Page 45 of Way Down Deep

This sounds ridiculous, considering how we’ve never even met, never even heard each other’s voices. But if I could get in a time machine and be there in that house, with that shotgun laid across my thighs, I would have killed for you. Not happily, but easily. Thoughtlessly.

I’m glad you shared all that. Honored you did, and humbled that you trusted me with it. I’m so, so sorry you went through that.

You don’t haveto be sorry. I’m not anymore. I’m not even upset, the way I usually get.

That’s good, though in all honesty, I’m sobbing right now. My vision’s blurred, the words on my screen running like rain on a windshield.

Thank you. I want to know you, the real you. I think you believe that now. You must, to turn yourself inside out like you just did.

IdoI did I am. It was so much easier than I ever thought it could be, too.

The strange thing is, I don’t feel any different. I mean, I knew there must be something sad in your past, something traumatic. And knowing now what that thing is, and who you lost, and how… It means a lot. But it doesn’t change anything about how I feel for you. You’re the same person to me. It’s like…

It’s like, you’re a tree.

Bear with me, this is going to be a cheesy analogy, because I’m weepy and I’m just a little drunk.

I’m bearing, in the best kind of way.

But it’slike you’re a tree, and after just these couple weeks, I know that tree like I’ve spent my entire life sitting under it. I know which directions the biggest limbs stretch. I know how the leaves ripple and the branches sway in a storm.

Before today, I knew where the knots were, and I knew that someone, at some point, sawed away a limb or two, leaving hard and secret scars, and soft pulpy bits, weeping sap. I knew the tree, and I knew it cast a long shadow. Now, I know what’s hiding in that shadow. I know a little about which limb got hacked off and who by. But it doesn’t change the tree as I know it.

It doesn’t change how I feel. And I feel a lot. More than I dare spell out for you. At least not before another glass of this whiskey.

I’m not evensure if it feels like something daring for me now. I’ve shared the scariest thing, and you still see the tree that is me. And I promise, I will always see the tree that is you. No matter what you say.

You asked me, way back when we first started texting, whose number yours used to be. Who I’d thought I was texting. I’ll tell you now, if you want to hear. If you’re not too raw from everything you just shared with me.

There’snothing that could make me not want to.

Your number usedto belong to an ex-lover of mine.

I met her over three years ago, when I was in Birmingham for a wine and spirits expo. She wasn’t with the convention. We met in a bar, hooked up for a few nights. I didn’t even know her last name at the time, and I don’t think she knew mine.

She was this beautiful, wild tornado of a girl, all art and music and light and energy. When I was with her, it felt like I was vibrating, so hard my bones might rattle apart. It was exhilarating. And after three nights, exhausting.

I figured she’d just be a fond memory, a merit badge on my Narcissist Scout’s sash, proving I was charming and worldly enough to get taken home by a hot English girl.

Then in the spring of last year, I heard from her out of the blue. She’d kept my number. And a year and a half earlier, she’d given birth to my son.

I sent her money. Every month, and didn’t ask for proof he was mine. I waited for her to invite me to see him, all the while praying she wouldn’t, because I’m a coward. She never did.

Last September, I got another call, this one from her mother. The girl had killed herself, cut her wrist in the bathtub. The police think she tried to drown the boy at the same time but didn’t manage it. Only he knows for sure, and he’s not talking.

So to answer your question from all that time ago, I didn’t think you were anyone. I thought that number belonged to a dead woman, to a SIM card trapped in a forgotten phone, its battery dead, lost in a landfill or an evidence bag or who knows where.

You can understand why I never expected to hear back.

Oh, Malcolm.

Ithoughtshe was a free spirit. You know that term—manic pixie dream girl? I guess that only works in the movies. In real life, it’s called schizoaffective disorder, and the suicide rate is something like ten percent. Probably higher if you mix in the stresses of single motherhood and a side of drug abuse.

I remember you saying something about a package. About venturing out into your hallway to retrieve a package, seven months ago, I think you said.

It’d be so eerie if that package was a new phone, with a new number. Your new number. Her old one. I’ve never been able to shake that possibility, not since you first mentioned it.

Ithinkyou can’t shake it because this feels like something big and crazy and unreal. Like when people talk about fate in the movies, and things come together in a way they never do in reality.