Northern Waters
Chapter 8
The second the door shut, he fell.
His knees could have broken the floorboards with the weight of his collapse, but he honestly didn’t think he would have noticed.
A sick tremble wracked his body and he brought both of his hands up weakly to cover his face. Why did everyone he loved leave him? Was he being punished for something?
The tears began to flow, but there was no way to stop them. There was nothing now. Just him. He was always the one left in the house alone. When his grandmother died, when Mathias had taken Lukas and left, when Tino had disappeared, and now Ludwig was gone. He had thought Ludwig had been growing to like him and he had given no sign of preparing to leave. All of his words had been warm and friendly. Berwald had thought he might have even been considering staying with him.
But no. He had planned to leave in the night. Berwald would have woken up alone in the morning. He wasn’t sure his heart could have handled that. Not that he was handling this, but at least he had looked him in the eyes when he did it. At least he knew…
Berwald tried to wish that he had only been given time to prepare, but that was a lie. He never would have been able to accept Ludwig leaving; he knew that now that he was gone. Ludwig’s arrival felt like it had helped him cope with Tino’s absence, but with now, they felt hardly comparable. When Tino had disappeared, he hadn’t known right away if it had been purposeful. He had searched for him for days, and after the letter he received, he simply felt weak with sadness. This was different. This sadness seemed to be devouring him from the inside, making him want to double up on himself until it consumed him completely, and he disappeared, too.
“Why?” he whispered, but no one answered; there was no one there to hear him.