After the Eclipse

by Fran Dorricott

  “You said you have different designs of rings now,” I said, falling over myself to get the words out. “What did you mean? How did you know that Olive’s ring was different from them?”

  My heart was in my mouth, which was dry as sandpaper and just as unwieldy. But Ady just shrugged unaware of the hysteria bubbling inside me that threatened to burst out at any moment.

  “You asked about a mermaid. We haven’t had those ones in years. I’m – sorry. Are you okay?”

  I let out a bark of hysterical laughter, unable to control myself. I wanted the ground to swallow me whole.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Oh my God. I must have sounded crazy. I just… I don’t know. I’m latching onto things. We were doing this memory thing and I got so wrapped up in it…”

  Ady didn’t echo my laugh, but a bemused look flitted across his features as he scanned the remaining bottle of booze.

  “Are you sure you need to buy any more of this?” he asked.

  “Oh, I’m not drunk. Just hysterical. Don’t mind me.”

  I could still feel the fire in my memory of that summer day in 1999. The unrelenting, angry heat. And the smell of oranges – now that I had smelled them once, they wouldn’t go away. Tinged with the alcohol scent of the hand sanitiser that sat on the till. I was going insane, I thought. That was the only thing that made sense. I was going insane and I was taking Marion with me.

  The memory of that summer day expanded, ever more haunting. I apologised to Ady again, grabbed the two bottles and left the shop.

  * * *

  Outside, the air had cooled considerably and I was no longer warm from the walk. One of the street lamps was out and another flickering ominously. I shivered.

  It was getting to me. I knew it was, but what had happened in there with Ady… I felt like a fool. The way I’d spoken to him, and to Doctor White. This was getting to be a habit.

  I cut across the Circle and sat on the edge of the fountain, the stone foundation digging into my heels through my shoes as I pressed them against the wall. I put one bottle on the ground next to my feet, and opened the other one eagerly. I stared at the bottle, felt the reassuring weight of it in my hand. There was nobody here, and given the fact that half the town was probably still out searching for Bella Kaluza I didn’t think I was likely to be disturbed.

  That’s what you should be doing, said the little voice inside my head. You should be out there. You should be helping, instead of accusing every bloke in town of kidnapping little girls.

  I stared at the bottle for another moment. Imagined the taste of the cheap wine, imagined the warm feeling in my gut. My fingers clenched hard against the cool glass, and I realised I was trembling. I thought of what Doctor White had said to me when he’d visited. That Gran was lucky not to have been more hurt. It hadn’t sounded like a threat at the time but now, here, in the dark with the cold wind at my back, I was embarrassed to realise I was afraid.

  What on earth did I think I was doing? I couldn’t play at this. It was Marion’s job, not mine. And, I realised, if nothing else, I was just making it harder for her.

  I stared into the pools of lamplight across from the fountain. I had been so focused on trying to find out what happened to my sister I hadn’t considered that Marion was going out of her way to follow my leads as well as her own, watching my back as I offended witness after informant after friend. Was I endangering Bella by wasting precious police time? If anything happened to her, I wasn’t sure I would be able to forgive myself.

  I put the bottle down next to the other one by my feet, suddenly tired.

  “Cassie?”

  I hadn’t even heard the car. I craned my neck, seeing a figure silhouetted by the headlights of a dark vehicle. I knew it was Marion, knew by the slope of her shoulders. The sight of her made my blood rush inside my ears. I saw the bottles on the ground, saw them for what they were: a crutch. An easy way out of a shitty situation, just like it had always been. Marion’s expression was warm as she approached, worry in her eyes, and I realised my breathing was finally normal again.

  “I’m okay,” I said. “I’m just taking a second. Panic attacks, wine… It seemed like a good idea at the time, but I’m having second thoughts about it.”

  “Good,” Marion said, picking up one of the bottles and frowning at it. “I thought you had better taste in wine than that.”

  38

  MARION SAT NEXT TO me on the sofa, her body pressed against mine. She cupped a mug of hot tea, blowing steam as we watched the fire that she’d lit. It cast the room in an orange glow, exaggerating everything. Marion’s features seemed to stretch as she leaned over to place her drink on the coffee table.

  “I’m such a shit,” I said.

  “No, you’re not.”

  “I can’t believe I stormed out on you like that, and I basically yelled at Ady too.”

  “It’s okay, Cassie. I’m proud of you. I know I don’t always say that, but I know how hard it is for you. I should never have made you do that – go through those memories. I knew it was going to be painful for you, but I didn’t think enough about it. I should have let somebody else do it because me being there probably made you feel…”

  “I hated you.” I stared at her. “I actually thought that. I thought that I hated you.”

  Marion’s face fell. “You… do?”

  “No. It’s just… I was angry. About then. And about now. About you and Fox, too, I think. And then I stormed off and took it out on Ady.”

  “I only slept with Matthew once.” Marion turned to me and took my hand. “I – I’m not saying it because I owe you anything. I’m just clearing the air. I want you to know that it happened, and that it didn’t mean anything.”

  “I didn’t…”

  “Come on. We’re both adults here.”

  I didn’t want to imagine Marion with him. But the tone of her voice made it clear that, whether it meant anything or not, it was over. And I felt a weight lift off my shoulders, a weight I hadn’t even realised I’d been carrying. I wondered if that was why Fox had been so horrid to me – because he knew what I meant to Marion. And what Marion meant to me.

  The thought of her talking to him about me made me perversely happy.

  We lapsed into silence. Despite the events of the night, it was a comfortable silence. It felt like we’d reached some sort of truce, admitted that there had been a problem between us, and now we could set it all aside.

  Marion shifted, the vest she’d changed into pulled low on her chest. This time I didn’t avert my gaze. Instead I thought back to that summer. How Marion was the only one I had eyes for. How I’d snuck away from Olive and Gran at every opportunity, happy to be sitting in the cool, damp air of the woods with her.

  We’d cycled to the Triplet Stones with a picnic, spent hours lounging by the lake when we were meant to be at Marion’s house. Her dad had been at work and Gran had been busy making plaster of Paris dinosaur moulds with Olive… Those days hadn’t been long enough. I could almost taste the dusty air, smell the cut grass and the wet mossy kiss of the earth beneath our bare legs.

  “Do you ever wish we hadn’t…?” I stopped, unsure what I was asking.

  “Kissed? Fallen in love? Been so wicked cool?”

  “Yes.”

  “No.” Marion nudged me gently. “Maybe once. But not now.”

  “What happened to us?” I asked.

  “We grew up,” she said quietly. “Realised that we couldn’t fix what happened.”

  “Can’t we?”

  I turned my body against hers. She was still the most beautiful woman I had ever known – in every way. Marion was vibrant, somehow. She understood me better than anybody else. I realised now that this was because nobody else had shared the same darkness, the same guilt that we had.

  But the darkness didn’t own Marion. She had a light deep inside her, a storm lantern. A quiet sort of confidence. She had been there when I had needed her, even if only at the other end of a phone. She was the only on
e I’d trusted enough to call when I’d found my mother’s body. The light grey and watery, my vision blurred with hot, salty tears, I’d staggered out of the room and fumbled for the phone. I didn’t call Dad. Or Gran. After the police the first person I called was Marion.

  “Do you ever think about Olive?” I asked.

  “All the time. I often wonder what she’d be doing now. Whether she’d be anything like you. I have this image of her in a lab coat somewhere.”

  I felt a lump forming in my throat and I found it difficult to breathe. I’d had the same thoughts. I’d wanted to talk to Gran about them over the years but never could – even before she started to forget things.

  “Oh, Cassie.”

  Marion wiped my tears, then leaned in and put her arms around me. She smelled like fabric softener. Her perfume was soft and musky and I breathed it in. I let her hold me, her body firm against mine. I shuffled closer, trying to rein in the tears.

  “I…”

  “It’s okay,” she whispered.

  She lifted my chin with one hand, making our eyes meet. She was smiling, the kind of smile that made her whole face light up. Not with joy, but with a sort of happiness that came from our contact. Marion leaned in and pressed her lips to mine. The feeling inside me grew and the world exploded in colour.

  It was the same feeling I remembered, only sixteen years bigger. Nobody had ever made my heart thud and my limbs shake with the same excitement as Marion. I drank her in, pulled her closer and wrapped her inside the blanket.

  “Marion…”

  “Shh.”

  She let her kisses travel from my lips down to my throat. I shivered at her touch, some core deep inside me vibrating. The years stretched behind us, a lifetime of love that we had never admitted. A lifetime of shared guilt and sadness and frustration.

  Now, somehow, it felt different. How had that happened? I marvelled at it as I ran my fingers along her jaw and traced the outline of her collarbones. I wanted to be consumed, to let her kiss it all away. Leave everything else a distant memory.

  “I’m sorry,” Marion whispered. Her lips were so close to my ear that her voice made me shiver. I held her tight.

  “What for?”

  “For not believing you. For treating you like you were… crazy. You’re not. I should have had faith in you.”

  “Yes,” I said with a small smile. “You should have. But I know you’re trying.”

  Marion shrugged. “I should have been more helpful.”

  I pushed down the guilt at the way I’d spoken to Ady, to Doctor White, to my father. Bella’s disappearance was making me lose my mind but I couldn’t blame it for all of my faults.

  “I can probably forgive you,” I said, turning my mind away from the hot feeling in my stomach, “if you let me kiss you again.”

  Her thumb massaged circular patterns on my palm as she stared into my eyes. Her lips moved without her saying anything, and I leaned in to kiss them closed. I was enveloped in softness, lost in her arms.

  “I can help with your gran, Cassie,” she whispered. “I can. I know you’re having anxiety attacks again. I know you’re trying to deal with them, but I don’t think cheap wine is the best way—”

  “I don’t need help—”

  “I want to help you. I know you think alcohol is better than sleeping pills, but neither of them are going to solve the problem. I can help.”

  “I know,” I said. I ran my thumb over her collarbone, up underneath her chin. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes grew bright and glassy at my touch. “I’m sorry. I’m trying to let you.” I thought about the threatening text messages again. How I should have told Marion about them before Gran got hurt. I vowed to try harder from now on, to let her help me, to stop trying to do everything on my own.

  Marion kissed me again, her hand at my back. Her kisses grew deeper, more searching. I let her fingers and her mouth trace the length of me, closed my eyes and lay back. Opened myself to her. She reached the little O tattooed on the inside of my elbow and let her mouth linger there, her breath hot on my skin. She didn’t have to ask what it meant; she knew, as I’d known from the minute I walked into her house why she had image after image of elephants. For memory. For Olive.

  I let Marion’s body mould to mine, wrapped my fingers in her hair and pulled her into me.

  We were still – after all this time – a perfect fit.

  * * *

  I woke with Marion’s head on my bare chest. The fire had begun to die and the room was dim with the glowing embers. The light from the street lamp outside cast faint shadows through a crack in the curtain, and Marion’s hair spilled all around her head like a pool of dark water. I brushed it back from her brow with tender fingers. She opened her eyes, shifting slightly so she could look up at me.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked, concern making her voice husky.

  “Like I scored big.”

  It was a joke, and yet it wasn’t. I felt drained, my whole body suddenly emptied of the weight I had been carrying around for days now. Weeks. Longer, even. I had carried this weight since before Bella, before Grace. Perhaps since Grandad died and I came back here. Perhaps longer still. Perhaps it was a weight I’d carried every day since Olive disappeared. I realised that everything I had been doing to avoid Marion and Bishop’s Green had all been for nothing.

  I couldn’t leave this town behind, just like I couldn’t leave her. All this running and I’d somehow come full circle. Another circle. Back to the start – where we could try again.

  “You remember, before Grandad’s funeral, when you emailed me and told me I should take Gran out of town?” My voice was quiet and it cracked.

  Marion tensed, her body pressed against the length of mine. I stroked her head, though, and she relaxed again.

  “Were you afraid? Of what would happen if I came back here? That I’d ruin everything like I always do?”

  Marion didn’t say anything right away, and then she let out a long sigh.

  “I was afraid,” she admitted. “But not because of you. It was because… I’ve spent a long time trying to get people to like me. I’m respected. I have a good job, and people around town are – they’re good to me. I was worried about what would happen if…”

  “If I blew things for you with Detective Fox,” I finished.

  “No. I don’t mean it like that. That was all a farce anyway. He’s pissy because I called the whole thing off. But it was just… comfortable. For a while. It made me feel like I fit in for once. I figured I could do the marriage and kids thing. Just be like everybody else.”

  “I get it.”

  Marion swallowed again. “I also worried that I would lose you,” she added. It was so quiet I thought I hadn’t heard her right.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was afraid that… if you were here, well, I thought… we wouldn’t get past it. I mean, we haven’t done a very good job, have we? There’s so much – so much in the past. I was afraid of the painful memories. Of the thought that we’d been hanging onto each other when we’d be better off letting go.”

  “That’s not true.”

  I could hear Marion’s breathing grow irregular. I was sure she was trying to say something, but I didn’t want to pressure her so I lay silently. I stared up at the dark ceiling, and then I turned my head so I could watch the dying fire.

  “Cassie…” Marion’s voice was quiet. It sounded like she was speaking from a room away. “When Olive was taken, I thought it was our fault. I’ve always thought it was our fault. And I know you’ve felt the same. But what if wasn’t?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Victims blame themselves for this kind of thing – I’ve seen it enough. I’ve been haunted by that moment all my life, but what if it wasn’t anything to do with us? We assumed it was because we weren’t watching her. But… there were loads of kids there that day. He could have chosen any of them, lured them away from the party.”

  I swallowed.

&
nbsp; “What I’m saying is, I don’t think it was coincidence. Or bad luck. I don’t think it was because we weren’t paying attention. At least, not just because of that. You said that you didn’t know Olive as well as you thought – but you knew she was acting differently.

  “What if the eclipse is the key to all of this? It was… symbolic. It was meant to be a fresh start – for all of us. It’s also repetition and things coming full circle. You said it yourself, there are a lot of similarities between Bella and Olive. Divorcing parents, complicated home life. The mood ring before the eclipse. Bella looks sort of similar to Olive. They’re both bookish children who like the company of grown-ups…”

  I wanted to stop her. To stop the words that were pouring out of her in a sort of fevered frenzy. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

  “What if this, now, is about repeating it?” she said. “What if whoever took Olive is recreating it? It would explain Olive’s ring turning up. Total solar eclipses – people get really superstitious. Even though it wasn’t total everywhere, it was in the media a lot. Very visible. It could be a compulsion.”

  My heart started to drum loudly. I sat upright, scooting backwards on the sofa and trying to hold the blanket over my chest. Marion had managed to put it into words – this feeling I’d had, right since the beginning.

  Marion scrambled over me and off the sofa, the suddenness of it making me jump. She was on her feet, completely naked, before I could say anything else. She grabbed her vest top and pants and started to get dressed.

  “Wait,” I said. “What’s happening?”

  “I want to show you something,” she said. “Come on. I never showed you before, but I have to now. I won’t be able to sleep until I do.”

  Baffled, I slid off the sofa and pulled my own clothes on quickly. Marion didn’t bother to dress fully. She gestured that I should follow her, and she went out of the lounge and up the stairs.

  “What on earth has got into you?” I asked.

  “Look, I started to do this when my dad died. He left a lot of stuff lying around from when he was with the police. So I gathered it all up. At first it was just… a sort of morbid curiosity. I felt guilty and it was a good way to feel like I was doing something about that. But now…”