Page 43 of A Sorrow of Truths
“And if you want the truths to continue, I did it without consent on the first one,” he says, bringing my face back to him. “She was a young maid here. The rest of them were given a substantial pay out for their involvement in the trials, as was the first eventually. Beatrice, my sister who you saw earlier, stays on top of the data. She’s far more of a prodigy than me, but even with that, I still can’t make anything work successfully.” He nods at my body, a smile coming from nowhere, and steps towards me. “That’s her dress by the way. Red looks good on you.”
I slip out of the chair I’m in, ducking around his frame to get to the door in the hope of avoiding his hands or his seemingly callous outlook. “This is all … I don’t know. I need time. Space. Something.”
I can’t think here with her in the room, can’t see anything but that bed, the thought of Gray with her even it wasn’t real according to him, and those other poor women he played with.
“I like my humans sentient when I fuck with them.”
That’s all I can find in my thoughts, all I can hear. That’s what he’s done. With them. With me maybe. But not with her, not with his wife. She’s the only one that hasn’t been sentient.
And Charlie? I stare out of the doors we came in through, wondering where he is, or what he even is to Gray if he isn’t his son.
His hand touches my shoulder, as if to turn me, hold me, make me feel the same way I used to when he landed on my skin. I swipe it off, and keep staring at outside of here “No, Gray. I can’t.”
“Can’t? Or don’t want to now? I’m still who I was, Hannah.”
That might be true, but all this around him is far from what I knew before.
And that makes him someone completely new to me.
“I want to go. I can’t be here with you,” I murmur.
A pause happens. A pause so long I don’t know how time works around the feel of it in my mind. It seems like hours. Hours with nothing but breaths and silence while we’re not looking at each other.
“Alright. I’ll have Jackson bring the car around for you.”
I look back at him, unsure of the finality that statement brings or my feelings about either option. He smiles sadly, as if that’s all he’s got to give me. It’s not enough because now I’ve made a choice and decided to leave his voice behind, I can’t bear the thought of not hearing it again.
Swallowing the need to go back to him, pushing it downwards into recesses so I can think clearly without the need for him building any further than it is doing, I choke out another sob I can’t control. It hurts. Everything does. Even my bones feel weary, as he walks over and opens the doors for me. I can smell him, feel him, and even see him when my eyes are closed.
Hallways pass by in a blur of pale colours, the peculiar silence of the place feeling as uncomfortable as the room I’ve just been in is. No warmth. No heat or happiness. There’s nothing that gives me a sense of him to cling onto at all, only the sound of his footsteps that, as always, seem in time with my own heartbeat.
“You have your truths. You can do what you want with them,” he says, as we reach the main foyer in this vast house. He picks out his cell and quickly presses something in, opening the door to the night air again. A shiver rides over me the moment we step out into it, and his jacket is placed on my shoulders before I’ve even noticed him take it off.
“I’m sorry if it hurts, for what that’s worth,” he says quietly, walking us down the steps. He sits when we reach the last one, looking at the spot next to him as if I should take it. “I did try to say no to you. Several times. And I did tell you you didn’t want to know this. You’re quite tenacious. And too damn beautiful.” I keep looking down at him, watching as he looks out into the night rather than at me. “Never had someone do that to me before. Didn’t believe in love either. But here you are.”
My eyes widen, fingers gripping the lapel of this jacket, as if losing it might mean losing him.
“You can sit, Hannah. I won’t bite.”
A small smile comes to me at that through my trembling lips, as my hands wipe away the tears I will not continue to cry in front of him. “You might. You’ve done it before.”
“Not tonight, though.”
Not tonight.
I sit with him and look out into the sky, not knowing what to say, do, or think. So many truths. All of them now out in the open for me. I’m so tired. Drained, shattered and crushed. If I could do anything now other than give myself space, I’d crawl into his arms and let the rest of the night pass us by in sleep, perhaps hoping that when we woke, when the birds chirped and the sun came up, everything would be full of snow and ice again rather than this impeccably presented display of lies.
It was safer there at Malachi’s. Less honest in some ways maybe, but yet more honest because of that deceit.
The thought makes me look back at the house, at the sight of something that is nothing like him and think of Heather in the bed. All these years of his life devoted to something that doesn’t apparently mean anything to him. Why? It seems so counter intuitive. So pointless and futile if there’s no love or care. He could have made another life by now. Lived it.
“I still don’t understand why,” falls out of my lips. “Why the need to wake her if you don’t care? Why not just leave her and …” A self-loathing settles in me at what I was going to say. Move on? Forget? Ignore the body and pretend it never existed?
He sighs and then chuckles a little. “Because I’m an obstinate brute, apparently.” Well, that’s probably true. I look over the lines of his face, both fascinated with them and regretful for the fatigue that seems as carved in as mine own feels. “A brute who wanted answers to lies. Perhaps I’ve been persistently senseless, stupid maybe, but either way she hasn’t deserved rest. Nothing else mattered until you. I don’t know now.”
All those words mean too much for me to be able to fathom. I’m too tired. Too confused. And too emotional about things that have made my heart both beat in joy and break in sorrow to find answers anymore.
His car pulls around the corner after a while of continued silence and stops in front of us, Jackson stepping out of it and opening the back door.