Chapter 89
Quill
The Old House
House Song
Searows
My finger traced the dusty shelves, and it was as if, with every step I took through this house, I could still feel his eyes on me. As if something inside me sensed that he knew I was here. As if he were about to step around the next corner at any moment, leaving me defenseless against his demons.
Why I had returned despite this feeling, which accompanied me from the very first minute I had stepped into this house?
I missed the familiar pain. I preferred it to the unknown pain that had tried to overwhelm me a few days ago.
I had never known anything else. Not at Christmas.
Christmas had been the safest time, because he had spent it with his picture-perfect family every year. And yet, the evening of the 24th was the most unbearable time of the year.
Every Christmas, until he had left us, a small package from him had been waiting there under the plastic Christmas tree. And every year, I had opened it with a knot in my stomach, only to find yet another book.
I opened the box, which I had struggled to drag up from the basement into the living room, and froze when I lifted the lid.
How I would have loved to burn all those books.
Austin, Dickens, Kafka, Christie…
Do you know that I’m writing because of you, Papa?
There was nothing more confusing than looking at all these books, from whose pages banknotes had fallen every year.
I wished they were still in there, wished I hadn’t used the money in times of need, when I had been too weak to pick myself up, to get a job myself, instead of living off his handouts. Alms whose stains of shame still clung to my fingertips.
When I couldn’t bring myself to reach for even one of the books I should have destroyed long ago, I got up and disappeared upstairs to my room.
It felt strange to sleep in this bed. A children's bed that Mama had never replaced. For years I had slept with my knees drawn up to my chest, still slept like a helpless embryo, and imagined that Vincent wouldn't let me go.
He hadn't. For the last five days.
I slipped under the blanket, as I had done most of the time over the past few days, and snuggled up to Mama’s jacket, which hadn’t smelled like her for months.
Tears dampened the fabric.
Could the next two days please pass quickly? Couldn’t I just sleep through them?
A creak made me open my eyes.
Not Everything Hast to End Badly
David Buckley, Luke Richards
Any heaviness in my bones vanished in an instant, and I listened into the void.
There was nothing… except for my pounding heart.
But I couldn’t bring myself to close my eyes again.
It was as if he were here. As if he were waiting for me downstairs.
Goosebumps erupted down my neck.
When I couldn’t bear it any longer, I got up and stepped into the dark hallway, listening again.
A creak. Another one.
I swallowed.
No, Papa couldn’t be home…
I pushed aside the instinctive urge to hide under Mama’s bed.
Never again would I set foot in her bedroom. There, in her bed, she had been lying, on the edge… pale, her mouth open…
I’d had to use my trembling hands to revive her until she’d snapped her eyes wide open, gasped, and then vomited all that alcohol into my lap. And yet it had been the last time I had seen her in that bed.
I blinked away the tears and looked toward the stairs.
What if it was just the wind?
Carefully, I made my way down the steps, but paused halfway down the staircase.
My eyes fixed on the piece of paper on the third step from the bottom.
A paper crane.
My heart gave a traitorous leap.
No, that couldn’t be…
I felt relief. For a moment.
What if this was just a fever dream?
My gaze wandered through the empty hallway, toward the closed front door, then to the coat rack.
Caught in a growing paralysis, I stared back at the paper bird adorned with ink.
My Inkbird.
Even if it was just a fever dream, I wanted to reach for it, wanted to think of nothing else but that soul in whose presence I felt safest.
I hoped he understood why I had left, trusted me to come back as soon as these days were over.
Where else would I go?
There was no other place in this world where I wanted to survive than in his arms.
Somehow I managed to walk down the last few steps and pick up the crane.
The lump in my chest gave another jolt when I recognized his handwriting.
Don’t Give Up On Me
Andy Grammer
Being an author is the most beautiful and, at the same time, the loneliest thing that has ever happened to me. Having someone who feels the same way is the only salvation from this kind of misery.
My face twisted into a smile, but I couldn’t hold back the tears, overwhelmed by a profound sense of relief.
When I looked up, I spotted Davian in the doorway to the living room, his tousled hair, the longing in his eyes…
He was here. He was really here…
He raised both eyebrows.
“What do you think you’re doing here, Quillon Veritas?”
I couldn’t help but smile through my tears.
He shouldn’t be here. Not in this toxic place.
“Hiding…”
He took a step toward me.
“Have I ever given you a reason to hide from me?”
I swallowed, smiling bashfully through more tears.
When had my damn heart become so weak?
“Never…”
I wanted to hug him, to kiss him… But that wouldn’t be fair to him.
These days here? I had to endure them, far away from the safe haven he had built for himself and his daughter.
“Davian, you shouldn’t be…”
He rushed toward me, stopped in front of the last step where I stood, and pulled me into his arms.
Warmth I hadn’t realized I needed so much enveloped my body, and I gasped, as he pressed his head against my chest and slid both hands under my sweater onto my bare back.
“With you, Feather. That’s the only place I belong.”
Flooded with emotion, I took the last step, slipped into his arms, and he pressed his forehead against mine.
“Don’t you ever do something like that again, okay?”
His eyes glistened. That sea of tears over which I had unintended control.
“You belong to me. In my arms. Nowhere else. Do you understand me?”
Both of his rough, warm hands slid to my cheeks, and an overwhelming sensation rushed through every nerve in my restless body.
“That's the only place where I can make sure you’re breathing.”
I didn’t want him to tear me apart any further with his words, so I annihilated the gap between us with my lips on his.
Davian breathed heavily against my lips, opened his mouth immediately to welcome me with his gentle tongue, while one of his hands slid back under my sweater to my bare waist.
I lost myself in his lips, letting him gently suck on my lower lip, take it between his teeth, bite it longingly yet with restraint.
Whimpering softly, I let the moths in my stomach take over.
Davian’s fingers immediately dug deeper into the flesh of my hips.
I wanted him, wanted everything of him, wanted to merge with him until the blue thread wouldn’t let us go anymore, weaving itself into a cocoon around us.
But not here…
And maybe he was right. Maybe I shouldn’t be here.
I pulled away from him, looked up at him, apologetically.
“Not here.”
He nodded, loosened his grip, stepped back, and when I started to move, he followed me into the living room.
Back to the Old House - 2011 Remaster
The Smiths
I had been packing my things while Davian had been wandering around the ground floor.
He hadn’t said a word.
His gaze on the stacked beer crates with the empty bottles next to the fridge, as well as on the dusty, cluttered corners full of piles of unfolded laundry, had said it all.
He had been looking for pictures on the walls. In vain. They had never existed. The three that Mama had once had of me on the coffee table had all broken over the years.
At the front door, he took my hand, and we stepped down the porch together.
On the neglected lawn in front of the house, I stopped, turned around, and let my eyes wander over the white, crumbling stone facade.
“This house belongs in flames, Davian. No one should ever have to live here again.”
Davian’s hand tightened around mine.
“I’d love to burn it down for you. But then I’d end up where I can’t be close to you anymore, and that’s not worth it.”
Smiling, I looked at him before glancing one last time at the front door.
Goodbye, Mama...
I let a tear roll down my cheek, then another, before Davian walked me to the car and I got into the passenger seat.
How easy it was for him to turn my no into a yes. Yes to being with him, even if I didn’t deserve it. Yes to life.
When he wasn’t with me, I lost myself inside myself. But when he was there, possibilities opened up that I had never considered.
Hope.
And it hurt. But I knew that eventually it would stop. With every kiss, every touch, every smile this man gave me…
My blood was full of poison. And every drop he gave me of his took some of that poison away. So that someday all the poison would be gone. I was sure of it.
You make stability emotional and emotions stable,
without stripping them of their rawness.
With you merges what I believed all these years
could only exist in the form of two unhealthy extremes
or a lifeless middle ground.
– Blue