“Who are you?” she whispered. What was she asking him? Sara didn’t even know.
Lincoln stared at her, his long eyelashes lowering to hide his eyes from her as he answered, “I’m me, Sara.”
But who are you?
“I’ve always been me,” he continued.
The air was thick with unspoken truths and enigmas; it was riddled with shadows and murkiness. Sara felt like she wasn’t seeing something; there was something glaring her right in the face and she couldn’t see it. Her eyes were veiled; because they had to be, for her sake. She opened her mouth to tell Lincoln to move, but he was already dropping his arms and turning away. Sara exhaled loudly, her nerves jumbled and shaken. Her eyes refused to go to him; she couldn’t see his face, not now.
“I think…maybe I should go,” she said, her mouth and throat dry. Sara grabbed the cup and filled it with water from the faucet. She gulped it down so fast it hurt her throat.
He stilled. “Do you want to?”
She looked at him then. One look at Lincoln’s face and the answer she was going to say disappeared and was replaced with another. He looked lost, young. He stood tall and proud, and yet there was frailty to him she’d never noticed before.
“No,” unconsciously fell from her lips, surprising her. Didn’t she? Why didn’t Sara want to go?
He tried to hide the relief on his face from Sara by looking away, but she caught it, something inside her twisting at the vulnerability he didn’t want her to see. “All right. I got ‘National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation’ queued up. Sound good?”
“Perfect,” Sara said, trying to smile. The tension was still there, though she was trying her hardest to pretend it wasn’t.
“I’m zero for two.” Lincoln got two plates out of a cupboard and loaded them with pizza.
She gave him a quizzical look, taking the plate with four slices of cheese pizza on it. Sara would maybe eat half of that.
“This was my idea. I said we had to talk about happy stuff. I screwed it up twice now,” he said as he walked into the living room, turning on a lamp. Days were shortening now and dusk was already approaching, turning the inside of the house dark. It wasn’t even four in the afternoon yet.
Sara sat down on the couch, setting her plate on the coffee table. “You can’t make yourself feel how you don’t, Lincoln. Pretending only makes things worse. I guess not knowing how you feel about something is normal too. You can love someone and hate them at the same time. You can want something and not want it too. Sometimes lies are all you have; sometimes you have to tell yourself them just to be able to breathe.” She clasped her hands and looked at them in her lap.
“Is that would you do? Lie to yourself? Of course you do,” he answered for her, not sounding judgmental, only matter-of-fact. “We’re all guilty of it. Sometimes you have to pretend, just to survive. Isn’t that how you make it through each day? Pretending? Sometimes that’s all you can do or you’ll break, Sara. You’ll ruin everything by not pretending. Believe me, I know.”
She looked at him, but Lincoln was readying the movie on the TV. Sara was missing an astronomical piece of information and until she grasped it, nothing would fit. And when you figure it out, what then? Unease trickled through her veins, chilling her.
“Remember how he used to buy Peeps by the armfuls at Easter time?” Lincoln grabbed his plate of pizza as he sat down on the couch, setting it on his lap.
Sara smiled softly. “Yeah. Those things are disgusting. I can’t believe he didn’t have tons of cavities. I tried a Peep once. Never again.” She shuddered.
Lincoln laughed, consuming half a piece of pizza in one bite.
He would have eaten chocolate every day if he could have, and actually, he probably had. After every meal, his dessert was a Snickers or a Kit Kat or some other kind of candy bar. Snacks consisted of Hershey’s Kisses and miniature Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Good genetics and physical labor had kept him cavity-free and his body lean and hard.
That restless energy he’d had had kept him moving, never able to sit down or be still for too long. She had admired that about him at the same time it had annoyed her. Some days she’d just wanted to sit and watch a movie and he hadn’t even been able to do that. His knees would bounce, he’d tap his fingers on the armrest of the couch, he’d get up and move around, decide he needed to call someone. Even on her husband’s days off he was working. Come to think of it, all that sugar consumption could have been a large part of his inability to relax for any length of time.
“Don’t forget his orange soda.” Lincoln shuddered this time.
Laughter fell from her lips. “He liked his sweet stuff.”
“And baseball.”
“And snowmobiling.”
“Beer.”
“Grilling out.” Sara tried to smile, but instead her face crumpled.
She could see him clearly, the sunny summer scene playing out in her mind. His blue fire eyes, his teasing grin; the dirt on him from work he had yet to wash off. She took a deep breath and the image faded. Sara rubbed her eyes, not wanting Lincoln to see her tears.
The movie began; already forgotten before it had even started. Neither of them spoke, lost in their thoughts. Her mind was stuck on the words Lincoln had revealed in the kitchen. What had they meant? Would she ever know? Did she want to know? Some secrets were too painful to unravel.
When Sara looked over, Lincoln was watching her, his expression indecipherable. The only indication he felt anything at all was the tick in his strong jaw. He wordlessly reached for her and Sara fell into his arms, holding him as he held her. It felt right to be in his arms, it felt right to let him hold her when no one else felt right doing so. He alone loved him the same as she. She didn’t understand Lincoln; she didn’t know what he was trying to tell her or not tell her with his words, spoken and unspoken, but in regard to her husband and his brother; they were in accordance. They would remember him together and they would love him together, just as they would mourn him together.
***
“How are you dealing with everything?”
Pushing the empty coffee mug back and forth between her hands, Sara focused on a red stripe on the cup as she answered, “Terribly.”
As was customary, they sat at the table in Sara’s kitchen. Mason had brought caramel rolls, scenting the air with them. She’d eaten almost half of hers, to Mason’s surprise. Sara had always tried to be healthy in what she ate and drank, but now she had a hard time eating anything. She almost thought she’d forced that much down just to prove to herself she could. Her stomach was not happy with her.
“It’s to be expected. I know I said you were lucky to be able to say goodbye, but it has to be hard knowing there’s a set date. Or maybe that’s a blessing instead of indefinitely wondering when his final day will be.”
She looked up with a frown. Mason sipped from his cup, eyebrows lifted, waiting for her response. “You do realize you say a bunch of nothing almost every time your mouth opens?”
Half of his mouth quirked. “Depends on how you choose to interpret what I say. If you want to hear nothing, then nothing you shall hear. If you want to get something out of what I say, then you will.”
“There you go again,” she muttered.
He laughed, opening the crinkled white bag to pull out a second caramel roll. Mason took a bite, licking icing from his thumb.
“I thought these sessions were only going to last a month?”
“I don’t remember saying that.”
“You said—“
“What I said was,” Mason interrupted smoothly, “I was on vacation for a month, so technically I wasn’t here as a grief counselor. I never said the sessions would only last that long. People always hear what they want to hear, even if it isn’t the same as what someone says. Clearly you needed me for longer than a month. It’s okay. I get that I’m irresistible.” He winked.