Chapter 96
Davian
Wonderland
Weight
Lee DeWyze
While the mortician, who hadn’t even known Quill, delivered a eulogy that didn’t reach my ears but only those of the other several dozen or so people in black – none of whom I knew, except for Anthony, Monica, Lara and Thomas – I stared, emotionally absent, at the black granite tombstone with the silver-colored engraving.
Gravia Onera Richter
No matter how many times I read that name, it felt wrong.
Quill wouldn’t have wanted that.
But what did I know… After all, I had believed she had wanted a future with me.
I knew that thought wasn’t fair. That she’d had her reasons. That it would never have come to this if Joseph hadn’t cornered her.
Maybe I was paralyzed inside, eaten away by shock, but the urge to make this bastard pay made my nostrils quiver.
I had wanted to snap his neck. I still did. But my impulsive attempt to drive to him with a kitchen knife had been thwarted by Brittany’s bodyguard and had resulted in me temporarily losing my driver’s license, being placed under observation, and Joseph being placed under police protection.
When I realized I had clenched my hands into fists, I gritted my teeth, trying not to look around for him, because I knew he wasn’t here.
On the one hand, the fact that he didn’t come to his own daughter’s funeral only fuelled my aggression toward this man.
On the other hand, I knew that if he showed up here, I wouldn’t give a damn about the police warning and would make sure a second gravestone appeared next to this one.
And once I was at it, I would also pay Arnold a visit.
Let them put me behind bars.
Even if their filthy blood on my fingers would never replace hers…
Quill was gone. She had simply left. Without saying goodbye to me.
It felt like betrayal. Accompanied by a poisonous feeling that made me rot inside. Hour by hour. Day by day. Bit by bit.
When I wasn’t sitting at home under my desk, banging my head against the wood; or curling up in her bed, searching for her scent, until the pain threatened to tear me to pieces from the inside; I lay on my office floor staring at the ceiling, trying to imagine how she had spent her final minutes, whether she had suffered…
At first, the mere thought had made me cry for hours until I had lost consciousness from headaches and hyperventilation. But with every passing day I lay there, staring at the ceiling with drying salt on my face, my body resisted emotions more and more.
It couldn’t bear them. It wanted to silence them. It wanted to destroy them.
It wanted to survive.
I had believed I would never again find myself so close to inner emptiness as I had been just before my second suicide attempt last August.
Whatever feelings had survived in my chest were barely breathing.
My inner life resembled a morgue of emotions.
An overgrown garden, abandoned by its gardener. And the only flowers that seemed to keep forcing themselves through the garden soil were those of regret.
If I had come up to that attic with her, she would still be alive.
If I hadn’t taken her to that gala, she would still be alive.
If I had followed her out onto the terrace that night and taken care of Troy before she had been forced to, she would still be alive.
If I had remained steadfast and never touched her, if I had persuaded her to leave town and never look back, she would still be alive.
Without me, she would still be alive.
I should have let her go.
Because the mere thought of a “maybe” would still be more bearable than the certainty of a “no.”
Feeling deep in my veins how I was running dry because she could no longer give me any of her ink blood was like watching a flower wither away.
There was nothing that could pull me out of this endless fever dream of growing emptiness and madness.
She had left me behind. With myself. And I didn’t know how long my battery would last.
That night, the hole had grown larger.
It felt as if it had been yesterday that I had fought my way to her body.
The mere memory made my heart clench all of a sudden, but my reddened, parched eyes could no longer keep up.
That evening, Anthony had stormed back into the attic and had smashed a rifle barrel against the back of my head, just before the police had disarmed and subdued him.
I had woken up in the hospital.
Without Quill.
Without life in my chest.
Lara had sat by my side, crying, and immediately thrown herself into my arms. My little girl had spent three hours in my arms. Three agonizing hours during which I had shed more tears than ever before in my life.
When I had arrived home, I had torn my study apart, smashed furniture with an old baseball bat from the garage, had screamed her name as if it would bring her back, had dropped to my knees amid all the chaos, and had lain there until the next morning.
That had been the night my emotions had decided to die.
Monica had been there every day, holding Lara in her arms, while I had locked myself in my study during the day and in Quill’s bedroom at night, trying to close my eyes in the hope that when I opened them, my feather would be with me again. My light.
But every time I had woken up from my restless episodes of sleep, it had felt as though I were experiencing all over again that she was no longer there.
All around me, it grew darker with each passing day.
They had taken my light from me. That candle flame I had sworn to protect from the storms of this world with all my strength.
I would have laid the world at her feet, walked through all seven hells, defended her in court, committed crimes, just to be with her...
But she hadn’t known.
Why hadn’t she known? Hadn’t I shown her enough that I would build my life around her? Had all that I had done not been enough?
No, Davian. You were never enough for her. If you had been enough, she’d still be here.
I felt tears running down my cheeks, but I couldn’t escape my own thoughts and truly be present.
Ever since she was gone, I lived in the past. The only place where I could have her.
Seven days it had taken the police to determine the cause of her death.
Cause of death: Blood loss due to self-inflicted cuts
Manner of death: Suicide
Instrument used: Razor blade
Nine days had passed since I had last held her in my arms. And yet it felt as if it had been yesterday.
She had smiled at me, with that playful twinkle in her eyes, before turning away. On her way to her death.
That had been the last moment I had seen her alive. A moment that, along with all the regret, would burn itself into my memory.
Something cold on my nose snapped me out of my trip down memory lane. My vision cleared, and I watched as the snow fell onto the thousand white roses.
At Christmas, she had told me how much she couldn’t stand roses. That they were an overused floral symbol, often used without any deeper meaning.
I looked up at the sky, from which more and more snow was falling down on us.
Quill’s death had frozen the sky. And I prayed that all the angels up there would freeze to death miserably.
The tears just flowed, without me feeling much.
Gradually I felt all those stares on me. Stares from strangers, from professors or students who had nothing to do with her. Stares from the press, who printed newspapers with her official name and the words murderer, criminal, and convicted felon.
I was so done with this world, wanted to see it burn, especially the legal system. But I was too weak to reach for the match.
I was done.
When it had happened? No idea… Somewhere between up there in the attic and my shattered office.
Everything that had happened since then passed me by as if someone had laid a veil over my perception. As if I were drowning very slowly, without the strength to even try to swim.
I sank and sank, drifting away.
I didn’t even remember how I had gotten here. Vague images of me sitting in Monica’s backseat floated around in my fragmented memory, but they faded just as quickly as everything else that didn’t have to do with Quill.
Everything I had ever wanted was gone now. And there was nothing else I would ever want again.
Lara began sobbing beside me and leaned against my arm.
Instinctively, I pulled her close, feeling her body tremble with every pain-racked sob.
Her best friend was dead. Because of me.
I felt Tony’s gaze on me, but I didn’t look at him, knowing he looked just as wrecked as I did, though I wondered if guilt was tormenting him just as much.
His sister was dead. Because of me.
That he hadn’t shot me yet was a mystery to me. It was as if something inside me longed for it. Let him finish what was so close to its end.
My life would never be the same again.
It was over.
I stared at the tombstone until the people around us grew fewer and fewer. Until Lara said “Dad”, but I stood motionless.
I had once been a father. Not even that part of me wanted to react anymore, let alone function.
I’m sorry, Lara.
My knees were numb.
I didn’t know how I was still standing.
At some point, I sensed that Lara was gone too.
All that remained was a hopeless author and his buried muse.
The author wanted to lie down beside her, wanted to stay with her, wanted to rot away with her. His hand in hers.
“You think it’s not fair and you blame yourself for having done something wrong. But the truth is, you simply weren’t meant for this life.”
Crime Scene Mystery Investigation
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I blinked away the tears and somehow managed to turn my head toward the stranger.
A tall, athletic man in an elegant, tailored black suit and a dark blue coat, with short, wavy, champagne-blond hair and striking eyes that resembled light-blue galaxies, looked at me with a steady gaze.
I thought I recognized him from somewhere, but couldn’t recall ever having met him.
What had he just said?
“How dare you… Who are you, anyway?”