The Ghostwriter's Words

Claire: What have I done?

I miss her already. What have I done? Why was I so angry that I couldn't listen to what she was trying to tell me?

Why?

She's married to a man. And she's returning home for his birthday. Why did that confession stab me so deeply? We've been together for fifteen years, and she's never gone anywhere without me. She hasn't been running off to see him in secret. She hasn't been cheating. Maybe they aren't even together anymore. Just not divorced. But she should have told me!

Yes, maybe she should have! Still, because of that, I've shoved the love of my life out the door. I've torn my soulmate from my heart. We'd found one another. How rare is that? So, now we are lost again, in search of one another. Forever!

I asked her once if she thought of men in the way I needed to think of women to get off, or at least tried to get off the one time I was with a man or whenever I've pleasured myself. But, Sara claimed, she only thought of me. Or did, until I sent her away.

How stupid is that?

I have no way of calling her back or how to find her, but if I could, I would beg her, 'Please, tell me. Let me hear what you want to say. I know there is so much more to know about you. You have other secrets you're afraid to tell me, afraid I won't understand.'

Now, I've silenced her forever because I refused to listen. And she'll never think of me in the same way again.

Standing in the open doorway, all I can do is stare like the fool I am down an empty road, as though hope and the power of my will might turn that car around and bring Sara back to me while all these odd random memories of what I've lost, of what I've thrown away, float one after another through my thoughts.

That habit of Sara's, reaching for that stupid thing she wears in her nose like she has a headache or is about to have a nosebleed. I don't think she's even aware she does it. Then her mind goes elsewhere, and she's lost in another world. Sometimes, only for an instant, but other times she's absent long enough that I feel the need to draw her back to the present, to herself, to me.

I worry that something is wrong. I'm afraid she'll tell me that she has a brain tumor, that she's sick and dying. And that's the secret she's been hiding. Now, I'm afraid she'll never tell me anything again.

I remember the morning she got me off tandem skydiving from twelve-thousand feet above a sparkly blue sea. There was a beautiful panoramic view of snow-topped mountains in the distance. The beach, where she pointed out that she planned for us to land, was a barely visible sliver of white. I finally spotted it just as my awareness of the world around us disappeared and shrunk down to the movement of her fingers and the building sensations they brought.

That wasn't the first time we'd gone skydiving. We went so many times those first few years and so many more since then. The first was because of some stupid joke about jumping out of a perfectly good airplane. That was only a few weeks after she came to live with me. After a laugh, we both agreed we should try that someday. Then, a few days later, a helicopter landed next to the house, and she told me, "Surprise!"

We flew to a landing strip nearby that I hadn't known existed, where a plane was waiting. I expected there'd be an instructor to explain what to do, but it was Sara who showed me how to fasten myself into the front of the harness of our tandem chute. She pushed open the sliding door and threw us both headlong out of a perfectly good airplane, and we fell through the sky together.

I screamed curses into the headset she gave me so we could talk over the whistling of the wind. I told her I hated her. I didn't have time to say my prayers - even though I'm not a true believer. How could I be when I love a woman in a way that is a sin that will keep me from heaven?