Pictures of You

Chapter 86

86

Evie

Evie, if I can’t have you …

Oliver’s last words crash in. You’re meant to spread this horror out over years . It’s even worse than squeezing a whole plot about someone’s life into a movie—at least then you get two hours for it to play out. This is instant delivery of a huge chunk of my life, and I can’t take it.

I’m standing on the beach, luminescent waves crashing beside us, but at the same time I’m back in the car on that cliff, hood crumpled against a tree, engine hissing, steam rising and swirling into the fog on the hillside, which seemed to have hushed around us—even the insects went into silent shock. Just the sound of our car, creaking and shuddering.

It was terrifying. I remember looking at Oliver and wondering who he was. Motionless. Blood oozing from his forehead. Eyes glassy, staring straight ahead. Only the very real pain shooting through my body told me this was real, and not some gruesome nightmare.

That man is dead, I thought. My eyes dropped to the wedding ring on his left hand, which had fallen into my lap.

Dead and married . Why was I in a car on the side of a mountain with a dead married man?

It’s like I’m processing the memory of being confused now, while layering over it my intimate knowledge of the entire situation. Understanding exactly how we got there, and what led to him being so angry and losing control on that bend.

No.

“He didn’t lose control,” I say so softly Drew can’t understand me. “Drew, he didn’t lose control on that bend. He sped up!”

Now I’m flashing right back to high school and the first time we met. Oliver plunging into that pool with me. Drew dragging me out. Every tiny step we took that led us down a path I doubt either of us envisaged—a relationship born from jealousy and infatuation that burnt so brightly even as it went so catastrophically wrong.

The marriage empty, in the end, of everything except emotional violence. Him so angry. Me always so scared.

“I could have been stronger,” I say softly. “I knew he was treating me badly …”

“Abusing you,” Drew corrects.

“Shouldn’t I have stood up to it, though? I’m an intelligent woman. Why didn’t I just leave?”

He looks at me, straight on and serious. “Evie, he had you on a pedestal so high at the start and then pelted you with so many rocks, you couldn’t find a way to clamber down. No move you made was safe. It doesn’t matter how many letters there are after your name or how strong you are …”

Now I’m seeing the love-bombing at the start. The monitoring in the guise of supporting me. The hacking away of my self-esteem with every criticism along the way. I watched the life I longed for fall away from me. My plans. My higher degree. He wanted to control the podcast I built, claiming he was “helping” me by producing the episodes. He was always making me dress in certain clothes and wear my hair a different way. Constantly editing, censoring. Not just the podcast, but every tiny aspect of my existence.

I glance at Drew and now everything floods in about him. All my feelings for him. The loss of the most important friend I ever had. The day I missed his mother’s funeral. Standing on that cliff with Oliver, who wasn’t ever going to really jump, and being forced to make the wrong choice, on the off chance that he wasn’t bluffing. He knew I’d stay. He knew I couldn’t bear to live with myself if it was my rejection that caused him to end it all, so he played that card, and Drew paid for it.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry …” It’s all I can utter. He doesn’t even know which bit I’m sorry for. It’s all of it. “I wanted to be there for you at the funeral. I was on my way. And then Oliver …”

He shushes me and hugs me into his chest. I clutch his shirt and cry. More than a decade’s worth of tears. So much grief smashing over me as the waves crash. So many dreams pixelated, fading into nothing. And I’m aware, suddenly, of the impact on my mind. The instability. The fear. The destruction of my confidence. How reluctant I have been to take any step, in any direction. Always potentially wrong, until that spiraled into mental illness—a dark whirlpool of anxiety and depression flaring at its height into fear for everyone I loved. Fear for my own life. Until my body couldn’t take another second of the trauma and let go of even caring, flinging me into the safe haven of amnesia where I was protected from it all.

And then, right when I think I’ve remembered each tiny detail, I recall the trigger for everything.