Free Slices by Michael Montoure

She’d — without him,
without his help, she’d — “When?” was all he
could ask.
    “Does
it matter?” Her eyes were dark and distant and seemed to look
right through him. “It’s taken care of. You don’t
need to worry about it.”
    She
turned away from him and went back to looking out the window, and
that was the last they spoke about it for years.
    It
was years, as well, before the dreams started.

    Even
though they still lived side by side in the small apartment, close
enough that her scent was always on his skin, Nathan knew, over time,
that he’d lost her forever.
    He
tried to make her happy, and for all he knew, sometimes she was.
She’d smile at him, sometimes, a smile as bright as a full moon
breaking free from the clouds, sudden and dazzling. But more often,
the smiles he saw were small and hidden and private, and he never
knew what prompted them. He eventually stopped asking.
    He’d
find her sometimes, alone and whispering. Sometimes out on the street
at night, pointing up at the stars and naming them. Or sitting, more
than once, alone and cold on a child’s swing in the playground
behind their apartment building. She answered to her own clock and
rhythms, followed her own seasons.
    She
dropped out of school, despite his protests. He tried endlessly to
reach her, and worried more than once that maybe this had all been
too much for her mind. If he’d had close friends to advise him,
maybe he would have known to insist she get help, tried to fix her
with more than just love and patience.
    Instead,
he worked. It was all he knew how to do. He’d never been much
in love before Sammy and for all he knew, this was what it was like.
But his work he understood, the abstract and the ideal and the
pursuit of a perfect line, existing somewhere in the unreal,
unhindered by pen and paper and his hands. He worked harder and
brought home a little more money and knew that he could just fix
their life if he kept trying.
    A
couple of years had gone by since that strange cold night by the
window. He announced that they were moving. He’d found a larger
apartment they could afford now, a too-small two-bedroom apartment
instead of their too-small one-bedroom one, and he hoped that he
could lure her out and into somewhere new and bring her back to the
world.
    For
a while it almost worked. She was happy and excited for a time, took
more interest in her life, and more interest in him, covering him at
night in their new bed with soft kisses and her softer body. For a
while, he thought it was all going to be all right.
    Then
for a small matter of weeks she was distracted and pale again, and
came to him asking, “Do you think it’s time now? For a
baby, I mean?”
    He
blinked. And hesitated once more. “I’m not sure,”
he said, thinking about it. “We are in a slightly better
position financially, and you’re not in school any more.”
    “ …
But?” she asked, when
he didn’t go on.
    “Well.”
He felt awkward, didn’t want to say anything. “We still
don’t have any savings to speak of. And I’d been hoping
that, well. That you’d go back. To school.”
    “Oh,”
she said. A slight puzzled frown creased her forehead. “I don’t
think I will.”
    “But
you still might,” he said. When
you feel better, he almost added, but didn’t. “And I’ve been very
busy at work, lately. I wouldn’t be much help with a new baby.”
    “It’s
still not a good time, then,” she said slowly, saying the words
carefully, as if making sure she had them right, like a ritual.
    “Not
in my opinion,” he agreed.
    He
watched her unreadable face for a long moment, until it changed to a
calm smile.
    “All
right,” she said at last. And never asked again.

    It
wasn’t long after that that Nathan started to dream.
    He
wrote it off at first as stress, overwork, guilt at having put her
off again. But he kept having the same dreams, seeing the same face,
impossible to ignore:
    His
daughter, his own daughter, happy and