She remembers Barclay’s story about the night they’d met, about collapsing drunk in the snow. “Then what?”
“Well, I didn’t die.”
“Go on. Tell the rest.”
“You can imagine. I got too cold. I remember trying to decide if I could bear to keep living with Gilda. In the end I don’t know if I really decided anything, but I stood up and walked a little way, and then I saw the lights of your house, not far away at all. I went in through the kitchen and tried to pretend I wasn’t as cold as I was, but Berit wasn’t fooled.”
Marian props herself up. “I remember that! I’d forgotten all about it. Is that what happened? I remember you coming in completely blue and Berit whisking you away. I listened at the bathroom door and heard you crying in the tub.”
He winces. “My hands and feet were frozen. Thawing them was awful. Berit kept asking why I’d been outside, and I kept telling her I’d heard wolves around the cabin and had gone out to hunt them. Usually she didn’t have any patience for my tall tales, but that time she played along. She asked if I’d gotten any. She sat beside the tub and listened to me chatter while I thawed. I was crying the whole time, it hurt so bad.”
“Good old Berit.”
He makes a small sound of agreement, says, “But afterward, for some reason, what Gilda did didn’t matter anymore. I felt, I don’t know, fortified. Like suddenly I was aware I could choose my fate.”
“I think I understand.”
She tells him, flatly, about the war she’d fought with Barclay over her womb, the siege she’d endured. “I needed a shock to leave—it was the pregnancy that fortified me.”
He rolls over to kiss the inside of her elbow, and when he lifts his head his face is strained with anger. “I already hated him, but now I want to kill him.”
“There are worse things.”
“That’s not the point.”
“It’s in the past.”
“Not entirely. You’re changed.”
“You’re not.” They smile. She says, “I can’t make myself understand that I’ll never see Wallace again.”
“Have you forgiven him?”
“I think so. Barclay would have found another way.”
Caleb makes a strange grimace. “He sent me a letter for you. Everyone knows I’m your postmaster.”
“Wallace did?” She doesn’t understand why he has waited so long.
“No, Barclay.” Caleb gets out of bed, rummages in his bag, drops a sealed envelope in her lap.
Marian—
I don’t know where you are, but I will live with not knowing. Not knowing is an atonement I can make and one I know you would want from me. In case you doubt the weight of my sacrifice, I will tell you my dearest dream is to walk out of these gates a free man, find you, and beg forgiveness. Without your forgiveness, I believe I can never consider myself truly free, and so I won’t be. I’m sure you think I want something more—that forgiveness, once gained, won’t satisfy me and I’ll try to forge onward, to take back your love, and that I will be as I was before: too passionate, throwing myself against your walls until I am battered beyond recognition to either of us. I used to think that if only you would open to me and embrace what was between us, we would both be happier. I was so caught up, so overwhelmed by my own certainty, I couldn’t see that you are someone for whom being fully open is the same as being destroyed. You kept telling me that the version of you that seduced me in the first place was incompatible with the version of you I wanted for a wife. You exert such a mighty pull on me, Marian. I was turned inside out by it; my guts were hung out for the birds to peck. I regret the things I did while writhing in that particular agony. I’m not blaming you, but I’m offering my suffering as a small token of explanation. I deserve to suffer more, I know. I can’t say I’m glad there was no baby, but I do recognize that maybe some larger wisdom was at work there.
I’ll leave this now, Marian. I expect no reply, though I long for one. I won’t assume your forgiveness, but I’ll continue hoping to see you again one day so I might ask for it in person.
Barclay
P.S. Perhaps you’ve heard somehow, but Sadler and Kate have married. Are you surprised? I was. I wish them more happiness than we found.
Marian sits for a moment with the letter open in her lap. Her eye catches the word passionate again, and she leaps from bed to throw the papers into the stove.
* * *