Page 28 of Possession

The day I walked into Paige’s childhood home I knew I shouldn’t want her. We were too different, and when I’d felt that burst of confidence, that need of normalcy for the first time, I was hooked. I lived for the fix, for the silence and beauty Paige granted me with each touch. I hated her and loved her and just like the addict, with a monkey on his back, when I’d left the church today I knew I’d never be able to quit her.

The brush fell from my paint-covered hand to the floor. I hadn’t realized how out of breath I’d become. The anger rushed through me with each rapid pulse of my heart. I closed my eyes and let the music surround me. I needed a break from those eyes, but even in the darkness she could find me. I felt her hand in mine, and the smell of the old cathedral filled my nostrils as I inhaled. Her prayer haunted me.

“I am wounded, and saddened. I am weak and miserable. Without thee, I am lost. I have sinned, dear Lord, and I do not deserve thy grace, but I seek it… I seek it. I seek thy forgiveness, I seek the forgiveness of thee, and of the one I love, the one I have wronged.”

Her frame was so fragile. The devils in my head begged to see her bones, see what horror lay beneath, but the human in me couldn’t hate the shell of the woman who’d kneeled beside me… not anymore. I opened my eyes and Paige’s gaze watched me from the canvas. Everything I hated about her had vanished and all that was left was a woman I didn’t recognize. Her youth and beauty had paled and she was a skeleton of her former self, a wraith, just like I’d always envisaged her to be. She hadn’t looked so frail when I’d seen her here in the studio the other day. It seemed I’d ruined her as much as she’d ruined me.

I bent down, grabbed the brush, and took a rag from my pocket, wiping up the splatter from the floor the best I could. The studio floor was covered in paint anyway. The clock on the wall told me I’d been here way too damn long. I covered my paint and gathered up my brushes. I dropped them in the jar of thinner sitting on the back wall and disconnected my phone from the stereo.

“Shit.”

My hands were still wet and left fingerprints on my phone case. I wiped the excess paint off my hands onto my jeans. As I wiped the back of my phone as well, I saw the blue notification light was blinking. I opened the lock screen and saw I’d missed a few calls from Liam and had a text from Kieran.

Kieran:Dinner tomorrow at Mom’s.

It was too late to text and say I didn’t feel like doing the Sunday dinner thing, but I’d missed the last few and I was pretty sure my mom, if capable, would’ve driven to the shop and dragged me there. I stared at Kieran’s previous text. The one that warned me he’d accidentally told Paige where I was. I’d have to let him off the hook tomorrow. Kieran hadn’t meant any harm, he never did, but sometimes I wished he could lie just like the rest of us. The wholenot being a liarthing was inconvenient for him.

I flipped through my contacts until I saw her name, and I wondered if her number was the same. My thumb hovered over the call button. We’d been on neutral ground today. A truce had been called before God as we both felt our sin and heard the other’s prayer. It was always that way with us. Her joy was my joy. My love was her love. Her pain was my pain. Paige and I were one, and we’d felt it today. I wasn’t sure if she was still married. I knew nothing of her these past nine years but the memories I’d dwelled in. Today, I’d wanted to set her free from her pain. She’d sought me out for forgiveness, and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to resist her lure.

I let the screen go black and placed my phone back into my pocket. I walked through The Gallery and locked the front door behind me. The bite of early fall sent a shiver down my limbs as I walked to the apartment. The city streets were abandoned for beds and lovers, and I was alone with my thoughts and the demons that twisted my rights into wrongs.

“Let me see her!” I shouted.

Paige’s father curled his upper lip exposing his white teeth. “You’re to never see my daughter again.” His words moved like ice, slow and hateful. “You think I’d let her see you again after what you two have done. You’ve murdered an innocent life, and I will see to it that Paige pays for her sin, that she gets her atonement, but you…” He shoved me square in the chest, but I held steady and rolled my shoulders back. Mr. Simon stepped off the threshold closing the distance between us, so close I could smell his self-righteous breath. “You’re worthless, Declan, always have been, always will be, and I will pay my own price to the Savior for ever allowing you to get close to my daughter.”

Worthless. Worthless. Trash.

No.

I shook my head and shoved him back.

“Paige!” I called her name in a roar. She had to hear me, she had to know I’d come back.

“She told us what happened, Declan. She broke down to her mother three days ago. Did you think you both could just throw away a life without guilt… without consequence? She doesn’t want to see you, and if you don’t get off my front porch I’ll call the cops!”

She’s given up on you.

She hates you.

“Paige! Please!” I was frantic and I tried to pass him, but he blocked the door.

“Call the police!” he shouted over his shoulder, and Paige’s mother glared at me as she pulled her phone from her pocket and flipped it open.

“Just…” I was out of breath, out of chances. “Tell Paige I forgive her.”

I didn’t wait for a confirmation, he’d never tell her and if I stayed I’d end up in jail, or worse, the psych unit. I should’ve never told her to leave last week. I should’ve never shut her out… I’d let her believe that I hated her and now I’d lost her.

The city loomed above me as I neared my apartment, and the laughter in my head was sardonic. The hate inside me had won the day I broke up with Paige. I could twist and turn the story over in my head a thousand times. She’d given up on me, didn’t think I was good enough to marry, and when I’d told her I’d never forgive her, I’d been still freshly wounded. But over the next few days, it had started to become gangrenous with regret, and I’d been able to see what I hadn’t seen before. She’d said she didn’t want to destroy my future,nothers. She’d said she wanted to protectme. And maybe it had been a lie, and maybe it hadn’t. We’d both been too fucking young, too caught up in our own pain to be capable of dealing with any of that shit, and over the years I’d lost touch with the truth, and I’d let the wound rot. Her father had been right.

I was worthless.

“I seek the forgiveness of thee, and of the one I love, the one I have wronged.”

She didn’t know.

I’d been a coward to walk away from that porch without telling Paige the truth. Without trying harder to tell her in person that I’d forgiven her. Instead of trying to get her back, I’d bowed out. I’d let her go. For years, every month on the thirteenth, I’d go to church and I’d light a candle for our child, for Paige, in hopes she could feel its healing flame. I’d stopped going a few years ago in an attempt to move on, in an attempt to heal the festered wound, but it only made it worse. Not until today, when I felt her hand in mine, her lips against me, had I ever thought I’d be pardoned of our sin. I’d left the church with anger, fear, and uncertainty, but I’d also left with a peace I couldn’t explain, like that part of my life, the hole caused by the choice—the loss of our child, had finally been sewn shut.

Kneeling together, as one.

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