Shine
Trevor Hambric
In twelve years of marriage, I had never been so completely aware of my husband. Of his shape. Of his apparent strength.
Liam stood naked on a high rock nearly twenty feet above me, silhouetted against the gray-blue sky, the muscles in his legs tensing as he crouched to make his leap.
I couldnʼt see the goosebumps on his flesh, couldnʼt tell if he was actually shivering. But I shivered at the mere thought of making the dive.
After a slow exhalation of breath, he exploded in motion. His thigh muscles leaped to life, his arms rose above his head, and he pushed off.
The surface of the lake was a broad swath of slate, brought to choppy life by the cool late-fall breeze. With its hard, moving angles, it looked impenetrable as Liam approached.
But he slashed through with barely a ripple. Here and then gone.
The disappearance--and momentary lull in the breeze--seemed ominously complete, and I caught myself holding my breath waiting for him to surface. I was on the verge of whispering Please, Liam, when his head popped above the surface with a jubilant shout.
I expected a cursing declaration of the cold, but it didnʼt come. Instead, he ran a hand through his hair, wiped water from his eyes, and turned to me. “You should try it, Babe.”
In our seven yearly fall visits to the cottages, Iʼd never once gone swimming. The cold was too harsh, the late-season isolation unnerving.
But today, as Liam dog-paddled twenty yards from shore, I slid out of my jeans and turtleneck, left my undies and sandals on a mossy tree stump, and walked with gritted teeth into the water.
“Youʼre magnificent, Isabel.”
As I moved slowly toward him, I felt guilty for the things he didn't know, burdened by the things I soon would. And I wondered why he failed to note my changed behavior.
Enveloped by the cold, I moved cautiously out to waist-deep water, grateful for anything to focus on but the intensity of his stare.
He approached and gently lowered my arms, forcing my cupped hands away from my breasts. Modesty, out here alone, in the season of no-one, was a pointless exercise after all.
“I mean it,” he whispered.
There was the tic again--a twitch under his eye--so subtle I was sure he couldnʼt feel it. Subtle enough that no stranger would even notice.
We were both shaking by the time he pulled me in a tight embrace. The faintest hint of warmth radiating from him to me, his hip to my belly. I felt the distinct outline of his fingers low on my back, a glow emanating from each touchpoint. "I wish we could stay here forever.”
I'm sure Liam believed I meant the woods and the cottage, our escape from workaday burdens. But I had something much more precise in mind. What I wished to have linger was this very moment. This water. This breeze. And this particular embrace.
But just a few dozen yards away, back in the cottage, my cell phone lay in waiting. And a thousand miles beyond that, my cousin, a neurologist, had performed a favor of which only I was aware.
And his possibly life-changing phone call was overdue.
Good or bad, how would I tell Liam when the news came? How would I announce my own treachery?
***
A few minutes later, Liam carried me, naked, to the cottage. The fire had warmed the tiny space now, and I sighed with relief when he closed the front door.
He lay me on the bed and straightened up. For a long while, he stared down at me, his thoughts, simple and sensual, so different from mine.
Suddenly, on the bedside table beside me, my cell phone began to ring--my cousinʼs ring-tone--and I flinched. When Liam reached over to silence it, my burning instinct was to push his hand away, to insist that he let me hear what needed to be heard. But I suffocated that urge.
The answer would be no different an hour from now.
A towel appeared from somewhere, and Liam was drying me. Passing gently over legs and belly, arms and breasts. I closed my eyes and allowed the feeling of his roaming hands to own the world.
Soon, bare fingers touched flesh, glided over now-dry and warming skin. I inhaled sharply when I felt the heat of his tongue, my body growing rigid to the rhythm of his tiny movements.
Eventually, when I thought I would be lost, he lifted my hips from the bed, lifted me with a strength that might prove more fleeting than either of us knew.
Once again, his warmth radiated into and even through me.
I realized, in a belated wash of gratitude, that Liam was a better lover than Iʼd understood. That he had cared enough to come to know me.
For a time, he moved with slow deliberation, but when he felt my body begin to tense as I neared release, he moved faster.
“Isabel,” he whispered, and I opened my eyes to stare in his face. His innocent, guileless face.
Huntington's was a cruel disease. And only my cousin knew if it had already begun its assault on Liam. If his father's rapid degradation would be his own.
I remembered Liam's stories of his youth, of helping his wheelchair-bound father brush his hair, the man crying bitterly at his 38-year-old bodyʼs refusal to obey the simplest command. A near-sob, lost in the sounds of our lovemaking, escaped me.
As Liam neared his own completion, I pulled him tight, arms and legs insistent that he stay with this moment, that he not abandon me too soon.
I wanted to hold his warmth in me. Wanted our joining to be eternal, to capture his shape and his strength. To bind him forever to this earth.
While beside me, a message waited.
Reunion
Trevor Hambric
Under the shadow of dark, laden clouds, the idling rental truck still faced the pond. Snow flurries, dry and crystalline, shone in the fast-fading light. Snow hadn’t been promised, or even hinted at. A cold, clear night was on tap, and he’d come for the meteor shower.
“Are we stranded?” Katie asked.
“Not forever. No.”
“For how long, then?”
Her dad shrugged. Two flat tires on Christmas Eve, deep on a rutted New Hampshire road in the hills. “Someone will come.”
Like Katie often did when she was unsettled in any way, she fingered her silver bracelet and its three dangling hearts, one for each member of what had been a whole family only a year before. “Do you miss Mommy?”
He turned the heater up one notch. “Of course.”
“Do you think she misses us?”
He surveyed the breadth of the sky before them, with its muted painterly colors and softened angles, and then met her look. “Maybe not tonight, Honey.”
This shocked her. She had asked this question knowing the answer, and this wasn’t it. But her dad persisted through her worry. “I think she’s looking down on us right now. She’s with us instead of missing us.”
Consideration silenced her. She slid tight to her Dad’s hip and rested her head against him. “Will we see Santa?”
He pointed to a cloudless patch of sky above the opposite shore, the fringes of surrounding cumulus tinted pink. “If we do, he’ll go streaking right over there. When the sky gets dark.”
White Christmas came faint and crackly over the radio, as if it were just now reaching them through the decades since it first came from Bing Crosby’s lips. Steam from the idling truck created a slowly-expanding fog bank behind them. He was travel-weary, the moment hypnotic, and soon he was dozing in the Christmas-themed quiet.
Time passed before he snapped awake to see Katie watching his face.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi.” He flipped the wipers, and with a chittering swipe they cast dry snow aside to reveal a clear but fully darkened sky. Stars shone in the blackness, flickering to the late-night whisper of I'll Be Home For Christmas over F.M.
Katie gazed at the distant, timid diamonds, studying for constellations. Before she could place anything, starry motion grabbed her attention.
They spotted it at the same instant, a glowing spec, more yellow than the distant stars, arcing its way from right-to-left in a slow-motion traversal of the sky. Katie let out a little involuntary squeak. “Santa,” she whispered in a tone so reverential she might have been witnessing the ascension. “I think Mommy’s riding with him.”
A ball of pain and pride constricted her dad's throat. In the distance, through the trunks of a million denuded trees, faint headlights appeared. Their ‘rescuers.’
Through an instant’s regret—this wasn’t a moment he’d choose to be saved from, after all—he pulled Katie close and kissed her on the forehead. “Me too.”
“Are we stranded?” Katie asked.
“Not forever. No.”
“For how long, then?”
Her dad shrugged. Two flat tires on Christmas Eve, deep on a rutted New Hampshire road in the hills. “Someone will come.”
Like Katie often did when she was unsettled in any way, she fingered her silver bracelet and its three dangling hearts, one for each member of what had been a whole family only a year before. “Do you miss Mommy?”
He turned the heater up one notch. “Of course.”
“Do you think she misses us?”
He surveyed the breadth of the sky before them, with its muted painterly colors and softened angles, and then met her look. “Maybe not tonight, Honey.”
This shocked her. She had asked this question knowing the answer, and this wasn’t it. But her dad persisted through her worry. “I think she’s looking down on us right now. She’s with us instead of missing us.”
Consideration silenced her. She slid tight to her Dad’s hip and rested her head against him. “Will we see Santa?”
He pointed to a cloudless patch of sky above the opposite shore, the fringes of surrounding cumulus tinted pink. “If we do, he’ll go streaking right over there. When the sky gets dark.”
White Christmas came faint and crackly over the radio, as if it were just now reaching them through the decades since it first came from Bing Crosby’s lips. Steam from the idling truck created a slowly-expanding fog bank behind them. He was travel-weary, the moment hypnotic, and soon he was dozing in the Christmas-themed quiet.
Time passed before he snapped awake to see Katie watching his face.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi.” He flipped the wipers, and with a chittering swipe they cast dry snow aside to reveal a clear but fully darkened sky. Stars shone in the blackness, flickering to the late-night whisper of I'll Be Home For Christmas over F.M.
Katie gazed at the distant, timid diamonds, studying for constellations. Before she could place anything, starry motion grabbed her attention.
They spotted it at the same instant, a glowing spec, more yellow than the distant stars, arcing its way from right-to-left in a slow-motion traversal of the sky. Katie let out a little involuntary squeak. “Santa,” she whispered in a tone so reverential she might have been witnessing the ascension. “I think Mommy’s riding with him.”
A ball of pain and pride constricted her dad's throat. In the distance, through the trunks of a million denuded trees, faint headlights appeared. Their ‘rescuers.’
Through an instant’s regret—this wasn’t a moment he’d choose to be saved from, after all—he pulled Katie close and kissed her on the forehead. “Me too.”
