Vanished

“Can't it wait?” But he could see from the look in her eyes that she meant it. She was surprising him actually. For a woman who seemed to go weak at the knees whenever life became even slightly difficult, she seemed to be holding up remarkably well in this crisis. She looked tired, of course, and pale, but she seemed calm and reasonable, and other than the pathetically trembling hands he had noticed at once, she seemed to be controlling her emotions. What he hadn't seen was the terrible scene in the boy's room only that morning, the crying that seemed to have no end as she held his teddy bear to her and felt terror rise in her throat every time she thought of her son. But she was fighting it, because she knew she had to. If she didn't, she would panic and collapse completely.

“Malcolm, will you come upstairs with me?” She was insistent.

“All right, all right. I'll be there in a moment.” She waited for him in her dressing room, because she didn't know where else to be, and she paced the small room while she waited. She didn't know where to start, or what to say, and she wished she had forced him to listen before she married him, but he hadn't wanted to hear it then, and now he had to.

He came up half an hour later, just as she was ready to go downstairs looking for him. But finally he appeared, and he seemed huge in the small room, as ha took a chair, and looked at her with obvious irritation.

“All right, Marielle, I don't know what you can possibly want to talk about now. I hope it's important, and has something to do with Teddy.”

“It might. I hope it doesn't,” she said quietly, sitting on a small settee across from him. It was odd how far away from him she felt, how distant they were, even in this crisis. In fact, suddenly, it seemed worse than ever. “It has to do with me. And I think it's important. Years ago, when we were getting married, I told you that there were things about me you might not like, and you said that everyone had a past and it wasn't important. You felt it was best left untouched, but I felt I owed it to you to tell you.” She sighed and had to fight for air again. All of this was so difficult that she always seemed to have trouble breathing. But she knew she had to tell him. And this time he had to listen. “Do you remember?” she asked him softly, and for a moment, his eyes gentled. Maybe he was only in pain, she told herself. Perhaps the shock of losing Teddy was so great that he could offer Marielle no comfort, just as she and Charles had been unable to comfort each other nine years before. Sometimes when the common agony is too great one can only struggle alone. She wondered if that was what was happening now, and it wasn't that he held her responsible after all. But she had to go on now.

“I do remember,” he answered her. “But what does that have to do with what is happening now? Or with Teddy?” There was a look of accusation on his face and she forced herself to ignore it.