No notifications arrived. Not that I’d expected them to. Jackson wouldn’t have an opportunity to deal with our divorce until he had arrived on Mars, done whatever they needed for the communications lid to lift, and then had two consecutive free moments to string together.
School drew to a close. Little Johnny didnotpass my class, and would spend his summer in summer school, making up the big, fat F in the chat he’d earned. One of his parents stormed to my classroom to ask why I’d failed him. I asked them if they’d read their son’s magnum opus of a final essay and provided them a copy. They said I would hear back from them once they’d done so.
I did not hear back. Surprise, surprise.
The media blackout persisted. It maintained an airtight seal on the fact that we’d sent a complement of troops to Mars for the purpose of stomping some base-raiding faces. Every night, I turned on the news, hoping that I’d hear word of the transport’s safety while simultaneously hoping I heard nothing. Loose lips really do sink ships.
No news was good news. If his ship had been lost in travel,thatwould have made the news. That was what I told myself, anyway.
I did take Elaine’s advice to consider who I wanted Sebastian Sadler to be. Teaching had been the path of least resistance when the physical rehab facility had spit me out its doors and declared me “healed enough”. Don’t think I mind it! I don’t. Work as a schoolteacher might not have been what I wanted to do with my life, but it was a calling I had embraced and admired.
I still wanted to be a doctor. Barring that, I wanted to return to lab work, or heck, to go back to school to train for another STEM field. Neither Sebastian Sadler nor the older, wiser Sebastian Hendrick was the shattered man who’d re-entered the world after his original life plan failed upon meeting the enemy. He didn’t have to settle for whatever his collection of degrees would buy him.
My physical health and financial malaise had stopped me from continuing a residency and picking up a medical license. Could I find a program that would take me and make accommodations for my physical limitations? Maybe some scholarships for “former soldiers with crushed hips and torqued spines who want to go do medicine”? How had I not looked for these before?
And there were some! Several programs across the country offered up solutions to the problems that had stopped me before. The financial aid was imperfect, because that’s how financial aid works, but it was doable. I could, if I wanted, return to medicine.
It would require me to leave Colorado. I would have to pack up and walk away from the home I’d shared with Jackson. There would be no chance that he and I would cross paths in a restaurant while he enjoyed leave. No chance I would encounter him and a new husband in a grocery store, either, which was a far shinier side of that coin.
One program in Pennsylvania had an opening in their fall semester. I could sell the house, pack my stuff, and go. Jackson’s transport would not even have reached Mars by then. I could handle the rest of the dissolution of our marriage from a new apartment in a new state. No looking back, just mainlining the future while I wrote off the failure of my marriage as a learning experience.
While I wrote off Jackson. While I moved on without him.
I stared at the email that asked if I wanted the place in the fall semester. Then I closed my eyes and remembered a black screen on a wall and four white symbols shining from it.
!!!*
I thanked the program director for the offer, but informed them that I had business I had to wrap up in Colorado Springs before I could move across the country. Could they please put me on the waiting list for the spring semester, or barring that, the next fall semester? They promised to do so.
Me, I sat at my desk and wondered what the hell I’d just done. Had I put my trust in a nosey server with a fixation on my pairing? Was I clinging to the hope that Jackson would reconsider and return, and that we could move forward together? I still didn’t know, but I felt peace at my choice like still, deep waters running through my heart. Maybe I simply wasn’t ready to move on yet, and that was okay.
Healing takes time. Too much remained unresolved. I needed to take care of myself, and for once, I intended to.
* * *
Summer passed without word from Jackson. Without word from anyone, really. Not from Mail Call Mates, or from the Army liaison who would tell me when Jackson signed our papers. Not from Jackson’s family, or Jiaying, and I assumed they hoped I’d been eaten by plagued prairie dogs for supposedly cheating on Jackson. Not from Dana or Joan. Not from the faculty I played bar trivia with. Not from the news.
I spent my time planning next year’s lessons and boning up on my medical research. Some days, I sorted through my belongings and collected boxes to donate or sell. One day, I even rented a truck to take a load of garbage to the landfill. I know. Exciting life.
It meant a part of me had already decided, though. This chapter of my life had closed. Jackson would reach Mars and kick ass, and then? He would retreat to the fear of broken trust and broken hearts, and would officially break our marriage instead of facing them. The specter of that day dogged me, but I had learned to deal with its whispers most of the time.
Not always. On quiet, lonely nights, haunted by terrible sitcom reruns and unable to lose myself in a book, I lamented my time alone. And I thought about the highway that would lead me to the big house in Boulder where my family lived.
They would talk to me. Yes, it would start as yelling, but after days of no contact with other people and an ache to hear Jackson’s voice, yelling sounded like a piece of salvation. They would forgive me in time. I could hide in a laboratory again, doing good work, and I could force myself to be happy with it.
Those were the nights I would break, and I would open Jackson’s introductory videos to watch again and again. Like old, familiar movies, I would watch his recordings and see new things every time. The quirk of his lip that I now knew meant wry humor. A drop of his gaze I could see meant him wrestling with his past, now that I’d learned to translate it. My wounded heart swam in lemon juice to hear him say how he was tired of coming home to an empty house.
“If you’re watching this, you’re the one to help me fix that. Thank you. For taking the same leap of faith I did, and accepting the match this place made. I’m sorry up front for how hard it will be for me to trust you. I’m not real good at opening up, so sorry for that, too. But I’ll always do my best for you as your husband, and even when I can’t say the words, I hope you’ll always hear what I’m not saying.”
I would sigh at the laptop screen and say, “I’m sorry I didn’t always listen well enough to hear what you didn’t say. I’m sorry for a lot of things.”
Those nights were the hardest. Lonely, empty, staring at the red dot in the sky and wondering if he was all right. If he was looking back towards the Earth, thinking of me. Possibly, he stood at a window in the ship, watching as the planet rotated and waiting for North America to crest over the horizon. Then he could search the face of the world until he found the great spine of the Rocky Mountains and say, “There. My husband is there.”
Then I would think about leaving the spot he stared at, looking to me as a beacon or landmark for strength, and my stomach would twist into knots. I’d promised to be here when he came home. It would be the worst kind betrayal to leave the place he knew I waited. If he changed his mind, and found me gone… I didn’t know how I could ever have thought I should move away.
Sometimes, your ghosts win. You fall asleep to the sound of their wailing and believe that, if you can just get through the night, the morning will bring you a new chance to defeat them.
School started up again around the time I figured Jackson would be landing on Mars. In class, I presented pieces of news that I knew would look very different once word came out that we’d launched an offensive. I wanted to teach these kids to watch the white spaces and listen to the omissions for the truth in the picture.