by Callie Hart
I move quickly, shifting over the paper and setting five new images in the developer. Each of these comes out the same way, with random dark shapes and lines on them. I rotate them into the fixer and shift the other images out to hang dry on the line overhead. It doesn’t take long to finish up the whole roll of film. There are more pictures of me in there, plenty of Coralie smiling happily, but there are nine of the white shots with the black markings on them.
Once the paper has dried a little, I take down the photos and place them in a grid on the floor, three wide and three high, and I stare down at them, waiting for them to make sense. It takes some rearranging, but I eventually figure out where the lines and smudges connect.
It’s not writing after all. It’s a painting. A painting of a bird. It would have been huge. It’s on a canvas—must have been painted onto the material I bought for her, since her father refused to buy her supplies. It’s beautiful. Now that I’m looking closer I can see that there isn’t just one bird as I’d first thought, but actually three, one inside the other, the smallest just a tiny little silhouette made with three twists of a brush. It’s such a simple painting, definitely not the most complicated thing Coralie has ever painted, but it’s beautiful because I know what it represents. It’s me and her. And our baby.
This is how she was going to tell me. She came over to the house one day when we were fighting and she wanted me to develop her camera. I’d been a stubborn asshole and refused. So this is what she’d wanted to show me. I crouch down, looking down on the photographs, my heart stumbling all over the place. I’m not used to feeling like this, so torn, being tugged and pulled in so many directions all at once.
I’m angry with her. She messed up. But then I messed up, too. We both did. If it hadn’t been then, perhaps we would have done something later on, hurt each other, done something stupid to send us hurtling away from one another on different flight paths. I was so sure of us back then that I never thought it would happen, but who knows.
I’ve wanted our paths to cross again, for us to find one another and fix the hurts of the past twelve years, but Coralie’s confession has changed things. The question is, has it changed things enough to make me give up the woman I love? I can’t stop staring at the painting Coralie painstakingly took shots of for me to tell me that she was carrying my child. She was so afraid at the time—petrified, in fact. I remember all too well. But this painting isn’t carrying a message of bad news. It’s simple and fragile, but it looks to me like a message of hope. Sure, she was nervous at first about what I was going to say, but she was hopeful. The way the tiny bird in the center of the picture is being cradled by the other two is loving and protective.
We’re a family in this picture; the three of us would have been a perfectly flawed family, so full of happiness and joy. It would have been hard. It would have been difficult, but it would have been worth it.
Carefully, I collect up the photographs and stack them one on top of the other, sighing under my breath. I’ve been so fixated on Coralie failing to tell me the truth about how she lost the baby that I haven’t really focused on the real person I should be angry at.
Malcolm.
That motherfucker took so much from his daughter. He took her childhood from her. He took her innocence. And then he took our baby.
Rage floods through me, polluting me from the inside out. What kind of a man would raise his fists to a child? Especially his own child? Coralie is tall for her age, but she was willowy and hardly strong. Not compared to him, anyway. She was vulnerable, and he abused his strength, used it to control and manipulate her to his will. He was a vile old man without a single compassionate bone in his body.
It’s taken me a long time to reach boiling point, but now that I’m here, now that I’m on fire and I’m so choked with rage that I can hardly breathe, I can’t seem to calm myself down.
If Malcolm Taylor were still alive, I’d fucking kill him myself.
I pick up the stop tray filled with developing solution and I hurl it across the room, yelling, venting my rage. The small lamp on my bedside table topples over, crashing to the floor where the ceramic base smashes into pieces. The developer runs down my bedroom wall, soaking movie tickets and torn stubs from gallery shows alike.
“Fuck.” I can’t fucking cope with this. I can’t fucking do it. Coralie’s on the other side of the street, hurting as badly as I do. She lost as much as me. More. She had to experience it firsthand, had to feel her father’s fists impacting with her body over and over again. She had to live through the loss, feeling it happen inside her, feeling the life fade and dim to nothing. I can’t even comprehend how terrible that must have been for her. And then to feel responsible? To blame herself for all of these years?
Jesus, she wasn’t to blame. She was a fucking kid who should never have been in that position in the first place. Yes, my anger over her not telling me the truth has been misplaced. It’s been hard to see that until now. I feel completely fucking helpless. I wish there was something I could do to make this right, but there isn’t. Malcolm’s dead. He won in a way. He took his own life, so now I can’t relieve him of the task.
The next few minutes are surreal. I don’t purposefully open the door to my bedroom, ruining the few remaining pictures that are only half developed. I don’t purposefully find myself walking outside and into the garage, rifling through dusty old boxes and plastic containers of bolts and screws until I find a full canister of gasoline at the back of the packed space. I don’t purposefully then walk on over to Coralie’s old house and put my fist through the glass window on the front door, reaching through so I can open it and let myself inside.
My mind isn’t fixated on the highly illegal nature of what I’m about to do. I’m actually not even thinking about it. I’m only thinking about the task I must complete in the basement.
Inside the house, everything is weirdly clean and tidy. It seems as though it should be like my place, dusty and hollow, but in reality it feels as though Malcolm is still very much in residence here. Like any moment he might come barreling down the stairs, fists clenched, fury in his eyes, ready to beat the living shit out of me. I spent so little time in this house that it holds no memories for me as I walk down the wide hallway, peering through the open doorways and into the dark, silent rooms beyond.
My body is covered in goose bumps as I place the gas canister at my feet; I’ve come to a halt at the door to the basement. I shiver when I see the deadbolt on this side of the door. The chipped and splintered woodwork where someone has attempted to force it open from the other side. That was Coralie. That was the woman I love, trapped and scared, knowing what was happening inside her.
Malcolm probably stood exactly where I’m standing right now, watching the door bulge against its hinges, and he probably smiled. I can imagine him doing that. There was no compassion in the man. No soul. No heart. He wouldn’t have cared when he heard his daughter crying and pleading for his help. He would have waited for her to go silent, hours of unconsciousness, before he slide back the iron bolt and carried her out of that place.
My eyes prick with tears as I open up the door and descend.
It’s pitch black. Takes me a while to find a light switch, and during those moments of blindness, alone, oblivious of what might be waiting for me, it feels as if the darkness is a living thing, thick, like swimming through glue, and it’s trying to slip down my throat, snake its way up my nostrils, trying to drown me and choke out my voice.
Is this how she felt when she was alone down here? Was Coralie in darkness, feeling like she couldn’t fucking breathe?
Eventually my fingers trail along the wall beside me and find what they are looking for. I don’t hit the switch right away though. I take a second to pull in one last shallow breath, to try and understand what this must have been like for her. It would have been terrifying, no doubt about it.
I don’t know what I’m expecting when I turn the light on. Maybe a set of chains in the corner, bolte
d to the wall. A dingy, stained mattress in the corner, rusty spirals of springs poking through the moth eaten fabric. Scratch marks all up the walls. That’s not the case. When I turn the light on, body tensed and prepared for the worst, I see that there’s nothing down here. Literally nothing. No workbenches. No tools. No freezer. None of the things you might find in any normal basement. The walls are bare concrete. The floor is hard packed earth, flat and even. The exposed beams that support the ceiling and the walls are raw timber, and they look like they have been treated at some point with some sort of varnish. The space looks like it’s never been used for anything at all, let alone as a prison for a seventeen-year-old girl.
I have to leave the basement and go back to my own garage to find a shovel. Jo Cross is etched into the wooden handle. Feels weird to be using my mother’s gardening equipment for this purpose, but I don’t have the patience to find something else. I head back down the basement steps next door with my heart somewhere in between my throat and the pit of my stomach, head spinning with anger, and I get to work.
Coralie never said where she buried the body.
At some point I take my shirt off, my torso slick with sweat, and I work for a long time. I have no idea how deep she would have gone. I have no idea whether she would have tried to hide the spot from Malcolm. All I know is that I’m not leaving this sinister, awful fucking place until I find the body of my baby.
It’s after midnight by the time I accomplish my goal. I’ve carefully lifted well over half of the basement floor, digging and then filling in holes as I go, until I finally come across a small dull white length of material about a foot below the surface. It’s folded and worn, so tattered and old that it almost falls apart in my hands as I lift it out of the ground.
It’s so light. Maybe this folded bundle of cloth isn’t what I’m looking for after all. Coralie was only four and a half months pregnant, though. The baby would have barely been formed. Certainly wouldn’t have weighed much. And after all of this time…
I think about opening up the cloth. That’s so fucking macabre, though. I just can’t do it. My child, whoever he or she was, has been at rest for a really long time. It would be wrong for me to disturb that rest. It would break my heart to do it. And besides, when I carefully turn the bundle over in my hands, I see something distinct that lets me know this is what I’m looking for—the faded, muddied outline of a bluebird.
I feel like someone has their hands around my throat, preventing me from drawing breath. I can’t fucking believe this is happening. It’s too surreal, too awful. Way too painful. Sinking down onto the ground, I cradle the delicate bundle of fibers to me, holding it in both arms, and I sob. I fucking sob until my throat is hoarse and I my eyes don’t work anymore.
******
CORALIE
I stay at Friday’s place. It’s weird, but knowing Callan is across the street gives me some form of comfort. I’ve spent way too much of my time here in Port Royal trying to escape him, to be as far away from him as possible, but now that I’ve told him everything, that’s changed. I want to be with him. I need to be with him. I want to be forgiven. Deep in my bones, I think it may be too late, though.
It’s black as ink out of the bedroom window when Friday bustles into her tiny guest room at the back of her house and shakes me awake.
“Child. Coralie, child. Get yourself up and outta bed this instant.”
I blink up at her, trying to place where on earth I am. “What? What time is it? Is everything okay?” Friday’s always seemed healthy as a horse but the truth is she’s well into her eighties now. And she really doesn’t like taking her diabetes medication. For a moment I panic, thinking something’s terribly wrong with her.
Her eyes are bulging, the whites showing as she frantically shakes me on the bed.
“What did I say, child? I said get up and outta bed this second. Somethin’s occurring across the street. Somethin’ bad, I’d say.”
Immediately I’m no longer worried about Friday’s diabetes, and I’m wildly worried about Callan in his mother’s old house, hurt somehow. There’s every chance he’s gotten drunk, been rampaging around inside, fallen down the stairs and broken his foolish neck. I scramble out of bed and tear down the hallway, ducking around Friday’s considerable girth as I fight to get out onto the street. I’m wearing one of her oversized nightgowns. As soon as I jerk open the front door and hurry out onto the porch, a stiff gust of warm wind catches the material, sending it billowing around me in a sea of white cotton. Behind me, Friday huffs and grunts as she lumbers down the stairs. Across the street, on the other side of the road, my old house is being eaten alive by fire.
Tall columns of smoke rise up, angry and gray against the deep night blue of the sky overhead. Red, orange, and white fingers of flame lick at the windows, the glass of which has all shattered, allowing the inferno to rise like liquid light, defying gravity as it leaps and jumps up at the stars.
“Holy shit.”
“You done got that right,” Friday agrees, standing next to me. Her hair is in rollers, pinned tight to her head. The fire casts an orange glow on her skin, reflecting in the pools of her eyes. “Look like hell wasn’t satisfied with his body,” she says. “It done come and claimed your daddy’s house, too.”
I take a single step out onto the grass of the front lawn, my mouth hanging open, trying to figure out what could possibly have transpired in order that my childhood home is somehow on fire. And then I see the dark silhouette of someone standing in front of the place, a dark figure against the chaos and the light, and I know exactly what happened. Callan. Callan Cross happened.
I stumble across the cracked blacktop, my feet bare, Friday’s nightgown still billowing around me like a sail. The front gate clangs as it slams shut behind me and I step foot into the front yard for the first time in twelve years. Callan hears—his shoulder tense slightly at the ringing echo of metal that carries down the deserted street.
He doesn’t turn around, though. He continues staring into the flames, eyes locked on the open front door and the madness he’s created. “It had to happen,” he whispers. “You’re not angry.” He says this as a statement, just in case I was thinking about giving him grief. I don’t intend on it, however. I’m stunned as I stand beside him, looking up at the destruction taking place, devouring the building where I was tormented for so many years.
It’s raw and beautiful, savage and overwhelming all at once.
I can’t hold back my tears. Callan’s face is streaked with soot and his own tears. He looks like a wild animal. Distant. Lost. I ache from my very core—a radiating ache that burns me from the bottom of my stomach up to my heart, my throat, my hands, my legs, everywhere. I ache in my soul. It’s painful and freeing at the same time. God, I had no idea how free I could feel until this moment.
The house was never the problem. It was just the backdrop for the violence and the abuse. But now that it’s burning, groaning and splintering, falling apart, beams and walls tumbling down inside, it feels like I’m really and truly free. I have no idea how that could possibly be the case but it’s true.
I’m startled when Callan takes my hand in his. As I was tripping over here, legs not working properly, mind gripped in amazement, it occurred to me that Callan might have set the place on fire as an act of anger toward me. As a spiteful act of revenge, since the proceeds of the sale of the house was meant to come to me.
But no…I see when I turn and look up into his eyes that this had nothing to do with me. This was about grief, overcoming pain. Taking back control.
“I should have done this,” I whisper. “I should have done this a long time ago.”
“You couldn’t have,” Callan says. His hand tightens around mine ever so slightly, and then he pulls me closer so he can wrap his arm around my shoulder. “You were raised in violence, but your soul doesn’t crave it, bluebird. Despite everything, you’re still gentle inside. You’re still you.”
How can he see me that way? Ho
w can he see any part of me as gentle? It makes no sense. I cry harder, turning so I can bury my face into his smoke filled shirt. I can smell gasoline on him, the chemical bite of the accelerant clinging to his clothes almost as fiercely as I now cling to him. He runs his hand over my hair over and over again mechanically as he watches the house burn.
“I’m meant to go back to New York tomorrow,” he says quietly.
“Are you going to go?” Dear god, I hope he’s not. I don’t want him to leave now. He can’t. Thankfully, Callan shakes his head.
“No. No, I’m not going anywhere, bluebird. I’m staying right here and we’re fixing things. And when we go, we go together. It can’t be any other way. I won’t allow it.”
For once I don’t argue with him. He’s right; it can’t be any other way. There is no other way now. It has to be me and him. Me and him always, the way it was meant to be before the world ended.
Callan and I stand there and watch. After a while the sun starts to come up and the structure of the house fails. No one calls nine one one. By the time the fire trucks make an appearance, my old house has been razed to the ground and all trace of Malcolm Taylor is gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CORALIE
Goodbye Part II
NOW
The funeral takes place three days later.
I wear one of my mothers dresses—the black one I was planning on wearing the night Callan asked me to go to the house party with him. I remember thinking once upon a time that I wasn’t going to be able to fit into Mom’s clothes anymore, and that had made me immeasurably sad. However as I became a woman, my body leaned out, became lithe and compact, and when I opened up the boxes that Callan confessed he bullied out of Ezra, all of her things fit me perfectly.