then. How exactly did that come about?”

I grind my molars together, dead-eyeing him.

He nods as if he can hear my snarky thoughts under my vacant expression, his lips pouting in a shitty type of smug expression that I’d like to rub off his face with a dig of my own. “Because I distinctly remember sitting at our kitchen counter as we pulled that list together from my contacts.”

“Yeah, thanks for those. Turned out great. Ree-aally generous friends you’ve got there. And so nice of your parents to show!” They’d not even bothered to RSVP, never mind attend, but Caleb saved them seats at our table regardless.

That knocks the smug look off his face. No one in the history of ever has held two such lousy people in such high regard as Caleb does his parents. “I told you to start smaller, Sar.” He did. I hate that he did. Win did too, in less direct wording. “I told you to—”

“You understand that you’ve made this night meaningless, right?” I ask, tears threatening to pour. I force them away, choking them down until the sadness rests heavy in my throat. I know the moment Caleb sees me cry, he’ll stop fighting. To him, tears are a white flag in battle—an immediate call for ceasefire. Perhaps it’s reckless of me but tonight I’d rather us both be wounded than experience another silent car ride home with unspoken frustrations continuing to pile between us.

I’m done pretending that everything is fine. I’m done pretending that I am fine. Honestly, I think part of me wants Caleb to be mad at me. I can’t always be harder on myself than everyone else is, surely.

“Before you stepped in, I could have at least said I turned a profit. Now between the cost of the event and our own donation, we haven’t.”

“That’s crap and you know it. It was a loss either way,” he says, one of his shoulders lifting as he points toward the ballroom. “You told me weeks ago that you wanted to raise at least double what it cost us. That’s what you said. You were nowhere close to that.”

Out of all the moments to be on the exact same page, I wish it wasn’t this one. “I’m really loving the times you’re choosing to use us and then you, ” I say, trying to force my voice even.

“Pardon?” Caleb crosses his arms and hunches forward.

“You said what it cost us and that I was nowhere near close.”

“Well, you made yourself clear. It’s your event, not mine.”

“But it’s our money I spent, not mine?” I retort.

Caleb purses his lips. “What’s mine is yours,” he replies pointedly.

Allowing that shitty turn of phrase to breathe for a moment, I stare at the tactfully closed door. It reminds me of Caleb’s urgency to get off the stage when I spun on him. And, sure, I care what the people out there think of me too, so it shouldn’t bother me that Caleb does the same and acts accordingly. But it brings up an old wound that time never seems to fully heal.

No matter how many times he’ll tell me otherwise, I feel like I embarrass him. That I’m the unerasable red-wine stain on the otherwise perfectly clean tablecloth that is the Linwood family.

His mother’s indifference toward me over the years, in stark contrast to her unbridled pride in her son, is only ever expressed in fleeting, passive-aggressive comments that hint at my lack of career or ambition. Questions like: How have you been keeping busy? Or comments such as: You must be lonely in that big house all day. And these are immediately followed by news of Caleb’s sister, Cora’s, career achievements or phone-tree gossip about their friends’ daughters—who would have been much better wives, no doubt—and their bright, shining, somehow-still-single lives. As if to remind Caleb that other women still exist in the world. Successful women. Women ready to give him children if he so desires because of course it’s solely my decision for us to not have kids.

Caleb’s dad, Cyrus, is universally indifferent to anything that doesn’t fill his pockets. He met Caleb’s mother, Michelle, during her first year of college when he, thirteen years her senior, taught a guest lecture on networking in business. I wasn’t there but I’d wager to guess that the keynotes were: Be born rich and use daddy’s contacts to get ahead. After that first encounter, Michelle quickly became “Chellie” to him and, soon after, everyone else. The Linwoods have a long, eerie tradition of all family members having first names that begin with the letter C. He didn’t call her Chellie out of affection or familiarity—he did it so she’d fit the mold.

Sometimes I wonder if Cyrus would like me more if my name was Claire or Charlotte or Cecelia. No…not that last one.

“I’m sorry tonight failed,” I say, turning to face him—my eyes wide and smile insincere. “I’ll be sure to pay you back.”

Caleb’s shoulders sink as he drags a hand down from forehead to chin. “Fuck’s sake, Sarah. You know I don’t think about it like that. That’s not fucking fair!” His voice rises, startling us both—Caleb rarely yells. Never at me. The moment freezes, as do I.

“Fuck…Sorry.” He blows out a long breath, bringing his wrists to his temples. “I—I didn’t mean to upset you. I didn’t think that it would upset you.” His shoulders fall on another sigh. “I really was just trying to help.”

“Yeah,” I say, then mumble, “always so helpful.”

“Do you expect me to apologize for that?” he asks, letting his arms fall heavy to his sides. “You were off pouting somewhere, the auction was done, I sent Bo and Win to try and find you, but time was running out and I had to make a decision. I’m sorry that I thought you’d rather save face, but clearly, I underestimated your pridefulness.”

“Well, times are tough!” I laugh bitterly. “I have to reserve the resources when my supply of pride runs so goddamn low.”

Caleb rolls his eyes. “Don’t be dramatic. You have plenty to be proud of.”

“Really?” I smile near hysterically, shaking my head as the tipof my nose burns with the threat of tears once again. “What, exactly? Name one thing that I should be proud of, Cay. Something that’s only mine. Something that I’ve done entirely on my own.”

I watch as the man who’s known me for seventeen years, the very same man who’s been hailed as a genius and received endless awards for his innovative, brilliant brain, struggles to come up with a single answer.

And there’s no fighting it anymore, his silence cracks me wide open. Tears spring loose on a broken sob.

Caleb’s eyes close softly as he lessens the distance between us and wraps me in his arms.

That’s enough, I think.

White flag.

Take me home.