My sobbing draws my partner from under the sink, where he is fixing a clogged drain.
"Oh shit," he gasps, getting to his feet and wiping his hands on his pants. "Sweetness, what's wrong?"
I stand in the middle of the house, shaking, trying to find enough air to speak. "The title company emailed...We're closing Wednesday at 9."
He frowns, trying to understand why the news I have waited six weeks for would be the thing that would finally break me.
But we both knew it was coming. I'd started sleeping in my clothes again. Flinching at the slighted sounds. I wake in full-blow panic attacks, screaming for help and not knowing where I am.
The danger of hiding one trauma below another is you risk creating a two-headed monster with the power to trigger each other to attack. And right now, they are both violently awake.
I reach for something I can say. Through gasps and sobs, I answer, "I thought before we left Salt Lake... I should see my sister's grave... but I don't even know where it is."
"I can't do this anymore." A laugh bubbles through the crying, and it makes me cry harder.
"You don't have to. It's all done. You did it. Misty, it's time to let it go and walk away."
He puts his arms around me, and I let go. The same way I did 20 years ago in the dark on the sidewalk between our two houses. My partner, then my neighbor, intercepted me, pacing the block hysterical... and bleeding.
He stepped in my way when I attempted to walk by him, refusing to tell him what was wrong. Then he said something that changed my life forever. "Misty, I'm not perfect, but I'm a really nice guy. Your husband is an asshole. I can help you leave."
Famine Bird, mlb [excerpt]
*Wren*
The weight of water.
The pressure on her chest.
The cold eating through her bones.
After the cold comes the lip of the light that cracks like an egg running and yellow oozing through the trees. It brings the lines of the day without warmth, but it is full of sounds. The creek gurgles disturbingly through the boulders like an infant choking in her crib.
Then Wren is at the bottom of a bathtub of sharp granite boulders filled with silky green water. Elliot's deep, booming laughter threatening the jade sky. As hard as Wren tries, when she feels Ollie sit down beside her, she can't wake up from the dream. No matter how hard she tries, she can't get away from Elliot.