“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that,” Diesel said quietly. “It’s one of the reasons that we do what we do. It’s to bring people home.”
She nodded. “That’s a big thing. Home. What does home mean to me? And it means different things now. Back then when I, … before this captivity—and I guess I’ll have a life that’s before and a life that’s after now—but before captivity, home was just that place that I lived in. My work was my life. It was my passion.” She said, “But now …” And then she stopped.
He looked at her, gently squeezed her, and asked, “And now?”
“I’m not so sure,” she said, her voice changing. “Watching Paul die, knowing that Marge is gone …” She closed her mouth and burrowed in closer.
He felt the shaking of her shoulders, and he just held her. “Now you get another chance,” he said quietly. “You get to reassess what it is you want for your life now. It’s not a case of having missed out, … having made a mistake. It’s not a case of having been in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s a chance right now to redo what you were doing. And decide again, is this what you want? And, if it isn’t what you want, you get to change it.”
“Is it that simple?” she whispered.
“I think it can be,” he said, with a nod. “I mean, a lot of people have multiple careers. A lot of people work from home. Maybe you would feel better doing that.”
“I’m not sure I could,” she said, “just because of the kind of work I do.”
“And that’s another question. Is that the work you want to continue doing? Do you want a family?”
“I didn’t,” she said, “until I lost the ability to choose that future for myself. But now? … And now maybe I do. I hadn’t really assessed it that way. I hadn’t looked at it. I just knew that everything that I could have was out in the future, and I guess that’s what the real problem is,” she said, as if trying to work her way forward. “I was working, burying myself in my work. I always thought there was time for all this other stuff later. You know? The husband, the two kids, the home with the white picket fence,” she said with a gentle smile.
“And there still is time,” he said. “You’re what? Knocking on thirty?”
“Almost,” she said. “And even just saying that now makes me more aware of my biological clock.
“But women are having babies a lot later in life.”
“Absolutely they are, but I’m not sure having children later in my life is what I want,” she said. “Say I do have them at forty, between forty and forty-five. Do I want to be between sixty and sixty-five with a twenty-year-old?” she asked. “But the point that I’m getting at is, when they took away my freedom, they took away those down-the-road future possibilities, and I suddenly realized that I hadn’t had that joy of giving birth or even the joy of marriage. I’ve never met that one person I wanted to go that distance with, and, because of that captivity, it’s as if all of that was taken away from me.”
“And you haven’t had a chance to assess where you’re at now, right? You’re still thinking you’re a captive?”
“I know I’m not a captive,” she said earnestly. “I get that. I really do. But the captive mentality? … I haven’t shaken it off yet. Maybe that’s what I’m trying to say.” But enough doubt remained in her voice that she looked up at him, shrugged, and said, “I’m not explaining it very well.”
“I think you did very well,” he said. “The truth of the matter is, you’ve had your world shaken up, and now you’ll take another look at your priorities. If you were to die or were to know that you had only forty days left, what would you do? It’s not long enough to have a child, no matter how strong your medicine is.”
She burst out laughing at that. “No,” she said, “it isn’t. And I wouldn’t want to bring a child into this world, knowing that I’m not there to raise it. At the same time, you know the only thing that really matters is those I love.” She added, “The money doesn’t replace those people I love. The job doesn’t. Not even the passion for the work I do. It really doesn’t right now. If I only had forty days, I’d go to the lake and spend it all with my dad.”
“And I can really appreciate that,” he murmured. “In fact,” he smiled, “I think I’d probably do the same thing.”
She looked up at him in astonishment. “I figured you’d tell me to go travel the world and do something memorable.”
“I think when we know that our time is coming or that we know that there’s an end near, all we really want to do is be with the people we want to be with,” he said. “And, in this case, that’s your father. I understand that completely.”
She smiled. “Thank you.”
“No,” he said, “don’t be so hard on yourself. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to spend time with your father.”
“Outside of my forty-days-to-live theory, doesn’t mean I want to stay there long though,” she said, laughing. “We do get along, but I get sick of fishing.”
He grinned. “I love to fish,” he said, “but I don’t know how long something like that would work for me.”
“Well, I tell you what. Why don’t you come fishing with me?” she
