The Bones of You
Page 26
But he just looks at me, utterly incredulous. “Kate, she killed her own daughter, for Christ’s sake.”
I’m not sure Jo will ever leave this place she’s found, with its blinding drugs and high-pitched walls that keep her safe. If she could even cope with the real world, least of all one that at last, because of Delphine, knows the truth. Maybe after killing Rosie, somewhere in the dark corridors of her labyrinthine mind, Jo sentenced herself to her own slow decline.
ROSIE
It’s easier than Joanna thinks it will be, even though her grief, shock, horror are all sickeningly real. As she’s always said, when you want something enough, you pay a price.
Then, after all she’s done for him, when he tells her quietly, with no threatening or bullying or harsh words, that he’s still leaving her, that nothing will change that, she knows the light has dimmed, the passion has gone, feels a part of her die inside.
But even through her shock, her fear of being without him, she knows. She’s always known. She can’t let him be with someone else. Anything is better than that.
Humiliation, betrayal, even prison.
And in the end, because of what she discovers about him, it’s so easy.
His arrest almost destroys her, but she clings on, won’t let go, no matter how hard this is. In her twisted mind, she still has him.
For a while, she believes she can do this, but inside, what she’s done tortures her. Every second of every minute of every day. Somewhere buried deep in her stone-cold heart, the small shred of decency and goodness that’s somehow survived this long inches out and pitches her down the slope to madness.
And now, she’s caught forever in her locked-down world, where no one will ever reach her.
43
What’s happened makes me think about the lines we all etch into our lives, between right and wrong, good and bad, love and hate, a kind of moral compass, one that when her brain shortcircuited, Jo lost forever as she crossed over into madness.
I still wonder how I didn’t see. But as Laura puts it, we can use all our skills, our experience, observe body language, read between as many lines as we choose, but we see mostly what we want to see. And if someone wants to hide the truth, we may never know.
Trying Jo for murder may take some time, if it ever happens at all. Laura says there’s an irony in that they’ve found the murderer, but all that’s left is her body. And there are laws against taking someone to court who will just sit, not understanding, not seeing, not able to speak, catatonic, which is what she is now. But Jo’s guilty, of deception, of emotionally abusing her children, of murder. Whether the law will ever call her to account for that, or whether locked away alone in her own hell, she’s found her own way of atoning for her crime, she can never be free. But I don’t think she ever has been.
All that may be, but even so, I knew her as a friend who was struggling, who needed me, just for a while. A damaged woman whose crimes were her obsessive love for her husband and her vulnerability. But more people are guilty. Laura’s publisher flew her out to see Jo’s parents, who would say nothing of any consequence, which, as I now know, means little. But they haven’t been to see their daughter, which speaks volumes, nor do they show any concern. Behind the closed doors of Jo’s childhood, anything could have happened. One day, if she’s able to face it, maybe we’ll know.
I’d thought Delphine would go to Carol’s, but just before it was agreed, she took my hand and asked if she could stay with me and Angus. Even without everything she’d been through, her terrible secret, which she couldn’t find a way to talk about, there was no way we could have said no.
I see Neal, just briefly, one last time. He comes over one evening, when Angus is home. We’ve talked about this, and Angus is prepared to be civil, though I know the personal cost to him. Really, he’d like to punch Neal’s lights out, but the time for that has passed.
“Thank you,” Neal says, meeting Angus’s eyes first, then mine. “For taking care of Delphine. That’s all I came to say.”
It hurts to think that if it wasn’t for us, if Carol also hadn’t offered a home to Delphine, Delphine would have ended up in foster care. Not that it’s of any real concern to Neal, who, because he could afford a good lawyer, paid a disproportionately small price for the abuse he inflicted. Who, with his newfound freedom and lack of interest in his daughter, doesn’t actually care.
Now the sham of decency is on our doorstep, holding out his hand, a gesture of conciliation toward Angus, who sees through him.
“You shouldn’t be here.” Angus is openly hostile.
“I know. But you needn’t worry. I came to tell you I’m leaving.”
“You’re a bastard, Anderson.” Angus can’t help himself.
I take my husband’s arm. Neal shrugs, then turns to leave.
“Where will you go?” I blurt out the words.
He looks at me, holding my eyes, with the same knowing look I saw that evening he kissed me.
“Where I always said I’d go,” he says softly.
At my side, Angus stiffens. Then, as Neal walks away, mutters, “Should have punched him.”
“No,” I tell him, reaching up and kissing his cheek. “You were wonderful.”
“What did he mean just now?”
I watch Neal disappear out of sight.
“He’s going back to Afghanistan.”
When I ride Shilo through the woods that evening, I’m thinking of Rosie, then Alex and Delphine in the same instant, wondering if just maybe, in their shared loss, in some way they can help each other. Then I urge Shilo into a canter, listen to his hooves pounding, leaving my thoughts far behind.
I choose the same path I always take, up the slope to the clearing where Rosie died, where we pull up and just stand there. A rare peacefulness comes over me. The air is completely still, yet alive, so alive I can feel it on my skin, seeping into my soul, so that just for a moment, I myself, Shilo, the trees, everything, we’re all one and the same.
I close my eyes, framing the thought in my head first, then my heart, before sending it out there.
Don’t worry about Delphine. . . . I’ll look after her....
And wait. But there’s nothing, not a flicker.
That’s when I know Rosie’s gone.
ROSIE
What you don’t know is that on the longest, blackest night, there is always a light. That the wind is myriad souls singing, passing from one world to the next, as they begin their journey to the stars.
Suddenly, my thoughts come in fragments. I know now that what needs nurturing isn’t the blowsy, transient flower, but what’s underneath, like people’s hearts. But I know, also, the consequences of what happens if you leave a heart unloved, un-nurtured, unimportant, destined never to reach its potential.
Why? The word echoes around me, resounding through my soul. Why have children? I don’t understand, when Joanna had choices. But like with everything, whether in this world or the next, there was a reason.
Then against the black, I see two far-off lights, pure, dazzling, untarnished, on a collision course. I watch them close until their paths touch, then flare brightly as one brilliant shooting star, before vanishing in opposite directions.
Once, I was my mother’s perfect daughter. I could do no wrong. Until she discovered that I wasn’t perfect and nor was she, and it broke her.
Then I’m back at the beginning. It’s coming to me; I’m starting to remember what’s missing, who I’ve lost, who I’m waiting for.
And through the woods, I see her, with Alex’s eyes, with the pale skin and the hair shining silver, like mine—because they are mine. She’s running through the trees toward me, and as she gets closer, the love inside me wells up and overflows around us, enveloping her, drawing her close until at last she’s here, with me. I reach my arms out, feel her melt into me, and the gaping emptiness is gone.
That’s when time stops, the trees, the earth, the sky fading, slipping away, as it’s the wind that comes for
us, with its choir of voices, that most pure, blissful sound, soaring us higher, up into the heavens, into the stars, into the light.
KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
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New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2015 by Debbie Howells
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
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Library of Congress Card Catalogue Number: 2015934153
ISBN: 978-1-6177-3766-4
eISBN-13: 978-1-61773-767-1
eISBN-10: 1-61773-767-4
First Kensington Electronic Edition: July 2015