11. Boone
Boone
A s June and Daisy rest in the room next door, I watch as Elias paces the floor before me.
"Are you two going to tell me what the hell the problem is," Cora cuts in, after a long silence. "Or are you just going to sit here all night acting like stubborn teenagers?”
I frown. I might not know what she’s talking about, but I know that she’s got a point.
A sudden rainstorm outside made it impossible for me to take back off to the cabin as soon as I wanted to, leaving Cora and I here overnight, even though June’s labor is well and truly over.
I doubt Cora would have been in any rush to get out of here even if we could – she's got Woodward on her lap next to the fire, and seems as relieved as Elias does that all of this has come to an end less horrible than the ones we’ve faced before.
I glance over at Elias, who has hardly been able to look me in the eye since I got here.
If I hadn’t told him that I was here with Cora, shit, he might have told me to get my ass out and never come back – not that I could have blamed him, not after everything.
Maybe I deserve it, the way he has pulled back from me, given that I pushed him away when he tried to help.
"I don’t know, Boone," he replies, after a long pause. "You want to say goodbye to your second-cousin first, or what?”
The words hang in the air, heavy with meaning. Cora’s eyes fly open in shock, and even Woodward seems to sit up a little straighter.
"Your second cousin?” she gasps. "Does that mean-"
She clamps a hand over her face as it hits her. Elias and I glare each other down for a moment before I grit out a few words in response.
"Yes," I mutter. "He’s my cousin.”
Those words carry a weight to them, a weight that neither of us have dared content with in so long.
It’s true – we came up here together, back when we lost our family, and he tried his best to bridge the gap between us.
But, when I married Anna, I thought I had found a family of my own, a family I couldn’t lose to illness the way ours had been taken from us.
I had pushed him away, too much of a reminder of everything that we had lost by coming here in the first place, too deep-seated in my pain to so much as look him in the eye.
"And you were going to let-" she begins, but then she stops herself, shakes her head. "What happened between you two? I thought you were just neighbors, that it was a territory dispute or something..."
"You ask him," Elias replies, his voice pulled taut. I can hear the months and years of pain in his tone, and it twists like a knife in my gut, the knowledge that I should have done more, that I could have done more, if I had tried.
She turns her gaze to me with an inquisitorial look.
I can’t look at her, not quite. God knows she has seen the worst of me today, what with how I tried to stop her from coming here – not because I wanted June or Elias to suffer, of course, but because I had been consumed with the thought of losing her.
And letting her walk out of that door seemed tantamount to accepting that she would leave me, just the way Anna had, just the way my whole family had. That she’d chosen something else over the safety I offered her.
And the cruel selfishness was not lost on me – in fact, an hour or so after she left, once I had stopped brooding, I had taken off after her, determined to do what I could to help.
But that didn’t remove the doubts she still clearly had about me, and the only way I’d get them off my chest was by telling the truth.
"I couldn’t stand to let anyone in after Anna,” I admit, lowering my gaze to the uneven wooden floorboards below. "Not after…losing everything. So I shut you out. the rest of the world too.”
Elias lets out a hiss through his teeth.
“Cousin, if you had come to us-"
"I know you would have helped," I shoot back. "But so much time had passed. And then I heard in town you had a wife. I…I couldn’t stand to see you with something I didn’t have. It reminded me of everything I’d lost."
The words come out of me piecemeal, and I struggle to say it out loud. None of it’s a lie, but I have been happy keeping this to myself for so long, it feels almost as though I am betraying myself by saying it out loud.
No, not happy. Happy’s not a word I would have used to describe myself, not for a long time.
But I found myself able to cope with it, the sheer weight of everything bearing down on me, when I knew I didn’t have to risk losing anyone else.
Keeping Elias at arm’s length, well, it might not have been the kindest way to go about it, but at least I knew where the hell I stood, right?
“I knew you didn’t want me here. I pretended you weren’t kin. Pushed it out of my mind. Didn’t even tell June I had any family out here, let alone that my cousin was my neighbor. Figured it was your loss,” Elias asks, his voice low and gruff.
I can still see a small part of the boy my cousin used to be, the pain in his eyes from everything we’ve lost. And it strikes me that, in the midst of all this, he lost me, too.
I pulled myself from his life and made it so he had no choice but to live it alone. The thought snaps like a blister against my skin, and, as I stare up at him, I realize how goddamn bad a cousin I’ve been.
"You should be worried about your wife and your daughter, not me!”
Cora’s eyes dance back and forth between us and she bites down hard on her lip, clearly not sure how to handle this mess. I stand up, squaring up against my brother, our eyes narrow as we glare each other down.
"You don’t get to come in here after all this time and act as though I’m the one who made the mistake," Elias growls. My first instinct is to plant my hands on his chest and shove him away – but that’s the instinct that landed me in this mess to begin with.
"Well, you better get used to it," I shoot back. "Because I’m not going anywhere."
His gaze shifts slightly, like he’s trying to take it in. But I stand my ground. I have spent enough time turning my back on my family, on the people I care about, just to protect myself from further harm.
But if Cora had listened to me, Elias might well have been without a wife and daughter right now – and it could all have been my fault.
Before I can stop myself, I pull my cousin into an embrace – a little awkward, a little restrained, but still, a promise that I’m here now and I don’t intend to leave again.
For a moment, he resists, but then he lifts his arms and returns it. My little cousin, there in my grasp. I don’t know what it’ll take to piece together the harm I’ve caused, but at least I know where to start.
"Good to have you back, cousin,” he mumbles, and I look over his shoulder to where Cora is sitting with Woodward, her hand in his rough fur, a small smile on her face.
"Good to be back," I reply. And, for once, for the first time in the last few years – I actually mean it.