I woke with a parched mouth and sweat clinging to my brow. For the past several months, my sleep had not been restorative. My dreams had been laced with odd flashes of my past life intertwined with my current life: I’d used night vision goggles in the military, and the prior week, I’d visited the optometrist where my peripheral vision had been tested with flashing lights. Almost all my dreams involved a gun. Me holding it. Me using it to shoot someone. No dreams about me turning it on myself, but it was a matter of time. These dreams scared the shit out of me, but I’d not told Doc about their increase in frequency, the subjects of them, or even the fact I had them. She had to suspect something was off; she told me to “reduce the stress you’re carrying around” more than once.
I moved into the bathroom to wash my face, thinking of the stress I’d been carrying. Of course, home life being as it was didn’t help much. Sadie had been so busy, almost too busy, like she’d been trying to avoid something—me? And while we still did things as a family—trips to get ice cream or on rainy days the bowling alley—the summer had passed without our annual trip to Walloon Lake.
“Do you think that’s the best idea?” Sadie had said when I brought the subject up a few days before. “The kids are so confused about our relationship, and Charlie is enjoying camp. I’m not even sure where you stand, and I’m swamped at work. Honestly, it’s all too much. Plus, it would be a bigger drain on the finances. I can’t even dream of a vacation right now.”
Going by myself had only been a slight possibility—Sadie had been adamant about not letting me drive alone. So instead of Walloon Lake, I spent more time at the gym: lifting weights, running on the treadmill, trying all the equipment I used to loathe. Thinking about all that now, it was clear the one thing keeping me grounded was my job. The routine, the people, even the grind. A few weeks earlier, I’d articulated that thought aloud.
“It’s good to be needed somewhere,” I said to my coworker one morning, just after I’d logged into the system. The coworker, a college student with too much on her plate, scrunched up her face at my statement.
“Yeah. You don’t get it. Someday, you might.”
“I believe you. In the meantime, here comes the rush.” She smiled and fiddled with the lanyard around her neck, ready for the onslaught of morning questions that always came our way. She hadn’t heard much about my past and neither did the rest of my coworkers, and they respected my boundaries. Everyone was too busy with their own lives to care about anyone else’s.
A creak behind me brought me back to the present, but it was only the house settling into the night. As I turned out the bathroom light, my mind roamed to my job again, to all the people I saw daily, those patrons who had wheedled their way into my life one exercise session at a time. The mom with the twins who came in every Tuesday and Thursday for her hot yoga class always stopped at the desk with a cheery hello. The elderly gentleman who walked the track for an hour each morning had a quick wink for me. One of the aquatics students often placed a piece of chocolate on my keyboard before I got in. And Andrew MacKinnon, the man I’d chatted with about the Browns and beer, liked to stop and ask once a week, “Want to work on web development?”
The first time he asked back in July I’d said, “No.” But each week after, I’d listened a bit longer to what he had to say. And soon, we’d chatted about his project needs, met for coffee, and lifted weights together.
In one of our sessions, Doc asked, “Would you call him a friend?”
“Sure. He reminds me of my college roommate, a lot.” Liam had seen me through four years of college before shipping off for his tour of duty, and he’d managed to live eight years before having been blown to bits. Andrew’s humor—snarky but rarely disrespectful—echoed Liam’s.
“Then I’m glad you’re spending time with him. If you’re going to go through with this divorce, you need a support system. Sadie can’t, and won’t, serve as support if you’re no longer married.”
“But I—”
“But nothing. You two get along, yes, but is it fair of you to ask her for something she shouldn’t have to give?”
That comment stuck with me every day as summer marched on, as the kids went back to school, as tension came and went in my spine, as the crackle of firecrackers reminded me of bullets, as Sadie and I still managed to exist separately, yet slightly together, as I watched her move on with her life, including friends and the kids. The comment hit me again as I moved into the office, back to the letter I’d found. I pushed it into the envelope and then under a stack of papers. The same divorce papers she’d asked me to sign, again, the day before. Why hadn’t I? What was I holding on to?
Chapter 7: Sadie
Andrew was divorced. Of course he was.
“I’m so sorry,” I said to Andrew. “I’m sorry about the divorce.” What other words were there? You’re a fine-looking man, Andrew. You’ll find someone,
