“We missed you at dinner.”
YOU’RE ALONE WHEN YOU FAIL
Owen Filby & Marion Barnes
prompt: the uninvited by christopher young
She found him on the roof that night, after more than an hour of searching for him. When she stepped out of the door and into the balmy Los Angeles air with a blanket of stars above, she saw him standing at the edge. For one horrible moment she thought he was on the ledge, but then she saw that his feet were flat on the floor. Relief fired through her, but it was short-lived. There was a tension in his shoulders that she didn’t like, and she was slow and cautious as she approached him. “Owen?” His name came out gently, questioningly.
If he heard her, he made no sign.
“We missed you at dinner,” she said to him, attempting to dive into an easy and casual conversation, but something about it felt wrong. He was staring out across the city, she saw, and when she was close enough to get a good look at his profile, she almost shuddered at the haunted look in his eyes. “Owen, what is it?”
“Would it have helped her?” His voice was so quiet that she had to strain to hear him.
“Helped who?” She followed his gaze as though that might tell her something, but all she saw were blinking lights and the smallest signs of thousands of different lives playing out all at once, far off beyond her sight. What was happening out there in that big bad city tonight, she wondered.
“My daughter.”
The haunted look made sense then and she felt herself frown. She was quiet as she pieced the puzzle together. “The wolf?”
“She was sick when she was born,” he said, his voice distant. Owen wasn’t really there right then, she knew. He was somewhere else, in another time and another place. “If I had been bitten before, would she still have been sick?”
Marion hated knowing the answer, her throat dry and her heart heavy as she watched his face. “Probably not,” she told him, wanting so badly to reach out and offer him comfort through a touch, but she recognised the tightness in his shoulders, the stillness with which he held himself. He was too close to the edge to be touched right now. It was a miracle she had been able to get as close as she had without him even so much as growling.
“That’s what I thought.” Again, she had to strain to hear him. It was barely even a whisper.
They were quiet for a time, each of them standing and staring out over the city. Marion imagined the moments being lived out there in this hectic and hazardous place she had come to call home. Her thoughts were disturbed by Owen’s quiet, distant voice when he spoke her name. Her eyes found his face in profile, but there was the slightest angle to the way he held his head, as though he wanted to look at her but didn’t quite trust himself. It took only a moment for Marion to understand why that was. Even from where she stood, she could see the wolf in his eyes, the feral burn that betrayed just how close it was to the surface.
“I think I should be alone,” Owen said to her after a heavy, pregnant pause. At first Marion was disappointed, but it lasted only a moment. He was right. He needed to be alone. So it was that she gave him a nod and a quiet acknowledgement, before she turned and walked away. When she reached the door, she looked back at him. He was still standing in the exact same spot, his back to her, staring out at everything and nothing. Stepping through the door and back inside the hotel, leaving him there alone, was one of the hardest things she had done in a long time.