The Weight of Stones by C.B. Forrest Page A

used the word “exhaustion”. His body’s immune system weakened, ravaged.
    â€œHow do you feel?” Hattie asked.
    â€œProbably not as bad as I look.”
    The room smelled of disinfectant, bandages and industrial floor wax. It was a sickly perfume, and McKelvey remembered it the same way a dog remembers the scent of the vet’s office. This smell was associated with vulnerability, weakness... endings. McKelvey had watched his mother wither away from cancer in a room not unlike this one. Machines and IVs, Hallmark greeting cards and cheap grocery store flowers lining the window sill; his father in the tavern, unable to face the day, an old man hiding from his life. McKelvey sat in that room because it was what he had to do, but every part of him wanted to get up and run down the hall, keep on running until he came to the end of something, the end of himself.
    â€œIs Caroline here?” he asked. “Did anybody call her?”
    She nodded then picked up a small plastic container from the table beside his bed, and began to fiddle with it. She replaced the container and looked at McKelvey. His hair was slicked back from sweat, and she saw what he must have looked like as a little boy, staying home sick from school, his mother touching his forehead, stroking his curly hair. A cute boy he must have been.
    â€œThe nurses in the emergency department kept trying to reach Caroline, but they couldn’t get through,” she said. Then her expression betrayed her. “So I went over, you know. While they had you out. You were out for a long time. I hope you don’t mind, I got your keys...”
    McKelvey waited. Hattie fiddled with something else on the table.
    â€œCharlie…”she said—and that was enough for him, enough and more. “There was a note.”
    â€œLet me see it,” he said and extended a wavering hand. He watched it tremble the way his father’s hand had trembled the last time he’d seen the man alive. He felt weak now, and his stomach began to glow with a strange new sensation. He wondered briefly if this was a sign of things to come. Is this what it meant to grow old, your body folding in like a card chair after the last hand has been played? There was so much left to do. Singleness of purpose.
    â€œI don’t want to upset you. In your condition,” she said. “I could read it to you.”
    â€œGive me the fuckin’ note,” he said and wagged his fingers.
    Hattie reached into her back pocket and produced a small square of lavender paper. He recognized it as Caroline’s writing paper, used for sending notes to friends and relatives. Sometimes she sprayed a scent on it, just a trace of fine mist. And sometimes she used a small stamp to cut out various shapes in the corners, an angel or a heart. He saw his wife sitting at the kitchen table to write this note. What it must have taken for her to come to this... Even before he opened the note, he knew it would kill her inside, hearing where he’d been when he read it. He wanted to spare her this pain; he had never meant to hurt her. Not in a million years...
    Then he read the lines so carefully written in Caroline’s beautiful handwriting. And it was strange. Everything seemed somehow so inevitable. The only possible conclusion to The Story of Charlie and Caroline. Of course Caroline had slipped away to visit her sister on the west coast for an indefinite period, “to sort things out”. Of course, she had escaped from their dead home, their mausoleum. He didn’t blame her. Christ, how could he? He loved her, and yet he was happy for her. She had seen a small window of opportunity, perhaps her last shot at a life, and so she dove through it. She had escaped, and how could he hold that against her? Keep running, and don’t look back, he thought.
    â€œI’m sorry, god,” was all Hattie could say.
    â€œListen,” he said, and he flushed with