The Piece Keeper

"Didn't you have something to say that you haven't already said?" Darren asked Patti with profound frustration at the incoherence and incomplete nature of what she was saying.

"No.  Was there something I was missing?" she asked of him.

"You've always been missing something.  That's always been our problem," he announced without so much as a hesitation.  This is alarming and maybe the most hurtful thing he has ever said to her.

"Is that why you want to leave me?" she asked, holding back the tears.

"I never said I wanted to leave," he pronounced.

"Not in so many words, I suppose."

"No.  Not in any words.  I never said I wanted to leave."

"But you are obviously unfulfilled for some reason."

"Maybe so, but that doesn't mean I want to leave."

"Sure it does.  You always want to leave.  That's your thing."

"My thing?" This was below the belt, even for her.  Patti had always thought of everyone's feelings before thinking of her own, so even hearing the tinge of pain in his question was enough for her to feel irreparable pain.

"Yes.  Your thing."

"Can't I ask a simple question?  Can't I ask you if you had anything left to say to me?  It just seemed like you hadn't finished talking.  Isn't it alright for me to just inquire if you had said all you needed to say?" Darren barked at her but he was out of breath from having asked her questions like this on many occasions.  He felt as if he was on auto pilot for the first time in his life.

"I always say what I need to say."

"Always?"

"Yes, always.  That's what happens when you're afraid of regret," she pointed out, as if she had to define the consequences of regret to a man who had never had the foresight for hindsight in all the days of his life.

"You're afraid of regret?"

"Yes."

"When did that start?" he inquired.

Patti was despondent.  She felt that she loved this man more than she could ever love anything in the world, but maybe all this time he was waiting for her to finish talking.  Maybe.  She figured it didn't matter if she said what she needed to say.  It wasn't for him anyway.  "Right around the time you said you were afraid to die alone.  When you said that and I said nothing in return.  Right around then," she said, as she held his face and moved his bangs to the side, knowing full well it would be the last time she would lay a finger on him.