The Hour Between Evening & Night

There were just a few hours of sunlight left. Catherine knew, though, that she could find her way home even in the dark. Ten years and nothing had changed. Just like she expected. Even the path was the same. The large tree at the corner still stood, and the “N & C” was still etched into the bark, though it seemed to sit a little higher in the tree now- seemed stretched a little broader. Time distorted things that way. Even memories.

Slowly before her, under the muted thudding of footsteps and the crunching of snow, the path opened to the bank of the pond. Its icy surface was dusted with freshly fallen snow, and from beneath the powdered-sugar coating glistened the sharp edges left behind by skaters. Her eyes glided over the surface and her lungs filled with the cold, dry air. She sighed.

Ten years...

“What are you doing here?” His voice was neither gruff nor welcoming.

She didn’t need to turn around to know who it was.

“You know, the last time we stood here together, it was summertime.” She closed her eyes, and there in the darkness she saw the sun dance across the surface of the water. “I can still hear… the birds at dawn and… the crickets at dusk. And the fireflies. Do you remember catching the fireflies?” She asked, finally turning to face him. Nicholas stood, stone-faced, a bundle of firewood over his shoulder.

He did not answer. He was still waiting for hers.

Catherine sighed. “I suppose I came to remember. Somehow it feels as though… my memories aren't so distant when I can stand here and-”

“I didn’t mean ‘why did you come to the pond?’” he cut in, almost surprised that she could have mistaken his words. “I mean, ‘why did you come here’? To our town?”

“You mean ‘why did I come home’?”

His face tightened at the expression. “You made it very clear this wasn’t home.”

“Oh Nicholas, I’ll be honest, I still don’t know if I’ll ever have a home. Especially now. But if any place could ever be my home, this would be it.”

He watched her. “Why especially now?”

“Do you remember when you told me that you could be my home?”

For the first time his expression softened, and he dropped his gaze to the snowy ground. They stood there in silence, their breath uncurling from their nostrils like smoke. Finally, his eyes met hers again.

“It’s cold.”

“Very.”

“I was going to make a fire.”

“Want some help?”

He looked around and then back to her, nodding. “Sure. Yeah.” He sniffed. She smiled. The cold always made his nose runny. “Let’s go over there by the logs.”

Catherine nodded and turned. When they reached the logs, she started to kick up the snow with her boots and made a ring in the hardened dirt for the fire. Nicholas untied the wood and began stacking it, one piece against the other. He stuffed a little kindling inside and struck a match. It didn’t take long before it was burning warm and bright in the slowly dimming light of dusk. They sat on opposite logs and stared into the dancing flames.

“What about you?” She finally asked, holding her gloved hands over the fire.

“What about me?” he asked, looking up to meet her gaze.

“Why did you come out here?”

Nicholas sighed. He was no longer looking at her but through her; his thoughts were taking him somewhere far away. There, lost in the distance, he could find the words. “To remember,” he replied. “And to understand.” He was quiet for a moment before continuing. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.” And with those words his eyes refocused. He was snapped back to the here and now. “But you still haven’t told me,” he added after some seconds had passed. “You still haven’t told me why you came.”

“But I did,” she replied. He looked confused. “I came- I came,” she struggled with the words. Her stomach lurched on them because she knew what they meant and how they ended. “I came because I knew you’d be here. And I didn’t know if you’d still be…” she trailed off, but he understood.

“My goodness, Catherine. It’s been ten years. It’s not like no one ever liked me.”

“I know. I knew it then- that I might lose you. If I left and I stayed gone, perhaps you would find someone else to make a home with. But I couldn’t help but hope…”

He nodded. “Well, you had a lot of nerve hoping after how you left.”

“No, a lot of faith.” His eyes dimmed from anger to an overcast melancholy. “Faith that you meant it when you said you loved me. I never doubted you. But you doubted me.”

“Well what was I supposed to do, Catherine? You’re the one who left! And for years I stayed just as I was, wondering if you’d ever come back. But you never did. How can you look at me now and say you loved me when you’re the one who walked away?”

“I told you to come with me!”

“You know I couldn’t. I couldn’t leave my family then. And-” he stopped short. Nicholas sat up straighter and looked away. He reached for another piece of firewood and added it to the pile.

“And what?”

He was quiet for a moment. When he finally looked back up, his eyes were moist. “I knew that if you could leave me, truly leave me, you didn’t love me. Not really.”

“That’s not true!” she cried, her eyes beginning to sting. “That’s not-” but she stopped. “Well I suppose it’s neither here nor there at this point.”

Nicholas nodded. “Right.”

Again they sat in silence. A slight breeze whistled faintly over the open surface of the pond and she shivered. “It’s cold,” she said. The night was still.

Catherine watched him where he sat, unmoving. Suddenly the tiniest of smiles curled at one end of his mouth. He glanced up. “Were you surprised that it was her?”

“You mean that you married Leila?”

His smile widened. “Yeah,” he said, with a little chuckle and a raise of his eyebrows. “That I married Leila.” She caught a brief glimpse of the mischievous boy she had sat with here all those years ago.

“She calls you Nick." Her nose wrinkled. She said it like she had bit into something sour.

He laughed. “I knew you’d hate that.”

“I do! I always said ‘Nicholas is much more romantic’ and I stand by that.”

Nicholas shook his head. “She’s one for simplicity. Always has been.”

“Well,” she took a deep breath. “She’s not the personality I would have picked for you. That’s for sure. And I’ll be honest, I wouldn’t have pictured you being her type, either. I mean, you’re so loud and… and boisterous. She always liked those quiet, serious men.”

He shrugged. “Yeah, well, I’m not the same person I was ten years ago. If I was, I don’t think I could have made her happy. But that me left the day you did and he’s never come back. I think maybe he died somewhere out there.”

Catherine shook her head. “No, he didn’t. He’s just in here,” she said, tapping the side of her head. “And here.” She placed her hand over her heart.

They were quiet.

“It’s getting late,” Catherine finally said. “Leila will worry. And I need to turn in, too.”

“You’re probably right,” he said with a sigh. “I’m going to stay out here a few more minutes, but you can go on.”

She nodded. “Thanks for talking.”

“Sure.”

Catherine stood and began to walk away, but she stopped when she reached him.

“I- I-.” She began to cry- soft tears that froze on her cheeks. He stood and faced her. “I’m sorry that I broke your heart. I always did love you. I loved you more than anything.”

“Almost.” She looked up, her vision blurry. “You loved me, yes. But you loved your freedom more.”

“I think I was just too young to understand… We were really just children then, you and me. Sometimes I still feel that I’m a child. Even more than I was then. But now I have gray hairs. Three of them, even.”

Nicholas laughed. “You’ll always be a child, even when your whole head is white like the snow out here.”

Her tears came faster. Catherine felt her cheeks turn red. She hated to cry, but she hated even more that he was there to see it. “I’m sorry I’m crying,” she said. “But I just know I’ll never see you again. I can’t live without loving you, but I can’t love you anymore.”

He hugged her for a moment and then kissed her forehead and lifted her chin with his hand. “Stay safe, Catherine. And keep that young and rowdy Nicholas safe for me, too. He needs someone to love him.”

She nodded and turned away, walking down the path. It was shadowed in the blackest blue that came just before night. When she reached the tree, she stopped, putting her hand over the letters and feeling their scar in the bark. Her eyes fell down the path again, between the trees, and onto the dark and distant form that sat by the fire.

I’ll always love you.

Catherine turned and walked away.