Oleander

My knees hit the snow; a thousand fractured moments catch up at once, and converge inside my field of vision. They spiral out my torso, then circle back in all directions, pulsing with blind force like lightning through prisms frozen in time.

My hands on my chest are soaking and warm. I can’t feel my face in the snow.

In a moment, everything matters; the stark and steel gravity is uncloaked in time, and laid to rest on top of my body. Every secret obscured in plain view is laid bare within reach, and too late to ever be told.

I was always running from this, heading straight towards it.

----

The year began as it always did. A short train ride to Stamford to exchange gifts with her parents, three days late, before we double back to the city and resume savoring celebrations.

I drop the bags next to the plants by the door of our apartment, kick off my shoes, collapse on the leather cushion and turn on the screen, finally unable to restrain my smile.

“Not so fast, champ, you need to pour me a drink first.” She climbs across my lap, pushing my wrist with the remote into the back of the futon. “First things first, or I pick what we're watching.”

“Shouldn’t you change first, and shouldn’t you pour me a drink after that!”

“I was gonna change right here, but have it your way.” She laughs and pushes herself off me.

Her countenance is darkened in the dim light, her body silhouetted against the glowing light of snowfall in the window behind her.

“I told you not to be scared. Dad did it his way, but of course he gave his blessing.”

“If you call ‘accepting defeat’ giving his blessing.”

She grins and rolls her eyes then slips down the wood hallway in her wool socks, pulling back her hair.

I lay my head back, savoring one of the rare moments where past, present, and future finally melt in unison, gleaming inside a single hummed note.

“Fine, we’re drinking that expensive swill your folks gave us first!” I call out to the bedroom.

I kick myself upright, reach for my bag, and dig for the bottle wrapped in newspaper. This was likely supposed to make up for only seeing them four times a year; today it would toast our entire future.

A shiver travels my spine.

“Babe, they gave you one of the black notebooks too?”

“No! Just you.”

“Well, there’s two of them in here.”

“They must have packed my brother’s by mistake. We’ll return it when he’s in the city.”

I roll my eyes, placing it back in the bag. “He can buy it back for a price.”

----

I jolt awake in a fevered sweat, and look at the clock. There’s still three hours 'till daylight.

I dreamt we were ice skating at night on the pond near her house. The sound of the ice begins to crack all around us, and she falls into a perfectly cut out black hole.

I drop down and plunge in my arms, grabbing her waist, as black tentacles violently emerge from the water in all directions, weaving and winding around her in coordinated frenzy. She grasps onto my shoulders shrieking as I desperately wrestle back, my knees inching towards the edge as she slips through my numbing grip.

I scream back as she thrashes and slowly disappears backwards into the black water, a fountain of bubbles pouring from her mouth, then freezing over in place again, her face replaced by the reflection of my own face, my fists pounding on the ice.

I stare at the ceiling, on fire. Hell is waking from a nightmare, back into a reality indistinguishable.

----

Her father and my father had worked together, but it was years later when she and I, and then David, finally met in New Haven at the bar lounge that gathered locals passing to and from the gym in the back.

She was finishing her Law degree. I was in the middle of my Gallery apprenticeship. David was just starting out at the Bureau.

Fate made us odd and fast friends in a new town, but grief joined her and I at the hip.

Her high school sweetheart Seb’s car went off the road on black ice in a snowstorm, and my mother’s cancer came swiftly. David was there for us through all of it, like few could be.

I can step back inside the hospital room in a moment; the sunlight indifferently filling every corner, the scene vividly charged with life about to be delicately extinguished, then held in place forever.

My mother’s face has much more to say, but she manages her lips to move, “I trust you.”

My head nods as the train turns sharply, warm sunlight dances inside my eyes. I come to, and the world keeps slowly turning around me.

The late day sun pierces the ribs of the skyline, blanketing the canals of pavement, shops, and brick stretching out to the horizon below us in stunning peach hues, like a spotlight shining from another world.

A child veers a bike across the street and past a blazing snowpile below, deftly steering with one hand.

My stop is next.

I compose myself and breathe in, long and slow. I push my hand deeper into my coat pocket, around the thumb drive.

----

She emerges back from the hall, still arranging her hair.

“My sweatshirt?” I laugh towards the ceiling then throw the pillow next to me. “Did you google ‘how to make your boyfriend propose?’”

“Clearly fake internet information.” She kicks the pillow back before collapsing back onto my lap. “I put on the Red Sox one, we can’t leave the house now.”

“When are we doing that again?”

She turns her head up at me smirking, reaching for the remote again. “Memorial Day, if we’re lucky.”

“As long as we get to go on the boat.”

“You know if he’s not on a work trip, Dad's on the boat. He might be there now.”

I run my hand along the side of her head. “When we have seven kids, I’m going to every game.”

“Yeah, cuz I’ll be the one supporting us.” She grins biting her tongue.

“I’m serious. We’re breaking the cycle. Ask my therapist.”

She leans up, putting her hand on my face. “Well, you’re making me wanna propose now. I’m getting you that drink, but you’re clearly already drunk.”

“Fine, I’m gonna draw profane things in your brother’s notebook.” I lay back as she heads towards the kitchen.

“Hurry up, when I get back I’m getting down on my knee.”

----

When I can’t stare at the ceiling in the darkness any longer, I force myself to turn over and open the notebook. In the moonlight the picture falls out again, the girl must be 18, 19.

The words are written on the page but may as well have been tied around my neck :

She doesn’t know what happened to Seb.

Simon & Winthrop

435 West 54th St.

NY, NY 10019

Box 17584

----

“Why are you bringing my family into this?” I slam my fist onto our table so hard a glass rolls off and shatters onto the floor.

I had somehow found my way home from the safe deposit box, without throwing up or passing out, to find two visitors waiting in the hall. The sun blazes off a prism of glass through our window, behind their dim figures. We had been here three years; her father and brother had never visited.

“Your family brought you into this.”

“WHAT did you just say?” I step backwards and somehow the floor is still beneath me.

“Just sit down.”

“Do you know how much information is in a single strand of DNA? Nature is ruthlessly efficient. Such sacred information is only carried by that which is proven fit to do so.” Her father continues.

“You’re SICK!” I scream.

“No, not us. We merely aid, and document the weakness of those given to sickness. Do you know what leverage is? Do you know what constrains ignoble cowards from plunging knives into Caesar?”

“These are HUMAN BEINGS.” My head is in my hands.

“Do you understand the choices men must make behind closed doors, so small men can wander blissfully like children in the streets? There are no shortcuts to the top, and there are no easy ways out.”

“What else does she not know?!” I barely get the words out from miles down.

He smiles in amusement.

“What do you think? She is my daughter. Not my aspiring son-in-law. And I’m not one to squander business opportunities. Besides, I’m getting too old for this.”

“I’ll kill you myself.”

Her brother steps forward, her father waves him back and slowly rises from the chair and heads towards the door. “Not the first time I’ve heard that. Won’t be the last.”

“Welcome to the family. You have two days. Consider the $20,000 you found in the box a down payment, a token of gratitude for your cooperation and partnership. You’ve demonstrated your ability to follow the trail we placed before you. You chose my daughter. I trust you’ll make the right choice.”

I want to collapse onto the floor.

“Choice of what?!” I spit back, the wall in front of me blurring in and out of focus.

“I’ve always liked that about you. You learn quickly. Like your father.”

He turns once more at the door.

“It’s quite redundant to again mention -- what happened the last time such a generous offer was betrayed.

Keep the pictures in the deposit box too; she was a pretty girl.”

----

My father’s place is two stops ahead, as I step off the train into the sun.

It’s too dangerous going to him, first. Snow melts across the sidewalk as I trace the steps to the park by the stream, turning the thumb drive over and over in my pocket.

My mind is racing and motionless as I wait on the bench. Why is it taking so long ...

It’s then she suddenly emerges from the stone arch underneath the walkway.

Her scarlet winter coat glowing.

It’s like the first time I saw her. Destiny steps into the foreground and calls your name with love and terror. She was the only thing alive.

What was she DOING here.

I see her face.

There are tears streaming down it.

She’s weeping.

“Kate!” I jump to my feet.

Her mouth moves, barely choking out a whisper.

“You failed.”

Her hands raise clasped in unison; light explodes from them.

It tears through my chest.

~~~~

I lay in the sun in the snow, the horizon unfolds in all directions and collapses back in on itself, to then begin its journey all over again, and over again.

~~~~

David had missed his train.

When he finds me ten minutes later, face down in the park, I have minutes to get to a hospital before the last hope of life has left. The bullet misses my heart by two inches. As a kid I had heard of such stories from war, and I told my mother I hoped to have the story of a soldier like that one day. I was a good and foolish child.

When they finally found her family, and the circus trials for all counts of abduction and trafficking had finished, there were lifetimes to spend in facilities before ever a hope to leave. They fell like lightning.

My father testified at the trials, but the last time I saw her, was in a photo on a screen.

She broke the cycle. She found her escape.

When I allow myself to think of it, I still try to know what Kate is thinking.

Why she didn’t make sure she finished the job. Why I am alive.

She always finishes what she starts.

I dream for, and I fear us finding each other.

She was always running from this, heading straight towards it.