18. Chapter 18
18
Chapter 18
CAMILLE
T he crew swarms around me. I’m wrapped in a bear hug from Jay while Evan and Bruce slam into us, lifting us off the floor.
“This is very unprofessional, guys,” I wheeze. Casey is filming us on her phone and laughing. “They’ve been absolute bastards without you.”
“Dix.” I laugh. “Get your crew under control.”
Dixon is wearing a smug smile, his arms crossed over his chest. “They’re your crew today.”
A young woman steps out of a nearby room and gives us a tentative smile. She has auburn hair tied up into a ponytail and her green eyes are carefully taking us in.
“Hope?” I ask.
She nods. Her younger brother, Chance, isn’t here. He’s a minor, and she isn’t comfortable with exposing him to the world yet.
I’m curious why she would agree to do this. I know I should just be content with having this opportunity at all, but it’s a question that has been running through my head constantly.
Why now?
Evan and Bruce set us down and Jay gives me a friendly pat on the shoulder, looking between me and Hope. “We’re all set up inside.”
When I follow them into the large private hospital room, I’m not surprised at the luxury. When the cab drove me up the long, gravelled drive, it gave me ample views of the modern hospice centre. The road is flanked by trees and the large grounds are well kept and green.
In the bed, surrounded by lighting screens and sound equipment, a middle-aged woman lies peacefully, hands folded on her chest.
The room begs a dignified silence, and I notice that everyone talks in lowered voices once inside. Everyone but Hope.
I’m so relieved that Finn isn’t here already. It gives me a moment to take everything in, prepare myself to see him again.
Prepare myself for the questions I have to ask today.
I feel tired to the very core of my being. The sleepless nights these past few weeks all caught up to me on the flight over. I slept listlessly, dreamless and empty. I have had enough of Finnegan Brennan. It is time to move on.
I hadn’t known it would be this difficult. Initially, when I started planning for the interview, I had sketched out questions vaguely, trying to figure out how to navigate Finn’s boundaries. But that had somehow deteriorated into me frantically penning down questions of my own, answers I need to finally move on.
Now I can tell I had it all wrong. Today isn’t about him at all.
Today is about Grace. About Hope .
Hope comes to stand beside me, and we look down at her mother.
“It’s hard to look at her through your eyes,” she says softly. “I’m so used to how she looks. To me, she just looks like my mom. But when new people look at her, I forget that they see her differently. They only see what happened to her. They don’t see who she used to be.”
“Who was she?”
Hope smiles. “She was my mother.” She says it as if she’s revealing a secret. “She still smells the same.” She reaches for her mother’s hand, lifts it to her face. Smiles before she puts it back.
“I’m so sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you.” She puts a tentative hand on my arm. When I look at her her eyes are sad, but they soften when she looks at her mother.
“Some questions today might be hard.” I take a breath, try to explain. “It can be difficult, to be honest.” I look at her imploringly. “It can be unbearable. But that’s not what I’m trying to do. So if you struggle, please take your time, and feel free to tell me to get lost if I cross a line.”
She gives a quiet laugh and I join in with a smile. We startle when we hear someone clearing their throat behind us.
It’s Finn, and he rips the breath from me when I turn to take him in.
He’s well dressed and shaved, his arm in a sling that wraps around his body, pinning it to his chest. He’s standing on the threshold, and for a moment he wavers before he steps tentatively inside. When he walks over, he gives a small grimace of pain, but he doesn’t take his eyes off me.
His eyes are dark brown, and in the lighting, I see flecks of gold.
Something about him is different.
There’s a chasm between us and I don’t know how to cross it, how to reach him.
It’s suffocating me.
He makes to walk over to me. I can even see a question form on his lips, but Bruce steps in, interrupting Finn before he can speak to me, and starts wiring him up with the microphone. Casey approaches Hope and guides her into the seat next to her mother, where she applies powders and sprays as she gets Hope camera ready.
Dixon makes his way over and stands quietly at my shoulder. He raises his eyebrows and I nod.
“I’m okay.”
“Thanks for doing this, Cam.” He glances at Finn over his shoulder, a look of pure hostility. I look over too. Bruce is being heavy-handed, and I watch as Finn winces when his arm gets jostled. He runs a tired hand over his face, taking it in stride.
It takes me back to the last time we were together, when I knew he had every intention of dying, and he couldn’t even muster the energy to deny it.
Jay and Evan are shooting daggers at him.
The hostility in the room is as thick as syrup, and I watch Hope as she peers curiously past Casey to take it in. She gives a small frown.
Poor kid. Doing this, today, must already be such an enormous challenge, and now she’s walked into a room filled to the brim with history.
She fidgets in her seat.
“Hope?” I ask loudly .
Everyone stills and glances at me. When she looks at me curiously, I give her a smile.
“You okay?” My voice is louder than it needs to be, and it has the desired effect. It reminds everyone why we’re here.
It breaks the hostility in the room.
She nods. Sitting next to her mother, their resemblance is striking.
“Jay, can we move the camera over to this angle?”
He steps over to move the equipment and I change the angle slightly, looking at the monitor to make sure we frame them correctly. Grace takes up half the screen. Her daughter, on the left, casts a striking mirror image, and the differences between them stand out. The angry red scars on Grace’s face are balanced out by Hope’s fresh skin, a healthy red glow on her cheeks. Their matching hair colour, Grace’s streaked with grey, Hope’s vibrant and shiny. Hope’s easy smile as she talks to Casey. Grace’s peaceful silence.
Dixon gives a sigh of contentment.
“You know, it’s always such a joy to watch you work.”
“Thanks, Boss.” I tuck a curl behind my ear.
Finn’s hand darts out as if to stop me. The movement out of the corner of my eye grabs my attention and I turn to him. He’s standing very still now. He’s still staring at me intently with his brown, open eyes.
I can’t help it. I have to know.
“Are you okay?” I gesture at Grace.
He scowls, licks at the corner of his mouth, nods.
Liar.
I turn back to thank Casey as she packs away her makeup kit.
To my surprise she steps up to Bruce and sidles into his side, Bruce’s arm drawing her closer against him as they wait for the interview to start. She gives me a shy smile when she sees me looking and I give her a happy nod.
Everyone scurries for their positions, and Jay carries an extra chair over and places it next to Hope’s. Finn sits down with jerky movements, wincing from pain. When he turns his head to look at Hope, she mirrors him.
They are drawing strength from each other.
How could he have kept this from me? This beautiful, kind young woman, mirror image of her mother. This girl who now looks at him with silent fortitude.
How could he have this and still wish to die?
I’m battling an influx of memories. The harsh black eyes and scowls, his intent on keeping me out, the moments he caved and drew me in, the push and pull of him, the pain.
And now he sits here with peaceful dark brown eyes, flecks of gold in them, and he looks about as fragile as I’ve ever known him to be, prepared to lay it all on the table.
Just never for me.
All my anger rushes back in.
* * *
FINN
“I lied before,” I say into the room before we start. I can feel Hope’s curious gaze on my face and I watch Camille’s small frown form as she looks up from the monitor to look at me.
“You asked me if I was okay, and I lied.”
I watch as a red flush creeps up her neck. When I look at her eyes, they’re an undulating ocean, a stormy sea. She isn’t embarrassed .
She’s furious.
“Can you elaborate?” she parries.
“No.”
“Please follow the established interview structure by stating the question before you give the answer.”
Because I can’t help it, I rise to the bait.
“Can I elaborate on why I lied when you asked me if I was okay? Unfortunately, no.”
Grace’s machinery sounds overwhelmingly loud in the room’s silence as everyone takes me in with curious eyes.
Hope stirs in her seat and picks off imaginary lint from her jeans, folding her hands neatly in her lap. I couldn’t believe when she agreed to it. To this interview. Because in my mind, for all these years, she had nothing but hate for me.
I had phoned her personally and we talked, casually, tentatively feeling each other out. it was cordial and courteous. Already the thought had formed that Cam would love this, love to see this. Would only believe it if she saw it with her own eyes…
And then I just threw it out there, and she agreed. “Because,”she explained, “I’m sure there are others just like me out there.”
So selfless. My opposite.
“Can you take us through what happened that day?” Cam tears her eyes away from mine, looking at the monitor in front of her instead.
It is so very important that I don’t lie.
And not just because Camille will know the instant I do. But because Hope is giving me a second chance at life, and for me to grasp it, to find the courage to live it, first, I need to shed this old one. I am hoping that by doing this I will somehow be able to accept the possibility of life. Of living.
“Stanley Everton,” I say, and I grin. Scoff.
“It had been my lifelong dream to be as good as Stanley Everton, and that day, it was my first chance to actually beat him.”
You could hear a pin drop. Their eyes are riveted to me, all except Camille, who filters me through the screen of the monitor. She doesn’t push, letting torturously long silences pool between my sentences.
“I was pushing it,” I admit. I swallow down a rock of guilt climbing up my throat. “Felix grounded me, reeled me in. I slowed down.”
I turn to Hope. Her green eyes are large as emeralds as she takes me in. She’s never heard my side, I realize. It’s important to me that she knows this minor detail.
“I was slowing down,” I repeat, and she gives a small nod of acknowledgement. “But it was too late.”
Her green eyes grow darker. She gives me another small nod.
We turn back towards the cameras. I look down into the black void of the lens.
“It was either the tyres or debris on the track. Either way, I lost control.”
Silence pools. I swallow hard.
“We’re always taught to turn into a skid. It’s instinct. I had this thought that I needed to get the car turned, to hit the barrier on the side. If you hit it head on, it’s so much more dangerous. All that energy in such a small area.”
The even cadence of Grace’s machine grounds me. I take a moment to get my breathing under control.
“I turned the car, but it was a mistake. The wheels caught on the curb, just a micro ridge, but at that speed…It vaulted the car into the air.”
I blink away the shrieking tear of the chain-link fence when I hurtled through it. The silence stretches out then. Long and fragile, a living thing.
Hope puts her hand over mine.
When I force myself to look at her, she’s crying, quiet tears down her face.
“The sound…” I whisper. I can’t say it. What it had sounded like, hitting human bodies.
“I remember,” she whispers back.
“I undid my harness. People pulled me from the car. It was already burning. Fuel everywhere, ignited.”
Hope nods.
“A child was crying?” My gaze flits between her eyes.
She nods. “It was me.”
I remember the smell of burning flesh. “You can remember it?” I ask her.
“Sometimes. Very little.”
We breathe through the silence, battling for control.
“She was pinned by the car.” My voice is empty, raw. “I knelt by her. She was burning.”
Hope gives a small sob.
“I unzipped my suit, the top half. It’s fire resistant. I thought it could protect her from the flames.”
“What?” Hope’s voice is small. A small frown between her eyebrows. “You tried to put out the flames?”
I nod.
“I don’t remember that.”
“Someone had grabbed you away. It was an explosion hazard. ”
“You stayed by her?”
I nod.
“But…didn’t you burn?”
I nod again.
She gives a small gasp. “I didn’t know.”
I shrug.
“Don’t,” she says with a small sob. “It matters. I never knew you stayed by her side.”
“I couldn’t leave her there.”
With a sob, Hope throws her arms around me, buries her face in my neck. She’s crying in earnest.
My arm is in a sling so I can’t pull her to me. I settle for awkwardly patting the back of her head with my free hand.
We let her cry. When she sits up, her eyes are swollen and red, and she wipes at them with her forearm.
“I’m so sorry, Hope.”
She nods. “I’m sorry too.”
I shrug again. Then I shake my head slightly. “Thank you, I mean.”
It’s hard to say it, because I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve forgiveness. But since she had given it already, months ago, I needed to learn to live with it.
She smiles at me, a weak, watery smile, and I mirror it with my own. When we turn back towards the camera, Camille’s eyes are on mine.
She’s crying.
“Cam?” I make to get up, to comfort her.
It breaks the spell in the room.
“Don’t!” Cam wipes at her own eyes, motions for me to sit down. Hope looks between us wide eyed.
Cam clears her throat. “Shall we get back to it? ”
I look at Hope for confirmation. She nods.
I nod at Cam.
She glances down at her phone. I can see her working through her list of questions.
“How did the accident shape your life?” she asks.
She’s such a brilliant journalist. It’s such a flyaway sentence, such a casual question. And yet, it’s the very core of who I am.
Who I was.
“It ended it.”
“Please-”
“Right.” I clear my throat. “The accident didn’t shape my life, it ended it completely.”
I turn to Hope, who’s looking at me questioningly.
“I couldn’t bear the fact that I had robbed someone of a life.” My eyes travel to Grace, beside Hope. “I wanted to end my life.”
Hope is crying again.
“But I couldn’t, not yet.” I swallow. “I needed to make sure you were taken care of first.”
I gesture at the room, at Grace, at Hope. “You and your brother.”
She nods.
“For fifteen years, I put all my money aside for you.”
Her eyes grow large and round.
“It’s millions.” I laugh at the look on her face.
“What?”
“Yeah. I hardly spent it at all. Apart from a necklace. A pretty expensive one.” I turn and smile at Camille. She doesn’t smile back.
“And when my contract didn’t get renewed, I knew now was the time. ”
“The time for what?” Hope cocks her head.
“To take my life.” I gesture at the sling.
She gasps, brings her hand to her mouth. Murmurs chase each other through the room. Only Camille stands quiet, eyes back on the monitor.
“But…why?”
“I couldn’t forgive myself.” My eyes travel over Grace’s prostate form, her hands folded peacefully on her chest.
“I thought it would free me.”
“From what?”
“From this. From you and your brother, from Grace.”
“But you said you read my letter…”
“I opened it last week.”
Shocked silence.
“You didn’t know?”
“I didn’t know.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“I’m not.”
“Why?”
“Because I met Cam.”