Chapter 35
It was warm out. One of those early April days that flirted with summer, all breeze and sunlight and that faint scent of things waking up again.
It wasn’t a session day, but Iris had texted me to meet her at the park after she finished work.
I did, and for once, I wasn’t annoyed by her plans to immerse me in real life.
The park buzzed with activity. Kids squealed in bursts of laughter.
Dogs barked at passing squirrels. The sun hit my face in that perfect kind of way—warm, but not heavy, a reward for making it through winter.
Iris made a beeline to the swings like it was the most natural thing in the world to do with me, like we hadn’t spent months now bonding over my trauma.
“Come on,” she called over her shoulder.
I hesitated for a second, then followed.
The swing set creaked under my weight; the metal chains were surprisingly warm against my fingers.
We swayed in silence at first, kicking lazily at the wood chips by our feet.
Then she created momentum by swinging back and forth, her legs outstretched, hair catching the light in a way that made me want to stare and look away at the same time.
She looked free. I didn’t know what that felt like.
We swung in silence for another minute. My fingers curled around the chains; my legs moved on their own accord.
She didn’t push me, but I knew what she wanted.
She wanted to know what secrets I was still keeping from her.
“I found him,” I finally told her. I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it for the last seven months. She didn’t stop swinging; she just tilted her head slightly as she watched me.
“The Deacon?”
I nodded, impressed by how quickly she knew who I was talking about.
There were multiple options for who him could have been, but she knew what I was saying almost immediately.
I couldn’t say his name, doing so forced me to recognize that he still existed in the same world as me.
“Yeah, back in September. I saw him on the news at some event. Now I know where he is, and I know that he is alive.”
“What did that feel like?”
I didn’t answer right away. A breeze moved through the trees; I watched the leaves dance under its caress.
“Like I still have unfinished business to attend to,” I finally said. “Like the world has handed me a loaded gun.”
She slowed her swing. “What are you thinking?”
I stared ahead. “That I want to kill him.”
She didn’t gasp, didn’t flinch. She was just her usual brand of quiet. Not oppressively so. Not judging. Just giving me space to speak and think and be.
“Okay,” she said softly. “Let’s walk through it.”
I turned to her. “What?”
“If you were going to confront him… how would that go? What would that look like?”
“I’d kill him.”
“What if you approached it without violence?”
“I don’t want that version.”
“But if you had to use words… even before you did something physical, what would you say?”
I looked away, jaw tight. “I have nothing to say.”
She finally turned fully toward me. “Are you sure about that?”
I kicked at the dirt, watching it scatter. “If I say something, it becomes real. If I say nothing, I stay in control and control is all I’ve got left.”
Iris didn’t argue with that, she just continued to swing slightly beside me, like the silence between us was a thread she didn’t want to snap lest everything fall apart. Because this… this may finally be something she couldn’t sew back together.
Just when the air grew thicker with the tension of what I was about to say, a voice interrupted us.
“Iris?”
We turned. A woman approached with a toddler on her hip. She looked like someone from a mommy blog—clean, dressed in pastel tones that matched her daughter’s outfit, even her diaper bag looked organized. Iris’s face lit up.
“Melanie, hey!”
The woman’s gaze flicked between me and Iris and then she said, “Oh my god, Iris. He’s adorable.”
My whole body tensed, and my ears went hot.
The woman was referring to me. I wanted to tell her that she was wrong but the part of me that always wanted to ruin good things finally stayed quiet.
I let it hang there, and the lie of omission tasted sweet and ugly in my mouth.
In direct contrast to my discomfort, Iris beamed.
“Isn’t he?” She didn’t correct her friend; she just let the assumption hang there in the sunshine.
It made me want to disappear and also—somehow—be exactly who Melanie thought I was.
As Iris chatted with her friend, I watched the little girl toddle toward the baby swings, laughing as she tried to pull herself up.
I wasn’t jealous. I wasn’t. But there was something that felt sharply similar to jealousy that rolled around in my chest. If my path had looked different, could my life have ever been like this?
Me, a dad, with a kid with someone who smiled like Iris?
Could I have been someone’s… parent? I looked down at my hands, unsure of what they were meant for.
What were they good at? Potential violence?
Setting up cameras? Typing to research the most dangerous roads in the country?
Certainly not love, or gently holding a baby, or caressing my wife’s skin.
My own skin flushed hot, and I pushed the daydream away.
Once Iris said goodbye and turned back to me, I asked, “What the hell was that?” My tone sounded gruffer and sharper than I had intended.
I didn’t know why I felt so angry all of a sudden.
No matter what I said or how I said it, it didn’t pull the smile off of Iris’s face.
She remained her happy, collected self as she said, “That was Melanie. She assumed you were my boyfriend and it was easier not to correct her because I would never tell her you are actually my…” her voice trailed off because what were we?
It certainly didn’t feel like I was just her client anymore. My ears burned.
“Did she really think that?”
She tilted her head. “Why wouldn’t she?
I hated how much I didn’t hate that. Iris wasn’t just kind or funny or beautiful in her nerdy, too-honest way.
She was good. The kind of good that lasted.
The kind of person that didn’t cheat or lie or touch kids or tell you to stop crying or threaten to have you medicated because your grief and pain made them uncomfortable.
She made s’mores and wore fluffy socks and got excited about baby goats.
She didn’t flinch when I said I wanted to kill someone.
She just asked me to walk her through it.
And I—I had trauma coiled inside of me like barbed wire.
Nightmares that made me sweat through sheets.
A YouTube channel that documented every time I tried to die.
A reputation as the guy who chased death because he didn’t believe in healing.
People like me didn’t get people like her.
But for a moment, a tiny flicker of space between heartbeats, I wondered what it would be like.
If she were mine. If I was… lovable. And it made me wonder if someone like her could ever want someone like me, all of me, not just the jokes and the quiet smiles and the moments where I seemed better, but the whole package, the rage, the panic, the silence, the rot.
And then she glanced at me, soft-eyed, still smiling, and said, “That was fun. Thank you.” And just like that, I knew I’d die to protect her.
Even if it meant protecting her from myself.
After a few more minutes on the swings, we found a dry and warm patch of grass and collapsed onto it. My heart hadn’t stopped racing since my intrusive thoughts had bombarded me earlier.
“You’re quieter than usual,” she noticed.
I shrugged. “Just… thinking.”
She picked at the grass, slow and thoughtful. “The worst things you’ve survived… they don’t make you unlovable, Danny.”
I didn’t respond but a part of me—a very, very small part—wished she was right.