I’m extra strong.”
“That’s...”
“Not fair? Makes him sound like a burden? Makes it sound like God did something to us? Yeah.” Rachel laughed, the husky sound barely rising up over the waves. “People say stupid things even when they mean well. But I don’t think Hannah meant well. And that was beyond stupid. It was cruel. And you didn’t deserve that.” Rachel’s voice broke. “I’m sorry for what I said to you. Because it was about my feelings. Not yours.”
“I imagine that you’re even more out of empathy than I am.” The constant barrage of idiocy Rachel must have received over the years... Anna couldn’t imagine how tired she was.
Well-meaning might not cut deep like mean, but it wore you down like a rock being slammed by the waves.
“Maybe,” Rachel said. “But I shouldn’t have been out of empathy for you.”
“I can’t get away from this feeling,” Anna said. “That what I did was the ugliest thing someone could do. Because somehow I put it all out of my head when I was in it. When it was me, it seemed like there were a thousand different ways to justify it. When it was just me and Micahel, I could pretend the rest of the world—the church, Thomas, you and mom—didn’t exist, not in our world. And then...now it’s like I see everything real. Not two sections of my life, but one life. It all crashed together and the wreckage is so bad. And I realized that I’m exactly like our dad.”
“Not exactly,” Rachel said.
A laugh burst out of Anna, in spite of herself. “Just a little bit?”
“No. It’s... Dad toyed with Mom for years. Got her pregnant with me, left, came back and got her pregnant with you, and then left again. He—he messed around for years. And he left her devastated and with two children. And I don’t think your husband is devastated. And therein lies the problem. The problem with all of this. I kept comparing you and your marriage to me and Jacob. But Jacob loved me. And I loved him. And losing him has left a hole in what I used to be because we were one person. Our souls were one. Losing him is changing the shape of me. Is it like that with Thomas? I don’t think it is. I watched him up there in front of the whole church like I was having an out-of-body experience. I watched him talk about you leaving him, and I didn’t feel like he was a man overwhelmed by grief. I felt like he was a man doing damage control. I know what it’s like to lose your other half. Damage control is the furthest thing from your mind.”
They let silence lapse between them, the waves battering the shore.
“I can’t go back and change it,” Anna said. “And I don’t think I would. But that doesn’t make it easy.”
“You know, all that stupid stuff that people say to me, all that yelling that Hannah did to you... It’s all people just trying to explain life in easy, neat ways. Because we don’t want to believe that it’s messy and painful and sometimes good men die for no reason.”
Rachel took her hands out of her pockets and pushed her windblown hair out of her face before she continued. “They want to believe I’m stronger, and special, to be able to handle such a tragedy, because they want to believe that they aren’t. And because of that they’ll be spared. They’re not going to watch their husband waste away in front of them.”
She toed at the pile of black, tan and gray rocks piled in a line in the sand. Dropped there by the sea, looking ordered and perfect in their randomness. Like a painting, when they were really just deposited there by water without care at all.
“They want to believe,” Rachel said, “like Hannah clearly does, that no man would ever appear and treat them better than their husband, seduce them away. They want to believe that there’s a weakness in you that isn’t in them, because it’s how they sleep at night. The same way they want to believe that there’s a strength in me that God won’t find in them. So maybe he won’t test their faith.”
Anna looked up at the hill, at the lighthouse. It was automated now, not dependent on three lightkeepers to stay up all night and keep it burning. It was just there. Eight beams of light turning in a slow circle.
Guiding