Re: Living Room: Hannah & David
He listened to the story of the hand-fed, dying, dead little animals. He could imagine Molly in that moment, but of course the Molly in memory was the Molly he knew. "I don't wonder why she didn't say." She had never been the type to dwell on the past, the ought-to-be-forgotten. When she opened and talked about the house and what had come before, it was always in bits and pieces, and those pieces often came with a sadness long tamped down.
"I think someone does. Not Anna, of course, but someone else. Maybe you, one day." You never could tell who would come out of life with someone they loved, whatever had happened before, however dashed their dreams might be. Good things did happen to the right people, sometimes.
"It comforts people to think of life as a progression. Event to event. Moment to moment, leading back to a neat and uncomplicated starting point where things began. But you're right. Go back and try it again, and who knows where life might lead?" Two people were talking, laughing at the back doorway, and he looked at them. "Too many variables, too much chance. That's what self-determination is all about. If you went back and did something again and got the same result, that would be fate. In which I do not believe. Too much randomness in the world for fate to dictate where we go and who we may be."
He nodded when she said that most people didn't really want to hear what others thought. She was right. Usually, they wanted small talk, surface conversation that echoed their worldview right back to them. When they asked how you were, they weren't terribly keen to know if it might upset their day. "You're you," he said, with a small smile. "That is all you ever need to be. I'm glad you found the pieces of who that was." He blinked. "What you are is never the trouble. Who you are is always harder to find." Or - he didn't mind what she was, whatever that might be. Someday she would tell him, or she wouldn't. But she would still be her, and he would still want to talk to Hannah, to Amy, to her.
She rubbed his arm, and he looked at her. "Why would I want to be dead?" There was the faintest seed of curiosity in it, but also a hollowness, a gap dropping into the ground. Why would he want any of this? He thought about it, and the thought felt like gripping a rope, slipping into a deep dark hole. It felt like lingering at the edge and looking down while trying to hold very, very still.
He looked at her. "To hear a house talk, and have no one else listen." It must have been hard. Beyond hard - it must have driven her even deeper into herself. "When people don't believe you, it makes you feel crazy." He blinked when she thanked him, and he smiled back at her. The room almost felt out-of-focus, fuzzy and blurry and distant as another planet. Hannah, however, was sharp and very much alive. "Any time."