Chapter Fifty-Six
For a long moment he simply sat there, the juddering that had begun in his hands spreading until his whole body was quivering, until his teeth were chattering as though a chill wind had gusted through the closed window.
‘Damien?’
Ava kept her voice low, kept it quiet, but when he didn’t respond she tried again.
‘Damien.’
Now he looked at her, his eyes like a moonless night, one tear slipping in a wet line down his cheek.
‘She was there,’ he said quietly. ‘I remember now. I’d heard her voice, when I was underwater. And I found …’ He closed his eyes, breathing shallowly through pale lips. ‘She must’ve seen me in the water, and—’
‘Damien …’ She smoothed her thumb back and forth over the back of his hand. ‘You were a child. It was an accident.’
‘I told myself she wasn’t there …’ His brow creased.
‘I told myself I was alone that day, on the lake. I told that story so often that I started to believe it, Ava. And then, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t remember it.
Couldn’t remember anything, and my father …
he told me I’d killed her. That it was my fault – and I believed him.
I thought I was a monster.’ His voice was thin now. Taut. ‘Perhaps he was right after all.’
‘You were a child, Damien,’ she clasped his hand all the tighter. ‘It was an accident.’
‘But she went into the water because of me.’
‘She went in because she loved you, Damien. Because you were her son. Because you were in trouble – and she wanted to help you.’
‘Yes, but if I hadn’t taken the boat—’
She reached for him, a palm cupping his cheek. He was trembling still, his breath ragged. ‘Look at me, Damien.’
His green eyes lifted slowly, reluctantly, and in them she saw not the fear of a man, but the fear of a child: raw, and wordless.
‘You cannot blame yourself for making a poor decision at an age when all we do is make poor decisions. And you cannot blame your mother for loving you, for wanting to help you. It was just … it was an accident. It was a horrible accident.’
He looked at her for a long moment, and some of the glassiness in his gaze began to steady a little. ‘She loved me,’ he said, his voice quiet.
‘She loves you still, Damien.’ She felt her own throat growing tight then, felt tears welling in her own eyes. ‘Because they’re never really gone, the ones we love. Even if we can’t see them anymore, can’t reach for them – they’re always with us. They live here.’
She pressed her hand to his heart, her lips trembling, and tried to feel those words.
Tried to feel her mother – and it was like a thread of light seeping from something within her – something she’d kept long shut.
She could feel her warmth, could feel her love – and she didn’t need her things in her dressing room.
Didn’t need her paintings upon the wall.
For she was here – as constant as the beating of her own heart.
Damien reached up, catching a tear with the pad of his thumb.
‘It followed me,’ he said, softly. ‘It hunted me. The thought of it. And now …’ He huffed a breath through his teeth, pushing his dark hair away from his forehead, his spectacles catching in the last of the day’s light as he pressed a hand to his heart.
‘But now I know. And it feels …’ His gaze grazed her, lip curling upwards just a little, his fingers hooking around hers.
‘Now at least I can see it. I can try and understand it. As the man I am now – and not the child I was then.’
‘And you won’t go to New York?’ she said. ‘You won’t run?’
A frown creased his brow. ‘New York will be a fresh start,’ he said, squeezing her hand. ‘A wholly fresh start. Ava – you could even come with me.’
Her eyes widened. ‘Come with you?’
‘Yes. To New York.’
She opened her mouth, and then closed it again, her eyes sliding towards the doorway. ‘Damien, that isn’t … this isn’t …’ She swallowed, for she was doing a shoddy job of putting this into words. ‘You don’t have to run anymore.’
‘But don’t you see?’ said Damien, gripping her hand all the tighter. ‘I wouldn’t be running. I’d be starting over. Starting something new.’
‘No,’ she said, trying to keep the urgency from her voice and finding it had threaded its way in, anyhow. ‘Listen—’
A knock came upon the door behind them.
‘Ava?’ Jem’s voice was strained, and muffled through the wood. ‘There is a man here. He looks rather official. Said he was from London.’
Now the light drained from Damien’s face, and his expression – which had been filling with hope and possibility – snapped shut. ‘I know who that is,’ he said, standing, pacing. ‘How did he find me?’
‘I told him,’ she said, lifting her chin, and trying to pull some of the righteous feeling she’d had upon her own doorstep back into the pit of her stomach, trying to hold it there. ‘He wants to help you, Damien. He wants to bring you home.’
He paused, and turned his head just slightly, just enough that she could see the whites of his eyes. ‘What?’
‘You’re not a monster. I’ve known it from the very start, and now you know it, too. Don’t you think it’s time you set aside your rules, and—’
‘My rules have kept me safe,’ Damien spat, his eyes searching the room – his Adam’s apple bobbing rapidly in his throat. ‘It’s breaking the rules that ruins me. Like you. You were a broken rule.’
‘I am trying to help you,’ said Ava, taking a step towards him. ‘All he wants to do is talk—’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Damien, pacing frantically now, pulling linen from crates as though secret doorways might have been hidden beneath them. ‘I’m sure that’s all he wants to do. Ava, even if I don’t blame myself, it hasn’t stopped my father from blaming me, all these years—’
He cast another linen sheet into the air, and Ava watched it float down, like a sliding cloud. ‘Ava, the man believes I killed my mother. He’s doesn’t just want to talk; he wants to punish me for it. And bringing Mr Briggs to my door—’
‘He promised,’ she said, a thudding fear thrumming through her now. ‘He promised all he wanted to do was talk. To reunite you with your father.’
‘He promised?’ Damien’s chuckle teetered dangerously, as though it could slip any moment into something with teeth. ‘Oh, wonderful. Well so long as he promised, I am sure he will be a man of his word.’
Jem’s voice came through the door again, louder this time. ‘Ava? He is being rather insistent. Can you unlock this door please?’
Damien’s gaze snapped to hers. ‘Do not unlock that door.’
‘Damien, please. You cannot spend your entire life running. I’m trying to show you that you’re not a monster,’ Ava said forcefully.
‘But I am a monster!’ His voice was no longer a whisper, but a roar, and it froze her in place. ‘Why do you think I came back to your doorway, Ava? Why do you think I sat in front of you that day? Because Lillian paid me to.’
It felt as though something ice cold had made its nest behind her breastbone, and it was all Ava could do to shiver out the word: ‘What?’
‘Lillian paid me,’ he repeated. ‘She and I have been working together this whole time. Did you think I just turned up upon your doorstep at the perfect moment? No. Lillian wanted you to return to your trade, and that was my job. To see that you did it. To see that you poured your whole heart into it, as you once had.’
Ava blinked, and felt something warm slip down her cheek. ‘So this … this was all a lie?’
He was plucking up one of the sheets from the floor now, and wrapping it around his arm as the door shook once more, and Jem said:
‘That’s it. I’m fetching the key!’
‘Damien!’
He hesitated by the window, and then turned back to her, and she saw that some of the anger had dissipated, replaced with something else. Something slanting, and sad.
‘Tell me the truth,’ she said – her voice shaking. ‘Was this all a lie? All … all of this?’
‘It doesn’t matter anymore,’ he said softly.
‘It matters to me.’ She knew what came next, and she needed to see it. Needed to see the regret stitched upon his face as clearly as it had been stitched upon Jem’s. Needed to feel it as it happened, a thousand iron bars shuttering her heart.
But instead of regret she saw only pain, the same aching thread that had wound itself around her heart tugging too at his.
‘Tell me the truth,’ she repeated, a tear sliding down her cheek. ‘Please.’
‘The truth is …’ His eyes were dark upon hers, endless pools, and she wanted to sluice the sadness from them, wanted to brush it away as easily as she could trace a finger down his cheek.
Behind them, the door rattled.
‘This is the truth, Ava,’ said Damien.
And then he kissed her.
And this time it wasn’t like it had been before.
It wasn’t soft, and slow, and searching.
This time it was as though he would consume her, his mouth hot upon hers, his hand gripping her waist, and the ice in her stomach transformed into something molten, something that thudded all the way from her stomach to her toes.
‘This,’ he breathed, and she felt as though her entire body was aflame, as though her pulse was ricocheting through every inch of her, beating in every cell, and she did not want the delicious, thudding feeling of it to end.
And then he was gone, and there was cool air upon her face once more as she heard the glass of the window shatter, as he hoisted himself upwards, bundling himself through the jagged hole he had punched through the frame.
‘Damien,’ she said, one hand reaching up to touch her lips, still warm from his kiss, as he disappeared.
As the door burst open behind her, and Jem and Mr Briggs tumbled through it.