Chapter 54
Life doesn’t have an off button, at least not one you can press and still be alive.
The truth is, I could leave. I could go anywhere in the world.
I could find places and people who would nourish my body and my mind and maybe this fucking leach called cancer would vanish for good.
However, I fear the damage it would do to me to get there.
The lies.
The manipulating.
The stealing.
I may not have told Theo the whole truth, but even my lies were wrapped in dreams of reality.
That has to count for something. Six months of being a Scarlet Stone that I didn’t recognize was part of what started to cure my cancer.
I can’t prove it. True miracles don’t need to be justified.
It’s my truth and that’s all that matters.
I will never need anyone to believe me as long as I’m my own living proof.
Filling the Theodore Reed void in my heart makes concentrating, meditating, eating, sleeping, and breathing feel impossible.
One breath. One day at a time. It’s been a week, and I haven’t heard from anyone, not even Oscar.
He left with a kiss, a smile, and a nod.
No goodbye. I suppose the most personal relationships in life eventually live on their own—without words, without explanation.
He knows I love him and I know he loves me. That’s why we’re here … I think.
I still steep herbs Yimin gave me. I drink carrot juice.
I avoid alcohol. I eat unprocessed foods.
I meditate for hours. I read and read and read.
Some days I feel quite inspired. Some days I think of Theo and smile instead of cry.
Some days I wake with my hands folded under my chin, very angelically, instead of down my knickers molesting myself.
Today I wake late to a knock at my door.
“Scarlet Stone?” The delivery man asks.
“Yes.” I cover my mouth with my fist to hide my yawn.
“Delivery. I just need your signature.” He hands me the tablet and I sign for the small parcel.
“Thank you.” I shut the door and rip into it.
A mobile. It’s like sending an alcoholic a bottle of vodka. When I open the actual mobile box there’s a note on the inside.
For your reading pleasure.
Taking a deep breath, I turn on the phone. There’s a document waiting for me. I open it.
“Bloody hell …” It’s scanned pages of Nellie’s journal.
Oscar. He was in her house. In her bedroom!
I’m mad as hell and … curious. I’ve been doing so good. Okay, maybe not “good,” but not bad. Sometimes not bad can be a really good day. It’s all perspective.
The journal gobbles up the rest of my day.
Hundreds of entries, some short, some quite long, but they’re all written to Bell.
A lot of them don’t make any sense and in some ways they confirm Nellie’s diagnosis.
Other entires remind me of my last day with her, the lucidity, the moment I questioned every day before with her.
By the time I reach the end of the final entry, I don’t feel the enlightenment that I had hoped I would find.
I wanted to know more about the “incident” that led to her mental state.
One thing I know is that something happened to Bell, and Nellie is responsible.
However, the last entry, which was three days ago, is most shocking.
She’s not insane—at least not in the way her family believes she is.
And I think Bell is the woman with whom Harold had an affair.
I don’t know if anyone else would read these same words and come to the same conclusion, but I feel it in the space between words.
Bell and Nellie were friends who betrayed each other.
That much bleeds through every page of the journal.
Bell,
I’m done. The lie has to end. I don’t know if the truth will set me free, but I have to try.
I’ve found someone who makes me want something more than revenge.
I’m not even sure if revenge was ever mine to give.
That’s probably something you would know.
What about forgiveness? Have I earned that?
Have you forgiven me? I’ve forgiven you.
I think I could even forgive Harold if I thought it would give me true freedom.
~Nel
My name is Scarlet Stone and for my twelfth birthday, Oscar gave me a signed first edition of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, an Inverness cape, and a deerstalker cap. It was more than a gift; it was symbolic of my duty to solve mysteries.
Nellie and I need to have a chat. I grab my bag and open the door. “Nolan.” I gasp.
“Scarlet, we need to talk.”
“Oh, um … okay. Come in.”
He steps inside and looks around my tiny flat, specifically at the bed and massage chair that consumes the room.
“Have a seat.” I nod to the massage chair.
His brow tightens.
“You don’t have to turn it on if you don’t want to.” I return a half smile while grabbing my picnic chair, unfolding it, then taking a seat. It would feel too weird to sit on the bed.
Never mind. Nolan’s gaping-mouth assessment of my place has already maxed out the weirdness level. I should have just sat on the bed.
He eases into the chair like each inch he descends is the final crank to a Jack in the box. “Your father,” he begins once he’s convinced a scary clown is not going to jump out.
For me, the clown is already out and his name is Oscar. Tapping my finger on the plastic arm of my chair, I bide my time. It’s too early to jump to any conclusions.
“He and my mother were …”
Here it comes: horrific tales of the trouser snake. The small smile on my face feels pained. I can only imagine what it must look like.
“…having dinner last night. They seemed close.”
As long as he wasn’t eating her for dinner, then I can handle this. It’s still manageable. “Dinner at your house?”
Nolan nods.
“With your father?”
“He’s out of town.”
I swallow a hard lump then clear my throat. “What … what were they eating?”
Nolan narrows his eyes. “I don’t know.”
My sigh of relief is a bit louder than intended.
“He said you asked him to keep her company while you took some time off.”
Of course he did. Wanker.
“My mother seemed …” His lips twist to the side.
I hate how he keeps baiting me with fragmented sentences that leave me hanging. It’s like he’s waiting to see if I will jump in and … what? I don’t know for sure.
“Different.”
“Different how?”
Nolan shrugs. “Normal. Too normal.”
I laugh a bit. “Too normal? I’d consider that progress, a good thing. Isn’t it?”
“I know you’re going to take this wrong. My intention is not to sound like an awful son who doesn’t want to see his mother get better, but … I don’t want her memory of the incident to come back if it means she could spiral out of control to the point where we could lose her forever.”
“This incident. I don’t understand this ‘incident’ that you and your father seem so determined to keep from her and everyone else.
You’re so afraid of me triggering her memory, snapping her out of her delusional state, but you won’t tell me what it is you don’t want her to remember.
So how can I tiptoe around some invisible trigger? ”
Resting his elbows on his knees, he cradles his head in his hands. “I don’t know,” he mumbles.
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know!” His head snaps up.
I flinch.
The last time I saw so much agony etched into Nolan’s face was when he told me about his ability to sense other people’s pain.
“My accident. That’s what caused my mother’s condition. She thought I died and something just broke inside of her. She doesn’t remember it. Not once since her mind has gone to its ‘safe place’ has she mentioned it.”
“But if it was an accident—”
He shakes his head. “It was her fault. I still don’t know all the details because my own memory of it is so sketchy.
I have these fragments, but when I try to piece them together, they don’t make sense.
We were going somewhere. My father was out of town.
She needed to make a quick stop.” He shakes his head some more.
“I waited in the car. It was taking her too long, so I went to look for her.”
I wait for him to continue, but he doesn’t. His eyes remain fixed to his interlaced fingers.
“Where were you?”
“I don’t remember where we were. My father said it happened at home. That doesn’t fit with what little I do remember—or think I remember.”
“So he’s lying?”
“I don’t know.”
“Tell me what happened, Nolan.”
He nods slowly. “I was shot. I lost a lot of blood. I died on the operating table. But they brought me back to life.”
“Nellie shot you?”
He nods.
“Why?”
“My father said it was an intruder. She grabbed a gun from their bedroom. When I walked around the corner at the top of the stairs, it spooked her. She shot me.”
“What did the newspapers say?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? That doesn’t make any sense. The only son of a prominent family gets shot by his mother and nothing gets printed in the newspaper?”
He shrugs. “My father didn’t want her to end up in prison for an accident. He didn’t want it to tarnish our family’s name. He made it …”
“Go away,” I whisper.
He nods.
“So, you live or come back to life, with an abnormally heightened sense of feelings, only to discover that your mother has lost it.”
“Yes.”
“So your father stays with her, in spite of what seems to be a broken marriage, because he wants the money.”
“Yes.”
“And when did he start cheating on her?”
“I’m not sure. He claims it didn’t happen until several years after the accident.”
“You’re pissed off he cheated on her.”
“Yes.”
“But you think she still loves him and it would crush her if he left?”
“Yes.”
“And he gets the best of both worlds—the money and other women. Tell me, what does she get?” Revenge. She gets revenge, but I don’t know how or why … yet.
“She gets peace. Peace of not remembering what she did to me. Peace of knowing her family is still together.”
“This is messed-up.”
Nolan doesn’t respond.
“I did not tell my dad to keep Nellie company for me. He bullied his way to work with me a while back. I introduced them. Your mother—the innocent doe-eyed Nellie? She took an instant liking to him and he to her.”
“That doesn’t make sense. My father said she’s like a child when it comes to intimacy. That’s what drove him to cheat on her.”
“Oh yeah? Well, the British bloke I sadly have to claim as my dad, he’s corrupted that child you call your mother and as much as it disgusts me, she’s enjoyed every bit of it.”
Nolan narrows his eyes. “What? You’re saying—”
“Yes. Please don’t make me go into detail. But … yes.”
I told him Father Christmas does not exist.
Blink.
Blink.
Blink.
He didn’t see the epilogue of the loo scene like I did. Clearly, he doesn’t understand how lucky he is at this moment.
“Is Oscar at your house right now?”
More blinking. “Uh … no, I don’t think so. When I left, my mother was in her room.”
“Alone?”
He flinches. Welcome to my world, Nolan, where some things cannot be unseen or unheard.
“Let’s go.” I stand and grab my bag.