“I just didn’t want to do it alone.” She met my eyes. “And you were the only one I wanted with me.”
“Don’t, Lily. What you did…”
“I’m not asking you to forgive me. I wouldn’t. I’m not asking you to spare me either.”
“I can’t hurt you, wouldn’t let anyone else do it either. But I suspect you know that.”
“Yeah,” she said.
My gut churned at the thought, but it was nothing compared to the relief that I felt seeing her again, the calm that I realized I had missed.
“I thought that was weakness,” I said, the memory of her words never having left me.
“It was. But there was more. I couldn’t go through with it, knowing what it would do to you.”
“Even at the risk of your vengeance. Your justice. Braden’s justice.”
“Not even for that.”
“Adela said I should forgive you.”
Lily blinked and furrowed her brow. “I’m surprised, though now that I think about it, I shouldn’t be. I doubt much escaped her. So she and Christoph Senior knew the whole time?”
“About you? No. About Christoph Junior…and Braden, yes.”
“And she still thinks you should forgive me?”
“She said we could have a good thing. She doesn’t know that I could never trust you.”
“That’s not true. You can trust me. I’m not saying you have to, or even that you should. But you can. You’re one of the only two people I’ve ever loved. I would fling myself off a bridge before I hurt you,” she said.
I couldn’t stop myself from laughing. And Lily, surprising me as she always did, joined in. “Braden always said I had a flair for the dramatic.” She sobered. “But I mean it, Anton. You can trust me.”
“It’s not just me I’m worried about. I have responsibilities.”
“You took over after Christoph Junior?”
I didn’t respond, but I suspected she understood.
“It seems unreal to say it, but that’s good for you, and for them.”
“Why is it unreal?”
“You have to admit, this isn’t a standard Saturday afternoon conversation for the park.”
“It’s not. And we are not having it.”
“You mind if we walk?”
I stood, grabbed her hand to pull her up before I could stop myself. The zing that shot through me reminded me of how empty, how cold I had felt without her.
I didn’t speak, and instead walked beside her, the beauty of the day, the beauty of her, only making the cold loneliness I would confront later that much worse.
We walked in silence for long moments that would never be enough. When we reached the bench, we stopped in front of it, facing each other.
“Where will you go?”
“Don’t know. Think I might become a geriatric nurse,” she said.
“You’d be good at it,” I said.
“Thank you. Good-bye, Anton,” she said.
I couldn’t bring myself to reply.
Twenty-Five
Lily
I gave the apartment one last look, feeling an unexpected fondness for the place.
It had never been a home, but it still meant so much, was the place where I’d found Anton, the one where I’d lost Braden.
Over the years, I had anticipated the call that I would receive, the one telling me that Braden was gone. Thought I had prepared myself for it. Yet another sign of my hubris.
Even after eleven years, time I spent convincing myself that I was ready, I had cried, felt a horrible wrenching pain that seemed to be ripping into me.
I was grateful that he was free, grateful that he would no longer suffer, but I mourned for him, mourned for the life that he would never get to live, mourned for the one I would never get to live.
And it was that mourning, that regret, that had given me the courage to seek Anton out.
It had been ill thought out, perhaps suicidal, but it had been necessary. I couldn’t go without saying what I needed to say, without seeing him again.
I’d mourned for him that day, prayed that he would find some peace in this life even if I did not.
But I had to stop now, had to try to carve a way for myself.
So, with my ID, $600 in cash, and a frayed picture of me and Braden as kids in my hand, I walked out of the apartment one last time.
And directly into a chest that I would always remember.
I stood for a moment, kept my eyes closed, trying to suck in as much as I could of him. After I didn’t know how long, it could’ve been ten minutes, ten seconds, I couldn’t say for sure, I looked up into those dark eyes.
I had thought them cold, fathomless, at first, but that had been a mistake, one that so many had made. They weren’t distant, flat, but instead sparked with emotion, something that the stubbornly hopeful part of me wouldn’t ignore.