Via Dolorosa (46 page)

“No,” he said. “No. Me—I’m sorry. Me. Me.”

“Okay.”

“Me,” he said.

“Okay.”

“I’m—”

“
Shhh
,” she told him. “Come here.”

He went to her, climbed up the bed and curled like a cat in her lap. And broke into tears. He felt her hand come up to his neck, touch him there, and slide down his back. He could feel every hitch of his own body in the press of her hand against him. He cried freely and did not open his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry for all of it.” He said, “All of it.”

“All right,” she said calmly, her hand still on his back.

“All of it.”

“Yes,” she said. “I know.”

Collecting himself, taking a breath, he said, “I’ve been thinking a horrible thought. For the past few days, Emma, I’ve been having this horrible, horrible thought…”

“Yes?”

“Yes,” he said. “Like you said—just like you said—we are in a dream. For the time we’re here, we are in a dream.”

“I remember,” she said.

“And I started to think that I was dead. That I never made it out of Iraq at all. The letter you got was real and I truly had died that day in the ambush.”

Emma began raking her fingers through his hair.

He said, “It’s a dream, all of it.”

Emma rubbed his cheek. He felt one of her teardrops fall on his forehead.

“Say something,” he told her. “Please. Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me I’m not dreaming and we have a chance. Tell me.”

She said nothing; rubbed his face.

“Tell me,” he begged, beginning to sob again. “Say something. Please…say something…”

“Nicholas,” she whispered. “My Nicholas.”

“Emma,” he sobbed. “Emma…”

And she held him in the ghostly glow of moonlight.

About the Author

Ronald
Malfi
is the award-winning author of the novels
 
Snow, The Ascent, Floating Staircase,
 
The Narrows,
 
and several others.
In 1999, he received a degree in English from Towson University, and has since spent much of his time traveling across the United States visiting the obscure yet notable cities which serve as the backdrop for much of his fiction. An excursion to Hilton Head Island in the fall of 2004 served as the impetus for
Via Dolorosa
, where the author spent several nights occupying a local jazz club while contemplating and discussing the country’s ongoing campaign overseas. The novel was written a few months later in a tiny Annapolis apartment overlooking the gray waters of the Chesapeake Bay. He currently lives in Maryland with his wife Debra and their daughter.

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