Someday I will return you. Someday I will take you back.
She went home and tucked it away safely in her drawer where it stayed most of the time. But every once in a while she would take it out and hold it up in the light, letting it dance in the air, and then place it back, hidden.
The boy grew and so did she. Their innocence dwindled with each passing day, as though exposure from the burdens around them ate away a thin layer at a time. He would have heartache and she just as much pain, but they would reach out to each other, their fingers barely touching and then pulled apart, the wind carrying them this way and that. Until they finally dropped into their own worlds, and he was no longer the little boy.
She would return the stolen knight, and it was his promise to her that it would never leave him. And she would wait.
Wait for his return. Wait for her stolen knight.
But would she remember? Would she remember all there was to her knight?
The way he hummed when he ate something that satisfied him. The way his head tipped down to look over his dark-framed reading glasses in bed with a book. The crooked smile he saved for her before he would lean in and kiss her cheek. The watch he wore throughout all of high school and college. How the brown leather was worn, faded and tearing at the edges, the way he twisted the face even though it didn’t rotate.
The way his brow formed, so hopeful and yet nervous, when he asked her to marry him. The earthy smell of rain as his knee bumped into her toes and how he lifted her off the ground so easily when he whispered it once more in her ear and she said yes. Yes, yes, she breathed into his ear and then he clung tight to her, making her feel more wanted and needed than she ever would again in her life. The feel of his touch as his fingers ran through the sides of her hair, drops of rain sliding through it as every inch of her spine went cool and shuddered and craved.
But there would be things she forgot to remember. She was a collector of water with her bare hands. It slipped through her fingers with every try. The exact color of his hair. The panic of not really being able to see it, guessing whether it was brighter or more golden. Was it like that in the light? Was it darker when she touched it? Why couldn’t she be certain when she closed her eyes and searched for it?
She would be angry with herself for what she couldn’t remember, angry that she didn’t think to keep everything in, steep every second like a tea bag in hot water, getting stronger and thicker with each twirl of the string.
She would remember so little of the countless moments she had with him.
But she would remember everything about the day her knight left.
CHAPTER 45
ISLA
December 16, 2017
Sawyer looked out the window and paused.
“What?” I asked, looking out with him, trying to see what he saw.
“It’s snowing,” he said.
Sometimes when I wake up now, I am right back in our farmhouse on that December day with the white quilted bed and black iron headboard, the smell of the paint we had just brushed over the bedroom walls. I should have told myself to shut my eyes and go back to sleep. Told him to stay with me and never leave that bed. Never let another minute continue, to make time stand still.
But it didn’t.
We got out of that bed together.
He went downstairs and made coffee like he always did. I heard the sound of water running as he rinsed the pot and filter. My feet stretched out onto the cold wood floor. It was a Saturday and the first thing I thought was I hadn’t gotten a Christmas present for him yet.
“I think I’m going to drive to Rosedale Mall,” I said over my plate of scrambled eggs and croissant Sawyer had made for me.
He took a long sip of his coffee. “Want me to tag along?”
I shrugged coyly. “If you want.”
He smiled. “All right.” It faded slightly. “I have to spend a few hours on the Kolstead plan, though. It has to get finished before Christmas. Are you sure you want to go alone?”
“Sawyer, I’ll be fine.”
“I know but I don’t like you driving around alone in this weather.”
I glanced outside. “It’s barely snowing.”
He looked uncertain. I reached across the kitchen table and held his hand.
“I’ll be fine,” I said once more.
“I love you, Isla,” he said.
His voice had a strange sadness to it. I tightened my grip on his hand.
We cleaned up the kitchen together and I changed to go out. I pulled my heavy winter coat on and passed the study on the way. He was bent over, intent on his work.
“I won’t take too long. Maybe we can have leftover soup for lunch?”
Ordinary . . . our words to each other were so ordinary.
He didn’t turn around but sat up, maybe unaware I was right behind him.
“That sounds good,” he answered.
The back of his head stared at me, and I didn’t step into the study to give him a kiss or wrap my arms around his shoulders. I left instead for the mall, in a hurry to beat the increasing snowfall. In a hurry to get a good parking spot. In a hurry to beat the lunchtime crowd. In a hurry for anything else but him.
By the time I parked in the mall lot, the entire ground was covered in white. My maroon rubber boots hit the pavement, spreading the wet, sticky snow around my feet. For a second, I considered getting back in the car and forgetting the whole thing. The idea of milling through a crowd of other last-minute Christmas shoppers felt so unappealing, like another bite of a rich and heavy dish when you were already beyond stuffed. What was I thinking going out like this? I suddenly wanted to be back at the farmhouse. I would pull the cold pot of leftover soup out of the refrigerator and heat it on the gas burner. Sawyer would tell me how good it smelled once it started to boil, and we would eat it together with a few pillowy rolls. He would stretch out on the couch with me afterward as we talked, his voice deep and hushed over me until we fell asleep. The fireplace would grow too hot, and he would turn it off and rejoin me, pulling the worn, red wool blanket over us, my head rising and falling with his chest. I would dream and we would wake up to a white and swirling snowstorm.
