Chapter Twenty-Five

Jaxon

“I like your new office”, I say patting the space I have around me on the couch. “It’s better than the last one.”

Miriam takes off her glasses and leans forward, interrupting the silence between us with a gesture I know too well. I look away and then back again. “More roomy”, I say.

“We can spend the entire hour talking about my office if you want to”, Miriam says. “The way the curtains come almost to the floor, the carefully chosen wall art, the wooden desk I still refuse to get rid of, the space-.” She puts her glasses back on, “-but it’s not going to help.”

I like Miriam, it’s why I’ve stuck with her for almost an entire year. She’s direct, and she’s excellent at her job, I’ve made real progress with her and I can really tell. “Okay”, I say.

Clearly it isn’t enough, because Miriam asks me the same question she asked me at the very start of the session, fifteen minutes ago. “How do you feel?”

“You’re really going to make me do this?” I protest.

Miriam takes her glasses off again. This time she folds them up, stores them away in the top drawer of her desk and fishes out another pair. I hate it when she does this. “You’ve just killed thirty people”, she says. “In the light of what’s being going on with you recently, I think it’s kind of important for you address the feelings that that brings up.”

“It’s work”, I say dismissively, “and it was forty people.” Miriam doesn’t change her expression. “You want to know how I feel?” I add.

“Yes”, Miriam says, nodding, her hands clasped together under her chin.

I stall. “Can we talk about something else?”

Miriam sighs. “We can talk about whatever you want, Jaxon, but you pay for my advice, which is why I suggest we talk about the things that I think are affecting you.”

Another minute of silence slips by as I try my best to avoid Miriam’s glare. “Bad”, I say eventually. “Guilty.”

“Go on.”

“It didn’t used to be like that. They weren’t even people to me before, it’s the way I could focus, it was like a game. Something changed after Iran. It got to me.”

“But you still did it”, Miriam says.

“I had to”, I say. “There was something more important at stake.”

“Ruby”, Miriam guesses.

I smile sheepishly. “Even so”, I say, “the guilt of killing all of those people in Mexico, all of the people I’ve had to kill in my entire career, it doesn’t come anywhere near to the guilt of losing that little girl and her mother in Iran. I can justify what I did for Ruby, for my country, against terrorists or bad people, what I can’t justify is letting my guard down so much it got two innocent people killed.”

“How many missions have you been on?” Miriam asks.

I look away and then back to her. I know she already knows the answer but telling her isn’t the point of saying it. “A hundred and sixty five.” I say.

“One hundred and sixty five missions over nearly ten years, in the most difficult conditions a soldier comes up against, and how many people have you saved?”

“I don’t know”, I say.

Miriam takes her glasses off again so I can see the widening of her eyes better. “Take a guess.”

“Hundreds, it’s not the point”, I say. “A girl died because of me. An eight year old girl.”

Miriam clears her throat, comes out from behind her desk and sits on the armchair next to me. I watch her movements carefully, worried she might try and slap some sense into me. We’ve spent months on this same subject and I know she feels frustrated I keep bringing it up.

“It’s hard to let go”, I say, “but I’m in a much better place than I was.”

“Tell me why”, Miriam says.

“Ruby”, is the first word that springs to my lips. “Seeing how much holding onto resentment and being unable to forgive yourself hurts.” I say. “She’s letting go of it and I can see how happy she is. Relaxed.”

Miriam nods. “You can’t change the past, Jaxon. You can’t change the death of that girl, the decisions that you made that led up to that moment, as much as you want to, we simply don’t have access to a time machine to go back and do so, and if we did we wouldn’t be the same people that we are now anyway. The most important thing for you to do, which I know you are already on the way to accomplishing, is to forgive yourself, accept that you did all you could have and move on.”

“I’m trying”, I confess. “I really am. You know, I feel better in general. I’m more positive, I’m getting out more. I feel like I’m functioning way better than I have done since retiring.” She’s watching me closely and it’s making me feel nervous. I readjust my position so I’m a little further away from her. “I actually enjoyed the mission.”

I give her a furtive glance, and I can’t help but smile because she’s smiling back at me, and seeing Miriam smile is like catching an eclipse it happens so little. “Would you like to elaborate on that?” she asks me.

“I’m not going back”, I say. “I’m not, I’m done with that world, and it’s not because I don’t think I’m cut out for it anymore, because I am, and Mexico proved that beyond any shadow of a doubt, it’s because other things in my life are much more important to me, and I can’t put Jessica in the parentless position Ruby found herself in as a child, or break either of their hearts like that if anything were to go wrong.”

Miriam nods. “What about what you need”, she asks. “We've talked about this before, and in one of our sessions you said that being on a mission was like a drug for you, that it was something that you needed.”

“You know what I’ve worked out I need even more”, I say, “Ruby and Jessica. I didn’t know that when Ruby left me five years ago, but I do now. It’s like having her back in my life is like finding the missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle. And then finding out I’m a dad as well, it’s just, I can’t even explain how that makes me feel. Terrified, elated, like I have purpose and responsibility in ways not even my old job could give me. If I’m being honest, it’s way more of a challenge as well.”

“And how is all that?” Miriam asks. “How do you feel about Ruby keeping that information from you?”

It’s something I’ve thought about a lot over the last month or so, and even if I wanted to hate Ruby for withholding information from me, it’s something I’m just not capable of. “I’m okay about it”, I say. “I understand the situation was difficult for her. I empathize with her. I wish I’d been there to see Jessica grow up, but I’m here in her life now, it could be worse.”

“And between you and Ruby?” Miriam asks.

“Great”, I say. “We’ve been seeing each other pretty regularly since we got back. They’ve stayed over at the house, we’ve been to the zoo together, we’ve had time alone when Ruby’s been back at school. Dan, Ruby’s dad, he’s going to take Jessica for a night so we can spend that time together. She keeps telling me she wants to take it slowly, but slowly for Ruby is like getting on a jet plane and asking them to drop the speed by twenty miles or so, even if she doesn’t realize it. I think I’m falling in love with her again.”

“And how does that make you feel?”

I smile evasively. “Like I’ve just won the lottery for the second time, only this time I hope nobody’s going to come round and take it away from me.” Miriam nods. She doesn’t need to ask me the question for me to continue. “I worry about that, because of what happened the first time, because I worry I don’t deserve it, because she’ll suddenly decide she wants someone better for her and our child.”

“Why do you think you don’t deserve it?”

I stutter the start of a few answers and then take a deep breath. “Did I mention how nice the office was?”

Miriam changes her tack. “Have you guys talked about what’s happening between you two, what you would like from each other, what you expect?”

“We’ve talked about the relationship we had more than the relationship we have now”, I say. “She apologized for running away, she feels bad about it and I told her I forgive her, which I do, and that she needs to forgive herself.”

“Good advice”, Miriam says.

“We haven’t talked about where we are going”, I say. “I’m kind of scared to bring it up, I think we both are.”

“Do you feel like you need to?”

“No”, I say, “yes, maybe. I don’t know. In a way, maybe I’d like to pick up where we left off, I was happy, stable, we had a good life, but part of me knows that’s not possible now, we’re both different people for a start, plus there’s someone else in the equation. I’d like a family, I’d like us to get married and grow old together, the same thing I always wanted just more seriously now. I don’t know about Ruby, she’s pretty independent, she always has been. I worry that maybe she'll feel unsettled here after a while, in Boston, with her Dad, a job when she gets it, with me. I worry she’ll just ditch all of that and run off again, maybe with her daughter, maybe leaving her with me.”

“Has she given any indication that she wants to do that?”

“Besides running off to Mexico four years ago? No”, I say. “I know it’s in my head, but I can’t help it. Maybe I’ve got abandonment issues, and maybe it’s just because it’s Ruby. I’m used to things going well for me, at least normally, but Ruby was the exception to that rule. Ruby and Iran”, I add solemnly.

“You could try and speak to her, communicate the way you feel”, Miriam offers. “This is clearly important to you, and I can see it’s something you’re worried about. In some ways it’s nice to see you worrying about something that isn’t related to Esther and Yasmin for a change, but transferring your concern from one place to another isn’t going to help.”

“I know”, I say, “but then I also know that the chance of her running away again isn’t as high in the real world as it is up here.” I tap my temple with my index finger.

“You can’t change someone else’s future choices as much as you can’t change your own past ones”, Miriam says, “and for that reason, there’s little point in worrying about them.”

I smile. “And how do I not?” I say.

“By concentrating on the present moment”, Miriam says. “By listening to your positive, actual voice and not your invented, analytical, future voice. The assessments that we make about the future can be either positive or negative, and they are largely governed by previous life experience. They are rarely accurate.”

She takes her glasses off again, this time to clean them, and then makes her way back behind her desk.

“How are you sleeping?” she asks.

I can’t avoid a memory of Ruby in bed next to me entering my head. “Better”, I say, hoping Miriam can’t see a twinkle in my eyes. “Good”, I add.

“Are you still exercising?”

“Not as much as I did before Mexico”, I say. “I’m still running though.”

“And how about work?”

I sigh. Ten years as a soldier and there’s little else I know how to do. “I’ve been thinking more seriously about the woodwork course”, I say. “When Ruby and I know a bit more about what’s happening, I’m going to apply.”

Miriam nods. “Why do you need to wait until you know what you and Ruby are doing before you decide to do something for yourself?”

It’s a fair question and I feel caught out. I shrug, unable to find a good enough response to defend myself. “Fair point”, I say. “I guess I’m putting it off.”

“Why?”

“I don’t have a good enough reason”, I confess. “Plus I don’t want to ruin the idea.”

Miriam leans forward and looks at me over the top of her glasses, demanding an explanation. I hesitate one. “I don’t want it to be like the gardening classes, or the Tai Chi, or the Italian. I haven’t exactly been very consistent”, I say.

“You gave these classes up half way through”, Miriam says, “I’d think it a character trait of yours but here you are, still seeing me after god knows how long, and there you were, nearly ten years as a special operations soldier, so what is it?”

“A year”, I say. “And it’s because I like you and you tell me what I need to hear, no one else did that before. It was the same with the classes, it wasn’t what I was looking for, and I know woodwork is going to be the same, it’s just if I don’t do it I can never ruin it, does that make sense?”

“What makes sense to me is that you’ve got a hole in your life you are struggling to fill”, Miriam says. “Ruby and Jessica give you part of that, maybe these sessions give you another, but the rest, what your job gave you, you don’t get that anymore.”

“I’m not going back”, I say again. “Not now.”

“Have you thought about it?”

“No”, I lie, “yes”, I say. “I think about it. I thought about it in Mexico, I’ve spent the last two years thinking about it and the best part of my life living it. I was good, one of the best at what I did, it’s hard to have to give that up.”

“So why are you?” Miriam asks.

“You know why”, I say, surprised she’s asking it.

“For you or for Esther and Yasmin, or for Ruby and Jessica?”

I give her my best incredulous look. “For me”, I say, although I’m not sure it’s true. “I can’t do that for the rest of my life. Do you know what the life expectancy of a special ops soldier doing the kind of thing I used to do is?”

Miriam shakes her head.

“You either die in battle or they retire you after a hundred missions. Very few people do as many as I did, and even fewer survive. I lost count of the number of funerals I had to attend. As good as I am at what I do, as much as I miss it, I can’t risk leaving Ruby and Jessica alone especially after I’ve promised I’ll be here for them.”

Miriam nods. She takes off her glasses, swaps them for the ones she originally had on and smiles at me, her arms folded to hold her weight as she leans forward. “I think that’s very noble of you”, she says. “The most important thing here is making a decision because you want to.”

“I want to”, I say. “If it’s a choice between Ruby and Jessica, and never stepping foot on a special ops mission again, never picking up a gun, feeling my blood pumping in my veins, my breath so short it might leave me any minute, I know exactly what I would do. It’s exciting being that person, being the hero, saving the girl or the family, or the dipshit diplomat who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but none of it compares to the sheer excitement I feel seeing Jessica for the first time in a couple of days, when she runs over and jumps into my arms and calls me Daddy. That sends shivers down my spine. Not to mention the looks Ruby gives me, when she tells me she loves me but doesn’t say it, when she strokes my arm, hugs me in bed or kisses me when she thinks I’m not looking. I miss being in the field, I can’t deny it, I miss the comradeship, the team, the adrenaline and the energy, and I miss that moment when the mission is over and we’re all on the way back home, but I’m someone else’s hero now, and that’s a way more important job.”

Miriam leans back in her chair. She taps the clicker at the end of her pen and looks like she’s about to say something. My eyes go to the clock and hers follow a second later. The room returns to the silence that defined it before the session begun.

“That’s time”, Miriam says. She takes off her glasses, lays them flat on the desk and stands up. I stand up too, the intimacy of the last hour reduced to the normal formalities either side of our appointment. I shake her hand and turn to leave.

“Talk to Ruby”, Miriam says when I’m at the door. “Tell her what you told me.”

“Okay”, I say. “Thank you.”

“You’re doing fine, Jaxon”, she says before I leave. “You look good, you sound good, I’m happy for you. If you’re fulfilled, then you should let yourself be happy too. It’s not a crime you know?”

“Right”, I say again. “I’ll keep that in mind. See you in a couple of weeks”, I add, and then open the door and leave.