Absolution

by Amanda Dick

  The back door opened, breaking the spell, and Maggie stood in the doorway.

  “Ally’s freshening up, she’ll be out in a minute. I made coffee for anyone who wants it,” she said uncertainly, her gaze flitting between them before finally settling on Jack. “You staying or going?”

  Jack drew himself up straighter. “Staying.”

  Ally sat on the side of her bed, sniffing and wiping her eyes, trying desperately to pull herself together. Humiliation and regret clawed at her and she wanted nothing more than to lie back, pull the covers up over her head and stay there forever.

  She had been determined to make sure that Jack would only get to see her at her best – strong, in control, healed. She hadn’t counted on him getting through her defenses so easily. Now that wall was crumbling so fast, she couldn’t keep up the repair work.

  Shame crept through every cell in her body as she had relived her suicide attempt, Jack staring back at her as if he was reliving it with her. She would have done anything to spare him from that. It was bad enough that everyone else knew – the one thing she had hoped to keep from him, the one thing that she was ashamed of more than anything else, and now he knew the ugly truth.

  She crossed her arms around her waist, imagining she could feel his arms around her again, as they had been only minutes before. She could still smell his cologne on her clothes, even through the blocked nose that all those tears and heartache had caused. Her arms felt empty and hollow without him in them. It was as if her centre of gravity had shifted.

  After years of trying to forget what he smelled like, trying to ignore the way her body wanted to meld with his at bedtime, trying to fight off tears when she thought of his soft, warm lips searching hers – trying to forget him – now he was all over her subconscious again.

  She wanted him to stay so badly, it scared her.

  The kiss they shared was like the stuff of dreams, alcohol warping and magnifying some details while removing others completely. She remembered that he tasted of beer, she knew he had wanted it as much as she had and she knew that when he pulled away, she didn’t want it to end. But he had pulled away, and she had been too frightened to mention it since. It seemed safer to forget it ever happened. If only she could.

  She could still feel his hands on her bare skin, and it had opened a portal somewhere deep inside of her. Her rampant imagination wondered about things she had been too afraid to consider for so long. Could they make love the way they used to, even with her limitations? Would he even want to? She wouldn’t blame him if he didn’t. She felt nauseous herself, just thinking about it. Would she even be able to feel anything at all? How would it work, logistically, even if by some miracle, they managed to get to that stage?

  It wasn’t just the sex itself, it was the minefield of emotions and technical difficulties that went with it. Lack of sensation and mobility weren’t the only stumbling blocks. She was so self-conscious, the thought of Jack seeing her naked body – all of it – sent her into a blind panic. She buried her face in her hands as she remembered the sickening look on his face when he had seen her, half-naked, on her bedroom floor.

  The last time they had made love she had been a different person, in every sense of the word. She meticulously catalogued the number of things she was unwilling or unable to share with him. The list seemed never-ending.

  By sharing this darkness with him, she had only added to his burden and she doubted she would ever be able to forgive herself. It was bad enough that she had to see the pain she had inflicted in everyone else’s eyes, but now she would see it in his, too.

  Every time he looked at her, he would know.

  Two and a Half Years Earlier

  Callum sat across the table from Tom, nervous as he watched him browse the information pack that had arrived yesterday.

  It had been almost four months since Ally’s suicide attempt and it felt like they had lost her. The old Ally had gone, leaving behind a shell, hollow and empty. As each day passed, the wall she built around herself seemed to get higher. The counsellor was happy with her progress, but he wasn’t – far from it, in fact. Desperation had set in. He would find his own solution. Jack may not be here, but he was.

  Tom closed the glossy brochure and put it down, picking up the booklet that accompanied it.

  “Well?” Callum prompted. “What do you think?”

  Tom took his glasses off and ran a hand down his face. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know? What don’t you know?”

  “It all looks great, don’t get me wrong – it looks incredible actually – amazing work they’re doing here. Where did you hear about this again?”

  “I found it online. Then I called the hospital and asked if they knew anything about it. They said it’s legit.” He leaned forward. “It works, Tom, the program works. They can get her walking again.”

  Tom looked skeptical and Callum sat back in his chair.

  “Well, not walking – they can’t repair the damage, obviously – but they can get her walking with braces and crutches, full time. It’s a whole new life, no more chair.”

  Tom glanced down at the glossy brochure in front of him and Callum followed his gaze. A man standing in braces stared back at them, as if reinforcing his words.

  “This is the hope she’s been looking for, I know it is.”

  Tom stared at the brochure a moment longer and sighed, putting his glasses back on. “With all this research you’ve done, did you find out if her insurance will cover it?”

  Callum shook his head. “That’s the tricky part. But I can cover it myself – with a little help.”

  “How in hell are you gonna do that? This is a lot of money, son.”

  “I’ve got a buyer for the van. With that, and my savings, I’ve already got most of it. I just need to see the bank for the balance.”

  “A bank loan?” Tom frowned, and Callum could read his mind.

  He silently dared him to talk him out of it, eyeballing him across the table.

  “We need living expenses for the duration, for the both of us. She’s not going through this alone.”

  “Look, I don’t think –“

  “Don’t say it,” Callum warned, his voice trembling as he fought back tears. “Don’t you dare say it. I’m doing this for one reason and one only – she needs it. She told me she wanted to get better, she said it was for Jack.” The name stuck in his throat, as did the idea, but they were Ally’s words, not his. “And then Pavlovic pulled the rug out from under her and all hell broke loose. Well this is ‘getting better’ – this is as good as it gets for her. The health benefits are huge. Read it – see? And not just physically, but psychologically too.”

  “I can see that,” Tom said, as Callum barreled ahead.

  “I’m tired of waiting for the counseling to make a difference. We’re losing her Tom, we need to do something and we need to do it now, before it’s too late.”

  “I agree. But don’t go to the bank for that money, let me pay for half the total,” Tom insisted, taking his glasses off and laying them down on the table in front of him. “I want to help too. That way, you’re not totally tapped out and you don’t have a bank loan hanging over your head.”

  “Wow,” Callum exhaled loudly. “Wow. Okay. Thanks.”

  “Did you really think I’d veto this? I know she needs something and maybe this is it. Who knows, but we sure as hell have to try,” Tom mumbled, leaning back in his chair and staring at the paperwork in front of him again. “I do have a couple of concerns, though.”

  “What?”

  “Firstly, this program – it’s a long way from home. I’m not sure she’ll agree to be away for so long. Second – well, do you think she’ll let us pay for it? Do you think she’ll even want to do this, with the way she’s been lately?”

  The questions were the same ones Callum had been asking himself. “I know it’s a long way from home, that’s why I’m gonna go with her. It’ll be just like when she was in rehab.”
<
br />   “And how are you gonna manage that?”

  “I’ll talk to them at work, see if I can take a leave of absence. If not… well, I guess I’ll have to quit. I’m not leaving her alone all the way out there – not after what happened. If she goes, I go too.”

  Tom regarded him carefully over the table and Callum prepared himself for the onslaught. But to his surprise, it never came.

  “That’s a big commitment you’re making. You’re putting your life on hold.”

  “My life’s been on hold since the accident. This is as much a part of her recovery as rehab was.”

  “You’re a good man.” Emotion heavily overlaid the words. “She’s lucky to have you in her corner.”

  “Same goes for you.”

  Tom picked up the brochure again, scrutinising it. “You’re right. This could change everything.”

  CHAPTER 17

  “You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself ‘I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’”

  - Eleanor Roosevelt

  The pain in Jack’s soul had reached saturation point. Sitting at Ally’s kitchen table earlier, sharing a quiet coffee among awkward small-talk, Callum and Maggie desperately trying to lighten the mood, all he could think about was how close he had come to losing her.

  She couldn’t even bring herself to look at him. He wanted to take her in his arms again but he had the feeling that it was all too little, too late.

  When she excused herself from the table, he made his escape. He didn’t remember getting into his car and driving away. When he finally stepped back to reality, he was driving the streets aimlessly, with no real sense of what to do or where to go. He just wanted it all to stop.

  The look of utter despair on Ally’s face refused to leave him. It was real this time, not the imagined scenarios he had conjured up to torture himself with over the years. This was far worse. He recalled with vivid clarity the way she looked as she lay in the ICU that night, the fluorescent light above her bed bathing her in that peculiar eerie glow. It didn’t feel like four years ago. It felt like it was happening right now, all over again and the pain was just as intense now as it had been then.

  It was perfectly clear to him now why Callum was riding him so hard. He was right, about everything. He had a lousy track record, and Ally had already fought her way back from the brink once. What was his role in her suicide attempt? She didn’t spell it out for him in so many words, but his mind went there anyway. Was it his fault, because he wasn’t here? It didn’t matter. Either way, he was guilty as hell.

  He pulled in to the almost deserted parking lot outside the cemetery. He had no idea why he was here but the hidden fingers of grief reached towards him from beyond the cemetery gates, and he realised that it made sense, somehow. He was grieving – for Ally, for his father, for the lost friendships and the part of his life and himself he would never get back.

  The cemetery stared back at him sombrely, offering no comfort.

  He switched off the car’s ignition and as the engine died, a hush suddenly filled the void. It cloaked him, throwing an invisible blanket over him so dense he felt like he was suffocating. His lungs burned as the silence around him thickened like a living, breathing entity, growing and gnawing at him.

  Ally’s voice filled the vacuum in his head as he relived their conversation, snatching snippets here and there and beating himself with them as if they were weapons. In the brief conversations he had had with his father over the past few years, none of this had been mentioned. He gripped the steering wheel tighter.

  Why? Why didn’t he tell me? Why did he keep this from me?

  The answer blazed through his consciousness.

  Because I told him I didn’t want to know.

  He felt like screaming. Callum’s words came back to him, grabbing him by the throat. What would he have done if he had known then what was happening? Would he have come back? He saw Ally as Callum had seen her that day – lying on her bed, quiet and still and waiting for death to claim her.

  The truth did so much more than just hurt. The agony gouged at him, leaving a gaping wound. Now he knew why he had stayed away so long. Torturing himself with the unknown for all this time was one thing – but hearing the reality was another matter entirely. He gripped the steering wheel until his fingers were numb and he closed his eyes, willing the pain to stop.

  Help me. Please?

  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d prayed.

  What he did remember was attending church with his parents when he was younger, sitting between them with his neatly pressed dark trousers and crisp baby blue shirt. He would sit with his father on the back doorstep on Saturday afternoon and they would polish their shoes together, him taking as much care as a child of his age could, his father overseeing his clumsy ministrations with the polish and rag. His mother fussed over his hair every Sunday, smoothing it and brushing down the stray ends and the wisps at his crown that refused to lie flat. All the while, he would grimace but not dare move. He knew this was important. Going to church on Sunday was an Event.

  He would sit as still as he could on the hard wooden pew between them, until he could stand it no longer. Then he would fidget until an elbow in the ribs or a sly whisper from his parents would force him to stop. He wanted to make his parents proud.

  The enthusiastic voice of Father David – younger then, and with twinkling eyes that fascinated him up close – rang out from the altar, in Latin and in English. He understood that it was important, but as a child it meant nothing to him other than the milkshake he would get at the diner on the way home.

  As he got older, it became more of a curiosity. He had questions that needed to be answered. What would happen if he didn’t go to confession before he took communion? Would God be angry with him? And what about heaven? If you couldn’t see it when you were in a plane, could you see it from a spaceship? Why didn’t angels fall right through the clouds they were sitting on? He got used to the tiresome looks his parents would give him when he asked. Eventually, he stopped asking.

  It had all been so easy then. He had been seventeen when his mother died. It had changed his view on everything, skewing it permanently. After she passed away, neither he nor his father could bring themselves to go to church regularly. What was the point? If God really existed (and he was seriously starting to doubt that), He obviously didn’t care about his mother or He would never have let her suffer like that. They went to church at Easter and for Christmas Eve Mass, and that had mainly been out of a sense of duty.

  And during the last four years, Jack hadn’t gone to church once. He thought himself beyond forgiveness, so what was the point in asking for it? He couldn’t face going to confession, he would never be able to receive communion. If God could torture his mother the way He did, then He must surely have forsaken him.

  Yet from the brief conversations he had had with Father David since his father’s death, apparently Dad had been attending church regularly during the past few years. Why, after all this time? Did it have anything to do with the accident, with what happened to Ally? Or was it because of him – Jack – and what he had done? He found himself wondering if his father had been praying for him, and it made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. The guilt and shame seemed to multiply suddenly, and he found his breath coming in short gasps as his lungs failed to respond.

  Please… do something. Help me.

  All it took was one night – one moment – and the world turned upside down. He tried to slow his breathing and concentrate as he played The Game. He squeezed his eyes shut tighter, putting all his energy into trying to visualize how his life would be now if the accident had never happened.

  Ally was painting a mural on their living room wall, perched atop a ladder, wearing a paint-splattered pair of navy blue overalls. Her long hair was caught up beneath a bright pink bandana, and she brushed
wisps of it away from her face as she concentrated, painting one brush stroke at a time, slow and steady. She hummed quietly to herself as she worked, completely oblivious to the fact that he was watching her.

  The walls were littered with black and white photographs, mostly ones she took while they had been travelling around the country on his bike. Memories of their life together surrounded them. Then she turned and noticed him standing there and she smiled – the kind of smile that made his knees go weak even now, all these years later. She put the paintbrush down and climbed down the ladder, talking all the while, smiling that smile.

  She crossed the floor with a skip and threw herself into his arms, wrapping her own arms around him and giggling as he twirled her around, the bandana coming loose and releasing her hair, smelling of paint and vanilla.

  He lay her down on the couch, covering her mouth with his and smiling to himself as he felt her body respond. She wriggled beneath him as he lay down on top of her, her legs wrapping around his waist and locking behind his back as his lips sought out her neck. Her arms snaked around his ribs as she pulled him closer, leaning into him…

  A sharp rap on the window brought the fantasy crashing down. His eyes shot open and the worried face of Father David stared back at him.

  For a moment, he wasn’t sure if this was fantasy or reality and he blinked, trying to put things back in their rightful places – fantasy there, reality here.

  The priest’s mouth was moving. He stared at him blankly, taking a few moments to realise that he needed to wind down his window to hear him. Feeling oddly detached, he did so.

  “Jack? Are you alright?”

  Jack automatically nodded, incapable of anything else.

  The priest searched the interior of the car, leaning on the sill. “Are you sure? You don’t look so good.”