Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
St Peter’s Church was a small stone-built structure on the outskirts of Glades Bay that looked like it might fit thirty people on a Sunday—if no one sneezed.
From what I understood, it existed before the town was officially founded, so I imagined there was less need for space back then.
Fields of sheep and beef stock surrounded it, and the grassy area behind the church sloped down a hill where a cemetery sat at the bottom.
“Can I help you, young ladies?” asked the elderly man standing at the arched wooden door, a corsage pinned to his paisley blue shirt. I beamed at him. I loved when people referred to me as young.
Breeze had insisted on coming with me, using the excuse that it was her day off. I had a sneaking suspicion it was more because she didn’t trust me not to skip town again. She linked her arm through mine and gave the man a warm smile.
“We’re here for Olivia’s memorial. Are we in the right place?” She asked, glancing around the empty car park.
The service was scheduled to start at 10.30 a.m., but we were the only car parked to the side of the gravel driveway, and we'd been pushing it for timing. The crinkles around the man’s eyes grew deeper as he felt behind him for the cane that was leaning against the closed half of the door.
“You sure are.” His eyes twinkled. “It fills my heart that someone’s come to see her off. I’m Jim.” He extended his hand to shake ours, one after the other.
“Are we the only ones here?” I asked, trying to hide the strain in my voice.
Jim nodded slowly. “Not unusual in these situations... when an individual hasn’t been otherwise claimed,” he added with a grimace at his own honesty.
I nodded, and sadness pooled in my chest. Breeze squeezed my arm and pulled me closer to her side.
It had been the right thing to come back. I already knew it, but now I was certain.
Jim shuffled his way inside, holding the heavy door open with his back while leaning on his cane with both hands. Breeze took the weight of the door as she walked in last, gently closing it behind us.
“Thank-you,” he exhaled a held breath. “Sharp as a tack up here,” he tapped a finger to the side of his head. “Afraid my body's been going on strike for a while though.”
The walls of the church were a light sea foam green, and sunlight filtered through the arched windows that ran along the sides of the room.
Heavy wooden pews stretched down the middle of the space, and a carved cross hung beneath a brightly coloured stained-glass window depicting a contorted-faced individual.
The air smelt dusty, the way the children’s home did, although no jarring memories emerged here.
“Would you like to take a seat?” Jim asked, nodding toward the front pew.
My gut nearly fell through the floor as I followed his gaze. A simple casket made of thick plywood, with two rope handles on each side, sat on top of the altar to the left of the pulpit.
“I didn’t realise she’d actually be here,” I hissed at Breeze, whose cheeks flushed pink. Her rounded eyes threw me a shut up, look as she dragged my concrete feet to the front of the room. Perhaps it was good that she’d insisted on coming.
Jim’s features softened again, and I wasn’t sure how it was even possible because he already had one of the kindest looking faces I’d seen.
“She might not be here in the way you once knew her,” his experienced voice spoke as he patted a long fingered hand against my spine.
“But she’ll know you’re here. It means a lot to the deceased that they aren’t forgotten.
” He held his arm out toward the casket in a gesture that invited us to go closer, like he thought we needed a moment with her before starting.
I shook my head politely and ignored Breeze’s glare burning into the side of my skull.
Jim made his way behind the pulpit.
“Welcome, everyone, to the memorial of Olivia Pratt,” he said, as though speaking to a full room. I glanced around the empty pews. “Let us open with a prayer.”
As he continued, my eyes stayed on the plain casket.
Even though I knew an adult lay inside, I couldn’t help but picture her as I remembered her—a child.
The sound of her cries echoed through my mind, along with the image of her scratched, bleeding arms. Emotion rose in my throat, and I tried to swallow it back.
We’d both been in that awful place. I just had the lucky ticket out.
Guilt coiled through me, and I felt more grateful for my dad than I had been at any other time.
It was difficult not to rage at the injustice of living that seemed to guarantee one life for some people and an inferno for others. For no particular reason.
As Jim began reading a section of the Bible, I let my gaze wander out beyond one of the side windows to the field below.
A red tractor pulled something along the grass behind it, and a black dog ran back and forth barking as if it were a game.
A plane jetted through the sky so far away that it looked like one of those drawings of seagulls that children do.
Life was still going on out there. Nothing had stopped.
Just Olivia’s heart. It seemed that didn’t matter to anyone but me, and even my reasons for caring had been selfish at first.
Sniffling to my left pulled my attention back. Breeze was wiping her eyes.
“Are you okay?” I whispered, careful not to interrupt Jim’s graceful speech. The way he continued to address the room as if it were full made me wonder whether he would have done the same if no one had shown up. It seemed likely.
Breeze pulled a tissue from a neatly folded packet and passed one to me. The lump in my throat tightened as I realised I didn’t need it.
“Takes me back to my parents’ funeral,” she sniffed, leaning towards my ear. “They say that about weddings too. Going to someone else’s always makes you think of your own.”
“I wouldn’t know,” I joked, my grey eyes raking over the side of her head trying to figure out how much she was holding in.
“You will one day,” she said and gave me a sly sideways look. I let my face scrunch as if it were a disgusting prospect. Truthfully, I wanted the wedding and the house and the… the…
I didn’t know the feeling I was trying to capture, but I felt it in my chest and stomach like a calming pool of water. Safety?
I don’t remember ever feeling that. Not really. I tried in vain to ignore the voice in my head that told me people like me didn’t get married. Didn’t get normal.
Olivia hadn’t got sunshine in her life either.
“Seriously though, are you okay?” I asked, concern softening my tone as I stroked her clenched hand in mine. An unusually affectionate move for me.
Her eyes crinkled at the corners, and she nodded. “It’s kind of nice to be sad about them sometimes, you know? To let myself feel it.”
I nodded, even though I didn’t know. Sadness had never been welcome in my home growing up, and it wasn’t an emotion that I considered to be even a little nice.
“We now open the floor for friends and loved ones to remember Olivia in their own way,” Jim said as he stepped around the pulpit. “If anyone would like to make a speech or share something, now is their time.”
He took a seat on the far side of the front pew, his cane resting across his knees. If there had been more people in the room, the gesture would’ve felt natural. As it stood, it felt awkward. Just Breeze and me, exchanging tight smiles.
Time did that strange thing where it clicked to slow-mo.
The round plastic clock on the left-hand wall seemed to get closer to the microphone, its ticking echoing off every surface.
My heartbeat took a similar action. How long were we going to sit here?
I let my eyes roll towards Jim, and his features were arranged into a relaxed and gentle smile as he looked toward Olivia in her casket.
A shaky sigh escaped my lips, and I found myself obliging, walking towards her before my brain could catch up.
My palm rested on the smooth wood of the box with my back toward the pews.
I tried to grow up the image of the child’s body in my mind and stand next to her in this moment as an equal.
I didn't want to imagine her child self in there.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered as my hand shifted from side to side across the casket.
“For what we went through.” Emotion overcame me quickly, and tears rolled down my cheeks—for both of us.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t save you. I’m sorry I didn’t know how to make it stop.
” I sniffed as more tears followed. My limbs heavy with the weight of it all. “I’m sorry I was a child too.”
And with that realisation, the tightness in my throat softened.
I had been a child too.
I saw Olivia’s face in my mind in that room of my nightmares.
But she wasn’t screaming anymore. She was smiling.
Someone had come to get her. She stood hand in hand with the woman I’d imagined when I tried to picture Olivia grown.
Her hair still sandy blonde, her chestnut eyes calm as they looked into mine.
They both smiled at me, and I smiled back as they stepped around my frame and through the open door behind.
The woman took the younger version of herself past the nurses’ station and the doctors’ room with the door swinging open, where staff stood frozen like someone had pressed pause on a film. Down the stairs, out the open front door, through the gate and into the darkness of the night.
In the distance, I saw the woman lift her, holding her like a mother would a child.
Little Olivia wrapped her arms and legs around her and she cradled her tired face into the curve of the woman’s neck.
I'd always had a creative brain, and this was my imagination again, I was sure of it.
But it felt good to see her free. To know that someone had come in with love and rescued her, even if it was herself.
I smiled at the image in my mind as I waved at them again.
“Fly free now,” I whispered as my eyes focused again and I pressed my hand to her casket. “You’re free.”
“She won’t be buried until later,” Jim informed us after the ceremony closed. “Have to wait until the grandkids can help get her down.”
The colour drained from my face as I imagined Jim and his cane on one side of the casket getting down the steep hill to the cemetery.
I had to banish the grotesque thought of Olivia toppling out of the box as it cascaded down the slope with Jim and his family chasing it like a wheel of cheese on Cooper’s Hill.
“Why do you do this?” I asked, gesturing to the casket. “Why hold a funeral and bury her, instead of letting the state deal with unclaimed people? It must cost you money.”
Jim smiled as he eased himself into a soft green chair nearby.
“We come into the world and leave the world as equals. It’s the in-between that gets messy. Everyone deserves a dignified passage to heaven. That’s the view of our church.”
I found myself smiling back, even though we didn’t share the same religious beliefs.
“This church has been in my family since Glades Bay was founded. Burying the unclaimed has been our commitment from the beginning, and I hope it continues for as long as we’re still standing.”
I rubbed under my nose, trying to conceal the laugh rising in my chest at the irony—Jim didn’t exactly look like someone ready to keep standing for much longer. I covered the gesture by walking over to the round side table and grabbing a tissue.
“This was found on her,” Jim said, pulling a folded envelope from the front pocket of his paisley shirt. He held it out to me, and I hesitated before walking back over to him and taking it. Another envelope.
“What is it?” I asked.
Jim’s lips pressed together as he considered his words.
“When someone dies under the circumstances that Olivia did,” he looked up to the left, nodding to himself like he’d decided that was an appropriate way to explain it.
“They sometimes leave a letter.” His eyes met mine as he finished to see if I understood, and my gaze immediately moved to the envelope in my hand.
“Oh.” Was all I could think to say as my shoulders sagged. Fresh devastation filled me, and all the remaining energy left my body.
“There might be something useful in there for someone who knew her,” his tone was gentle.
“I’m not sure if I should?” I held the envelope back towards him. I understood she didn't have anyone close to her by the empty room, but surely she didn't mean her last words to be read by me. Legally, was he even allowed to share this with me?
“Someone should,” Jim said, closing his hand over mine on the envelope. I found my head bobbing even though I wasn’t sure I agreed.
“But I’m not—I'm not family,” I stammered.
“If she left a letter, she had something important to say,” he replied, patting my hand. “And I’m an old man. I’ll do what I see fit. I think you were meant to see this.”
He was right. Olivia had likely gone her whole life without being heard.
Jim winked at me and started humming Hit Me with Your Best Shot by Pat Benatar, wildly inappropriate but oddly perfect. My lips curved into a smile as he pushed himself to his feet, leaning heavily on his cane, and began packing up the artificial flowers he’d placed around the room.
“Let me help with those,” Breeze smiled, looking relieved to have something to do.
She moved to the back of the room and started collecting bouquets.
Jim nodded and continued while I hovered on the spot as if my body were a new discovery.
It felt weird leaving Olivia sitting there for the day. Especially knowing what I knew now.
Jim smiled at me as he hobbled past. “Hit me with your pet shark,” he sang quietly to himself. “Why don’t you hit me with your pet shark.”
A classic misheard lyric. He might have just become one of my new favourite people.