Ripple Effect

Chapter Sixty: ...Gunsmoke.

Henry

2:01 AM

"Earlier on, when you asked me if I'd thought about it... I'm sorry that I lied."

Henry's eyes jolted open, and he scrambled to prop himself against his elbows where he lay on his side of the bed. A sliver of pallid amber light crept through the chink in the curtains, a diffuse beam that unspooled amidst the shadows, whilst the chill in the air prickled against his sweat-slicked brow and snuck beneath the neckline of his tee to elicit a shiver that rippled through his shoulders and brought a ragged edge to each gasp of breath.

His hand groped through the covers, his fingers thirsting for a touch that would wash away the remnants of the nightmare: the image of Elizabeth, the warmth of her skin drained to milk white, her lips brushed with a blue the shade of watered-down ink, her pupils like two black windows gaping open as her soul escaped into the night. But the cold sheets that greeted him only reminded him that he had simply awoken to a different kind of nightmare.

She had been gone three weeks. That meant three washes of the bedsheets, yet still her scent clung to the cotton—a cocoon that wrapped around him and soothed him to sleep each night, only to unravel into an empty promise the moment that he awoke. It taunted him that so much of her still surrounded him whilst she herself had gone, and it left him feeling as lost as he had done the day he'd learnt that she'd failed to show up to her transportation out of Iraq and he'd been forced to lie to their daughter—We made this, Henry—who waited by the front door. When he'd left her at the clinic, he'd honestly believed that things would be all right—that she'd sleep and talk and heal—just as on Stevie's eighth birthday, he'd believed that at any minute they'd hear her knock echoing at the door. But then the staff told him that Elizabeth wasn't 'engaging', then Dr Sherman said that Elizabeth was planning to leave and that she had serious concerns, then came news of the panic attack, followed by the revelation that Elizabeth would stay after all but they could no longer accept his calls. After three days spent missing in Iraq, she had finally come home, but now, having heard nothing of her for the past twelve days, it made him question whether that narrow window Dr Sherman had spoken of—the one that would see Elizabeth return to how she was before—had already slammed shut. Which in turn only added to the feeling that he should have done something sooner, he should have found a way to make her see sense, even if he didn't know what that way might have looked like, he should have done something more.

The thought haunted him as much as the image of Elizabeth and what might have happened to her had he never called Dr Sherman at all.

He swung his legs over the edge of the bed, hunched forward, and rubbed the dregs of sleep from his face, as though to leave them there would only invite the image to flood back. The room simmered with its blue-black light, and though he could have chased the shadows away with the glow of the bedside lamp, he didn't. It would be just one more reminder that there was no one there to disturb. Instead, he grabbed the sweatshirt that sprawled across the armchair and wrestled it on as he padded out of the bedroom and into the hall.

Downstairs, the den was steeped in darkness, the kind that hung so thick that it brushed up against Henry as he shuffled towards the couch. He slumped down onto the cushions, snatched up the remote control, and zapped the television to life. The light from the screen flickered across the walls and painted them in flashes of grey and not-quite-white. He scrolled the volume down to one bar and then navigated to another rerun.

"Hey."

At Alison's voice, he startled and twisted around. Alison stepped off the bottom of the stairs, her cardigan bundled around her, her hands bunched and hidden in the sleeves.