Chapter 132: The Unfolding Truth XII

Third Person POV

Sonita was already walking.

She did not look back. Her shoulders were set and her steps were quick and she moved the way she moved when she had made a decision and was not interested in having it reconsidered.

"I cannot believe this," she said. Over her shoulder. Cold.

Helen exhaled. The sound of it was long and unsteady, like something that had been held too tight for too long.

Her hands were not still at her sides. They were pressing against each other, fingers interlocked, trying to find somewhere to put the energy that had no other outlet.

"I know this is a lot," she said. "But I love him. I cannot just set that aside because it makes you uncomfortable. I do not know how to do that."

Sonita stopped walking.

She turned around slowly.

Her eyes were sharp in the way they went sharp when something had landed and she was deciding what to do with it. "You love him," she said. Flat. "You met him a few days ago and you are standing here telling me you love him. Does that sound like something a person with a clear head says?"

Helen did not answer immediately. She looked at Sonita’s face and then at the ground between them.

"You will not understand," she said quietly.

"There is nothing there not to understand." Sonita’s voice stayed level but the level was the kind that required maintenance. "We have been friends longer than you have known this man exists. You cannot let someone you just met tear that apart."

"He is not tearing anything apart." Helen’s voice came up slightly. "Nothing is being torn. I do not understand why this has to be one thing or the other."

Sonita stepped closer. The distance between them shortened and the air between them felt it.

"Then let me make it simple," she said. "You decide. Right now. Is it me or is it him?"

Helen stared at her.

"What?" she said. "Sonita, stop. Stop this."

"I am not stopping anything. I am asking a direct question." Sonita’s voice did not rise. It did not need to. "Someone you just met a few days ago. Or someone who has been by your side through everything. Someone who left her family for you. Someone who did everything in her power to make you less lonely" She looked at Helen’s face. "Who do you choose?"

Helen’s face moved. Something in it was crumbling at the edges, the steadiness she had been holding beginning to crack along its seams.

"You know I cannot choose between you both," she said. Her voice had gone rough. "You know that. It is not possible. It is not a real question."

"It is the only question." Sonita looked at her. "And you do not even have to answer it. Because I already know. It will always be him. It does not matter how long I have been here. It does not matter what we have been through together. You will choose the stranger. Every time."

"No." Helen reached for her. "That is not what this is. That is not..."

Sonita raised her hand. Palm out.

"That is enough." Her voice was quiet now. Quieter than it had been. Something had finished in it. "I have heard enough. I have seen enough today."

She turned and walked back toward the cottage.

"Sonita." Helen’s voice followed her. "Wait. Please. This does not have to be like this. Just wait. Just talk to me."

Sonita did not turn. She walked to the cottage door and pushed it open and went inside.

The door closed.

The sound of it was not loud. It was just final.

Helen stood in the clearing alone. The light was still warm around her.

The birds were still in the trees. Everything around her was continuing in the ordinary way things continued when something significant happened to a person and the world did not notice.

A tear reached her jaw before she realized it had started. Then another, tracking the same path. She pressed the back of her hand against her face and turned back toward the cave.

****

He was not inside it.

He was leaning against the tree just outside the entrance, arms folded, his shirt back on, his hair still carrying the damp from the stream.

When he heard her footsteps he straightened up and looked at her face and the look on it told him everything before she said anything.

He walked toward her.

Not fast. With the same deliberate unhurried pace, he brought to everything. When he reached her he did not speak. His hands came up and found her face. His palms were against her cheeks, tilting her head gently upward. His thumbs rested just below her eyes where the tears had been.

He looked at her. His green eyes moved across her face slowly.

"Is everything alright?" he said. Quiet. Just for her.

She shook her head.

The tears came properly then. Not the contained kind. The kind that arrived when someone asked the right question with the right voice at the wrong moment, when the holding finally stopped being possible.

Her chin moved and her eyes went bright and wet and she pressed them together trying to stop it.

She could not stop it.

"I just had my first fight," she said. Her voice broke in the middle of it. "With... with my best friend."

He pulled her in.

His arms came around her and she went into them without resistance, her face against his chest, her hands finding the fabric of his shirt and holding it.

He held her solidly. One hand spread flat across her back, warm and steady. The other rested at the back of her head, gentle, not pressing, just there.

She cried against his chest.

Not quietly. Not the restrained kind. The kind that came from somewhere real and took its time arriving and did not apologize for the noise it made.

He did not tell her to stop. He did not say anything at all for a while. He just held on and let her go through it at whatever pace it needed.

"It is going to be okay," he said finally. His voice was low against the top of her head. "Give her a little time. She will come around."

Helen’s hands tightened slightly on his shirt. "I hope so," she said. Muffled. Small.

He did not let go. She did not move away.

He found a place where the trees made shade, away from the direct sun, and they sat there together. Her back against his chest. His arms around her. The forest was quiet and unhurried around them the way forests were quiet when nothing was required of them.

They stayed like that while the afternoon moved.

****

The sun had shifted by the time Helen straightened up.

She pulled back and pressed her sleeve against her face. Her eyes were swollen at the edges and her cheeks were still warm and her white hair had dried into something not entirely neat during all of it.

She looked at him and he looked back at her and neither of them said anything about what her face looked like.

"I should go back," she said. Her voice was still slightly rough. "I should talk to her."

He nodded.

They walked back to the cottage together. The path was familiar now, she knew every root and dip of it, and she walked it with her shoulder close to his without paying attention to how close.

When they reached the fence she stopped and turned to him.

"Wait here," she said. "If she sees you right now it will make everything worse."

He nodded again. No argument. He stayed where he was by the fence and she walked to the door and pushed it open.

"Sonita?"

The room gave back nothing. She looked at the chair where Sonita had been sitting with the book earlier. The book was still there, closed, on the arm of it. The cup on the shelf had not been touched.

"Sonita?" Louder.

Still nothing.

She walked through the main room and into the small room where Sonita slept. The sleeping mat was there, rolled out the way it was always rolled out in the mornings. She looked at the shelf where Sonita kept things.

The small pouch of herbs was gone.

She looked at the hook near the door.

The extra cloak was gone.

She crossed back through the main room and her eyes went to the floor near the entrance where the bag had been sitting for two weeks, worn soft at the corners, always there.

Gone.

Helen stood in the middle of the empty cottage and looked at the space where the bag had been and the space where the cloak had been and the space where the herbs had been and understood all of it at once.

She ran outside.

Kai was still at the fence. He looked up when he heard her coming and his expression shifted before she reached him.

"She left," Helen said. She was breathing fast. "She is not inside. Her things are gone. The bag is gone. Everything she brought is gone."

He tilted his head back. His eyes went slightly unfocused in the way they went when he was using a sense that was not sight. A moment passed. Then another.

He looked toward the tree line. The direction the path ran was back through the woods and eventually out the other side toward everything that was not this clearing.

"She did leave," he said quietly.

Helen looked at the trees. At the path between them. At the place where the forest closed in and the path disappeared into the green.

Her hand came up and pressed flat against her sternum. Not over her heart exactly. Just over the place where something had been and was now absent, the particular hollow that opened up when something familiar stopped being present in the world.

The clearing was quiet.

The birds were still in the trees.

The cottage stood behind her exactly as it always had.

And Sonita was nowhere to be found.