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Falling Through Thin Ice

A good kiss can take your breath away. Fall into the right arms and you'll be transported to a whole new world. But when the people we love cannot live life at our side—or worse, should not live life at our side—a good kiss can linger on in the memory as a slow poison, and there is only one cure for that.

By Call Me LesPublished 2 years ago 6 min read
54
Lena

Lena inhaled sharply. It was a lie; it had always been a lie and always would be a lie. But she didn't care! She kissed her husband back deeply. Kissing him left her breathless, and knowing this might be their last kiss for who knows how long made it all the more precious to her.

Her husband, Shane, had just been arrested for embezzlement. Her home—their home—and all its contents, their shared accounts, everything that had touched his name was forfeit. What she had thought was solid ground had turned out to be nothing more than a hollow lie, thin ice over deep water, and when the police pried him from her arms, Lena plunged headfirst into the freezing void below. Floating in the vast, cold expanse she had not known lay beneath her feet, Lena's prospects of survival were uncertain.

Fall through thin ice on a frozen pond, and you’ve got a decent shot of getting out. Pond water is dormant; it doesn’t flow. Fall through thin ice on a river and you’ll be swept up and away, clawing at the surface of thicker ice further downstream until you run out of air. The naive young woman couldn’t tell yet if the ice she had fallen through belonged to a river or a pond, but she was about to find out. That’s the thing about currents, sometimes you don’t know they are there until you enter the water.

~~~

Things moved fast after the arrest. The trial was swift and justice served; Shane plead guilty in exchange for a smaller sentence. Then life slowed to a crawl, and Lena was left alone to face the public disgrace and humiliation as best she could. She got up for work each day, bought her discounted groceries while making as little eye contact as possible, and spent her evenings alone at the piano. Funny, it was his crime, yet despite being innocent in the eyes of the law, the jury of public opinion had nevertheless imprisoned her—in solitary confinement no less! At least he had his fellow inmates for company.

Part of the reason she had been ostracized was because Lena had refused to divorce Shane. Her friends and family assumed she had done the weak-hearted, wifely duty of standing by her man. Only, she didn't see it that way since, in her eyes, there was nothing left to stand upon. No, she clung to the very ice she had fallen through, unable to let go of the dreams they had shared, the love they had shared. She could never bring herself to enter the water, not while there was still hope left of rebuilding their life together after he was released from prison. For no matter how badly he had deceived the world, when it came to loving her, Lena knew Shane had been telling the truth.

~~~

At last the time had come; Shane had been released. Lena told herself it was for good behaviour, but deep down she knew it was likely due to overcrowding. In a few moments, she would face the love of her life again for the first time in two years. Lena hadn't seen him during his days spent behind bars, neither of them had wanted those memories. As it so often did when Shane was nearby, her breath caught in her chest, only now it was not in anticipation of a kiss, but rather the ambiguity of what fate awaited her.

When he knocked on her door, Lena rushed to greet her husband.

"Shane—"

But, he raised his hand and turned from her embrace.

"Don't. Please, don't," he muttered.

Her arms fell to her sides; his expression had told her everything she needed to know, but that didn't mean she would let him leave without a word. The public was wrong to believe that she was a nothing more than a meek housewife behind closed doors.

"So, you've made your decision. Have you at least considered the fact I still love you?"

He ran his hands through his hair. "Don't make this harder than it has to be."

That was a line in the sand; her resolve to keep her temper fizzled like an egg on hot asphalt.

"I should make it easy for you? Do you have any idea what it's been like while you were away? The stares I've had to contend with, the muttered comments—the flat out refusal to serve me in a restaurant! You commited the crime, but I've paid the greater price! And now you want to walk away and start over as though it had never happened, as though WE never happened?? Say it, Shane. If you're going to abandon me, say it to my face! Tell me your love is gone!"

The coward looked at his boots.

"I won't. You know I won't. I'm sorry, Lena, truly I am. I can't live with the shame. I can't live beside you. I'm not what you need!"

And there it was. The poorest excuse to break up with a lover that had ever been uttered, the twist on, "It's not you, it's me," that comes with a gaslit side of guilt.

Lena shook her head. It wasn't worth wasting her breath arguing with a brick wall. She signed the divorce papers he had brought with him; the only upside to divorcing a convicted embezzler was that it made dividing up the non-existent assets easier. Then Shane turned and left as hastily as he'd arrived.

After he was gone, Lena's bravery shattered and she sank to her knees. She wept bitterly for who knows how long, then crawled to her piano. As she sang out her pain, she realized she had her answer: the water was not a pond.

When the last notes of her melody left her, so too did the pieces of her heart that still loved Shane, that would always love Shane. She envisioned herself letting go of the ice, and sinking into the deep, releasing those pieces into the river as it washed over her, where they would be swept away, lost to the current of eternal love.

But what Lena didn't understand yet was that while those pieces were gone forever, at least she was no longer clinging to the remnants of her old life! Now that she was flowing freely, there was a chance the river would one day direct her back to terra firma—real, honest, dry land. Perhaps it was for the best he had left after all. And what else is music for if not to heal our poisoned hearts?

Author's note: This story is a fiction dramatized by the author and is loosely based on the true life story of Fanny Brice.

Cover image licensed from Shutterstock.

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Love
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About the Creator

Call Me Les

Aspiring etymologist and hopeless addict of childrens' fiction.

If I can't liberally overuse adverbs and alliteration, I'm out!

Instagram @writelesplaymore

~&~

No words left unspoken

She/Her

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