Her relief gave way to annoyance, which at least she didn’t feel guilty over anymore. Not since about a week ago, when she’d found one of the hidden cameras, confirming what she’d already suspected by then. And she hadn’t even gotten time for a proper snit, because the next day the news had arrived that the latest revision to history was official. David’s resume now listed him as having worked for the NSA until November. When asked, everything that had happened publicly in the past year had done so as part of a joint NSA/Homeland mission he wasn’t allowed to talk about, and the right people could confirm it. She and David had their suspicions of why they were willing to, but they weren’t asking any questions.
It worried Sarah that the next day David had suffered a very bad episode. She’d come home from work to find him huddled in bed, saying he didn’t think he could pass an interview any more, and he was sorry, but he thought he might not be anything but a burden to her now. She’d pep talked him up as best she could, because really, she’d had to. Though the truth was, she’d already been calculating how to stretch her current salary, if worst came to worst. It wouldn’t be easy, but she thought they could get by.
And he wouldn’t be completely useless anyway; he’d even taken on most of the household chores while waiting for the resume update. She’d barely had to do any cleaning this last month, and he’d cooked more nights than not too. Having a househusband might cost a lot of money, but it was convenient.
She’d ended the pep talk by jokingly mentioning that. He’d looked like that had cheered him more than anything else she’d said. Sarah was now trying not to read too much into that.
In any case, he now had two interviews, and the first one was tomorrow. He didn’t have time to lose sleep tonight.
At least the house had been sparkling clean for the beginning of Chanukah. Which had been three nights ago, but David had kept going. He was probably aware she hadn’t really forgiven him for the cameras, and even less so for not admitting to them right away.
Sarah’s anger was dull and tired inside her. Just like it had been at the world in general over the past year. Of course, when she’d thought him dead, sometimes thinking about him left her loving him more than ever, and sometimes doing so had made her curse his ever existing.
Then again, that remained true even now.
She found him standing in front of the menorah. It was still by the window; they’d only blown the candles out right before going to bed. He’d opened the curtains partly, but Sarah couldn’t tell if he was really seeing what was out there, or if there was even much to see.
“Four nights,” he said, when he noticed she was there. “At this point, back in the Temple, they must have realized something was up, that this oil was burning for way too long. I know we’re supposed to think they all accepted that they were getting a miracle and that was that, but you’re not going to convince me that no one freaked out.”
Sarah went up to him and placed a hand on his arm. It was as much for her own sake as his. Touching him always made her more certain he was there.
He knew that, and bent his head, before saying, “I found the candle. I mean, the one you must have lit last month when I’d been dead a year, since everyone uses the same one.”
“I thought about having to do it all again.” She hadn’t yet run out of things to tell him about, pains he had caused. “Before they told me you still weren’t really dead. I had the image of my head of hanging those curtains again and I wanted to scream.”
David opened his mouth as if to question the necessity of doing a second sit shiva. Or whether they even could have; it was possible they wouldn’t have been allowed to tell anyone he hadn’t been dead the first time. Then he wisely closed it. She would’ve grieved over again no matter what, just as badly as she had.
He looked so sad and tired, then, that she found herself saying, “It’s not you I’m most mad it, you know. Not even now.”
“I know.” And he had, no doubt, but he still sounded a little relieved.
“Even the cameras,” she continued. “I mean, I’m still mainly angry at you over that one, but you really were terrified for our lives, weren’t you?”
“I was.” She could hear his memory of it. “But it was better after they were up. I didn’t dare try to place them during the sit shiva, which was the longest week of my life. I tried to tell myself with everyone we knew coming in and out they wouldn’t try anything then…and then there were the federal agents paying visits, and I still couldn’t do it for way too long. It was such a relief, when there were times I *knew* that, at that moment, there was no one around to threaten the three of you.”
“I was scared too.” One of the biggest admissions she had made. “I knew that I knew too much. And I kept thinking, what if they thought the kids knew something? There were nights when I couldn’t sleep, where I’d go back and forth between the doors to their rooms-I don’t know if the cameras picked the sound up anywhere.” There hadn’t been any on the upper floor inside the house. He’d snuck in to install them when they’d been asleep, and been too worried about waking them up.
When he didn’t answer, she asked, “What would’ve happened if I’d been awake that night and caught you?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I would’ve had to let you in on everything, I suppose. Caused you more agony, and made everything much more dangerous.”
“Would it have?” she demanded. She dropped his arm, which made him flinch.
But still he argued, “Think about it, Sarah. One of the outside cameras did pick it up, and I noticed when it stopped about three months in. We were both able to think if they were going to try to do anything to you or the kids, they would’ve done so already. That part of it was over for you, then. I know the rest of the year was still hard, but…”
Sarah got it, but she still said, “I would have happily endured it all. I understand why we couldn’t have told Leo or Zach, and maybe I couldn’t have even ever contacted you. But even if I had to lay awake more nights wondering if they’d found and killed you, knowing you’d still been alive, that maybe we might be able to bring you home in the future…I would’ve had hope, David.”
That defeated him. As his shoulders slumped, he said, “The truth is, I don’t know if I could’ve stayed away if I hadn’t done exactly what I did. I think there’s a good chance I would’ve gotten all four of us killed. As it was, I was starting to break by the end of it. Seeing you start to move on, seeing Zach dealing so badly…Frank had to drag me away from the house at one point. I’m afraid the man you married is a weak coward, Sarah.”
She had to laugh. She had to. Also wrap her arms around her husband, and say, “David, you may be many things, most of which boil down to idiot. But a weak coward would never have gotten into our situation in the first place.”
David tilted his head back, probably just to increase the contact with hers. The first week he’d been back, he’d been even more desperate for her touch than she’d been for his, expect that during the evenings, he’d often flinched away from hers and the children’s hands, unable to take anymore. That had been when he’d been having more trouble coping with the world in general than he was having now.
Now, the only times they weren’t touching constantly were when she was too angry for it. They’d always been on the physically affectionate side, but Sarah suspected they would be even more so for a very long time.
“You know,” she said. “There was one favor that fear did you. During the first month, when I was at my loneliest, I seriously considered going out at night and picking up a man, just for right then. Of course I’m not sure I would’ve done it anyway, what with the kids in the house, but what stopped me from even trying was the thought that if he murdered me, no one would’ve looked very hard for an explanation why.”
“I had a plan for if you did. It involved me hurrying over here and possibly trying to do some climbing outside. I don’t know if I could’ve gotten close enough to stop him, if…but I had to try. Yeah,” he actually chuckled. “I would’ve had to hear the whole thing.”
“Ouch.” She chuckled too.
“To be fair,” he said, “I would’ve known not to be jealous. So long as they hadn’t tried to hurt you, they wouldn’t have mattered later.”
They’d talked about Frank already, though it had taken them nearly two weeks. That was when Sarah had lost her patience and laid it out for him: the whole sequence of events had mostly made clear in her mind that yes, if David really had been dead, she might have eventually found someone else, but she’d never want anyone as much as she wanted him. “Avoid pulling this kind of stunt again and you never need fear competition,” she’d said.
It had been a daytime conversation, where they’d even referred to Frank as “Pete.” Now, at night, when David had already used his real name, Sarah could make a confession that might just horrify her husband, even if she’d expressed the main sentiment of it once already, when the trauma had been fresh enough for him to excuse her.
She plunged right into it. “Ever since we got that update from Curtis about Frank, I’ve been of two minds about him. One is that I just want him to be happy again, the way I think we’re going to be. I know what you said about him, but I’m officially hoping. I’m even hoping he does love Karen Page, and he’ll admit it to himself, and she’ll love him back, because that would give him something.”
Obviously that speech made David relax against her. He had no idea what was coming next.
“The other…” Sarah paused, buried her face further into his skin. “I want him to go back to killing people. All the other people involved in this, because I can’t believe they’re *all* dead. All the ones involved in the coverup of their murder of you, especially, because that shit they pulled requires more people than we have accounted for. And maybe even other people like them, because there are so many of them in this world.”
She kept talking, afraid of facing his reaction when she stopped. “I want to suffer even though we’re done with it, and even though Frank deserves to stop and rest and have better. It is utterly selfish and horrible and malicious of me, and I want their pain so badly.” At that point her words caught of a sob, and she couldn’t get any more out.
David’s voice was as soft and as tender as she had ever heard it be, as he sighed, “Oh, Sarah,” turned around, and gathered her up and into a tight embrace.
For several minutes they just stood there, both of them letting her cry, especially as she remembered once more how badly she had missed this man.
“For what it's worth,” said David, “I think if Frank knew you were feeling this way, he’d tell you not to feel guilty over it. Of course, he’s convinced he doesn’t deserve better anyway.”
“Well,” said Sarah, “you were the one who knew him in the end.” Though she’d always care for him, even though, if it had ever truly been like that, it certainly wasn’t now.
“I keep thinking,” she said next. “Don’t know if you saw this one, but it was back in June when Zach punched another boy for making a comment about you. When they called me in, he repeated what the boy had said, and I’m not going to repeat it now; it truly was a horrible thing for him to say. When I took him home, all Zach would do was say over and over that the boy had been the one who was wrong, and he shouldn’t have been the one who got in trouble, and he’d never be nice to any of the school staff again.
Well, Leo heard him say that, and then she start to say, ‘But you’ll have to forgive them when-’ And we never found out when, because then he was screaming, ‘No I won’t, never, I can’t forgive, I can’t forget, it’s too much, it’s too much…’ It’s all been running in my head ever since.
They shot you out on the street, right in front of me. They defamed your name. They said terrible things to us. They threatened me at one point. And then they kidnapped us. There are too many nights when I can still hear Zach crying, the way one of them laughed. None of us will ever be the same, will we? How can I just forget that the world did that to us? Even those of them who are dead, even those of them I’m sure Frank brutalized, I still can’t do it.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t, then,” said David. “Maybe if it can’t be about forgetting or forgiving, we should all just focus on letting go, and not letting everything hurt us more than we can help. We spend too much time being bitter, that’s letting them hurt us more, and from beyond the grave, which is just insult to injury.”
“Then we just…” Sarah tried to think it through further. “Try to keep going? It’s as simple as that? Or go for anger management? Do you think we could get away with meeting with a therapist and telling them everything?”
“Believe me, if I thought we could…though there are some who exist with security clearances and such. I could ask Madani for help, see if she can find anyone?”
“Do it, then” she said, and felt much better. “Wow,” she commented. “I think I really needed to believe we were doing something. Or at least trying something. I mean, even if this doesn’t work out, I can still think we’ll finish recovering, but…if I feel less helpless.” That finally crystallized in her head. “That’s one of the biggest reasons I’ve been angry at…well, truly everyone.”
“I did leave you helpless, didn’t it?” David had got it immediately; he’d always been smart enough for that. “I am sorry for that, Sarah. Maybe that more than anything I’ve been sorry for so far.”
He really meant it; she could hear that in his tone. Sarah felt the weight of it, and she herself grew lighter, her anger diminishing. They weren’t done talking about the cameras yet; there was much more she would have to say to him on the subject. But it could wait, maybe until after he’d gotten through the next day’s interview.
For now, she said, “We should go back to bed.” He still needed to sleep, the conversation had taken its toll on them both, and Sarah had already known, when she’d left the bedroom, that the two of them likely wouldn’t be sleeping immediately when they went back to it.
Also, upstairs, David paused in front of each of their children’s bedrooms, the way she had so many nights a year ago. Neither of them said anything; they didn’t want to risk waking them up. But each of them knew the other was thinking the same thing.
Like his father, Zach was now much better than he had been a month ago. His most serious behavioral problems were gone, and his grades had also improved. (David had spent a lot of time helping him for the latter.) But he was still moody, and he still didn’t have any real friends among his classmates anymore. Sarah was hoping that would change as he got older, and met new kids who hadn’t known him when his father had been a dead traitor, but she also was already fearing his entrance into junior high.
Leo, meanwhile, was much like she had been. Maybe a little more cheerful, but still all too serious. The thing about growing up was that you couldn’t reverse it, not really. Leo had stopped being a child when she’d lost her father, and now she would never be one again.
Even before all this she’d also been less sound a sleeper. Sarah had never stayed by her door long, and now she and David didn’t either. She was just glad they’d both thought to put on their slippers, even though she hadn’t put on her bathrobe, and underneath his David was barechested.
When the door was closed behind them, instantly they were pressed together close; she was able to taste his breath. She’d left the lamp on by the bed, but here on the other side of the room she could only just make out his face. “I’m here, right?” David asked. “I know I am, but I am, right?”
“You are,” Sarah was answering the question in both their heads. “They tried to destroy you in every way, but you’re still here. And then they went after us, all three of us, but we’re still here. They probably would’ve wanted all of us to be gone from the beginning, but we are. Still. Fucking. Here.”
“Best revenge,” he whispered back, hot on her jaw. “We were good, weren’t we, earlier tonight? I swear I was.”
She’d thought as much already. David had been relatively quiet that evening, but spent much of it wearing the gentle, contented smile she still longed to see more of. She herself had felt good, like she was on warm and steady ground at last. And the children had enjoyed one of the happiest nights they’d had in the past year. The previous three nights they’d attended parties, which had been too stressful for David to handle easily; she thought they might spend the remaining nights in.
There was a moment where they were lingering there, millimeters apart, each of them somewhere in between, “I am holding you right now for pure, life-affirming based reasons,” and “but I’m really going to need to fuck you as soon as we can get over to that bed.”
Then David kissed her in the way he *knew* got to her every single time, and seconds later they were on the bed, his bathrobe and both their slippers already off, and he was pulling her nightgown over her head.
It was hard for her to stop kissing him long enough for him to do so. When she finally forced herself to, he laughed as he got her naked. “My hungry wife,” he murmured, even though he was entirely responsible for this one. That’s what he’d started calling her his first week home, when one stolen moment in the safehouse had just whetted her appetite, but he’d been too overwhelmed to do much. It hadn’t been until the second week they’d really made up for the year he'd spent with his hand and she'd spent with her vibrator.
“I do admit I want a bite,” she replied, but then she deliberately arched her body up and lifted her chest up to him, to make clear what she meant. Since that second week she’d rarely walked around without multiple love-bites from him on her body, but the one almost faded just below her breasts was the one she relied on the most. It was the easiest thing, when she was at work, or anywhere else he wasn’t, to rest her arm on top of it through her clothing and feel it there.
And she’d think of this when she did so, the pleased grunt that David let out as he went for her breasts themselves first, tongue and teeth light against them, which still sent sensations running up and down her spine, her head falling back. She let out moans that struggled not to get too loud as he licked over her left nipple, then nosed his way down her breast until he found a spot he liked below it, not too far from her heart, and made another pleased and possessive noise as he sucked hard.
He kissed his way up, lingering on her right breast, teasing it with his tongue, and possibly leaving another hickey, and by the time he reached her neck she was already straining against him, trying to get her hands up to pull his sweats down. When he reached her mouth, he kissed it soft and wet, then whispered, “I want one, too.”
He didn’t need them as a reminder she was alive, of course. But while he hadn’t quite said so, Sarah was pretty sure the marks she left on her husband’s body with mouth, teeth, or nails gave him his own needed reminder: that he’d come home, that all four of them were now safe, that his ordeal was over.
Sarah rolled them over, and she too took her time, nuzzling all around his neck and chest. The taste of his skin alone still drove her to distraction, still wasn’t something she could get enough of, like his hoarse pants as she bit at his nipples, then found soft skin just low enough on his collarbone to easily hide. She did it as slowly as she could stand, trying to memorize the feeling of his flesh between her lips as she worked on it, drawing up further heat and her name on his lips.
She still felt like she was set on fire, after spending a year in the freezing cold. David knew it too; his hands soothing as he tried to pull her up to keep kissing her. It was hard to refrain from latching her mouth onto his neck, especially since she was pretty sure he’d have let her.
“What do you want?” he asked her between more kisses. His hands were teasing on her back, making her want a more solid grip, maybe even one strong enough to bruise.
“Fuck me hard,” she finally whispered, and she was on her back again even as she once against grabbed at the sweats, fumbling with them in her haste. He yanked them down and kicked them off, then shoved himself on top of her, knocking her legs about even as she eagerly spread them, and sealing his mouth back over hers to muffle both their cries as he slammed home.
After a month, Sarah had once again gotten used to how much David filled her to the bursting, though that didn't make her love it any less. It felt so good, and just what she needed, the way he was pounding her, making tiny noises through gritted teeth as she grabbed his hair and pulled hard enough to yank his head back, his own hands holding her down near her hips, though those she moved up as much as she could manage. When she let go and dug her nails into his back, David moved his head back down, not trying to kiss her again, just keeping his forehead against hers even as his thrusts sent her body arching, her head falling back on the pillow, involuntary Ah Ah Ahs escaping her each time he bottomed out.
It was too frantic to last long even now, before she felt David shudder against her and the warmth of him coming inside her. He kept going through it, getting one of his hands to her clit with practiced ease, and she was coming apart before he’d gone soft, him slowing down as he worked her through it, his mouth soft and wet as he pressed final kisses to her face before he slumped down and slid off her, pressing himself into her side and his face into her hair. He gently kissed her ear in several places.
After a moment or so, which Sarah spent mostly trying to catch her breath, his fingers linked themselves through hers, and she took his hand in a solid grip. She had to get up, she told herself.
Even if David said, “I can shower in the morning, right? Probably a good idea when I have an interview anyway.”
It would make the bed smell worse later, but if it got him more sleep tonight, Sarah was willing to cope. Finally forcing herself up, ignoring his noise of protest, she leaned down to kiss his forehead with a “Sleep tight.”
By the time she finally stepped into the shower, roughly five minutes later, the soreness between her legs had kicked in full force, to the point she wasn’t entirely walking straight, though she would be by morning. The high was fading faster, leaving behind exhaustion; she resisted the urge to slump against the shower wall.
After already crying once that evening, she probably shouldn’t want to again. She made herself think about the smile that had been on her husband’s face when she’d left him there. She rubbed her legs together, the ache between them now nothing but welcome. Her hand reached under her breast, where the newest mark was blooming.
It made her want to cry for a different reason, or maybe it was the same one. She gave in. She had learned how to cry very quietly in the past year.
She felt better when she walked back into the bedroom, calmer. The lamp was still on, and by its light she could see David was now asleep, same smile still on his face. Though even in his sleep, as soon as she carefully lay herself against him, he pressed back. Even when they fell asleep on their own sides of the bed, they often woke up in the morning with one or the other clinging tightly.
Sarah didn’t turn off the lamp, because she didn’t want to stop seeing her husband’s face. She breathed in the scent of him mixed with the smell of sex lingering in the air. She lay there, in her warm bed, in the quiet night, and told herself for the thousandth time they’d be all right. That she’d be all right.