Axis of Aaron (61 page)

“We have to get you home.”
 

“Don’t you see it?”
 

“See what?”

“I’m so tired, Aimee.” The scenery down the shore was shifting like liquid, never pausing. Cottages rose from nothing. Shacks vanished. The pier resurrected; children ran the beaches; the beaches went cold and white and empty. The sky turned the tangerine of a sunset, except that the sun was rising, not setting. Orange blushed into the white snow, turning it a painter’s palette. Then the snow melted and the color was only in Aimee’s hair: yellow to orange to red to crimson to purple to black. The moon rose. The stars shone. For full seconds Ebon was sure there was nothing but Aimee’s breath, the touch of her hands, and the warmth of her body beside his.

“Get up,” she said, pulling.
 

“We have to get to Redding Dock,” he replied, his earlier urgency returning.
 

“What we have to do is go home.” She hefted. “Come on. Help me.”
 

“Redding,” Ebon said, his heart rate increasing. “It’s the only thing that doesn’t change. I have to find the middle. I have to reset.” He clutched his head, pinching his eyes shut. “Don’t you see? How can I know what’s real and what’s not if it never stops changing?”
 

Aimee blinked, hard. A tear spilled onto her cheek, cutting another line through the dust.
 

“How long have we been chatting online, Aimee?”

“We … ”
 

“Who came up with the idea of me coming to Aaron?”
 

“I proposed the specifics, but it was your … ”
 

Ebon stood, shambling backward. The ocean swelled. A storm approached, raged around them. Rain drenched them in sheets. Thunder cracked with the sound of a tree snapping over God’s knee; lightning struck something nearby, the static of it prickling Ebon’s skin like warm fuzz.
 

“When did I find out about Holly and Mark? Were there other men, or just the one? Did she know I knew? Did I ever tell you? Did I look her in the eye? Did I try to stop it?”
 

“Get up. Just get to your feet.”
 

“Did I
want
to stop it? Did I tell you, Aimee? When we chatted, when we texted, when we emailed, when we called, incessantly, endlessly? Did I know what I was doing, or was I blocking it? Was I willfully ignorant, or had I managed to forget even then? Did I ever tell you about Ginny?” He was upright now, the cold numbing his skin, the hot summer sun doing nothing as windsurfers and Jet Skiers sailed by. “Did I ever tell you that? Did I even
know
it? Or was it gone?”
 

“I … ”
 

“What did I tell you about Holly, Aimee?” Ebon’s voice began to hitch, his eyes trying to freeze shut. “When I talked about her, what did I say? Did I tell you the truth? Or did I tell you a lie, like I told her about you?”
 

It was all starting to crumble. The pier snapped in the middle and spilled into the water, a giant whirlpool at its base swallowing it whole. A rock bluff cleaved off upshore, crumbling into an avalanche. A chasm formed along the shore, and Ebon watched as a massive slab of rock, beach, and water all spilled into it like a widening sinkhole. If they stayed where they were, they’d be sucked down into the chasm’s depths. As it all faded away forever, and for good.
 

“I can’t hold it together,” he said, now grasping at Aimee’s coat. Beneath his grip, the coat became a shirt, a light fall jacket, the twin straps of a swimsuit. Aimee became tan, white, tan. The sinkhole gave way and the rest of the island, from where the pier used to be and south, vanished. There was no land, no sky. It was just empty, as if the world held nothing. “I could control it earlier, but whatever it is … it’s falling apart.”
 

“We have to get you back to the cottage,” she said, still dragging him, oblivious.
 

“The cottage is
gone
, Aimee! Can’t you see what’s happening around us? We have to get to Redding.
To Redding!”
 

A new crack in the ground formed at Aimee’s heel. Ebon watched the soft beach shatter like hard glass and fall away. Her foot moved forward, now on the cliff’s edge, and yet she still didn’t seem to notice. Snow fell. A storm blew. Lightning struck the void, alighting on nothing. Now there was weather below too, everywhere around them, snow flying up rather than down, wind blustering at the ground and stirring sand, the shore a symphony of decaying and sundering.

Aimee’s face changed, summoning an expression of regret. She took his face between her palms and turned his head slowly so that he was looking north. He found himself facing empty water. Empty water that looked familiar, near a beach entrance that he knew all too well.

“Ebon,” Aimee said, “Redding Dock has been gone for fifteen years.”

Ebon felt the bottom drop from his stomach. There
was
no center. There
was
no safe place. Everything changed, and Redding wasn’t an exception after all.
Nothing
stayed the same. Time was relentless. You couldn’t go home again. You couldn’t change the past. You could only stumble blindly ahead, helpless, as all that once was decayed into emptiness behind you.
 

Another huge crack opened twenty yards to the north and fell away. Beyond it was more void. More gone. More nothingness.
 

There was no future. There was no past. There was only now.
 

There was no Redding Dock.
 

The wheel had no axis.
 

You can control this,
said a voice.
You can stop it.
 

But Ebon didn’t know how.
 

Start with what’s real.
 

He couldn’t.
 

Have the courage to tell the truth.
 

He couldn’t. He wouldn’t.
The pain. The guilt.
How much of what he’d lived had been real in the past years? How much of it did he have the strength to face?

“Jesus, Aimee,” Ebon said, taking her hands. “I’m so afraid.”
 

She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him close. The world continued to shake and fracture. He could hear the splitting of rock through the muffling bulk of her coat.
 

“Shh.”
 

“I’m so afraid. I’m so scared.”
 

“Shh,” she said. “I’m here, Ebon.”
 

Something seemed to catch in his mind. He blinked against Aimee’s coat. Then the sounds, the wind, the cold, the heat, and the breeze all stopped at once.
 

Ebon looked up to see that they were on a tiny circle of land, floating in a vacuum with nothing around them. There was no ocean. No sand. No sky. Only a single patch of existence, held steady while everything else crumbled around it — the center of a wheel held intact while the edges flew asunder.
 

“It’s all gone,” Ebon said, blinking into the void.

“Shh. I’m here. I’m here for you.”
 

Ebon met Aimee’s eyes. Her serious eyes. Her eyes that were often playful, often sarcastic, often crude, often sheltered and guarded. But always
there
.
 

“There’s nothing left,” he said.

Aimee smiled. “Not for always,” she said. “It will get better.”

Ebon thought about the warmth of her father’s cottage — a place that encapsulated his worst fears and his very best memories. A place he’d loved as much as he’d hated, because nothing in life was just one thing. Every moment had all the facets of a cut jewel, and could be turned to reflect light from any angle.
 

In the distance, a small strip of beach boiled into existence. Atop it, Ebon saw Richard Frey’s cottage. Its siding was blue-gray, faded with age.
 

Just an old house. And at the same time, so much more.
 

“There’s so much to say,” Ebon said. “So much to sort through.”
 

Aimee put her hands in his.
 

“Tell me everything,” she said. “From the beginning.”
 

CHAPTER THIRTY

Something Tangible
 

“ARE YOU WARM ENOUGH?” AIMEE ASKED as she prodded the fire, stirring sparks.

“Plenty warm,” said Ebon.
 

He snuggled deeper into the blanket Aimee had wrapped around him after they’d returned to the cottage. She’d done it as if he were a child, unable to clothe himself. But then again, maybe her attention wasn’t out of line given how few things he could do these days and how many he couldn’t. The world was still fragile. Ebon didn’t want to chance losing it in a vain grab for dignity — so if he had to be swaddled to make things easy, so be it.
 

He looked out the window and shivered at the wire frame of reality now visible in the dark sky. The strip of snow-covered beach they’d walked during the return trip had been nothing more than a ribbon in the middle of nothingness, a floating isthmus running through a featureless void. There had been no pier, no beach, no ocean, no sky, no anything at all. He was building the world anew piece by piece as he needed it, adding nothing until it was required. Now, as he looked, he saw a kind of skeleton — that single backbone they’d walked finally growing the thinnest of ribs. None of it felt in his control — and yet it all seemed, deep down, to be. Nothing was amiss from Aimee’s perspective. To her, he was helpless. But that was okay, for now.

Aimee gave Ebon a small, patient smile and set two more logs on the fire. The wood was dry and caught immediately. It looked like the flames came from within, radiating comforting warmth. It was almost too much for Ebon’s near-frostbitten skin.
 

“Do you want something to eat?” she asked.

Ebon shook his head. She’d already brought him coffee. The coffeemaker had stopped working after the kitchen’s faulty wiring had burned it out, but the microwave was working fine. Richard had always stocked at least a small jar of instant.

Aimee sat a few feet from Ebon, also opposite the fire, cross-legged. He’d wanted the lights low to remind his body to relax toward sleep, and in that sparse illumination the firelight flickered across Aimee’s features. She seemed younger than her years … but that was just because it was how she looked, not because Ebon’s mind was falsifying her appearance. There had been times that she’d changed while he’d stayed here, sure, but he felt confident she wouldn’t change anymore. Now, Aimee was his center, and she was stable. She’d become what he’d thought Redding Dock was supposed to be. She’d probably been that thing all along, with him too blind to see it.

The anchor. The middle of the wheel.

Around them, as Ebon’s eyes took in the firelit room, parts of the cottage still waxed and waned in flux. The changes were slowing, though, settling into fixed normality as Ebon allowed himself to remember the truth around him without resistance. But even as the walls and corners cycled, Aimee stayed unchanging. She was a girl who’d grown into a pretty woman, her hair still a mess but now strewn with a few silver strands. A girl he’d never stopped loving. A girl who’d become his archetype for infatuation, edging out anyone else who tried to fill that spot in his heart. Like Holly.

“I’d turn on the TV for you,” she said, “but unfortunately, after you left me alone today, I went against your advice and used the jigsaw.”
 

Ebon moaned. It felt good to participate in a joke. Normal. Like something a sane man would do.
 

“I told you not to do that. Florists can’t operate power tools.”
 

“I’m an artist.”
 

“It’s even truer for artists. What did you do?”
 

“I cut the power cord.”
 

Ebon gave a small laugh, then cautioned himself to stay focused. It was easy to be lulled into believing this moment was as normal as Aimee’s gray hair — to forget she’d just rescued him from something like a psychotic episode and that he’d watched the world crumble around him. It was tempting too to forget that he had no real assurance it wouldn’t happen again. Other than the feeling. The
feeling
told him he was on the right track. And he desperately wanted to believe it.
 

Just keep telling the truth,
he thought.
Especially to yourself.
 

“I have a surprise for you,” said Aimee. “Do you remember this?” She’d been hiding something behind her back. She pulled it out, and Ebon felt his heart stir with nostalgia. It was the small CD boom box they’d listened to during their lost summers, all those years ago. In Ebon’s mind, the thing would always look out of place away from the warm sand, its plastic case slowly bleaching in the summer sun as Richard Frey complained about its constant cost of D-cell batteries.
 

“Oh, sweet 1995,” Ebon said, reaching out to touch it.
 

“I found it yesterday in one of the upstairs closets. And look — ” She opened the top to show him a CD that had sat on the spindle unspun throughout their entire adult lives. Then she closed the top and turned on the box, which worked perfectly. The disc began to play. “Talk about 1995. Remember this one?”