“Ara, my love, there is no going back.” His hands tightened on my face. “We make mistakes, we have regrets, but, sweetheart—” He opened and closed his mouth a few times, his eyes searching my face for any words he could say to make it all okay. “It was selfish of you to make her come out and get you in the middle of the night, and it if it weren’t for that, she would never have been there when that truck tire blew out. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t her time to go. You can’t control everything, Ara, and what matters is that, if you were to go back, you’d do it differently.”
“How is that possibly any good to me—to know that?”
“Because you learned something. And if that’s all you can take from this, then it’s better than walking away with only grief.”
I shook my head. “Don’t give me that rubbish, David. They spoon-fed me that crap in the hospital until I nearly choked on it. There is no lesson to be learned. There is no goddamn bright side. There are two facts here; they are dead, and if I hadn’t called Mom, they wouldn’t be.”
I could tell David was frustrated. I could tell he wanted to shake me. I wanted to shake me. I didn’t want to feel this way, and couldn’t expect anyone else to understand, which is precisely why I hadn’t said it to anyone.
“Why are you shaking your head?” I asked him.
“I just…I’m angry. Not at you, but…at everything. What…who was looking after you? Who’s been talking to you about this, who have you had to comfort you?”
I brushed my hair from my face. “My dad.”
“Does he know you blame yourself?”
I swallowed, unable to see my shoes through the blur of tears. “No.”
“What kind of closure have you had, girl? Did he even let you farewell them in their graves before he dragged you away from the only home you’ve ever known?” David sounded almost as angry as me.
“We went to the funeral. But a storm hit. It rained so hard I could only see a grey blur in front of me where their coffins should be. And most people left.”
“Did you?”
I nodded. “At first, I refused. I knelt on the ground, in the mud, letting it soak through my clothes. I just wanted to touch them—to feel them again.”
“But your dad made you leave, didn’t he?”
I nodded again. “I sat there, with my hand on Harry’s coffin, just watching the rain drip over my skin and into the ground where he was headed. I didn’t want him to go in there. I didn’t want that to be it for him. And my dad…he sat down next to me.” I smiled. “He got covered in mud. He just took my hand and moved it down a little, told me it was over Harry’s heart—that he had his teddy and his little blanket in there to keep him warm and that, tucked up right beside his face was a picture of me and Mom. And I got up, and as soon as Dad got to his feet too, I shoved him, and I yelled at him.”
“Why?”
“A teddy?” I wiped my nose on the back of my wrist. “He put a teddy in there with Harry. What teddy? Why didn’t he come to me? Ask me? Harry would’ve wanted his monkey—Pappy. He wouldn’t want some stupid teddy. But it was too late. It was sealed up—locked up. I couldn't change it. I couldn’t change any of it.”
“Goddamn it.” He rested his chin on my head, shaking his. “Ara, I just—I just wish I’d known you then. I just wish I’d met you sooner. I had no idea you were carrying this much grief. I mean, I knew you were sad, I knew you were grieving, but this…” He kissed my hair. “I didn’t know it went this deep.”
“No one does. And I won’t tell them. And neither will you.” It came out as a demand, but deep down, it was a question. He held all the cards right now. If he told my dad I called my mum that night, I’m not sure Dad would ever forgive me.
David’s soothing touch wordlessly tried to wash the pain of my scars away. He just sat there, shaking his head, making line after line over my jaw. “When did this happen? You arrived here a month ago, but your scars—they’re healed too much to have such little time pass.”
“It was June. My dad and I stayed at a motel until my face healed enough for me to go out in public again.”
“A motel? Didn’t you have any family to stay with?”
“Only Mike—my best friend. But I didn’t want to see him, and we couldn’t go back to the house. Dad said it would be too painful.”
“It would’ve. But you still should have gone back once before leaving.”
“I did. I made him take me back there before we got on the plane, and…”
“And?”
As I craned my neck to look at David, he gazed down at me, the feel of his breath on my nose and lips calming me with the reality of his existence.
“Talk to me, Ara.”
I pictured the grey day, the cold wind and the rain making waterfalls over the windscreen as we pulled up outside my house. The lights were all out and the remainder of the daylight fought against thunderclouds for right of existence in my world. I took each shaky step up to the porch with a kind of stillness that had my dad lingering closely behind me. “It hadn’t really hit me that they were gone,” I said. “Not until I pushed the door open and looked down the hall. And…for a second, I waited, expecting, truly believing I’d see Harry crawl up to me at full speed with his little train in his hand.
“Everything looked the same and it smelled like home, but it was empty—and so very quiet—like they weren’t there anymore. I couldn’t feel them there anymore.” I tapped my chest with an open palm, trying to push the pain back in. “The dishes were still in the sink, and the clock on the wall was still ticking—that much stayed the same. It felt strange, how, even though we weren’t there, time just kept moving without us.” I shook my head slowly, seeing that ticking hand. “It should’ve stopped, but it didn’t. That’s when I fell down. It hit me so hard. I just broke apart and cried in the doorway.
“Dad didn’t know what to do. He ran next door to get Mrs Baker; she made me get up. She told me I had to be strong now; that childhood passes with tragedy, and the sooner I came to accept that, the easier my life would be.”
David groaned, folding my face into his chest. “What did your dad say to that?”
“Nothing. He just led me to my room and shut the door.” I closed my eyes and saw the dark shadows in the hallway near my room, how the absence of that warm summer sun meant the death of everything I loved. “I packed a few things, and…as I was leaving, I went to Harry’s room—to get Pappy, his monkey toy, but Dad blocked the door; he wouldn’t let me go in there.” I broke to tears so deep the words came out in hiccups.