Eleanor couldn’t sleep. She tossed and turned for what seemed like an eternity. In true Jackson fashion, he slept through her flip-flopping in the bed. Eleanor finally pushed back the blankets and sat up. She swung her legs off the bed and lowered her feet to the floor. The bunkie was freezing cold. The fire was now only smoldering in the fireplace. The glowing embers were barely giving off any heat at all.
Eleanor pulled on Jackson’s abandoned hoodie and wrapped her arms around herself to keep warm. She walked into the main room of the bunkie and found a small stack of perfectly cut wood. She piled three more logs into the fire, hoping that they would catch. She honestly had no idea how to get a fire going again. She reached her cold fingers toward the warm coals, but it wasn’t helping.
Eleanor sat on the hearth for a few moments before deciding that she wanted to go for a walk. She thought if she could get to the library and find the book she had been reading, she might be able to distract her racing mind just long enough to fall asleep.
Eleanor quietly slipped out of the bunkie and into the frigid fall air. She was sure that the temperature had dropped at least ten degrees since they had left the main house for the bunkie. Eleanor stepped off the path and into the clearing, and almost as soon as she did so, a security guard rounded the corner of the manor.
“Good evening, Mrs. Walsh.” The security guard nodded, and issued her a friendly smile. “A bit cold out for a walk, isn’t it?” He asked.
Eleanor wrapped her arms around herself. “Sorry. I couldn’t sleep. Am I okay to go into the house? I thought I might get a book from the library. Is that okay?” Eleanor hadn’t even considered that she might run into a security guard. But it made sense. Or course security would be patrolling the grounds at night.
The security guard smiled and nodded. “Yes, absolutely. Go ahead.” He said. “Security mostly patrols by camera, but we do regular patrols of the exterior.” He explained. “You can come and go as you like.”
“Thanks.” Eleanor said. She was cold and shivering. In another second, her teeth were about to start chattering.
Eleanor slipped into the house, breathing a sigh of relief as the heat instantly warmed her.
The house was mostly dark, there was a lamp on in the sitting room, and a light in the hallway. The house was so quiet it was almost eerie. Eleanor tip-toed into the hall, worried that the slightest noise from her shoes might cause an echo that might wake someone. She crept quietly down the hall toward the library.
A faint flashing light up ahead caught her eye. Eleanor frowned and slowly moved down the hall. She approached the movie theater and stopped in the doorway. Inside, Lilith was curled up in one of the arm chairs with a blanket draped over her lap. She was watching an old episode of ‘Friends’ on the big screen. An untouched bowl of popcorn sat abandoned on the table. A glass of red wine was sitting on the table next to her recliner.
“You can cone in, if you wish.” Lilith said suddenly, with her back still to Eleanor.
“Oh, sorry.” Eleanor said, feeling herself blush. “I didn’t want to startle you.”
“It’s okay. I saw your reflection in the wine cooler.” Lilith said with a small smile.
Eleanor swallowed thickly. She walked into the theater. “How come you’re up so late?”
“I’m a night owl.” Lilith shrugged. “I usually do my best work at night, but right now I’m stuck.” She lifted her shoulders in a light shrug.
“That’s funny. I’m the same way.” Eleanor said. “I’m usually up late working away.”
“Must be a writer thing.” Lilith mused. “Would you like some wine?”
Eleanor considered it for a moment. “You know what? Yeah, I’ll have some wine. If anything it’ll probably help me sleep, right?”
The corner of Lilith’s mouth twitched into a faint smile. “Absolutely.”
Eleanor reached down a wine glass from the bar and filled her glass halfway with the wine in the decanter.
“You’re watching Friends? I love this show. I used to watch it all the time in high school. I wish it never went off the air.” Eleanor said, sitting down in the arm chair next to Lilith.
“Me too.” Lilith answered. “I’ve seen every single episode probably about a hundred times, and it’s still funny.”
Eleanor made herself comfortable in the recliner. She took a sip of her glass of wine. “The house is different at night. It’s so quiet.”
“I know. It’s almost creepy. Once the staff retire for the evening, the house quiets right down. Its why I get so much done at night, I think. Well, one of the reasons.” Lilith shrugged.
“I did run into one of your security officers.” Eleanor laughed softly. “I fully expected him to shoot me on sight.”
“Oh no. I don’t even think they carry weapons,” Lilith explained. “We’re out in the middle of nowhere, everyone tells me that I probably don’t even need security, but it’s just me being paranoid, I guess.” Lilith picked up her wine glass and took a small sip.
“No, I mean its good to have someone when you’re out here. I mean, it’s peaceful, but you’re also isolated too. Especially someone with your notoriety, you can never be too careful.”Eleanor said. “Whatever makes you feel safe in your own home.”
“Right. That’s the way I feel too.” Lilith nodded. “My apologies if the guard startled you. I can have him walk you back to your bunkie if you wish.”
Eleanor laughed softly. “I’m really not worried about it. I mean, unless I get attacked by a bear or something, but the chances of that are slim.”
Lilith nodded. “If it makes you feel better, I’ve never seen a bear here.”
Eleanor laughed. “Thank you. That actually does make me feel better, I think.”
“Will Jackson wake and wonder where you are?” Lilith questioned.
“Jackson? No, absolutely not. He sleeps like he’s hibernating. An atomic bomb going off next to him wouldn’t wake him.” Eleanor sighed. “He’s the soundest sleeper I know. And he’s the worst person for falling asleep anywhere and everywhere. I mean, coffee shops, restaurants. Anywhere. He’ll sit down, put his head back and he’s out like a light.”
“Wow, that’s a talent.”
“It’s infuriating!” Eleanor laughed. “I’m so jealous! I wish I could fall asleep like that!”
Lilith drained the last of the wine in her glass, and pushed aside her blanket.
“Don’t get up. I’ll get it.” Eleanor offered, starting to get to her feet.
“No, no. I can get it myself. I spend most of my day not doing things for myself,” Lilith said, already on her feet. “After the staff go to bed is when I get to do things my way.” She crossed to the bar, walking with her back perfectly straight and her shoulders squared. She reached the bar in a few long strides and picked up the decanter of wine. She filled her glass half-way and paused for a moment.
Eleanor watched Lilith carefully. She wondered if she could tell that Lilith was sick just by looking at her. She’d never met anyone who had a brain tumor before. Lilith seemed okay. She was able to function normally, she could clearly function normally. Her speech wasn’t impaired in any way, and her balance wasn’t impaired in any way. Was Lilith really that sick? Was it possible?
“Are you hungry? Would you like anything to eat? I can call one of the chefs and ask for him to make something. “They don’t mind.”
“Oh, no. I’m fine. Thank you.” Eleanor said, taking a sip from her glass of wine. “Really, the chefs have been feeding us very well since we got here.”
Lilith crossed the room and eased herself back into the recliner. She elegantly and neatly crossed her legs, placing her glass in the cup holder of the chair.
Neither of them spoke for a few minutes. They both watched the enormous television in front of them.
Eleanor laughed suddenly. “Do you remember the time we went to Micky Reid’s party? We got so drunk that night.”
Lilith nodded. “What were we even drinking that night? I hardly remember it. I just remember having a couple of drinks, then all of a sudden I was so wasted I could hardly walk.”
“It was rum and Dr. Pepper, I think. They were going down so fast, then we were both drunk. And we were too afraid to call my parents to come and get us because we thought they might bust us for drinking…” Eleanor laughed.
“I remember. We had to stumble all the way back to your house, and it was my brilliant idea to take a short cut through the bush.” Lilith said with a smile.
“And we started running because we thought we heard something in the bushes? We almost got lost.”
Lilith laughed outright, for the first time. “I don’t think I drank again after that until my second year of college. I was sick for like a week after.”
“We both were.” Eleanor said. “I remember my dad thought we both had mono. I got a lecture about kissing boys, but I couldn’t tell him that I’d really been out at a party and was drinking underage.”
Lilith laughed, “I got a similar lecture from my parents. My mom thought I was being bullied at school and was trying to avoid this fictional bully…”
Eleanor laughed. “Really? Oh my god, that’s hilarious.”
Lilith laughed. “Do you remember the time we snuck into that scary movie at the Guardian? We paid for tickets to some silly kids cartoon, then walked straight into an R-rated horror film that was supposedly based on a true story.”
Eleanor couldn’t stop laughing. Her stomach was starting to hurt. “Yes! We jumped so much that most of our popcorn ended up on the floor of the theater.”
“I honestly had nightmares for weeks afterward.” Lilith laughed.
“We spent the night at your house, remember? We slept with all the lights on and your bedroom door locked.”
“My parents picked the lock in the morning, and found us in the same bed with the covers pulled up over our heads. And my dad gave us hell for leaving all the lights on and wasting all the hydro.” Lilith laughed.
Eleanor laughed. Her sides were starting to hut. “I completely forgot about that! He was so mad, he was red faced and standing there in his underwear yelling at a pair of teenage girls.”
Eleanor polished off the rest of the wine in her glass. She got up and refilled her glass. “This wine is delicious. I’m not much of a wine drinker.”
“I enjoy it. I have it brought in from a winery a couple of hours from here. No one ever really drinks it except me.” Lilith smiled into her wine glass.
Neither spoke for a moment, then Eleanor spoke again.
“Do you remember all of those notebooks that we filled with writing when we were teenagers? The ones we stole from school?” Eleanor began.
Lilith nodded. “Yes, of course. The ones we passed back and forth for hours on end. I remember.”
Eleanor swirled her wine in her glass. “I kept them, you know. For the longest time. I had this crazy idea that you might come back one day. I thought we could pick up where we left off one day. I guess that was kind of a long shot, but I had always hoped you would come back. I found the notebooks when I moved back in with my parents after college. They were crammed into a box at the back of my closet. For the longest time I couldn’t bear to throw them out. It seemed a shame to destroy something that we spent so many hours doing and we worked so hard on.”
“Do you still have them?” Lilith asked.
Eleanor shook her head slowly. “No. I hung onto them as long as I could, but when Jackson and I got married and bought our condo, there was no place to keep them. I read through them though. A lot of them the ink had gone right through the pages and they were completely illegible. I thought about keeping the ones I could read, but it felt wrong to separate them from this amazing creation… I couldn’t throw them out either, though. Then it felt like I was turning something that we worked so hard at into trash. It felt like a violation. In the end, I felt so attached to these silly notebooks that I burned them in my parent’s backyard. It felt like a funeral, like I was setting them free in a way…”
Eleanor paused for a moment before she spoke again. “It’s silly, isn’t it?”
“No, not at all.” Lilith answered. “At least I don’t think it’s silly.”
Eleanor looked down at her glass of wine, feeling the sense of loss that she had felt when she let the notebooks go.
She sighed, forcing the feeling to pass almost as quickly as it came. “We’re out of wine.”
“There’s more under the bar,” Lilith answered. “If not there’s a wine cellar full of the stuff.”
Eleanor moved around the bar and easily located the wine rack. She grabbed a bottle from the top rack and peeled back the foil. She picked up the cork screw and expertly expelled the cork. She poured the wine into the decanter and returned to her seat.
“We could always try writing together again. See if it works.” Eleanor offered.
Lilith drew in a deep breath, and her demeanor became immediately solemn. “We’d better do it quickly. I might not have time to finish it.”
Though she didn’t outright say it, Eleanor knew immediately what she meant. Lilith’s prognosis was grave.
“Is it hard to know that your time left is limited?” Eleanor asked, trying to be as gentle about it as possible.
“Yeah,” Lilith answered honestly. “There’s a lot more that I wanted to accomplish. There are so many ideas that I’m struggling to get down on paper to preserve them… there are so many things I didn’t get the chance to do. It sucks. I mean, it would almost be easier to step off the sidewalk and get hit by a bus. It’s instant, and you don’t see it coming. This way everything almost becomes a count down. Another day over, another day closer. You know?”
Eleanor nodded. “I can’t imagine what you’re going through.”
“I guess that if there is a silver lining, its that I’m trying to use my time to my advantage. I’m trying to do as much as I can in the time I have left. To make the most of it.” Lilith paused for what seemed like a really long time before she spoke again. “I took it really hard in the beginning. I went to several different doctors, trying to get a diagnosis that was less final. But the prognosis was always the same. I took it hard. I stayed in bed for days… but I realized that I couldn’t do that anymore. There were things that I needed to do.”
Eleanor nodded.
Lilith still had a few mouthfuls of wine in her glass, but she drained it quickly and got up to refill her glass. “But let’s talk about something else. Something less depressing, shall we?” She asked.
Eleanor quickly agreed.