16. ABRAHAM
AbrAHAM
ICOULD THINK of two distinct moments in my life that truly threw me for a curve.
The first was moving counterclockwise against my own instinct and getting myself half-burned alive as a result.
The second, happened a little under four years later when a twenty-seven-year-old with a face that had my mid-life crisis written all over it, threw herself—literally—into my arms and forced her tongue into my mouth.
I’d always thought fortune favors the brave was a stupid fucking saying, espoused by Dunning-Kruger victims and alcoholics with no truly regulated baseline.
A declaration that preceded a trip to the ER, county lock up, or worse—a come to Jesus moment with JAG—and I’d had little patience for folks who acted first and thought last. But that Sunday night, I’d never been more grateful for a young woman’s risk because that first taste was like a first high. Bright. Consuming. Slightly horrifying.
I’d never forget her moan on my tongue, her ass in my hands, nor the finality in the way she’d trustingly wrapped her entire body around me as if to say, you’re it. You’re what I want.
Those moments—core moments that’d reshaped my life completely—were so deeply weaved into the tapestry of my personhood that without them, I couldn’t fathom the man I’d have been instead.
Probably still working in intelligence, for the agency or the private sector, maybe.
Unattached and unbothered until my clock ran out.
What had never occurred to me in one million lifetimes was that I’d forget so quickly that the harder you held onto something, the more fragile it probably was.
That Sunday. The following month. The subsequent years—gone.
My wife was gone.
My grief expelled in a tired sigh as I contemplated adding a night to my hotel reservation and checking in early just to get away from this place, but it wouldn’t matter. I wouldn’t be able to sleep and I couldn’t make myself get up.
Nineah on the other hand, snored softly, obliviously peaceful in the land of unconsciousness while I watched her.
Only she could come out of a traumatic accident still looking like an angel. And although I was admittedly tired of walking into ERs seeing her bruised up like she’d picked a fight with an MMA heavyweight, I also couldn’t help my overwhelming relief.
She was alive. Mostly unscathed. And to my surprise, talking.
As if she knew I was thinking about her, my wife stirred, rolling over onto her side, wincing at the stiffness of her injured body. Her eyes fluttered open and she gave a sleepy smile. “Hi.”
“Morning.”
“That’s a start,” she praised, yawning. “Hopefully by the end of the day I’ll have bullied you up to two-word greetings.”
It was apparent she was ready to get the fuck out of here. Hospitals had always made her uncomfortable. Ever since her neglectful parents had left her wandering around one alone at three and never came back for her.
“They started weaning you off the morphine last night,” I told her. “The doctor’s preparing your discharge papers now and says we should be set to leave around noon. She’d like you to eat something first.”
“All business,” she murmured. “I can respect it. I suppose it should comfort me to know that some things stay the same after four years, and yet I also kind of want to crack you open like a music box and find the gear that makes the ballerina go spinny, spinny.”
When I didn’t respond, she shook her head and turned her back on me. Raising her arms to stretch out her muscles, she bent over to each side, wincing at the tightness in her shoulders and back. Then she began to shake. It took me a moment to realize she wasn’t crying, but laughing.
Ten days removed from a traumatic event, I couldn’t stop staring at the bruising on her arms and cheek, and she was fucking laughing.
“I’m sorry,” she wheezed. “I was just thinking…” This started another fit of giggles that turned into coughs. Retrieving her inhaler from my pocket, I handed it to her, but she didn’t turn back around to take the medicine. “I actually see it.”
“Explain.”
“Okay first, I have severe impulse control issues, which you’re probably well aware of,” she said, rolling her neck from one side to the other.
“And no offense, but you’re so drunk on the Kool-Aid I bet you haven’t slept in or skipped a run since high school.
Second, we’re complete mirror opposites.
Third…” She flopped back down on the bed and looked up at me from upside down, holding up three fingers.
“Being ignored is my toxic weakness. Eventually, with delusion and sheer will, I’d have forced you to be my friend and maybe if I were less of a bad bitch and not very funny, you’d have resisted.
But alas…” she made a sweeping gesture with her hand. “Mariage.”
I stared at her like I was watching a stranger because I might as well have been.
Her smile fell and she sucked in a sharp inhale. “Please don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like I might disintegrate at any moment.” Her dark brown eyes met mine and the mirth that was there just seconds ago was gone. “I’m not insane.”
“I’m not worried about you.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
I hesitated. We were stuck here until she was medically cleared to fly.
If I wanted to be an asshole, I could catch her up on the last sixteen months of our lives but eventually, she’d regain her memories, and we’d go right back to before—co-existing on opposite sides of that mirror she’d mentioned.
Not speaking. Not laughing. Not looking one another in the eye.
There was no point to this conversation.
“You’re compartmentalizing,” I told her. “That’s survival. You’ll have more than enough time to unpack your shit when this is over.”
She considered that. “They said they didn’t find any identification on me when the EMTs brought me in.”
“That’s correct.”
“And no one can tell me what I was doing? How I got to the middle of the goddamn ocean in the first place?”
“Sea,” I corrected. “Logical deduction says you were on a ship, either thrown overboard or you jumped. The events preceding your rescue remain a mystery, but the absence of a digital footprint reveals two possible outcomes—you wiped everything and left of your own free will, or against it.”
Her shoulders slumped. “Fuck.”
“Until we can rule out your culpability, we have to consider all possibilities. There were no signs of a break in or a struggle, the security cameras were looped for about five minutes. Whatever happened, happened in a short window.”
“What do you think?”
I paused. “Speculation won’t help the situation.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
I looked at her. “I think I’ve been married to you long enough that it’s strange you never discuss your work.
You complain just the right amount that it passes for communication, but never with enough detail to constitute transparency.
At first, I assumed that it was because your projects were classified property, but you evade even the most indirect questions.
It’s not that I assume the worst, it’s that I can’t deny it. ”
“So this could’ve been related to my work?” she asked.
My gut was telling me no.
Nineah wasn’t a door kicker and she didn’t have the stomach for field work. Not to mention, the passports and IDs she’d procured told the story of a runner, not a fighter. If she’d left our home of her own accord, it was for a very good reason. One she’d have to have been willing to die for.
“I don’t think so.”
Her brows knit in the middle. “Okay. So, I’m supposed to just, what? Wait around, hoping I remember something? Meanwhile, there may or may not be someone out there who thinks they’ve successfully off’d me?” she squeaked.
“I know patience is a difficult concept for you, but this is what I do. I’m not asking you to trust me, I’m asking you to trust what you know about me.”
Nineah swung her legs around and stumbled to her feet. For a moment I feared she might charge at me, but she about faced and paced the room instead.
“What I know about you, is that you’re trained so well, you can lie without blinking and kill without feeling.
I know that you’ve probably talked to hundreds of people just like this, feigning familiarity so you can extract what you need from them before betraying them.
How do I even know you’re really my husband?
” she demanded. “You haven’t given me a phone.
I haven’t been able to confirm anything you say. ”
“Don’t,” I warned.
“Don’t what?” she said, her cheery little personality flipping on its edge.
I sat up in my chair. “You’re well aware that it’s in your best interest for whoever you made contact with in Palanga to believe you drowned in the Baltic.
And until I can confirm that you weren’t compromised through FX, you’re not touching so much as a goddamn calculator.
As for the rest of that bullshit rant, I’m not one of your little girlfriends or your punching bag.
You have a question, you fucking ask me. ”
She stopped pacing.
Her shoulders deflating, she limped back to her bed and climbed onto it. Wrapping her arms around her knees, she pulled them up against her chest and rested her chin there. “Just one—How do you plan on confirming anything by handicapping the only cyber specialist in the room?”
Fucking women.
“The same way I did anything before you.”
Now I saw why you never worked your own shit.
I’d been here three days and she was already provoking me, testing me.
I had to remind myself we were barely cordial, let alone familiar because the urge to go back and forth with her was like experiencing withdrawal.
The woman I’d been in the process of divorcing hadn’t wanted to meet me in the gutter.
Detached, devoid, depressed, she’d barely been willing to look me in the eye.
Now she was yelling at me like she didn’t know better and my dick already couldn’t separate passion from overstimulation.
My wife for twenty six more days huffed like I was some inconvenient bastard and not the sole reason she wasn’t wandering a Lithuanian hospital in confusion. “I see why you’re not well liked.”
“You liked me well enough to stalk me, accost me, and throw your pussy at me like some restless college girl.” I knew it was the wrong thing to say when her back straightened at the same time her eyes blanked.
I stupidly didn’t quit there. “Or did you think I was the one who interrupted my peace to go chasing after a twenty-seven-year-old?”
My comment hitting its target, Nineah seemed to snap back into herself. Her eyes lit up with irritation and that single display of emotion was like a stimulant to my bloodstream. “I don’t believe you.”
“You’re irate, afraid, and you keep testing me which means you not only believe me, you know I’m the gatekeeper to the last four years of your life. But you’re so used to people lying to you, you only trust information you can trick out of them. Trying asking for a change. It’s quicker.”
Her raw emotion was triggering me to no fucking end and I needed to put as much distance as possible between us before I did something asinine—like touch her—but if she had questions, I wasn’t going to withhold shit.
Rocking back and forth, soothing herself, she stared straight ahead until she finally spoke. “Who walked me down the aisle?”
It was the last thing I expected her to ask, but I answered anyway. “Matthias.”
“And my shoes?”
I frowned.
She wanted to know about her fucking shoes?
“Uh, white and satin. With a bow. I could see your toes. You painted them blue.”
Nineah nodded.
Then the first reaction she’d had that actually made sense to me, suddenly broke open like a poorly constructed dam and the flood swallowed her whole as she began to cry.