[ Early May, 2004 ]

ANN

When faced with a future not built on your own past, what path do you choose? This was more than some philosophical issue for me, Diary. It was my new reality. It hadn't really dawned on me with the force it eventually did until Terry had to leave on his next business trip.

He was unsettled about leaving me on my own. However, he was also increasingly withdrawn being around me. It was like he was constantly censuring himself. Like he would start to give me some honest reaction to a question or observation ... but then he'd check himself and give me some namby-pamby weasel answer.

The problem as I saw it was that he wanted badly to adjust to the reality that I was stuck here. Yet, he was fighting it because he wanted to hold on to the hope that she was coming back ... the woman he loved. Even though he knew she wasn't.

It pained me. It was tough seeing someone that special refuse to acknowledge and deal with his own grief and loss because as he just couldn't. And, in his own way, I suppose, that was dealing with it, wasn't it? It just seemed more awful than I could explain to watch him close down and to find his only solace was distance from his feelings. To see that the man chose trying to make me feel better and sheltering me in this difficult time over his own needs ... or maybe that was what he needed in that time.

So ... oh ... who, me? How was I dealing? Diary, I'm not really sure you want to know that. Y'think my alienation might have taken the lead ... but in reality? Oh, reality was so much different. Guilt ... it's a tough ass mistress. I kept seeing Jack's face through the mirror. I kept seeing his eyes when he must have heard me talking to him through that old mirror on my deck. I kept seeing that look on my Isobel's face in the mirror in the hotel room as she told me it was my only way back. I kept seeing her hand reaching toward me. I kept waiting to wake up.

There were times when I thought the loss of all I'd known would bring me to my knees. But I hid it around him as much as I could because I just didn't think he needed my grief to be that evident ... not when you consider how bad his grief would hit him eventually ... when he could finally find the peace to deal with it. It is so hard to rationalize such a loss when you feel down deep that you're to blame somehow. I think we both felt that there'd never be anyone who'd understand it.

And I hated how there wasn't a night that went by when I didn't want to sneak into his bedroom and sleep with him just because I thought maybe I deserved something ... anything ... whatever. Just sleep, mind you. Just someone to hold me and tell me everything would be okay.

But nothing really felt like it would ever be okay again. We had left London both in these fogs of denial. He kept saying we'd find another way ... I kept saying if there was a way in, there's a way out. He kept telling me we'd figure it out and I kept telling him we'd face this together.

As long as we'd kept busy pretending there was hope, we were hopeful. In those weeks since the trip to London, we'd gone through every one of her journals. He'd researched every legitimate expert on the paranormal. He'd interviewed any of them whom he thought might lend another idea we'd never have considered on our own. We'd picked apart theories. We'd looked for clues. We'd tried to be logical. Until this one night when he came downstairs to find me sitting in their window seat that looked out onto the street in front of the house.

"It's not the portal," I had said and I gave him no other warning. He'd just come and sat next to me. Somehow I knew, he already had been thinking the same way. He'd already added this all up and had just been waiting on me to find my own way to face it. "If it was a portal, it'd have been in Florida. You don't come out of your portal someplace else, you come out in the portal. Get it?"

"Got it." And we neither of us said anything for a while. His gentle voice, prodding me to go on and think this through. To face reality. "Then what is it? What brought you here and sent her there?"

"I don't know. Maybe Dea. Or maybe something to do with your Isobel and the trauma she was going through."

"Isobel. Gotta be. Y'know what they say ... the easiest answer is usually the right one." There was this heaviness in the air as we both realized that putting this out there between us meant we admitted to each other that we believed this thing -- that it was real and not some half-remembered nightmare. There was a heaviness to the finality of admitting defeat. "Then there's no way back if she's gone, is there?"

"This was all my fault. If I'd never have left in the first place, then ..."

"You did not cause this," he said and his hand touched mine, this tentative stroke. "It just happened."

"Terry, if I give up fighting to get back, I don't know what else to do. Did I really do something so awful to be punished like this?"

And it was almost like he read my mind because he opened his arms and let me crawl up into his lap so he could hold me and I could hold him.

"I am never going to desert you. You know that, right?" he whispered against my hair, his voice fierce with determination and honor. "You're not alone in this. We'll figure out where we go from here. I promise."

But we never really talked about it in the time that followed. Instead, we settled into this quasi-existence. He'd go to the office in the morning and I'd stay home and play house. I couldn't go to work ... when she appeared to have gone off with no contact for so long, the magazine had fired her and the newspaper rescinded the job offer. Not that I'd have been qualified for either job, mind you. But tell me this, Diary ... how do you fight the inertia that stands in the way of you starting your life over when you cannot make yourself believe that's what you really have to do?

He was infinitely patient with me but he'd slipped pretty easily back into his professional demeanor. And sometimes I'd catch him out of the corner of my eye and I'd see that fleeting look on his face, that hope that maybe the nightmare was over.

Can I be truthful about something about him, Diary? He was so careful with me. He was too careful. In the place of the frank friendship we'd established, he wrapped me in cotton batting and wanted to protect me from the rudeness of life. And for a time, I needed that so desperately. I needed him to take care of things and to make me feel like he'd never stop. I needed to be waiting on him each evening to walk through that door looking like the typical suburban dad coming home after a long day at the office. I needed to keep his house, make his dinner, wash his clothes. I needed a role that seemed safe and functional and easy and useful. I needed to know he wasn't going to kick me out of his life.

And I think, to be brutal, that Terry needed to take care of things in this way. I think he found comfort in that role. Yet ... I also knew my presence in his house wasn't easy on him. Imagine what it was like for him, Diary. One day, this woman's his partner. The next, she's his dependent. And just who did he have to give him support?

We walked on eggshells around each other. We were both a bit too nice for our own good ... but we were scared, I think, to upset such a fragile state of affairs.

So, at first, it was a relief to me when he announced one day over dinner that he was leaving the next day to deal with client issues in Japan. Was this an active operation, I'd asked him. He shook his head and said it was nothing to worry about.

That night, I lay in bed and felt this anxiety blooming inside me. It wasn't until I was kneeling on the window seat and watching him getting into a taxi the next day that I realized what it was.

I was only responsible for me now. All these weeks since I'd been stranded here, I'd felt like I was living for her. Like there was this part of me that judged everything I did by how it might make her pleased. And the only reason I was doing it was because I wanted him to be happy and I hated how unhappy he was.

That's a lie. I was also doing it because it padded me from facing my own empty future.

The truth is that in the days before he had to leave, we were ... um ... constipated around each other. I know that sounds awful but it's how it was. It was so stilted being around him. I tiptoed constantly. Afraid to desecrate her memory. Afraid, more than anything, to intrude on her memory. Only too aware that I wasn't the woman he'd loved no matter how much I looked like her.

He said something one evening ... about the shirt I was wearing. It was hers. Apparently, it was one he particularly liked on her. I never wore it again. It wasn't that what he said was disapproving or negative; it was just that he noticed these little details and I thought he deserved me being more careful to respect the impact of such things on him.

If he only knew how I was falling for him. I mean, how could I not? He was Terry, right? So I was already in love with the core of him and I was absolutely aware that they were not interchangeable, these Terry's. But this particular Terry? So capable of being in love with some version of me? An amazing thing. But it was more than that. It was how he looked at me when he didn't think I'd notice. How he longed for me physically and emotionally just because I reminded him of her. I'm ashamed to admit that I liked him looking at me like that and feeling like I could pretend it was a look meant for me. I'm also embarrassed to say that caring for him in this way gave me the pleasure of indulging in whatever soft smiles I'd earn from him. I should have felt guiltier than I did to have taken this route with him ... to play up the domestic side she eschewed because it made me feel like I was doing a better job than she did. But I justified it as the only role open to me and sublimated the truth that this was a lie.

It was wrong. Neither of us had the right to feel that way. And I did feel disloyal to feel that way -- like I was saying it was that easy to dismiss the other Terry I knew; that I would ever forget that this wasn't my place and if I could fall for this Terry that easy, then just how fickle was I? It was so confusing. They were not interchangeable; he was not a substitute for any man any more than I was a substitute for another version of me.

So off he took on his trip and the day he left, I felt like maybe this was a good thing for us both.

I spent the first week he was gone just more or less doing as I'd been doing before. Sticking close to his home, trying not to cause trouble, figuring out ways to keep my mind occupied. But each day, my anxiety grew. It was like this antsy feeling of wanting to simply bust right out of my skin.

He called me every day. He sent me flowers the day after he left. I knew he was checking up on me ... I suspect there was a part of him that wondered if I was just going to disappear and some other strange Ann would be in my place next time he came home.

I was surfing on the Internet one evening and checking out the news from home. I missed home. I wanted to be in New Orleans so badly. This is such a great time of year to be there. It was in that evening that I realized just how homesick I was. I came across this article about the Jambalaya Festival in Gonzales. I closed my eyes and got these instant images of going there when I was a kid. They always made a big ceremonial pot of jambalaya in the town square. This huge black caldron that was big enough to be a hot tub. One of my favorite memories around that festival came courtesy of a story from my grandfather. He told me that when he was a kid, the town drunk had fallen in and they fished him out hours later. I'd scrunched up my nose and said 'yuck!' but Granperé gave me this serious look and said, "No, 'tit bebe, was good jambalaya that year, it was. Flavoring, sure?"

It always made me giggle when I thought of that moment. It was the first time he'd ever told me a story like that. He died the next year.

When Terry called me that night, I was sniffling. He asked me what was wrong and I told him. I need to go home for a while. I'm just missing a familiar place, I said. Inside me, the anxiety was kicking the shit out of me. He said, I'll take you when I get back in a few weeks. I said, I'm perfectly capable of going to Louisiana all on my own and there's nothing holding me here while you're gone.

There was this annoyed silence on his side and I suddenly saw it from his point of view. I told him not to worry ... even though I knew inside me, he had every right to feel edgy at the thought of me out there wandering around so far from him when he was fighting this irrational need to protect me as if he could keep her safe by keeping me safe. He said, just promise me you'll be careful. I said, you promise me the same thing.

The next afternoon, I stepped into welcome humidity and sunshine filtered in between dank gray clouds. Far off over the lake, thunder boomed even as I traveled west toward Cajun country. I stopped in Gonzales for the night. The next day, I wandered around the festival and got even more homesick.

I knew from her journals that she was estranged from her aunt and uncle. I called them anyway. I just wanted to see them. They said only one thing: "Come." So I did. I drove two hours west until I got to Mamou.

Spent a week with them. I felt like this was my gift to this other Ann. I just wanted her family to see that she'd turned out after all. That she had made a good life for herself.

Somehow in that week, I felt like I had an understanding of that anxiety I'd been feeling. I told Terry about it one night when he called me. I said to him, do you remember how you and Dino felt when you came into this world? Remember telling me that you'd just felt like anything was possible? Like this was a fresh start and while it was scary as all fuck it was also exciting as all hell and all you wanted to do was go crazy for a little while?

That's what I was feeling. That's what the anxiety was. It was a need to acknowledge that I was adrift, without roots, no ties, no one knew me, no one cared, on my own, reckless, abandoned, adrift and looking for something but until I found it, I just needed to explode.

I met this guy. Worked with my uncle. Danced with me at a fais do do at their church. Good looking, rugged man who took one look at me and knew ... just knew ... I was dynamite waiting to have my fuse lit.

Started seeing him every night. He took me to all the best joints between Mamou and Lafayette. We danced. We drank. We smoked. We lit the fuse.

Every night, that fuse burned. One night soon, I kept saying to myself as I'd stand on the porch waving at him as he pulled out of the driveway. And on that night, the fuse was going to reach its end and I was going to have my explosion.

Maybe then I'd be able to settle down and grab the real chance at a new life you could build from scratch like Terry and Dino had.

I knew Terry needed peace in his life. I just was so far from peace in that time that I was glad I was so far from him that he'd not know what I was up to. When he'd call me in the evenings, I'd be getting ready to go out but I'd be telling him about the walks I was doing on the bayous and the remembrances I was having of my childhood. It was like I was living two lives ... one for her and one for me. The one for her I lived in the phone calls to Terry, keeping him calmly in the dark about the one for me.

One night, I made him laugh. I cannot even remember what it was I said. But suddenly, I heard him laugh and my heart went out to him. It was the best conversation I'd had in so long. I sat on the porch swing waiting for my date and laughed with Terry on the phone. He told me some crazy story about the first time she'd taken him to Mamou ... about eating boudin and dancing at Fred's Lounge. I told him I'd be going to Fred's on Sunday morning for the regular festivities and I'd have me a Dixie beer in his honor.

He asked me if I realized how strong my accent had gotten since I'd been down there. I've let myself go feral, I'd said in response. That I'd like to see, he retorted. I looked down at the denim shorts I was wearing with this little scrap of a top ... and thought he'd probably never seen her wear clothes just for her like I was doing.

I asked him what he was doing at that exact moment. He said it was something quite banal and that he didn't want to bore me with the details. I pictured him sitting in a boardroom somewhere waiting on a meeting with some suits. Poor thing, I whispered to him; you need to get out more often and kick up your heels. He asked me if that was an invitation. I said, are you angling for a date with me. He said, it does give me ideas when you coo at me. I changed the subject and we stopped flirting.

Two more nights and then it was Sunday morning. I drove my uncle's truck to Fred's. Every Sunday morning, they broadcast a live show of traditional Cajun music performed by real deal fiddlers and squeezebox players. The radio station that broadcasts the shows only has a strong enough signal to be heard about as far away as Lafayette on a good morning. The announcers speak Cajun French on the station and it's a bit of heaven to catch any broadcast but this one is like divine light.

By the time I was walking in the back door, it was 8:05 a.m. and there was a crowd already there. I sat at the bar with my uncle and aunt to drink our first beer. By the second beer, I was waltzing with my uncle and then I was twirling the two-step with this man who was born proud to catch this beat. My uncle back in my world had actually been my favorite dance partner. Then again, that was before I met the Brothers, right, Diary?

Somewhere in the twirl of that dance, I felt my spirit drift with ease. I found my concentration wavering and if not for the practiced skill of the man leading me in this dance, I might easily have spun out of control. But the fiddle player slowed and, just on the cusp of making a life-changing decision that suddenly seemed so evident, some familiar voice inside my brain said my name like it was calling me back to awareness. I turned in my uncle's arms as the dance was ending and saw him sitting there at the end of the bar. Couldn't help this instant grin that I felt overtake my face.

"This place attracts the worst sort of people," I said as I slid onto the barstool next to him. He shook his head at me and sipped at his long neck. "So what attracted you here?"

"The thought of drinking a cold beer on a Sunday morning. What else?"

"Shoulda known it'd be that. Sure it wasn't the music?"

"Music's okay. Some cute dancers out there," he said, nodding his head toward the dance floor that surrounds the band.

I turned in my stool to watch my aunt and uncle waltz. Leaned over to Terry and said, "Why dontcha come dance with me and work up a sweat that earns you the right to drink that cold beer this early in the morning?"

Rather thought he'd give me some lip, sass me a bit more ... but he prodded me off the stool and then took my hand and edged me onto the crowded dance floor. Before another moment passed, we were waltzing in the same direction as the rest of the dancers. He had a hand in the small of my back. My hand was gripped lightly in his other hand. He was looking off over my head at some point in the distance. He felt ... too far away. So I snuggled in closer to him. Our eyes met. He tilted his head and regarded me for a long few steps.

And then he seemed to commit. His arm gathered me right up to his body. His thigh kept brushing between mine. His mouth rested near my ear. He smelled so good. He felt even better. I memorized the pleasure of his proximity.

"I didn't realize you'd gotten back to the States," I said. "You should have said something. I was only down here killing time. I would have come back to your place if you'd told me to."

"She only brought me here once. After her cousin died, she just never wanted to come back. There was a part of me that understood that. But I also like that you're wanting to do things your way."

I blinked and swallowed. Looked up and our eyes met. Turned my head and lay it upon his shoulder. Closed my eyes and I let my body just do as it wanted. Inside me, I was wondering why he was telling me this. Why he seemed to be making the point that he was able to talk so equitably about the differences between me and that Ann he loved so much and for whose loss he still had yet to really grieve.

"Did she teach you how to dance the two-step?"

"She tried." The dance switched to the two-step. He slid right into it; he spun me a quarter turn and then back to where I was right up on his chest. "I always was a quick learner."

"You are good."

He gave me that cocky smirk of his and proceeded to make us both sweat. By the time the tune fiddled out, we were laughing and we were close.

We took our beers and escaped out into the parking lot to get some air. I wandered around the lot while he leaned against the cement block wall and smoked and watched me. I looked up and took in a sight I wanted to catalog away inside me. Him, dressed in black jeans and black t-shirt. Leaning against this off-white cement wall with the black logo of Fred's Lounge just above his head. The way the smoke from his cigarette was almost white against the black of the sign's paint. The way the scene looked monochromatic. The ethereal nature of seeing a wisp of an illusion that Terry Thorne was standing there and I might leave this place with no notice and never see him again.

The impact of admitting what the anxiety coursing through my skin was evolving into. I turned circles in the oyster-shell lot and was so glad this was happening. All my adult life ... living it just to arrive at this moment when clarity was closer than it might ever have been.

By the time I was hopping behind the wheel of my uncle's beat up pickup truck, Terry was heading toward me. I waited until he was in the passenger side before peeling out of there. We headed out of town on the state highway and turned on the blacktop road that led to my uncle's farm. I rattled off all the landmarks to Terry and he just sat there watching the world go by without saying anything. The wind coming through the open windows ruffled his hair and he seemed relaxed with me in a way I'd not seen him in a while. We stopped at Pooky's Grocery outside of town and picked up a six-pack of long neck Dixie's. He never asked me what I was up to; I never felt I needed to explain. Figured that if he hadn't come all this way to find out why I was there, then he shouldn't have come looking for me.

How like him to have shown up here, though. I wondered if he even had made a conscious decision about coming here or if it was just some gut instinct he has to put himself on the line for someone for whom he feels responsibility.

The tires left the blacktop and crunched along an oyster-shell drive that led along Vermillion Bayou. I parked under an oak tree that dripped Spanish moss. Pointing across the tea-brown waterway, I mentioned that the farmhouse on the other side, beyond the three oaks over there, was my aunt and uncle's place. My grandparents had moved there from St. Martinville when their kids were little, I told him.

"I learned to swim here in the bayou," I told him as we sat on the truck's open tailgate and peered across at the old house. Drinking long-neck Dixie's and swinging our legs over the edge of the tailgate. "I spent my summers here with my cousin Reggie and his family. See that middle oak? Somewhere up in those branches, I carved my name. Got in trouble for that, too. My granmére said that was no way to treat a dear old tree."

"I learned to swim in the ocean," Terry said. "My dad taught me. Used to swim out past the breakers and then just swim back and forth until I got tired. He used to tell my mum that it was the only way he'd learned to deal with my excess energy before it drove him crazy."

"Geez, I bet you were a hellion to keep up with. And then when you got in your teens ... damn. Just the thought of it makes me shake."

"Whatever you're thinking, I bet I did worse."

I glanced at him and caught his grin just before he put the bottle to his mouth and sipped. I got this sudden visual of him as a rampaging, testosterone-addled boy of 17 ... sweet Jesus.

Hopping off the truck's open tailgate, I wandered over to the edge of the bayou. Skipped a small oyster shell across the still water. Crouched there at the point between solid land and shifting water. Looked back at Terry. He was studying me openly.

"I can still remember the summer I came here when the road in front of the farm there had been widened and newly blacktopped. Man, we thought that was something so cool. Imagine that? Way out here in the country ... I mean, at that time, there was nothing out here. If one car passed an hour, that was a lot of traffic. Reggie had gotten a bike for Christmas and I had spent the month before coming to the farm begging my dad to get me one, too. He finally gave in and got it just before we left. I itched the whole trip to get there so I could get on the bike cuz Reggie'd been telling me there was nothing better than riding on the blacktop."

"I remember my first bike. Got it when I was about ten, I think. Maybe older. I remember I got it for Christmas. I cried and I remember being embarrassed. But my mum's got this picture of me holding that bike and my dad's in the background crying right along with me."

"How'd you learn how to ride it?"

"My dad sat me on it and then pushed it and told me to start peddling. Crashed a few times but eventually figured it out."

"I wonder if everyone remembers how they learned to ride a bike? Most people I've ever asked have a very specific memory of the moment." I looked off into the distance at the blacktop road. "My uncle would run along with me, his hand on the back of the seat, keeping me from tipping over. Then one day, I got going too fast for him and he let me go and I remember feeling just fine until I realized I was on my own."

"You fell?"

"And how! Steered myself smack into a tree."

We both laughed. "Were you hurt?"

"Not bad enough to not want to keep trying. Seemed like the next time I got on, I was able to just ride it. Do you remember that feeling? How you felt when you were first really able to ride a bike?"

"Yeah. I do. Haven't thought about that in years. It felt like freedom, didn't it, love?"

Nodded at him as I said, "That's how I felt. Like the entire world was now open to me. I thought I could go anywhere then. Reggie and I would take off and just go-go-go! It was such an adventure. Like everything was just wild and exciting and there just for us. Like we didn't have to have any plans ... all we had to do was hop on our bikes and go wherever the spur of the moment took us. Whoosh! The places we went. The hours we rode. The adventures we had."

"I remember that feeling. I remember the trouble I'd get into with my mates. Christ, if my dad had ever known half the shit I pulled. But what a fucking load of fun that was. Haven't thought about that in years."

"Life should be that kind of adventure, shouldn't it?" I asked him and only then did I stand up and wander back near him. "Can I ask you something, Terry? Do you remember the last time you felt that way?"

He never even hesitated. But then I think he had known this conversation's purpose. "Yeah. It's how I felt when Dino and I crossed over into this world."

"I rather wondered. Is that why you went a bit wild at first?"

"Sure. No reasons not to. But it was also because it just seemed ... I don't know ... like there were no more ties."

I leaned against the side of the truck and looked up into the tree over us. "No more ties. Nothing to bind you in place. No obligations, no past that had to intrude on your future, no expectations you had to fulfill, no one you owed any explanations. There's a freedom in that, isn't there? Wasn't it like you just realized that everything could be the adventure it should have been before you got bogged down in life? Like you just snapped your fingers and realized you were free to just go wild if you wanted?"

"That what you want? To go wild?"

"No. I feel wild. But what I want is to channel this feeling that anything is possible for me. That I don't have to be bound by the expectations I had for my life ... because I no longer have that life. I no longer have any of those people I loved. I no longer have to be anything but who I want to be. Does that make sense?"

"Sure. In some ways. So why does this feel like you're about to give me bad news?"

I looked at him and read this pain in his eyes. It's never easy, is it, to feel like you're the one being left behind? "I don't intend to live her life anymore. I've been living every moment since I got here with this straight jacket of feeling like I had to do everything as if I was just borrowing this life ... and that when she came back, I wanted her to have her life back the way it was as much as I could. But now I realize, I don't owe her that anymore than she owes me that. From now on, I live my life. And I'm freer than I've ever been to shape my life just like I want it."

"What do you want? Do you know? It sounds like you've made decisions and ... Dunno, love, but maybe you need a friend to talk with about it? If so, I'm here. I'll always be here for you, right?"

"I know that, Terry. It's what's gotten me through this time." My feet wandered. I looked at the grass. I peered into the bayou. I scanned the oaks. Finally, I said, "Do you have any idea how alone I feel? There isn't a single person in this world who cares about me."

"I care about you."

I looked back at him and his head was down; he was digging in the oyster shells with the toe of his shoe. And then he stopped. His eyes came up to meet mine. So serious. They drew me in.

"I don't want you to feel obligated to take care of me anymore. I feel like all I do is take from your kindness. And the truth is, Terry, that you feel like you owe me something but you don't. So what that it was really shitty that I came here into Terra Nova and that I'm stuck now. You've helped me; you've sheltered me; and I would never have made it without you doing that for me."

He gave this tight smile and waved the bottle at me, like he wanted to dismiss any contribution he might have made. "What'd you expect me to do, Annie? Kick ya out on yer arse? Every one of us got help when he came into Terra Nova; we owed you the same. I owed you, love. Still do. You risked so much to try to help me get her back. I don't bloody forget things like that. And I take care of the people who are important to me."

"But every time you look at me, it hurts you because I am so like her but I'm not her. And my very presence in your home makes this a wound that will never heal for you. I hate that I make you feel that way. That that's the reward you get for your kindness to me."

"So you want to escape from me? I've been that tough to get along with?"

Something in his eyes made me remember. I walked right up to him; my hand caressed his cheek. "Never. You know very well that I adore you. Just let me do the right thing by you, hey? I am tired of making you hurt just because I exist. I'll make it on my own now. I won't like it that way, because I'm a selfish bitch who'd like nothing more than to be with you. But how can I do that to you if it means you'll never heal? So instead, I choose to grab the adventure of my life and do something with it. But I gotta know, Terry, that no matter what, you'll still be my friend. You are so important to me."

"You're making a choice that will affect us both. Without consulting me. You're just assuming you know what's right for me." He gave me this hard look. I felt about two inches tall and ... he was right. And it was so like me to do something this way. "What about what I want?"

"Let's talk about that, Terry. What do you want?"

"Not this."

"Okay but ... But surely you weren't wanting to just go along like this, were you? Do you really and truly think this is healthy for either of us? What about you? What about what's best for you ... be selfish for a change. This isn't good for you. And I think you know that even if you wish you didn't."

His eyes flickered away from me. He started to say something, stopped, looked around, fidgeted for his cigarettes, rubbed at his scar ... and I just let him. I let him go through the nervous motions until he'd break through for me. Finally: "I am not going to abandon you. I have an obligation to keep you safe."

Patting his knee. Saying it soft. "Okay. I can see that. But, Terry, you have your whole life ahead of you. If I'm willing to go out on my own, to release you from any obligations, then you're free again."

"No one's ever really free."

Of course, he was so right. But he'd also more than paid his dues. He had earned his freedom. "I had this thought the other night. I was thinking about how I want her... your Ann, I mean ... I want her to be happy back there. I would never want her to be sitting around feeling guilty if she's finding any enjoyment in life. I don't want her to feel like she's not allowed to live her own life. I want her to be happy. Don't you?"

He didn't say anything but his eyes clouded over and he looked above him at the swaying Spanish moss.

"And I think she'd want the same thing for me. And she'd also want you to be happy, Terry." From somewhere, I found these new words. The unspoken feeling I'd had. And so I took the chance to broach the one subject I'd felt us both refusing to acknowledge out in the open. "It's like your wife has essentially died for you, isn't it? You need to be giving yourself permission to grieve for that loss. And then you need to give yourself permission to live again, even with that loss."

"She's not dead," he whispered in this hard voice. I'd crossed a line with him. I knew it and I also knew, he needed me to push him on this.

"No. But you've lost her as if she was." I stroked his hand but he flicked it away with this angry motion. "You are such a wonderful man, Terry. Somewhere, there's another woman who is just waiting to share love with you. You deserve that like maybe no man I've ever met. And Ann wants that for you. She doesn't want you to be sad forever or guilty or any of that."

"Stop it."

"Are you still waiting for her to come back here? If you are never going to give up that hope, then ... I just believe that when you give that up, you're going to crash so hard. I worry about you. I wish I knew what to do to help you."

We just waited on each other. He sipped his beer and smoked. His face had closed down on me. That tight mouth and blank-eyed stare.

"Don't feel guilty for needing some time for yourself, Terry. Don't feel badly that the idea of me moving out has given you a feeling of release from part of your burden."

"I don't want you to do this," he said and the fact he said it so plain and the fact he said it without anger or pain ... I understood him. In some big way, I think, even he knew ... he needed to be released from the weight of the responsibility he felt for me. But never in a million years would he have let himself walk away from me. So it had to be me and only then would he find the way to begin working on the other issues. He needed to find his own new way in life. I'd never abandon a friend like him. Ever. But I would release him.

"I know you don't. Can you let me do it anyway?"

He did. He let me go. Maybe he finally figured that staying wouldn't amount to much if it had been forced upon me in any way. But I knew this about him ... he needed to be cut free more than I did. He needed to figure out what he wanted without the albatross of guilt.

Maybe that had been my fate all along. That I would stop searching for answers when I no longer cared to form the questions but chose instead to give up everything for the sake of his peace.