Free Stars Go Blue by Laura Pritchett Page B

. . . Oh, Ben—” and she looks at him, sorrowful and startled. “It’s too late now?”
    There are still screams in him that need to come out. But instead he cries with her. Even as he cries he knows Renny is driving and saying “Holy kamoly this is new oh no oh no I can’t do this, not this” over and over and he can see that Anton is in the rearview mirror.
    When they pull up into the driveway of their home, he sits in the truck gazing at the white farmhouse and barn and chicken house. He sits until Renny talks to Anton, and Anton leaves, and then she comes back to sit with him in the truck.
    Renny puts her hand on his leg. He can feel how bony he is. He used to be so strong. She says, “Oh Ben. I wasn’t aware that you . . . hated Ray so much—” Then she stops, tilts her head, says, “I think I know what you mean.” And she says, “It’s not that Ray was a monster, not outright evil. That’s why, in certain ways, it’s worse. Because he had the capacity to be a good man. People liked him. He had a certain charm. But deep inside, beneath those brown eyes, he was a fake and a bully. He didn’t love her. He didn’t love much of anything. And he was lazy and self-centered in about a hundred different ways.”
    Ben starts crying again because she is right. He can understand her, and she is right.
    â€œWe should have talked about this sooner. Why only now?” Renny nods as she says this, agreeing with herself. She pats him on the leg. “Listen. We’re both worn out. I don’t want you doing that, ever again. I don’t know what’s in store for us now,but not that. I don’t know if you understand me. But it might be time—I’ll think about it tomorrow—to move to that assisted care place. I can’t . . . But for right now, I know what you mean, Ben. Rachel, for instance, saw enough in him to love. He had her fooled. With dreams of a piece of land. A future together. So it makes it worse, doesn’t it? That when you look inside this supposedly good man, if you look hard enough, into his marrow, you can see that he was a pretend show.”
    â€œPretend show.”
    â€œYes. You’re right, Ben. That’s what he was. The difference between a real man and a pretend show is courage. Courage. Deep down he didn’t have any. Isn’t that right, Ben? Some people on this earth aren’t even really human. And he was one of them. But he looked like the other kind—the good kind.”
    And Ben nods and cries and whispers words like coward , go to hell , and all that.
    â€œYes, all that.” Later, she says, “It’s getting cold out here, Ben. Let’s go inside. Look at that snow. We’re going to freeze to death in here. It would have been easier if he was evil. But no. He was just a fake. Everything except the gun was a fake. We should have told each other this sooner.”
    She leads him in the house, their footprints making new marks in a new snow.
    On the way inside, she stops once. “Ben? If you were alive ten years from now, what would you want to be doing? Can you understand that question?”
    He understands. Pauses to form the words of it. Only gets out, “Take care of you and the ranch.” Or, at least, he hopes he says it. He doesn’t look at her, though, to see her reaction. Instead he looks at the aspen trees standing in their winter silence, and the snow behind them is an octave whiter than the aspens themselves. Suddenly, he remembers how rain fallsand the drops are held in the center of aspen leaves, how their circular perfection is held inside a cupped palm of leaf, and his heart snaps with the knowledge he won’t see spring again. “Oh,” he says, clutching at his heart. “It hurts. I’m scared.”
    Renny doesn’t hear him, though, and once inside, she tells him to take a nap. But no, he says, he won’t.