Page 89 of We Are the Match
Zarek tilts his head. Smiles. “Ah,” he says. “So youcancontrol your impulses.”
“Helen,” I say softly. I place my hand on her arm and look at her, because I cannot bear to look at Tommy. Tommy, who was gentle when neither Helen nor I deserved it. Tommy, who cared for me patiently when no one else ever really has.
“Let us do the decent thing,” I say to Zarek. “And give him a burial. He kept her safe for many years. You owe him that.”
Zarek’s eyes flicker.
Milos is still staring at Helen as if he has never seen her before. “You—Helen, whatareyou?”
She looks at me desperately. “Your wife,” she says, but she is looking at me and not at him, as if I did not kneel here during all of it. As if I cannot taste blood in my mouth from the force of the shot. “Yourwife. But you were supposed to save Tommy.” She looks up at Zarek. “You promised.”
The last part comes out a whimper.
“Take care of him,” Zarek tells me, waving his hand at Tommy, as carelessly as if Tommy has not spent almost three decades caring for Helen, as if Tommy has not been loyal in a world where no one ever is.
I reach forward and close Tommy’s eyes. Gently, gently, I brush the blood away from the entry wound. It is not enough, not nearly enough, and he deserved so much more than this, but it is all I can give him. It is more than I gave my sisters on Troy.
I take Helen’s hand. “Come,” I say. “Come, Helen.”
They leave us there, and I let Helen cradle him against her for far longer than I should.
Finally, I coax her to her feet, and then we carry him as best as we can. He is heavy, so painfully heavy, especially in his tactical vest and gear, but it seems so much a part of him I cannot bear to take it off. We could call someone to help, but neither of us can find our voices, and we both seem to have decided that this we have to do ourselves.
It takes us so long, so very long, to find our way to Helen’s room. I pause there, grab a fistful of poppies from her bedside table, and then Helen guides us to a trapdoor in the back of her closet. There is a staircase hidden there, leading down to a private cove where a small speedboat and a few canoes are moored.
We set Tommy down at the edge of the water, and I fold his hands over his chest. His hands, so gentle with us, so brutal with the rest of the world, are still.
And then the first sob rips through me, rips apart my chest where all the bombs of the gods could not.
“You were not supposed to love us this much.” I bury my face against his chest, so still and quiet.
I want to feel the steadythump, want him to call me kid and sigh when I do something utterly stupid, I want him to call mekideven when I insist that I am not.
Helen lets out a noise that is more snarl than wail this time. “No,” she says. “No.”
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, and we lean on each other, our strength gone. There is so very little left of us, just as Tommy had warned us. Just as so many had warned us.
Helen sighs, a soft release of breath.
“I want to send him off,” she says. “Will you help me?”
In the end, we pull a boat in, one of the smaller canoes docked here, and help him into it.
I hold out poppies from Helen’s bedroom.
She places one in his hands, folded now over his heart, and I do the same.
She saysI love youandI’m sorryandpromise, so many times I think my heart will break.
Tommy, who loved Helen so much it killed him.
I fold his hands over the poppies and smooth his dark-brown hair, speckled with gray. I straighten his coat, button the buttons over his heart.
We send him to sea, our Tommy, to rest at last, to rest away from this gods-cursed place.
“Helen,” I say at last.
She is so, so far from me now.
