Page 44 of The Two of Us

His shadowed arm reaches into his back pocket and with the sound of a faint click, a flashlight turns on. He moves to the side and only then do I realize we’re standing next to Old Maple.

He tilts the flashlight, illuminating the small grin on his face before allowing it to disappear in the dark again. “Take a look.”

I’m confused. I’ve been out here a million times. I know what Old Maple looks like better than anyone else. I raise my eyes to the old tree and the tree house that rests upon it. The air whooshes from my lungs, leaving me speechless.

Old Maple’s treehouse looks brand new. New in a way that highlights what it’s always been but fixed up to look more aesthetically pleasing. It looks safer. The cracks in the roof and walls are filled and the stairs jutting out from the tree have been upgraded. You can climb the stairs without fearing for your life now. The rot that has been taking over one of the side windows has been taken care of and there’s a little pulley system installed with a basket hanging on the end.

I can’t look away. “What did you do?”

“When the real estate agent saw the tree house, she wanted me to tear it down. She said it was an ‘eyesore.’ I told her it was a part of the house and it needed to stay. I promised to fix it up, make it a bit more marketable, and that convinced her to concede in the end.”

I take him in then. This man who continues to surprise me. Something very far in the depths of my soul is waking up after its long slumber and it scares me. After everything we’ve been through, it makes no sense. His kindness, his openness toward me… it’s incomprehensible.

“Why?”

He knows what I’m really asking and I can tell his eyes soften, even in the dark. “You’ve lost enough.”

Those three words rock me and I have to readjust my stance to keep from crumbling into dust on the ground. I don’t speak, terrified that if I open my mouth, all the little broken pieces inside me will fall out.

Ambrose’s gentle fingers close around my wrist. “Let’s go up.”

We climb Old Maple together for the first time in a long time. Thanks to the new stairs, the climb only takes a few seconds and part of me wants to laugh at how much of a struggle getting into this tree house used to be. Ambrose enters ahead of me and when I crawl my way inside, he has his body folded in on itself. I notice my hands and knees don’t ache like they usually did when I climbed inside.

I shoot out in surprise, “Did you install carpet in here?”

Ambrose’s laugh filling the air answers my question. I crawl all the way in, lying flat on my back. It’s pitch black and the only indication that Ambrose lies right next to me is the heat emanating from him and the way my body instantly responds to it. We sit in comfortable silence for a few minutes.

“This tree house used to be our entire world,” I whisper. “And now it feels like a tiny matchbox.”

Ambrose breathes deeply, and his shoulder grazes mine. “It served its purpose. It made us happy during those years.” He turns his head on its side to face me, but my eyes stay glued to the ceiling, not wanting to see the past on his face. “But we were never meant to stay this small.”

I want to erase his words. I want to be small again. I want to hide away and disappear into the crevices of these walls. The world is too expansive—its mouth always opened wide and ready to swallow us whole.

I shift my head, putting me face to face with Ambrose. Our noses almost brush and I can practically taste the mint lingering on his breath. “You said you were helping my dad with the house because you owed him. What do you owe him for?”

He turns away from me, taking all the heat with him.

I want it back more than I’m willing to admit.

“The summer after your graduation… I got into some trouble.”

I wait patiently for him to continue.

“The last thing I wanted to do was go back to school. I stayed around town for a few months and honestly, I turned into a shit person. I let my emotions get the best of me. I drank too much. Before I knew it, I was picking fights with people whose only offense was crossing my path. I was the worst version of myself.” He rakes his fingers through his hair like his confession is painful to relive. “When your dad heard about me, he got on my case. He had a way of talking to me that made me listen. You know my parents never mastered that. He bailed me out every time I was taken to the station for fighting. Every time. He started taking me on small build projects around town. Nothing fancy, just things to do with my hands so they wouldn’t find their way back to people’s faces. If not for him, I’d probably be behind bars right now. He pushed me to go back to school. I owe him everything.”

I have no words. Nothing I imagined comes close to what Ambrose just confessed. I don’t waste time wondering why my dad didn’t tell me about Ambrose’s struggles. When I left Speck Lake, I made it clear I was leaving its inhabitants too. Ambrose has every reason to hate me, but since I’ve been back, he’s passed up every opportunity to completely shut me out.

He smooths out the crease in my forehead with his thumb. “Hey. I know why you left. I would never hold that against you.”

I nod. It’s all I can do.

Ambrose repositions himself too many times for being confined to such a small space. He wants to ask me something.

“Just spit it out,” I say.

Without hesitation, he turns onto his side and lifts his head, cradling it in his hand. “Why haven’t you visited Cat since you’ve been back?”

The ringing in my ears is surprising because I’ve been waiting for this question. But that’s the funny thing about painful words. Anticipating them doesn’t make them any less painful. Sweat breaks out across my forehead as if the small matchbox we sit in is catching fire. My body knows to run before my mind does and I scramble up onto my knees, feeling around for the exit.

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