Chapter 12 #2
At that moment, the weather flings something sharp – a small branch or stone – at the kitchen window.
They both flinch, but the glass holds, and when they look back at each other, Robin seems to have softened.
At the word wedding, maybe. Or the waver in Nora’s voice.
Like he’s stepped back into his own shoes – or rather, the socks that Nora had knitted him one Christmas, warm and steadied on their tiled floor.
Long pause. His anger, ebbing.
No, he says, and he’s quiet; still rubbing his arm. No, you’re right.
Relief washes over her, then. Like the sun that is due the next morning, after the storm blows through overnight.
And she’s about to go over to him, but then Bren is in the doorway, saying can he help with anything, and there is a moment where both men look at each other; Robin, listless now, rather than angry; Bren looking awkward, swamped in the clothes that aren’t his.
I’ll just, Robin says, and he gestures at nothing. Says sorry, slides past Bren into the hall, and closes the bedroom door behind him.
Is everything … okay? Bren asks.
Why did you have to say that, Nora says, rounding on him, and Bren doesn’t ask what she means. He must’ve overheard their row, or assumed that Robin would have shared what he’d said; known there’s no point denying it.
In my defence, Bren says, he started in on me.
He did not start in on you, Nora says. Robin isn’t like that.
She picks up her wine, doesn’t drink it, as Bren says, right, okay. He seemed pretty riled up to me, but –
Please don’t, Bren, she says. I can’t do this.
And before he can reply, she steams on, reaches for something that would make sense; something she thinks he’ll understand. Something she, too, can make sense of.
I don’t have many people I can count on, in my life, okay? But what I do have is the both of you. When it suits you.
Bren tilts his head. His St Christopher watching her, like a third eye.
You’re my two favourite people, Nora says, unable to keep the emotion out of her voice. But ever since you got back, you’re making me feel like I have to … choose.
Stillness, in the kitchen. The wind, outside, finally dying down.
You really think that, Bren says, in a low voice. And she says after the way they talked to each other, in there? Yes. But he says no, not that.
You think I’m only in your life … when it suits me?
Nora says nothing. Drinks her wine.
It’s true then, he says. What Robin said? That I make you feel worthless?
Unworthy, Nora reasons, and she’s already apologetic, hating the shutters that’ll come down, how he’ll retreat from her, now she’s confirmed it. But I was angry with you when I said that, she says. It was before we knew about the phone call.
Tannins, from the wine, on her tongue.
But I did make you feel that way? Bren asks.
And Nora looks at him, standing there in Robin’s too-large clothes.
At the pendant she bought him, the patron saint of travel, but also protection.
And she wants to say yes, but he also said you light me up, remember.
But she stays quiet, because sharing such a thing won’t do anything good, for anyone.
I never … intended to do that, Bren says.
And I didn’t intend for Robin to share that with you, Nora says. I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s got into him. I’m a big girl, Bren. I don’t need him … managing my relationship with you.
Relationship, Bren echoes, and she says yes. He nods, seems sad, but she doesn’t know what he wants from her; there is no definition for what he is, what they have, and he must know that. Outside, the gutters, newly cleaned, drip rainwater onto the ground.
I think I should go, Bren says. The storm’s eased up, a bit.
Yeah, Nora says.
They stand there for one more moment and then she follows him to the front door; refuses his offer to return Robin’s clothes; he can keep them, okay, thanks, of course.
I’m sorry for … whatever happened here, he says, once he’s stepped outside. Me too, she is going to say, but he turns to her before she can, saying for the record, Nora? You weren’t someone I checked in with when it suited me, or just when I wanted to.
He is standing where he did four weeks before, when she first saw him at her party.
It’s fine, she says. Really.
No, Nora, he says, just let me say this. Because I wanted to reach out every day. I thought about you all the time, if I let myself. So I got really good at not letting myself. Trying to detach from … everything, back home.
Nora is aware that this is important, what he’s saying. Aware, also, that Robin is only metres away, behind their bedroom door.
And I always thought home was complicated, for me, Bren says. But maybe it’s not. Maybe now I’m here, it’s easier than I thought.
Everything can be easy, she says, nodding. I’ll talk to Robin, and it’ll be fine.
And Bren’s nodding back, and there’s a second where she thinks things will be fine, just like she’s said, but then he stops. Shakes his head slightly, instead, and says sorry, Nora. But what is it you’ll talk to him about?
Us, she says, after a protracted pause, rain glistening on the parked cars in the street. I’ll make him see there’s nothing to worry about, here. That we’re like family.
Right. Except you were never just family to me, Nora.
Everything in high contrast, as he says it. Soaked ground, red hair. Feelings she cannot name.
I’m probably way out of line, saying this now, Bren says, but I got it wrong once, when I left, and I didn’t put it right, or even talk to you, about any of it, so this is me … talking, this time.
Nora is staring at him.
And maybe we missed our chance, Bren says, and maybe I don’t get what you’ve got here, with Robin, but I see you looking uneasy, Nora, every time the wedding comes up, and I’m just saying, if there’s a part of you that feels like this whole thing is – not what you want?
Then you can walk away, like I did. With me.
That’s ludicrous, Nora wants to say. You are ludicrous.
But her brain isn’t working, her mind is not connecting the synapses that fire between thought and language, and she doesn’t imagine him kissing her, this time, doesn’t feel much of anything except a stunned blank dumbness as he says just give it some thought, okay?
Before he heads down the path into the blurred, storm-wrecked day; a day where everything has changed.
_
Almost every hiker – and in fact, most thrill-seeking tourists – Bren has crossed paths with in recent years has seen 127 hours.
A film about Aron Ralston who went walking alone in a canyon in Utah, only to get trapped under a boulder for five days.
Five days of waiting, with no communication, his mind primed for any glimmer of rescue.
Five days of wishing he’d told someone where he was going.
Five days of self-reflection, extreme regret and agonising possibility.
Five days of hell, essentially, ending only because he cut off his own arm and willed himself towards freedom.
Bren thinks a lot about that movie in the five days after the storm.
His own five days of no contact. Of regret, and possibility.
Five days of priming himself for any message from Nora, which does not come, and he can’t be sore about that after Robin’s point because yes, he has been known to disappear for months at a time, but in all fairness there wasn’t a question to answer, wasn’t a wedding three weeks from now; wasn’t a situation where, while not his actual arm, it does feel like he’s cut off a part of himself and held it out, is waiting to see if she’ll take it.
He’s aware the comparison ends there; he’s bleeding out hope, not blood, with three meals a day and a bed to sleep in and innumerable cups of coffee; checking his flight app to stay occupied between his walks and his mind-numbing conversations with his mother.
But Bren can feel something clotting inside of him as he begins to check flights more frequently.
An itch, almost, that is becoming hard to ignore.
He does odd jobs for his mother to pass the time.
Checks his bank account, baulks, does some handyman jobs for the next few days around the village until someone says he looks so much like Jon and he decides he’s earned enough cash for now, enough to put towards his ticket back to the outdoor centre; emails traded; yep, the next season’s contract is still his; does he want to do his NZOIA Rock 2 assessment, sure, yeah, sign him up.
Long days like this. Longer nights. And then, on the fifth evening, Bren watches another movie, in the company of his mother this time.
No amputated limbs in this one as she sits with her herbal tea and he sits scrolling for routes back to Auckland, cheapest via Singapore or Shanghai, but in spite of himself he ends up lowering his phone and watching the film properly.
The protagonist needs to find herself, but to do that she needs time alone, she’s going to walk some distance with a giant rucksack; there’s a comic scene where she can’t pack it properly and Josie laughs her bellowing laugh and asks if it’s ever like that for him, he grins back at her, says he packs much lighter than that; snaps his toothbrush in half, even, stuffs his socks in his shoes.
It’s kind of nice, they are laughing together, and then the woman in the film comes to realise what the viewer has known the whole way and something happens, inside Bren, as the credits roll.
Because what if Nora is just getting some distance, he wonders, before she gives him her answer?
This feeling in his gut, this feeling that has steered him right his entire life, can’t be wrong – and is telling him, too, that she knows what’s right.
That she just needs time, unlike him, who has no attachments or commitments – to sort things out.