Before
After the disastrous Kern Family Christmas, Kestrel drove Hank’s truck all night, straight back to their little apartment in Ann Arbor.
She fell into bed and, beside bathroom breaks, remained there for twenty-two hours.
When her body wouldn’t let her sleep anymore, she kicked off the covers and blinked at the daylight.
Everything hurt—her back, her legs, her neck, but also parts of her that she couldn’t name. Even the space around her body ached.
She rolled onto Hank’s side of the bed and put her face in his pillow.
It smelled like warmth, safety, and passion, and it filled her with yearning for a way to keep him.
She could change. She could stamp down the unruly parts of herself.
She could cut off the bits that didn’t fit.
She could be an Anika, Jennifer, or Stacey.
Maybe she’d even start to go by Sarah. There would be loss, sure, but think of all she’d be gaining! A place, a family. And Hank.
It was Christmas Day. She got back on the schedule and worked a double, rushing to car crashes while imagining a way to crash her own life into a perfect, mythical version of Sarah Kestrel. That fantasy kept her going for six days.
And then on New Year’s Eve, she watched a drunk-driving victim get zipped up in a body bag. As the plastic closed over the corpse’s face, Kestrel choked on her feeling of airlessness and hurried away, clawing at her throat.
“Kes? You okay?” asked her coworker Cody.
“I need a minute.”
Her whole system was flooding with white-hot anger.
Her cells vibrated with it—each mitochondrion and tiny little ribosome trembled with rage.
And over everything rained despair, because she realized that she couldn’t.
And that she wouldn’t. Never again would she willingly step into a box and let anyone lock the lid.
Cody let Kestrel off early, so she was in the apartment when Hank returned.
“Do you know how dangerous that drive was alone at night?” he said, starting off in a more aggressive tone than was usual for him. “I had to ask Cody to check on you on Christmas Eve and make sure you weren’t stuck in a ditch somewhere.”
“You called Cody but not me?” asked Kestrel.
“I figured you wouldn’t want to talk to me.”
Hank was the only person she’d wanted to talk to, but she didn’t say it.
“It wasn’t unreasonable what Mom was asking,” said Hank. “We all have room to grow, and there are things you could learn from my family.”
“I know what you’re saying sounds logical to you,” said Kestrel. “But you’re missing the point—or they are, because I suspect you’re parroting their words.”
Hank sank sadly into their beloved secondhand sofa. “If you had just gone to church—”
“Yeah, what if I had?” said Kestrel. “And pretended to be who they wanted me to be all Sunday long? And then we got married and moved to Wisconsin to work on the family farm, and every Sunday I kept pretending, and on weekdays, too, year after year, scrunching myself down into whatever shape they needed me to be—”
“You would have been willing to move to Wisconsin?”
“Of course I would, Hank! Are you kidding me? Part of a big messy family, working at something interesting, and with you? That was my dream!”
They’d finally adopt that outdoor-loving dog they always talked about and build their own cottage a short way from the big house.
And on Christmas morning, they’d walk over before the sun was up so they could experience the Santa magic with the little kids.
And when someone needed the garlic press, Kestrel would grab it first because she’d know exactly where everything was in Mom’s kitchen.
Hank was staring at Kestrel with such a profound sadness, Kestrel ached to hold him and kiss joy back into that wonderful face.
“There’s no way it would work,” he said. “It couldn’t work. I was fooling myself.”
“It doesn’t have to be a binary choice, Hank,” said Kestrel, sitting beside him. “I’m not trying to make it your family versus me.”
Fireworks popped in the streets. They both looked at the oven clock. Midnight.
Her gaze left the clock and met Hank’s. Expectation sat there, as heavy as an invisible elephant.
It felt ludicrous not to kiss. It was the New Year!
And she was facing the love of her life!
Some part of her hoped that kissing him now would bring back the magic of their first kiss on that New Year’s Eve and the moment they’d both fallen so deeply for each other that being apart had seemed unimaginable.
She leaned forward an inch.
Hank looked down at his shoes.
Kestrel stood up, picked a mug off the counter, and threw it, shattering it against the tile. She yelled, “Why didn’t you fight for me?”
“I did. I—”
“Why didn’t you stand up to them?”
“But . . . they’re my family.”
That word. It felt wrong somehow. Kestrel’s dream of a family was brilliant and hopeful and perfect inside her, but against the reality of the Kerns, it shattered into jagged splinters.
“Your—” Her voice caught in her throat. She took a deep breath and met his eyes as she said, “Your family is a cult.”
Hank loaded some of his things into his truck. When he came back into the kitchen, Kestrel turned to face him, intending to yell again. But he leaned toward her, and her words were gone. They fell into each other, her face against his chest, his arms around her.
They held each other, feeling wounded love in silence.
Her hands gripped the strong muscles of his back as if for life.
She inhaled through her nose, and the smell of him set her heart ringing like a bell.
Her whole body felt soft, as if it would mold itself onto his.
Her thoughts were quiet, and in the calm her gut seemed to say, Him.
Hank. You belong here, with him. This is your home.
But Hank said, “You can keep the furniture.”
And he let go of her and walked out the door.
As if gravity had suddenly magnified, Kestrel was pushed downward, crumpling chest-first onto the kitchen floor among the shards of ceramic mug.
She lay there for a long time, her cheek slowly warming the tile.
The walnut-shaped ache beside her heart felt boulder-heavy and was pinning her down, making it hard to breathe.
How she had loved him! The way a lake loves a dam, filling it, pressing against it, lapping its borders.
The pain was so much more intense because she knew he’d not just loved her—he had truly seen her and accepted her as she actually was.
And only after that had he cast her off.
How could she recover from such a profound rejection? How could anyone?
And then, from deep inside that monumental pain escaped an unexpected sob, and she realized it wasn’t sorrow. It was relief. She would never again face the temptation to chop herself into bits in order to fit his family. She would remain Kestrel.
She had loved deeply and truly, and her heart, though broken, was also surprisingly strong.
But she needed somewhere for all that glorious love of hers to go, so almost immediately, she began to date other men.
Rashly and lavishly she dated, unburdened by illusions that anyone would want her forever.
And she went to the local shelter and asked for whichever dog had been there the longest. Hank used to talk about getting a purebred German shepherd.
Kestrel wanted a mutt who had been passed over again and again for years, who had been deemed unlovable—and she wanted to love her.
Karma suffered from high anxiety and potty-training challenges, but who’s perfect?
She loved cheese curds, ear scratches, and one specific squeaky ball that she’d tuck under her belly like an egg under a mama hen.
She sometimes forgot her anxiety at dog parks and ran nearly fast enough to fly.
When Kestrel came home from work, her tail wagged so hard, she almost knocked herself over.
From Kestrel’s eyes, Karma was immensely lovable, and the two of them together almost made a family.