The Clouds Aren't White

by Rachael Wright

  "It’s not the change of scenery, you know. I gave myself the chance, the chance at a life."

  The sky darkens around us, the lights from the surrounding houses casting a warm orange glow on the ground, beckoning their occupants inside.

  "Is there a chance of being friends?" Ian asks in a husky strained voice.

  "Yes,” I say, looking up into his pained face.

  "Maybe there will be a day when I'm not so broken and you won't have to fix me."

  He moves closer. The saltiness of the sea tickles my nose; the space between us is so small I can make out patterns of freckles on his face.

  "I can't promise anything...Sophie...she's all I have room for."

  Ian moves closer still, his eyes shifting over my face.

  "I'll have to wait then," Ian says and delicately lays a hand on my cheek.

  His face is so close I can feel the coolness of his breath, there's even a vein throbbing in his neck.

  "Ian..." I say, breathing out his name, but his lips drift over my own, tasting of sun and sweat and salt.

  The unshaven stubble of his face pulls roughly over my cheek. He leaves before I can even draw a breath, before I can process what has happened. I stand rooted in the street even as the first drops of the evening storm pool in potholes and tinkle on the metal roofs of cars. I'm soon wet to the skin; the heavy material of my jeans sticks uncomfortably. Chills run down my arms in waves. I don't remember standing here, rooted absurdly in the middle of the street.

  "Where have you been?"

  It sounds like a malediction. My father stands with his hands perched on his hips like a mother hen.

  "The mail," I say, holding up the rain-splattered envelopes.

  "You look upset."

  "I'm fine." I say, pushing past him and dropping the mail on the entry table.

  "You don't look fine."

  "Ian kissed me." I say, making my way towards the kitchen.

  "He what?"

  "You heard.”

  "As your father..."

  "Drop it."

  "And what about your happiness? What about your life?" he says from behind, pulling me around to face him.

  "I am happy," I say looking towards the living room where Sophie's flitting from one grandparent to the next, reveling in the attention. "I used to think moving would make me happy and for a moment that having love again would make me happy. Happiness isn't about gaining the last piece of the puzzle; it’s about treasuring what you already have. Holding it lightly in your hand and wanting nothing else."

  As the anniversary looms, a cloud of pain descends upon us all. All I dream about is a twisted maze with Hugh's voice calling out to me. I can't escape this purgatory, and the nauseating worry that I might be slipping back into a pit of grief. I feel like some hunted thing, chased by Hugh and the faceless man alike. To escape, I drink too much red wine, listen to the music of the waves on a pebbled shore, surrounded by love, and I pretend I'm not tormented.

  On the eve of the anniversary, I'm the last to retire. I recoil in fear of my bed, of the nightmares awaiting me in its seductive comfort. I drag a thick wool blanket and a pillow over to the bedroom's bay window and curl up like a cat. A full moon is perched starry sky and in its bright light I can make out individual pebbles on the shore of the loch and the outlines of boats in the harbor with their bright white sails. It’s mesmerizing, almost as if it were a secret between the moon and I-this midnight beauty.

  I wake to something burning my eyes, gnawing at my corneas, urging them to open. The curtains are wide open and beams of sunlight fill the room. A thick sheen of sweat lays heavy my face; I can feel its droplets curling down towards my neck. Remnants of the nightmares come back to me, loud echoing shots in the dark and the hot sick feeling of blood running in rivers down my face.

  "You're up early," my mother-in-law says as I walk bleary-eyed into the kitchen.

  It also blazes with a too bright morning light.

  "I could say the same for you," I say, feeling my way around to the coffee maker.

  "I already started it."

  "Many thanks."

  "The least I could do after you opened your home to us," she says, scooting out a chair and patting its seat.

  I'm surprised by her cordial manner but comforted all the same.

  "How'd you sleep?"

  "Poorly...."

  "I'm sorry..." I say, looking down at the deep groves of the oak table, trying to hide a shudder at the memory of blood.

  "To lose a child, no mother should have to..."

  She rises and brings the coffee pot over to fill our mugs.

  "How do you get through it?"

  She considers my question for a moment, looking past me towards the open window. Her face is soft and lax, as though she's lost in the memories of decades before. I imagine her thinking of a small boy running through the house on Christmas, of the first day of school, of the night he died.

  "You."

  My mouth veritably drops open.

  "Wh...what?"

  "Whether or not I wanted it, you became my daughter when my son fell in love with you."

  "I don't follow," I say staring across at her, my eyes can't seem to move.

  "Its what any mother does I suppose, when you see pain you try to help...to lessen it in some small way."

  Her eyes drift over me, and come to rest on a picture of Hugh perched on the counter opposite.

  "So you..."

  "I had someone to take care of. I'm sure you've experienced something similar." She says with an appraising look over her nose.

  "I have..."

  "Its a strange thing, the amount we can endure as women...as mothers...if we have someone to love, someone to care for."

  Her voice is soft and contemplative, devoid of the anger so blatantly present during her last visit.

  "It devastated me for a long while. The thought of never seeing him again and of all the years that lay ahead of me, but mostly Sophie. She'd never get another father. Not like Hugh."

  "Is that why you left?" she asks.

  "I left so I could be whole, or so I could have a chance at being whole. For her. It was always for her. Everything." We're quiet for a time, watching the sun, casting down its golden beams, lighting up the blue-grey waters of the loch.

  "I wondered. And Ian?"

  "What about him?"

  "What's his part in this?"

  Her brows knit together, her lips purse over the rip of the coffee mug, suspicion flits around the corners of her eyes.

  "Nothing. When I look at him, my heart doesn't flutter...I don't yearn for the next time he'll catch me unawares. We could, get along well together and create a life..." I say and pause when the image of my family as it once was, swims into view, well and truly taking my breath away, "He's a good man, handsome and hardworking, but we'd forever be chasing an image of what life should look like. Not what life is."

  "And Sophie?"

  "Sophie's in love with her father. I'll catch her staring at photos of him, running her little fingers over his face. The book of memories I gave her for her birthday hasn't left her side. She yearns for him, for any previously unearthed or forgotten memory of his presence in her life. I suppose that's why I won't marry again..."

  "For Sophie..."

  "Yes...for Sophie, for the woman she will grow to be. So she'll know she was loved."

  "I wonder what would happen if more of us valued our children over ourselves...?" she says, swishing the last dregs of coffee.

  "The world might end," I say with a laugh.

  "No it wouldn't end..." she says with a sigh.

  A bedraggled six-year-old appears on the threshold.

  "Mommy..." she says, her head lolling forward.

  "Good morning, sweetheart," I say and pull her forward onto my lap.

  She's a comfortable weight and though her growing frame spills out of my arms, its heavenly. Her hair smells of sunshine and the clear ocean air, or laundry set outside on a warm
day. Holding her is calming, calming in a way nothing else is.

  "Did you have anything planned?"

  She doesn't elaborate but we all know what she's referring to.

  "No," I say, without lifting my head from where its buried in Sophie's curls, which smell of lavender.

  In all the months following our move, I never once thought about what I would do to commemorate the anniversary of Hugh's death.

  "What do you want to do, Sophie?"

  Sophie raises her head and shakes it firmly from side to side. It’s quite how I feel.

  "How about a walk...or maybe a picnic?" she says plowing on.

  Sophie shakes her head again and my mother-in-law sinks back into her chair, a pained expression on her face.

  "Let's get dressed, Sophie," I say and urge her upstairs. "We can talk in a bit," I add to my mother-in-law and set off in Sophie's wake.

  "I don't like today," Sophie says with a grunt.

  She slips out of her pajamas and frowns at their inert shapes on the floor. I wonder if she expects them to move, to fly at her, to cause more mayhem.

  "I don't like today either," I say and head off to terse the sheets off the bed.

  The room is uncomfortably warm, so I move over to the windows first and throw them open with a clatter. Sophie's window looks over the loch to the east and its already bustling with tourists going out to sea for the day.

  "Do you think my heart will get bad again, Mommy?"

  I turn to see her long body clothed only in underwear.

  "Not if we take good care of it. Dr Wolfe said you will be fine as long as we are careful," I say with a smile, but instead of being reassured her face falls into abject misery and she collapses on the floor, a pile of limbs.

  "Sophie!" I say, sprinting over to her. "Sweetheart? Shh, everything's going to be fine. I'm right here. You don't have to worry about your heart, it's..."

  But what it was, I don't get the chance to say.

  "I want it to get bad again!" she wails and with a rush begins to sob.

  Tears stream down her cheeks, one after the other in rapid succession. Under my arms her back heaves with overwhelming pain. I hear feet patter outside and then stop in front of Sophie's door. I close my eyes, praying no one enters.

  "Why?" I say, barely able to speak.

  "Because...I could see him..." she says between sobs, "Maybe if it got bad again, then he would come back and I...I could spend some more time with him. We could be together."

  I can't help it. I collapse against Sophie and our tears mingle as our sorrow is mingled. We cry and mourn as we did on the day he died. I don't have the words for Sophie, to reassure her. I don't even have the words for myself. Instinct has at last failed me. We sit, drowning in wretchedness, and the more we cry, the more right the world seems. I wonder at my own hubris, how I thought I could so just set aside my own grief and pretend it didn't exist.

  "What would you tell him?" I whisper, looking at the puddle of tears on the hardwood floor, which cast tiny beacons of light around the walls.

  Sophie heaves a mammoth sigh, her breath catching as she exhales.

  "I love him."

  "What else?"

  Sophie is quiet for a moment, contemplating the leather bound book perched on her nightstand.

  "I remember,” she says, breathing out the words as though they were a spell.

  "He would be so proud of you."

  I run my fingers through her hair, the silken strands slipping across the pads of my fingers.

  "I remember when he used to tuck me into bed and we'd talk about you...I remember Daddy always smiled when he talked about you and his eyes got all shiny as though he was going to cry. But happy tears, not sad ones. We didn't cry as much then."

  Sophie's eyes glaze over as she speaks. I can't help but smiling thinking that even the worst days come with their own gifts.

  "We don't have to cry as much now."

  "No, its ok, Mommy. I like talking about him. I don't mind crying for Daddy"

  "You don't need to wish for your heart to get bad again. We can talk about him as much as you want. We don't ever have to stop."

  Sophie considers me for a moment before she pulls both hands across her eyes, wiping the tears away.

  "I know its bad to want to see him again," she says with a bowed head.

  "Its not bad. I wish I could see him again too, but I am so happy you did get to see him."

  I don't tell her I was jealous or how I wished for my own lifethreatening episode where I too could see him again. Those are things you don't tell a child, those are things you shouldn't even wish for as an adult...as a mother. I don't mind as much now, I see Hugh in Sophie. When I least expect it, he shows himself most clearly and I am grateful. Grateful that a part of him still walks this earth.

  We sit for a long while. Sophie doesn't try to get up even when the shower starts in the bathroom across the hall. I settle more comfortably by her and she traces the sunlight on my skin, sending waves of goose bumps up and down my arm.

  "How about clothes?"

  Both of my legs have fallen asleep and are being tortured by tiny invisible knives. Sophie heaves a great sigh and shrugs her shoulders in resignation. Its strange, the difference in our lives from one year to the next. I wonder whether I should feel more anger for the man who shot Hugh. His haunting of my dreams irks me. I hate the banality of his featureless face.

  The day feels like some sort of trance. It’s as if it were some terrible parody of Christmas, we six, gathered together, grouped in pain. I wonder if I weren't a mother, would I drown my sorrows in a bottle of wine or the bottom of a whisky bottle? If I weren't a mother would I know how futile it is to try and escape? Would I even be able to cope, if everything that was good and bright in my life didn't even exist?

  We picnic on one of the many hills surrounding Portree. There's no use in trying to get away from the tourists. I don't even mind them. They make me feel that the world still turns and that somewhere people still lead normal lives. I wonder when we see a young family with three little ones, running around in the heather, whether they've known pain. Which of them will be the first to die.

  "You've got a call!" my father bellows from inside the house. Sophie and I are outside, weaving dandelions into a crown, flowers that took an hour to scavenge. Sophie looks up and smiles, then drops her head again over the tiny golden crown. With a soft pat on her head I jog back into the house to find my father standing in the sun washed living room holding out my cell phone.

  "Why don't you take it upstairs?" he says, places the phone in my hand.

  I turn in, at the last moment, into Sophie's room.

  "Hello?"

  "Emmeline?" Andrew Wexford's soft voice comes through the line.

  In one great rush, the breath from my lungs is expelled and I am barely able to flop onto Sophie's bed before my legs give way.

  "Yes."

  "It's not the best day to call, I realize," he says, his voice full of concern.

  "No, I'm alright. Its nice of you to remember."

  "I'm not calling to remind you of the anniversary."

  There's pride in his voice but also something else, something reminiscent of disappointment.

  "Oh?"

  "We found him. Well we've done more than that. You have the answers you've been wanting."

  He speaks quietly and sounds exhausted.

  "What...?" I breathe.

  "We know why he was killed."

  Black dots swim across my vision. I can't feel my extremities; the world is spinning on a dime. I blink rapidly to bring into focus the photo of Hugh and Sophie hanging on the opposite wall.

  "I understand it’s a lot to take in."

  "Please, please tell me."

  I clear my throat and place my trembling hands on the rough fabric of my jeans.

  "I'll spare you the gritty investigation details, but after a great deal of leg work we were able to identify the man who shot your husband. Around the same
time the prosecutor, Gideon Mallory, who was interviewing Hugh on the day he died, decided it was in his best interest to cooperate with our investigators. The shooter's name is Victor Davies; he was a veteran of Desert Storm. His military records are impeccable. He was honorably discharged as a captain in the Marine Corps and was even awarded the Navy Cross and the Silver Star for his actions in combat.

  "We looked heavily into his background because there wasn't a motive to speak of for his actions. There was no evidence in his files he suffered from any sort of post-traumatic disorder or that he had any connection to Hugh. He wasn't even homeless as we originally thought. He did sell most of his possessions and his home and was renting an apartment in Grand Junction for about six months before the murder," Wexford takes a breath and then continues, "Are you still with me?"

  "Yes," I say impatiently.

  Nothing is as important as the end of this story, the answers as to why Hugh was gunned down, why we were left alone.

  "We went looking for family members who we might talk to, to get an idea of who Victor was. He went by Vinnie we were told. We found a younger brother. Darrell. Two years ago, Darrell was indicted for drug trafficking. Not the low level stuff, he was alleged to be the head of the largest drug ring in Colorado. I've looked at the evidence and let me tell you this...there isn't much. I don't know whether the kid was responsible. He was barely 26 at the time and just didn't look the type, not that that matters.

  "Well, his public defender was a sham and let Darrell be bowled over by Mallory. The public defender told Darrell to plead to a lesser charge or risk sent away for decades. Darrell was scared out of his wits, according to his friends (although he pleaded his innocence) and took the deal.

  "He didn't last two months in prison. There was significant inmate abuse and he was killed with a shank in the prison yard. They never identified the killer. Victor was overseas at the time, working for a private security firm, and had little communication with Darrell. He was unaware of the entire episode. He came back to the States two months after Darrell was killed in prison. A month later he sold his home, most of his possessions, and moved to Grand Junction.

  "I thought there might be a connection with the case against Darrell but Hugh was never apart of it. Not in any capacity. So I turned to Mallory. After many sessions with my investigators, over almost six months, he confessed to trying to pin the sham of Darrell's case on Hugh, though there wasn't even the shadow of a connection. Not even one the press might lap up because of Hugh's position."