Page 178 of These Tears

But underneath it all, there had been a man who had learnt that bodies are taken and that words are twisted.

That wanting is a weapon someone else could use against him.

Last night? He had used that damned book like a map, not a medium. And I had sat there, staring at that page, thinking I was surviving his darkness, when maybe he had been trying – in that strange way of his – to survive it without becoming the thing they said he was.

I crouch as my stomach folds in on itself.

Did you do the same to Melody?

It echoes in my head, in my own voice, with my own ignorance.

God.

My hand comes up to cover my mouth as if I can shove it all back. I had watched him panic at the question and labelled it guilt.

You don’t know anything.

That much still stands. I don’t know what happened with Arthur. Or how involved Cromwell really was. There’s no telling how much of the story was tucked into legal language until the victim disappeared beneath the monster.

And now, the word rapist no longer fits as neatly into the version of him I had constructed.

He can stand over me in threat, force-feed me, make me read dirty books, feed me his want – and still carry the marks of violence that happened long before I found him.

Jakob pitched against Elias.

I stand, rolling my neck and taking deep breaths. My spine aches as I stretch to feel my own body again.

This does not absolve him.

It does not erase the plane, the cabin, the fear.

It does not make captivity better because I have found what bleeds beneath it.

But it does change the way shadows fall around him.

I look into the mirror. It shows a woman shaking her head at herself.

I am standing in a stranger’s lavatory with more distance between Elias and me than there has ever been, understanding far too late that he has not been trying to convince me he is innocent. He has been waiting for me to decide whether the truth disgusts me too.

The descent takes longer than the climb upstairs. My thoughts keep slipping beneath my soles, making each step uncertain.

The women in the sitting room look up at me and offer weak smiles that people use when they know something private has happened behind a closed door.

No one asks.

Because they know Elias, or know of him, well enough to leave the silence be.

Unlike me.

I return the smile, tuck my arms close to my sides and slip past them without meeting anyone’s eyes.

Somehow the telephone is no longer the loudest thought in my head, either. I can’t decide whether that makes me compassionate or catastrophically stupid.

Outside, Elias is seated by the fire. Two men sit to his right, plenty of space between him and them.

Space.

He stares at the ground, rearranging rocks in the dirt with the toe of his boot, shoulders bowed so low the firelight can’t reach his face.