Page 170 of Into the Dark
“Not sure. Doesn’t say. He might have been sick.”
“What kind of sick?”
“The really bad kind.”
“That’s when you die? When you’re really bad kind of sick?”
“Not always, no.”
“His mummy and daddy must be sad.”
My stomach lurches again. Fucking hell, I’m going to throw up. My forehead breaks out in sweat, my hands too, so I feel my grip on his slip a little. I let go of him and wipe my palm on my thigh before retaking it.
“I’m sure they are, buddy.” I nod. “Let’s keep going, yeah? Then we can go for ice cream.”
He nods and lets me pull him back to the path.
Her stone is black. Shiny gold engraving. No photo. There are some nice pink flowers around the sides. Wonder who brought them. I fucking hate this place. I never want to set foot in this place again. This is the last time I’ll come here—ever. I don’t belong here. Caleb doesn’t either. If he wants to come back when he’s older, then that’s his choice. But I’ll plant a tree or something, and we can visit that instead in the meantime.
“Why is there no picture of her?” he asks.
“Um, ’cause she didn’t want one.” She probably would have wanted one. But then she’d have liked a lot of things I wasn’t ever going to give to her.
“Why?”
“Not sure, mate. She just didn’t.”
Fuck, I wish Alex were here with me. Alex is better at this. She’s always been better at explaining things to him in ways that make sense to his little head. She’s always been better at everything.
As he lets go of my hand and crouches in front of the grave, I think I might pass out. Guilt can do that, I’ve found. I never considered the amount of guilt I’d have to swallow after. Self-hatred I know well. I wear it comfortably and always will. But guilt has never plagued me, not really, not even over Fred. So this is unexpected.
Lifting off my cap, I drag a hand through my hair and down over my face and take a deep breath. Get it together. For him. You owe him that much.
“They made us say a prayer at nursery,” he says. “But I don’t ’member the words.” He reaches out and brushes his stubby little fingers over the crinkled orange leaves lying on the base of the stone, wiping them away.
“That’s okay, mate,” I tell him. “Why don’t you just say something else then? Tell her something.”
“I’m going to live in ’merica,” he says after thinking about it hard. “Next to the beach. It’s warm there and we have a swimming pool, and Dad says I can have a dog.” In the newly cleared space he sets the flowers down on their side, stems tied with a white elastic band covered with a pale blue ribbon. He picked them himself from the large buckets out front.
Her stone doesn’t say how she died. It also doesn’t say she’s with the angels now. ’Cause she isn’t. That’s some bullshit they tell children and grieving people, and I’m neither of those things. My name is also nowhere to be seen—I don’t belong there either. I kept it simple. Factual.
Victoria Elizabeth Ward
1988–2020
Mother, Daughter, Niece & Friend
It’s like a terrible fucking Facebook bio. “Hairdresser, tea-drinker, vodka-lover, animal-hater.” The alternative, what I wanted to have written on the overpriced slab of polished stone—well, that would have cost less and been far more fucking apt: “Junkie bitch, got what she deserved.”
Not that Cale will ever know that. He’ll never know her and Kevin’s plan to take Alex from me almost worked. He’ll never know how I almost killed her with my bare fucking hands. He’ll never know that her spiral after Fred was arrested gave me the perfect opportunity to get rid of her for good. It was far too late for forgiveness where Vicky was concerned. If she’d had it her way, Alex and my baby would be dead. It’s a crime I was never gonna let go unpunished.
She’ll still be the first mother he ever had. But I hope over the years, bit by bit, memories of her will fade and wash away, replaced by new ones: Alex. Sisters. Brothers. Dogs. Beaches. Sun. Happiness. Love. He’s young enough that he doesn’t have too many memories that require washing away. Not like I did.
I have new ones now, of course. Lighter ones. But the darkest, blackest memories are always the hardest to wash away—I know that better than most. And the memory of that night will never leave me. I walked my whole life through a hundred times on that drive the night I tried to get to her. Back, left turn, forward, back, right turn, a different choice this way, another one that way, back, forward, forward, back. Don’t look up. That night, the first night I saw her, that’s the only other choice I could have made. Don’t look up. Don’t look up.
But what the fuck good was that? I’ve waited my whole life for her. To feel the way she makes me feel. She’s the other half of me—I knew that long ago. The same way I knew all my choices led me to her. She’s the only option open to me. Her. Just her. A laugh, a moan, a cry, French-talking in bed, strawberries, a smile. A photo album of moments that are far more than I deserve.
More memories now though—darker, harder to wash away: a bathroom floor, a battered face, an ambulance, a hospital bed, tubes, wires, plastic bags of air, needles in the pale-white skin of her arm, insides explored, doctors looking for life or death. I did that to her. I did that because I gave him a pass. Because I told him to run. And because I was looking forward and not back.