Bridge of Clay

He woke up.

He was sweating.

He swam up through the sheets.

Since the telling of truth to McAndrew, and Ted and Catherine Novac, he was left with a lasting question.

Did he confess for only himself?

But not even in his darkest moments did he believe that; he did it because he’d had to. They deserved to know how it happened.

* * *

—

Now, many nights later, he woke and felt her upon him:

The girl was on his chest.

It’s a dream, I know it’s a dream.

She came at his will of imagining.

There was the smell of horses and death, but also alive and life-like; he knew because she was warm. She was still, but he felt her breath.

“Carey?” he said, and she moved then. She got up sleepily and sat beside him. Her jeans and glowing forearms, like the day she’d first walked over.

“It’s you,” he said.

“It’s me…” But now she turned away from him. He’d have touched her auburn hair. “I’m here because you killed me.”

He sank in a channel of sheets.

In bed, but caught in a rip.

* * *

—

After that, he returned to running, in mornings before work with me. His theory was perfect logic; the harder he ran, the less he ate, the more chance he might see her again.

The problem was only he didn’t.

“She’s dead.”

He quietly said it.

* * *

—

Some nights he walked to the cemetery.

His fingers would cling to the fence.

He would ache to see that woman again, from the start, from way back when—the one who’d asked for a tulip.

Where are you? he almost asked her.