Page 117 of The Love Losers

But then she’d seen the marks, and I’d told her everything, because I was still just a kid. Days later, she’d left me at the house alone because there’d been an emergency with Emma. My father had come home early from a meeting, pleased to find me alone. He’d told me that I needed to be punished for telling my mother the truth, because no man would lean on a woman in that way.

So I’d watched him climb the tree, because he always made me watch him choose the branch and make the switch—part of the discipline, he said. Only this time he’d fallen.

Fallen and died instantly. In front of my eyes.

Just like I’d been wishing he would, each and every time.

I’m alarmed to feel tears in my eyes.

Inevercry.

I didn’t cry at his funeral.

Haven’t cried since the day he died.

I hear something over the rushing in my ears, my head, and I look up, feeling lost, and I see her like a vision, just like I did the other day my world fell apart. Rosie.

She rushes toward me, and I drop the axe, only then noticing there’s fresh blood on my bandage. And then her arms are wrapped around me, her scent in my nose, and the awful ache inside of me is curbed. I feel, again, like everything’s going to be okay, because I’m not alone anymore. I have this woman. I havemy wife. And because of her, I have my mother and Emma again. Because of her, I can have my dream.

“Oh, Anthony,” she says, tightening her grip on me, burying her face in my neck. “What happened?”

My hands are shaking, everything inside of me still vibrating like my teeth did the first time I used that axe.

“I love you,” I say, pulling away enough to look at her. “Iloveyou.”

There’s more I could say, about how she’s saved me from myself and from this legacy I’ve never been able to leave behind. But right now, that’s what I need her to know.

She reaches up and rips the chain off her neck. For a second my heart races for a different reason, and I try to prepare myself for her to give me back the ring. The horrible possibility that she may have come here to tell me she changed her mind rolls over me, but then she lets the chain drop and spool at our feet and puts the ring on her engagement finger, where it belongs. Looking at me with glistening eyes, she says, “I love you too. Now tell me why we’re fucking up this tree.Please.”

Relief bursts inside of me as she guides me to sitting on the ground beside the tree, which is bleeding sap from its wound. The snow is wet, but the ground beneath is solid.

She sits in my lap, facing me, and I nearly start crying again from the relief of it. But she’s staring at me, and I know she’s waiting.

“I wanted him to die,” I admit to her, saying it for the first time out loud.

If she judges me for that, it doesn’t show on her face.

I swallow. “When my father did something really bad or dangerous when he was a kid, his father would make a switch out of one of the branches from the apple tree and switch his back. He…” I rub my jaw. “He credited that with making a man of him.”

Understanding dawns in her eyes. “Thatbastard,” she says through clenched teeth.

I cup her cheek, embarrassed but vindicated by her rage on my behalf. “It didn’t get bad until I was ten or so. It went from once every few months, to every month, and then…” I glance away. “It was supposed to be a secret from my mother, but he went too far. One of the cuts bled through the back of my shirt, and she noticed, and I was only eleven, and my mother’s much smarter than me. It wasn’t hard for her to get me to talk.”

Her lips part, and I can tell she wants to drag my father’s name in the dirt. To pummel and destroy him. I’m brought back to the moment when my mother found out. To the way she got down on her knees in front of me and hugged me, tears streaming down her face. My mother is nothing if not a woman of action, though. She confronted him that night, and the whole house had filled with echoes of their shouting voices.

Taking a ragged breath, I say, “His accident happened after that. He came home when he knew I’d be alone, and he wasn’t careful. He fell, and his neck hit at the exact wrong angle and—”

I feel tears in my eyes again, and I’m ashamed, but she grips my face in the crook of her hand, forcing me to look at her.

“Good,” she says firmly. “That means someone took care of you. Someone was your angel, Anthony. I believe that.”

I lean in and kiss her, my hands lifting into her golden hair. I may not believe what she’s saying, but I believe she’s my angel now. Maybe all of these frustrating, lonely years were what I needed to bring me here, to her.

She pulls away slightly, her expression determined, and lifts my bandaged hand for inspection. When she looks back up, she says, “You’re in no condition to take this tree down alone. This is where I need to be real with you and say there’s no way you would have been able to do it alone, without any supplies, even if your hand wasn’t bleeding.”

“At least I know you’ll never bullshit me…”

She’s right, of course. But itneedsto come down. And it’s supposed to happen today.

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