Chapter 29
LANEY
"S he’d take you back,” Neenan said for the fourth time since we left the Ravencroft Estate. No day went past where she didn’t enter my mind, Neenan made sure of it. We were staying at an inn over a pub in the neighbouring village Oxenwood. “After I left you in that van, I met one of our guys, a guy named Sorren, he vowed my safety if I align myself with them. They weren’t killing indiscriminately.”
The only image in my head was of my hand fisting the pomegranate band feeling at a loss and like I'd been relentlessly run over by a lorry. Not a bird in the sky. Does it really matter if it wasn’t indiscriminate when it was my family that they were targeting? Granddaddy, Tilly, Flavia Novelli, for all intents and purposes, Father.
“No lives needed to be lost. This was only ever about revenge.”
“And Kenna?”
“The greatest revenge of all.”
“You don’t believe that?” He said, but his words were distant, he was being more talkative than usual, and it was always the same topics. It wasn’t what I called a good distraction, I didn’t need the reminder of what I lost.
“I have to, Neenan.” The drum of loud music shook the floorboards under us, it was karaoke night downstairs. Thankfully, the bass drowned out the singing. “Can we talk about something else?”
For a moment, there was a harmony to the place we were in. The pub was between songs. The conversation was between talking points. The distant church bells paused between rings. When it all started up again, though, I cringed.
“Bad migraine?”
I nodded. “Throbbing at the exact rate as my heart palpitates.”
He looked at me blankly. “That bad?”
I offered him a weak smile, but it took effort. The last couple days had been slow, all the options for our next steps came so fast it confined me to stasis. It’s funny that the moment I lost all my attachments, I felt the most free I’d ever been but also the most confined.
Only two bags left the estate on our body, but the number of things scattered about the place would make you think otherwise. One thing caught my eye in particular. The box my mother gave me.
Neenan followed my gaze.
“Are you going to open it?”
I was building myself up to it. Marriage was the last thing on my mind, but I wished for some words of comfort right about now, so I grabbed it from my nightstand and just held it. It felt heavier in my hand than I’d thought. The musical vibrations below us were drowned out by the gravity of the moment.
I didn’t know much about her, and I was the reason Father never talked about her. It was a weight that I carried with me every day and something that my father saw in my face each day too. Having this little piece of her was a treasure to me, to open it was to let it go. But with the current times, I needed to end every mystery in my life, and this was a big one.
What message would my mother have wanted me to receive upon marriage? Inspiration? To learn from her mistakes? I wasn’t sure.
“Can I?” I asked as if Mother was in the room with us. In some ways, it felt like she was the only one close. Minus Neenan, of course, but he was such a permanent feature in my life that he felt as solid as the earth we stood on.
He insisted.
Fear rocked me for a moment. “What if it’s bad?”
“What if it’s good?”
“What if it’s not?”
“What if it’s great?”
I had to believe him. He was only a little older than me, but sometimes I think he knows things about me that I didn’t. As if his father had all the stories about my parents that Father refused to divulge. Sometimes I wished for his perspective. But wait–
“Your father! Is he okay?”
He swallowed hard. My heart plummeted. I didn’t even ask him. Dammit. Too self-absorbed to even consider that my family wasn’t the only one affected. Stupid girl.
“Uhh…” The words seemed to lodge in his throat. I didn’t need them anyway. I threw myself at him, arms wide and tight as they wrapped around his shoulders. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. So sorry.”
His arms returned the hug. Yet, he still didn’t say anything when he withdrew.
“After the funeral,” He stumbled, “His body was found in the med bay at the barracks.”
My hands covered my mouth. Forrester Waite was a friend of my grandfather’s, faithful to the Ravencrofts but a stern protester of the fissure. The disagreement brought Edward and him together, but he and my father were stretched further apart.
I wanted to cry for him. “That’s horrible, Neenan. I wish I could take your pain away, I know how it feels.”
But his response was the last thing I’d expected. He laughed. But not in a humorous way, it was sinister. “You know exactly what I feel.” He scoffed, his eyes darkening. “Glad you finally realised.”
I blinked repeatedly, but continued, earnest. “I-I–I can’t tell you how devastating it is to find out—”
The blood in his cheeks rose to the surface in a way that I feared was shame before I saw the flames behind his eyes. “Don’t start.” He spat and stood towering over me. Then, his shoulders fell. “You never see me, Laney. We share more than just proximity, but you always just saw right through me, wallowing in your own self-pity too much to see that I was just as isolated as you!”
He was as alone as me. How did it take so long for me to see?
“You think you were the only one to grieve your grandfather, huh? Edward was a grandfather to me too!” He continued his tirade, getting increasingly more flustered as the words tumbled out his mouth. “And all this time you were too selfish to see it! Always busy with your oh Kenna this, and oh Kenna that. It’s bullshit.” He stressed the carpet as he walked back and forth in the room.
“What? Am I only a burden to you? An obligation that you are too weak to put aside. Talk to yourself!” I fought back in a yell.
Regret found me a minute after I had caught my breath. All he wanted was a friend who listened. It was obvious in his outburst, but he was right, I was too self-absorbed to notice his cry for help.
So, I sat in front of where he was pacing, perfectly still. With that, he calmed until his worrying steps slowed to a simple stride. After a minute, he finally slumped down to sit beside me.
“Do you want to know the worst part?” Words turned to sobs as he averted his gaze to the floor. “He’d been dead for days. I was too busy escorting you around to raise the alarm at his absence.”
I wrapped an arm around him, and I was grateful when he leaned his weight onto my side. “I didn’t know,” I said in a gentle tone. “I should’ve been there for you. I’m sorry.”
He brushed his hand up the back of his head, standing one more. “God, I should just go.”
“I forgive you.”
“It’s too late. I did this, you don’t—”
“I forgive you.” I repeated as I saw the mental battle play out on his face. He had to know I meant it. “Please, stay.”
“I’m sorry.” He said as he shut his eyes and leaned back onto the bed, our upper thighs still touching.
“We can go into the woods, light a fire, and roast some marshmallows,” I suggested with a tight smile. I might’ve been blind to his feelings, but I always listened to his words. “In his honour.”
I pulled back from the contact. The distant look in his eyes made me believe he wasn’t listening, but he eventually nodded. I didn’t cry for him, though, my reserve of tears was used up.
So, when Neenan prompted. “Go on. I’d do anything to have a box like that from him. Please.” Pointing at it. “Open it.” And I lifted the lid to find a USB stick and a letter, still, not a single tear fell.
We had both lost a lot this week, not least our sanity, but we still had each other. I had to do a good job to remember that. He nodded at me as I fiddled with the edges of the paper. The encouragement fuelled me, and I knew all would be alright with us. Now, perhaps, we could rebate a little of what we lost.
I unfolded the letter and started reading. As the words sunk in, a weight dropped in my stomach, heavier than anything else I’d felt. Mama.
☆
I may have stolen a bottle of red wine from the pub downstairs. Or several.
In a fit of giggles, Neenan and I had fallen down on the first step of the back stairs. Stairs were scary so we dared not go up them. Especially not like this, I’d never been drunk before. Tilly and I indulged in the odd bottle of wine, but we never took it this far. My head felt heavy, but it came with a freedom that I hadn’t anticipated. I thought being intoxicated would be disarming, not freeing. It felt weird. Good, but weird.
“Did you…” I laughed before I got the words out. “See her?”
His eyes were glazed. “What?” He shouted comically loud.
I groaned with a smile. “You’re so drunk.”
“No,” He hiccupped, swirling a finger in the air in my direction. “You are. What?”
“Me?”
“Yup.” He popped.
I shook my head. He didn’t like that.
“No, Lanes, what did you see?” He sat up straight to prove it, the move gained him such momentum he swayed a little.
I raised my eyebrows.
“I’m waiting for an answer.” He continued.
I controlled my breathing to say it in one breath. “Did you see her?” I laughed but wanted to cry. It hurt to swallow. “In the bathroom that time?”
“At school?”
“Yes.”
A moment elapsed and it was like he sobered himself in an instant. “No, just you.” Sadness befell his face like a weight had pulled down his features. “In the dark.”
“Did…” I couldn’t find the right words. “Did you think I was lying?”
“Never.” Pulling my hand into his lap, he warmed them between both his hands. “I was worried...” The concern in his expression told me he still was.
I felt the words before I heard them.
“You were seeing things.” He wouldn’t meet my eye. I was fine. “You were sick.”
No. My hand slipped out of his grip, and it was like the room filled with water, robbing me of the vitality of air. “You still don’t believe me.” I realised.
All this time, it was just pity. He stayed close because he felt sorry for me.
“And Father?”
He hesitated to answer. “Why do you think he let you leave your marriage so easily?”
I shook my head continuously, my tear ducts were dry but stung all the same. He said he accepted my reasoning, accepted me. He said he supported me. Was it all sympathy? Some misplaced pity. I had an anxiety attack, sure, an identity crisis, most definitely, but there was no doubt about my reality. I thought he trusted me to know myself. Was it all an act?
It wasn’t true. In the forest with Aldo, he took me seriously. The Karsteins had clocked onto us years before we realised it, he had to have changed his mind. He made the bed for their presence to be undetected.
I am fierce. I am capable. Now it seems only one person actually believed that.
I made a mistake.
With renewed vigour, and only a little liquid courage, I shot up. I fell back on the banister as my head filled with blood. When my vision returned soon after, I was already running.
Damn Neenan.
And damn Father.