Crucifixion River

Melissa

Autumn leaves skittered along the narrow main street of the small town in California’s gold country. They leaped the high curb, rattled down the board sidewalk, and drifted against the bench where I sat dying.

Was this where it was to end-Murphys, population around 300? A hard, wooden-slatted bench my last resting place in this life? Tricked-up shops and polyester-clad tourists my last sight? What was I doing here, anyway? Traveling aimlessly, as my husband and I had done over the past five years, possessed of more time and money than purposes and enthusiasms.

The pain was growing stronger now; if I had any chance to survive, I had better do something soon. But I felt curiously lethargic and resigned. Even the prospect of a painful death didn’t seem to bother me.

It had been a good life up until this past year. I’d accomplished most of the modest things I’d set out to do, had visited most of the places I wanted to see. Of course there were loose ends, but didn’t everyone leave a few of those? There was the emptiness of the past few years, but what were a few out of many? And then there were the events of September and my growing suspicions about the terrible way Jake Hollis had died…

I didn’t want to think about Jake. That was in the past, over now. All over. As my life soon would be.

Strange. I hadn’t expected to feel such detachment at the end. I seemed as little a part of the dying woman on the bench as the leaves that drifted at her feet. They were dying, too, torn by the wind from the trees that had sustained them through the sudden rainstorms of spring, the blistering heat of summer, the first frosts of autumn. Dying like…

“What the hell’s the matter with you?”

Slowly I looked up. My husband Ray had returned from the used-book shop with a package under his arm. A handsome man yet, blond and tanned and fit, dressed in a new brown cashmere sweater and cords. Handsome as the day I’d met him at the sorority open house twenty-six years ago. A quarter century of marriage, so long that I could scarcely remember a time when he wasn’t there. Always there, yet so often absent even when physically present.

I should have sensed that quality even before we were married. The way his eyes kept moving restlessly as he pretended interest in what I was saying. The way he replied with nods and utterances that were mere reaction to my tone of voice, rather than my words’ content. But I was twenty years old; what did I know of a man for whom the real world was never quite enough? A man who sought elusive fulfillment in the new and strange and different, as if he might then enter another dimension that would measure up to his expectations.

Nothing had ever measured up. Nothing. Not a stellar career that began with the glimmerings of what the media now called the Information Age and culminated in the sale of the last of three computer software firms he’d founded-a sale unprecedented in financial annals that ensured the security of our children and their heirs for generations to come. The children-Donna and Andrew-certainly hadn’t measured up; he’d given them scant attention, and now they had drifted away. There were the various pursuits, all dangerous-flying, mountain climbing, auto racing-and now all discarded. Even the latest passion, skydiving, was a thing of the past. I would be the last to go, the wife who had become nothing more than a good traveling companion.

The Caribbe an in winter, when rains soaked northern California. Paris in the springtime. Alaskan cruises to escape the heat of summer in the Napa Valley. African photo safaris, visits to Egypt’s pyramids, tours of China and Russia. Hawaii at the holidays when our children and their families failed to return home. We migrated like birds, but insulated from unpleasantness and with fewer surprises.

Until this past month.

“Melissa, I asked you, what’s the matter?” Feigned concern turned the fine lines at his eyes’ corners to furrows. With an effort I said: “I’m not feeling well.”

“I told you you shouldn’t have made that chicken pasta for lunch. It’s a warm day, and heavy food and wine…”

I nodded wearily. It wasn’t the pasta or the wine, but there was no point in arguing. The only point was in calling for help, trying to save myself. And I still couldn’t seem to care. I was dying, and Ray had poisoned me.

Ray

Melissa didn’t want to leave the bench. “It’s already too late, isn’t it?” she said dully.

“Too late for what?”

“Oh, God, Ray, I can die here as well as anywhere else. It’s peaceful here…”

“Die? Don’t be silly, you’re not going to die.”

She squeezed her eyes shut, grimacing, and wouldn’t say another word.

I was tempted to let her sit there with her stomachache and suffer. She could be exasperating sometimes, when she was in one of her moods. She tended to exaggerate and overdramatize situations even at her best, and, whenever she was hurt or upset or angry, she retreated so deeply inside herself that no matter what I did or how hard I tried, I couldn’t reach her.

Not that I’d ever been able to get to the core of her, really, except in small ways and for short glimpses. There was just no common ground for us. I live in the real world; I don’t believe in anything I can’t touch or see or smell. I have strong appetites-sex, food, danger. I take life in both hands and squeeze hard. Melissa is just the opposite. She’s a romantic, a sentimentalist; she lives in a fantasy world of dreams and ideals, searching for comforts and fulfillments that I can’t give her, that nobody can, because even she doesn’t understand exactly what it is she wants out of life. “Little girl lost” is an apt description of her. Dorothy wandering around in some fantastic Oz of her own devising, where everything and everybody is strange and bewildering.

That lost quality was part of what attracted me to her in the beginning. It’s very appealing in a beautiful young woman; it makes her more desirable, the chase and catch more exhilarating. Chase and catch weren’t enough for me in Melissa’s case, though. Before we slept together the first time, I knew I was in love with her. But how can you keep on loving someone you can touch only part of the time, like a ghost who drifts in and out of your life and bed, substantial for a while and then little more than vapor? I don’t deal well with frustration or failure, yet that’s what Melissa had come to represent.

It was the same for her, I suppose. I’m not what she wants or understands, either. That’s why she keeps drifting from one affair to another-looking for someone who’s more like she is, who can give her what she wants or thinks she wants. A satisfaction I could always take until recently is that none of the men measured up anymore than I have. None until the last one.

Jake Hollis. My good skydiving pal, Jake. He must have measured up. He must’ve been what she wanted. Otherwise, why would the two of them have plotted to kill me?

She had to have been part of it, much as I hated the thought. It’d been her idea that Jake and I go jumping that day; I remember her suggesting it. And she’d gone along with us, the first time in years she wanted to be in the plane for one of my dives. I don’t know why I agreed. I knew by then she was sleeping with Hollis. But murder…the possibility never even occurred to me. His hands on my back, clawing at my chute…I can still feel them. Trying to rip the pack off so I’d plummet to my death. A few years younger, a little stronger, but not as determined to survive as I’d been. That’s the main reason his chute was the one damaged in the struggle, his body the one that plummeted 2,000 feet to shatter on the hard earth.

She didn’t cry for him, at least not in front of me. Shock, horror, but no tears. Retreated inside herself to that place no one else can ever go-like the Cheshire cat when it vanished. If she had cried in front of me, I think I would’ve confronted her then and there. Two weeks now since it happened and I still haven’t done it. And I don’t know why. This trip to the Sierra foothills, the pretense that everything is reasonably normal between us…it’s a fool’s game. If she and one of her lovers had tried to kill me in the past, I wouldn’t have hesitated to accuse her, throw her out, take some sort of revenge. Now…I don’t know. I’m still hanging on to life with both hands, but the grip isn’t as strong as it used to be. Neither are the highs nor the lows, the emotions that once raged in me like torrents. It’s as if part of me, or something within me, did die that day, along with Jake Hollis.

I ought to hate her, but I don’t. I feel sorry for her.

She was still sitting with her eyes closed, her hands clutched at her middle, her mouth twisted. Typical of her. An upset stomach, and she turns it into high drama.

“Melissa,” I said, “we’re going back to the lodge. Right now.”

She didn’t object this time. “All right.”

I helped her up, put my arm around her, and led her to the car. People watched us, one or two with concerned expressions or small, approving smiles. Solicitous husband helping unwell wife. The scene was so outwardly caring, loving, that I felt an urge to laugh. But I didn’t. There was nothing left to laugh about.

And now my stomach was beginning to bother me. Sharp little cramping pains. Sympathy pains? That was almost funny, too-but not quite.

I helped Melissa into the car and took us away from the watching eyes, away from Murphys. Tom Moore’s hunting lodge was eight miles higher up in the mountains-a secluded retreat, a place for lovers. Why had I agreed to come here? Why had Melissa agreed? What was the sense in us getting away alone together, with the end for us so near?

Halfway to the lodge, the cramps grew worse. The pain was stabbing and I was feeling nauseous by the time I reached the turnoff. Beside me, Melissa sat hunched over, holding her stomach, her face pale. Pretending, to throw me off guard? Those thoughts came on the heels of the other one, the one that made me jerk and clench my hands tightly around the wheel.

Christ, what if she’d poisoned me?

Melissa

In the car on the road leading to our borrowed mountain cabin Ray asked me in what way I wasn’t feeling well. Nausea and stomach cramps, I told him, as well as a headache.

“Must be the flu,” he said. “I feel the same way, except I’ve also got chills.”

Liar, I thought. This was like no flu I’d ever experienced. “How long have you felt sick?”

“A little while.”

Then why had he eaten with apparent enjoyment a huge helping of the chicken pasta I’d fixed for lunch? Why had he suggested we drive into town and then spent so long browsing in the bookshop if he was feeling bad? Faking, of course, so I wouldn’t guess the truth. Except that I’d already guessed it.

“How awful for you,” I said.

“You’re certainly the sympathetic one.”

I turned my face to the side window and didn’t reply. My cramps were growing worse; the poison was doing its work.

At the rustic wood-and-stone lodge belonging to Tom Moore, his former business partner, Ray pulled the car close to the front steps, jumped out, and rushed up them without waiting for me. By the time I made my way inside, he was in the bathroom off the front hallway, making violent retching sounds. Acting again.

He was a consummate actor, I thought as I went upstairs to the living room and slumped in one of the armchairs in front of the huge fireplace. All those years of high-level business dealings, all those years of pretending interest in and affection for the children and me-they had polished his art. And now he was playing his biggest rôle of all, unaware that his audience of one wasn’t the slightest bit fooled.

I leaned my head back against the chair, narrowed my eyes, and looked around. Knotty pine everywhere. God, how I hated knotty pine! Every uncomfortable mountain or lakefront cabin I’d ever stayed in was paneled in the stuff, and now I was going to die surrounded by it.

A violent surge of nausea swept through me; bile rose in my throat. Ray was still in the downstairs bathroom, and I’d never make it upstairs in time, so I rushed to the kitchen and was sick in the sink. Leaning with my hands braced against the countertop, I thought distractedly: All the work I did cleaning up in here…ruined. Not that Tom would care. The man’s become a slob since his poor wife died.

His poor wife died…

That’s what they’d be saying about Ray soon. What did he plan to tell people? That I’d been poisoned by accident? Or did he intend to get rid of my body? Claim I’d disappeared? Bury me some place in these woods…?

My stomach contracted again; another cramp, more intense than any pain I’d ever experienced outside of childbirth, left me weak and breathless. And suddenly the apathy I’d felt since Murphys was gone. I didn’t want to die this way, in agony. I didn’t want to die at all. I’d thought I already had, spiritually, as I’d watched Jake Hollis plummet through the air. But that simply wasn’t true. After a moment I felt well enough to move across the room to a little desk with shelves containing cookbooks and other house hold volumes. The chills Ray had mentioned were starting now. What kind of poison produced chills? Had Ray chosen it because its symptoms mimicked a bad case of the flu? He hadn’t wanted me to know I was dying.

Unlike Jake. He’d known in those last few awful minutes.

The scene I’d witnessed from the plane two weeks earlier replayed itself in my mind: Ray and Jake struggling in mid air, neither chute open. Ray’s suddenly blossoming upward, while Jake fell, arms and legs flailing. And when the pilot and I arrived at the airstrip, there was Ray, pretending to be completely broken up over our friend’s death. Over and over he repeated: “I just don’t know what happened.”

And I had kept my silence, even though I knew what had happened-and why.

Jake Hollis was dead. Perhaps the closest person to a friend Ray ever had. My friend, too; I’d turned to him in desperation when I sensed my marriage was finally about to end. Not for sex, as I had to two other men in the past, but for insight into what had brought Ray and me to this point. But although Jake had heard me out through two long lunches and an afternoon of drinks, he could shed no light on the situation. Ray had kept him as much at an arm’s length as he had me.

For days after Jake’s death I’d felt numb, unable to cry, unable to confront Ray with the fact that I knew what he’d done. I even tried to deny it myself, pretend I hadn’t seen the mid air struggle; it seemed too monstrous an act for the man I’d lived with for a quarter of a century. But then a violent scene from five years before escaped from where I’d buried it in my memory: Ray raging at me, having found out about the second of my two brief affairs. His face red and contorted, his eyes wild, he’d accused me of repeated infidelities throughout our marriage. Berated me for sleeping with a member of his mountain-climbing team. Screamed: “I’ll kill him! I swear, on the next climb I’ll grab hold of him and pitch him off Denali! If I have to go down with him, I will!”

He hadn’t, of course. Instead, he’d spent five years nursing his rage and imagining I was sleeping with every man I met. And when that rage was at a fever pitch, he’d turned it on Jake. Killed his friend because he overheard a phone call between us. Killed him because another so-called friend had told him of seeing Jake and me in intimate conversation in a neighborhood cocktail lounge. I’d denied either when he asked me about them; now I wished I had told him why I’d been talking to Jake.

I laid my aching head on the desk and moaned. Finally the tears that shock had frozen began to flow.

Why did you kill him, Ray?

Why didn’t you just kill me?

Ray

Emptying my stomach didn’t help much. I still felt sick and shaky when I came out of the downstairs bathroom. This wasn’t the flu or any other kind of natural illness; there was no doubt of it now. Call nine-eleven, I thought, ask for medical assistance. But it would take a while for an ambulance or medevac helicopter to get here from Jackson or Sonora and I could be dead by then.

What kind of poison had she used? If I knew that, there might be something I could take to counteract it. At least I could tell the emergency operator, who could then alert the paramedics.

It was an effort to climb the stairs to the upper floor. Ray Porter, who had climbed mountains, hiked through jungles and across deserts-so damned weak he couldn’t mount a dozen steps without streaming sweat and hanging onto the railing with both hands. It enraged me, the idea of dying this way, weak and helpless. Yet the funny thing was, most of the rage was at myself for allowing such a thing to happen.

My fault, as much as Melissa’s. I’d driven her into Jake Hollis’s arms, the arms of all the others. I’d destroyed her, slowly and surely, with the heat of my passions. And in the process I’d sown the seeds of my own destruction.

But not blaming her or hating her didn’t mean I would let her get away with what she’d done. Life was still precious to me, and I wouldn’t let go of it without a fight.

She wasn’t in the kitchen. She had been, though; as I passed the stove, I smelled a sour odor and saw that she’d thrown up in the sink. My God! Maybe she hadn’t been faking in Murphys or on the way up here; maybe she’d poisoned herself, too. Hollis was dead, she couldn’t have him, and she didn’t want me anymore, so what did she have left to live for? It was just like her to concoct a quixotic Shakespearean finish for both of us.

I stumbled into the living room. She wasn’t there, either, but I could hear her-low sobbing sounds coming from out on the balcony that ran across the entire rear of the lodge. I almost fell before I reached the open balcony doors; I had to clutch at the glass for support, all but drag myself around the jamb. The weakness and the cramping pain made me even more determined.

Melissa was sitting on one of the redwood chairs, her arms wrapped across her middle, rocking slightly and grimacing. A closed book lay in her lap. A book, for God’s sake, at a time like this!

“Melissa.”

She stiffened and her head turned toward me. Her eyes were enormous, luminous with pain. In spite of what she’d done, in spite of myself, I experienced a surge of feeling for her-compassion, protectiveness, even tenderness, like suddenly materialized ghosts from the past.

“Why, Ray?” she said. “Why did this have to happen?”

“You know the answer to that better than I do. But it’s not too late. I won’t let it be too late.”

“I don’t want to die. I thought I did, for a while, but I don’t.”

“Neither of us is going to die. I’ll call for emergency medical help…but I have to know what it was first.” She shook her head as if she didn’t understand.

“The poison,” I said. “What kind of poison?”

“How should I know! Ray, don’t torture me any more…”

“Listen to me. It’s not too late. An antidote, some kind of emetic…what did you use?”

“I didn’t…I didn’t…”

I lurched toward her, fell to my knees beside her chair. “How long ago? What kind of poison? How much?”

“Stop it! You know it wasn’t me!”

“Melissa…”

“You did it. You, you, you!”

I stared at her in disbelief. “That’s crazy. I wouldn’t do a thing like that to you, to myself. I wouldn’t hurt you.”

“But if you didn’t poison us…?”

“I didn’t.” Confusion gripped me now; I couldn’t seem to think clearly. “And you swear you didn’t?”

“I swear!”

“If it wasn’t poison, then what…” I broke off, staring at the book in her lap, seeing its title for the first time. Symptoms: The Complete Home Medical Encyclopedia.

I reached out to it-and the pain came again, a sudden wrenching so violent it brought an involuntary cry from my throat. Gagging, I clutched at Melissa. Felt her hands on me. And then we were clinging to each other, holding tighter than we had in a long, long time.

Melissa

As Ray kneeled beside my chair and we held each other, I felt something that I’d never felt for him before: compassion. He’d never needed it, never wanted it, and he probably wouldn’t now. But a man who had climbed mountains, who had been unafraid to step out into space with only a parachute to depend on-it tore at my heart to see him reduced to this sweating, trembling weakness by…what?

He was staring at the home medical encyclopedia I’d found on the shelf above the kitchen desk. Now he raised his eyes to mine and said thickly: “Did you look up our symptoms in there?”

“No, not yet…”

He reached again for the book, but another wave of pain drove him down into a sitting position, forehead against my knees.

“Can’t do it,” he said. “My eyes…”

The admission seemed to rob him of his last strength. Ray had always taken charge, always, in every situation.

A sharp spasm wrenched my stomach. When it eased, I put my hand on the back of his head and said: “I can.”

It was a huge volume, and for a moment I couldn’t focus on how to use it. Then I realized the first part was a reverse dictionary of symptoms; you looked yours up, and it referred you to the causes described in the second section. I started with the section on nausea and vomiting.

“This doesn’t help,” I muttered after scanning the entry. Vomiting…Characteristic of nearly all infectious diseases, none of which it was likely we’d both come down with…Wait, here was vomiting coupled with headache…

Ray grabbed onto my calves now, his fingers spasming along with his body. More cramps, worse than what I was experiencing. I gripped his shoulder reassuringly and read on.

Brain tumors, migraine headache, acute glaucoma…

Oh, God, this was no good! I felt the beginnings of panic, took a deep breath, and continued skimming the entry. It told me nothing.

Ray moaned, his face contorted.

I flipped to the front of the book, looking for a table of contents. An encyclopedia of symptoms-wouldn’t they expect that a user might be in pain, want answers in a hurry? Why wasn’t there…?

Severe pain in the abdomen, nausea, cramps, vomiting. Acute gastritis…Staphylococcus…Botulism…“I’ve narrowed it down. Hold on.”

“What…?”

A strong spasm stiffened me before I could focus clearly on the next page. The chills that followed were intense enough to make my teeth chatter.

“Melissa?”

“I’ll be all right in a minute. Are your eyes any better?”

“…A little.”

I fumbled the book toward him. “Look at page three fifty-two, darling. Three fifty-two…”

Ray

Darling. Had I heard that right? She hadn’t called me darling, dear, honey, any of the endearments in a long while, even on the rare occasions the past few years when we’d made love…

Another twinge of pain made me grit my teeth, focus on the open book. Page 352. Infected Food, Gastroenteritis. Usually due to eating food that is infected by salmonella bacteria.

Food poisoning. What fools we’d been, each imagining that the other had resorted to arsenic, strychnine, some damned thing. And all along…

“Salmonella,” I said. “But how did we get it? We haven’t eaten anywhere but here the past couple of days.”

“The kitchen! You remember how filthy it was when we arrived? I thought I cleaned everything thoroughly, but I must’ve missed something…That damn’ plastic cutting board. Bacteria breeds in plastic like that, and I diced the raw chicken on it for our pasta.”

Rarely fatal, the book said. But nevertheless a medical alert. Severe cases develop dehydration, kidney failure with urinary suppression, shock. Call physician immediately.

“Nine-eleven,” I said. “Can’t waste any more time.” I tried to push up onto my feet, but I seemed to have no strength in my arms or legs. The entire lower half of my body felt heavy, almost numb from the vomiting and cramping.

“You’re too weak.”

“No. I’ve got to make the call…”

“You ate more than I did,” Melissa said, “your case is more severe. I feel better now…I’ll do it.” She touched my face. “I’m the strong one right now, darling. Let me be the strong one for once.”

I looked up at her through the wetness and the pain. The same Melissa, the same woman I’d married and had children with and lived with for a quarter of a century. And yet she seemed different somehow. Or maybe I was seeing her differently. The little-girl-lost quality was gone; for the first time I saw strength in my wife. Hazily I wondered if it was something new, a courage born of this crisis, or if it had been there all along, hidden or suppressed or just not visible to me for what it was.

I clung to the chair, weak, and watched Melissa stand up, strong, and make her way toward the open doors. And a voice that didn’t sound like mine, that almost whimpered like a hurt child’s, called after her: “Hurry, baby, hurry…”

Melissa

Ray had collapsed against the chair when I came back. “They’re sending a medevac helicopter,” I told him. “We’re going to be OK.” Then I sank down beside him, pulling an Afghan over both of us. He grasped my hand the way the children used to when I’d comfort them after bad nightmares.

A nightmare, that’s what today was.

“Melissa,” he said after a moment, “why did you think I poisoned you?”

“It isn’t important now.” We’d have to talk about it, of course, but later, when we were both stronger. I’d finally have to confront him about Jake. After that…

“No, please, I need to know.”

“…After Jake…died…”

“Jake? What does his death have to do with this?”

“I was there, Ray. I saw the two of you struggling in midair.”

His lips twisted and he let go of my hand. “The son of a bitch tried to kill me.”

“Jake, kill you? He was your friend. You meant a lot to him.”

“He was your lover.”

“No, my friend, too. All we ever did when we were alone together was talk about you and why our marriage was dying.”

A spasm overcame him, and he made a choking sound. When he recovered, he didn’t speak. I felt a coldness in him-anger, too, directed at me. And suddenly I understood.

“Oh, no!” I said. “You think Jake tried to kill you because of me. You think we conspired to get rid of you!”

His pain-dull eyes watched me for a moment. “You didn’t plan to kill me? And you weren’t sleeping with him?”

“I told you I wasn’t. I’ve slept with exactly two men other than you in my life…the last over five years ago. And even if I had been having an affair with Jake, I would never have plotted to hurt you.” The tears I’d been controlling started again.

Ray put a shaky hand to my cheek, tried to brush them away. “What’ve I been thinking? Accusing you over and over. And today…I thought you’d decided you couldn’t go on without Jake and were going to…Christ, what a hideous, twisted imagination I’ve got!”

“No more than mine. I thought you killed Jake and were faking your illness so I wouldn’t realize you’d poisoned me.”

He shook his head, grimacing. “You know, this would be funny if it wasn’t so…”

“Yes.”

We sat silently for a while. A distant thrumming and flapping noise came from beyond the pine-covered hills to the west.

“What about Jake?” Ray asked. “Why did he grab at my chute like that? There has to be a reason.” He closed his eyes, probably reliving the horrifying experience. “Oh, God,” he said heavily.

“What?”

“Jake taught skydiving, remember. Instructors are trained to notice things that other divers might not. He wasn’t trying to kill me…he was trying to save my life. He must’ve seen something that told him my chute wasn’t going to open. And he saved me at the expense of himself.”

Ray lowered his face into his hands and made a strange sound. At first I couldn’t identify it, then I realized he was crying. I’d never seen him shed so much as a single tear.

I peeled his hands away, took his face in both of mine, and kissed him. No words could ease the grief and shame we were feeling. There were not enough words to do that.

Ray

We were both composed again by the time the medevac he licopter arrived. Huddled together under the Afghan, holding hands. We hadn’t said much after the revelations about Jake Hollis’s death; there was only one issue left to discuss, and neither of us was quite ready to put it into words.

Every time I looked at her now, it was as if twenty-six years had melted away. I felt the same deep stirrings as I’d felt that first night at her sorority’s open house. But it wasn’t a young woman’s vulnerable beauty that attracted me this time, made me feel alive again; it was a mature woman’s capacity for giving and understanding. For such a long time I’d seen only the young Melissa whenever I looked at my wife-an illusion that had begun as reality and gradually evolved into pure fantasy. False illusion was what had driven the wedge between us, led to all the problems and foolish misconceptions we’d both had. And not only on my part-on hers, too.

Neither of us knew the other any more.

I wanted to know her again, everything there was to know about this Melissa-but did she feel the same about me? Did she want to know the Ray Porter I’d grown and changed into, with all his flaws and insecurities? I thought I saw the answer in her eyes, but the spasms that continued to rack us both made me unsure.

The helicopter was down finally, its rotors making a hell of a racket on the road out front. The paramedics would be here any minute. I had to get it out into the open now, before there was any more separation.

I squeezed her hand. “Melissa, it’s not too late for us, is it? We can start over again, learn to love each other again?”

“I never stopped loving you,” she said.

“Nor I you, but I mean…”

“I know what you mean. No more misunderstandings between us. No more walls.”

“Yes.”

“No more dying,” she said, and now I was sure of what was in her eyes. “The dying time is over. Now we can start living again.”