Absolution

by Amanda Dick

  “You don’t need to count it,” Jack said, eager to get them out of the house.

  “I won’t. If it’s not all there, we’ll be back. I’m sure you knew that.”

  They eyeballed each other in silence.

  “So that’s it then? We’re done here?” Jack prodded.

  Jimmy smiled, and Jack’s blood ran cold. “Not quite.”

  CHAPTER 23

  “You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope… I have loved none but you.”

  - Jane Austen

  Callum checked his watch again, tapping his foot nervously. He should have heard from Jack by now. He got up and peered through a crack in the curtains, scanning the street in front of Ally’s house.

  “Call him,” she said from her place at the kitchen table. “If you don’t, I will. It’s been forty minutes – how long does it take to hand over a bag of cash?”

  Not bothering to argue, he dug his phone out of his pocket and dialed Jack’s number. As he listened to it ringing, he shrugged helplessly across the room at Ally.

  “Something’s wrong, I can feel it,” she said.

  Callum disconnected the call, then dialed again.

  “Who are you calling?”

  “Maggie and Jane. While I check up on him, you three are gonna have a quiet drink at Barney’s.”

  She stared at him blankly.

  “You’ll be safer in a room full of people,” he explained. “Trust me.”

  Callum pulled up slowly behind Jack’s car, parked outside Tom’s house. He pushed the car door shut behind him carefully, conscious of not disturbing the peace in the quiet street.

  So, Jack’s car was here. He wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing yet. Keeping his wits about him, he made his way up the front path. In the darkness, the light from within the house illuminated the fact that the front door was ajar. Odd. He crept up the stairs onto the porch, but nothing else seemed out of place. Still, he couldn’t help the anxiety that sat in his throat. He gently pushed the door open and a cold chill stung the back of his neck.

  The hall table had been overturned and lay on its side, contents spewing out of the single drawer.

  “Jack?” he called tentatively, panic overwhelming his need for stealth.

  No reply. Broken glass crunched beneath his feet as he made his way through the hall and into the living room. “Are you here?”

  He stepped over a dining room chair inside the living room doorway. More upturned furniture greeted him. Then he noticed a boot, partially obscured behind an overturned armchair.

  His heart stopped as the image sensors in his brain put two and two together.

  He covered the short distance in a millisecond, dropping to his knees beside him as his heart threatened to leap out of his chest.

  Jack lay face down on the floor, out cold.

  Callum checked his watch again. God, how he hated hospitals. The smell of the place was enough to make him feel sick – a peculiar mix of Lysol and misery, wrapped up in one jagged little bundle that scraped away at his insides. He glanced up as the outer doors opened and Maggie, Jane and Ally made their way into the waiting room, blinking in the harsh light. Maggie rushed straight over to him, grabbing him by the arm.

  “What the hell went wrong? How is he?” she demanded.

  “Keep your voice down,” he warned, eyeballing the deputy who was talking to someone at the reception counter. He had managed to answer all of his questions without once telling him the truth. He didn’t want to foul it up now. Once again, he crossed his fingers that Jack’s insistence on keeping the cops out of it was the right thing to do.

  “I knew it wouldn’t be as simple as he said,” Ally said, staring up at him with tears in her eyes. “Why couldn’t he just tell us the truth?”

  “I don’t know, but he’s going to be fine, according to the doc.”

  He reached down to squeeze her shoulder, conjuring up a smile from somewhere. He could tell from Ally’s face that she could see right through it.

  “What did the doctor say?”

  “In a nutshell – a bruised kidney, a couple of cracked ribs and a concussion on that thick skull of his.”

  “Oh my God,” Ally’s chin trembled, as Maggie reached for her hand.

  “Come on, let’s all get comfortable,” she said.

  “Good idea. The doc said someone would come and get us when it was okay to go see him.”

  They settled down into the bank of plastic chairs to wait.

  “The concussion seemed to be the thing they were the most worried about,” Callum said after a few minutes. He wanted to tell Ally that everything would be fine, but with the doctors’ words ringing in his ears, he thought she would be better off knowing the truth. “He said there’s some swelling to his brain. He might be out for 24 hours or so. They’re pumping meds into him to keep him under – something about giving him a chance to heal.”

  Ally nodded silently, her gaze wandering to the door that led into the emergency room. Callum read her mind. If they could just see for themselves that he was okay, it would make this whole nightmare seem that much less terrifying.

  “So that guy – Jimmy – any sign of him?” Maggie asked tentatively.

  Callum shook his head. “None. If I were to take a guess, I’d say they grabbed the bag, did a number on Jack and trashed the place before they left.”

  They watched people come and go, mostly in silence. Callum kept a close eye on Ally, but her gaze was leveled on the door. There didn’t seem to be much point in talking. Finally, when he thought he couldn’t wait much longer, a nurse finally appeared, leading them down the hall, through the doors and into the emergency room.

  Ally was determined to stay calm and remain positive. But as the curtain surrounding his bed was pulled aside, revealing the full extent of what Jack had been through, she was tempted to do the complete opposite.

  Jack lay propped up on the bed, his previous bruises blending into insignificance faced with the cuts and bruises that now marked his face. Ally shuddered as she slowly moved around the bed towards him. A padded bandage wound around the side of his head. What had done that? A boot? A fist? A weapon of some sort? She choked back tears as a hand squeezed her shoulder.

  “Hey, come on. He’s gonna be okay,” Callum whispered.

  Jack was pale, a cannula clipped to his nose and disappearing behind his ears. He looked like a rag doll that had been kicked around endlessly before finally being thrown on the scrap heap, unloved and unwanted.

  Except he is wanted, and loved.

  The realisation presented itself with such force, fighting its way up from the centre of her soul, that she felt light-headed. She took a moment to fight the sensation of falling. She wheeled forward, reaching for Jack’s hand and holding on tight. She willed him to squeeze back, to show some sign that he was with her in more than just body.

  Outside the curtain, the emergency room buzzed with urgency as medical staff called out instructions and demanded answers as they went about the business of saving lives.

  Inside the curtain however, all was quiet.

  Callum glanced in the rear-view mirror as they drove away from the hospital. The cluster of buildings, dominated by a single, concrete, multi-storied structure that seemed to dwarf the surrounding area, loomed in the distance. A shiver crawled up his spine as he tore his gaze away from the building and tried to concentrate on the road ahead.

  The landscape flew by as he barreled into the night. Ally sat silently in the passenger seat, her mind clearly somewhere else. He half expected her to tell him to slow down. She didn’t. In fact, she had barely said a word since they left the emergency room.

  He glanced at his watch. Almost two o’clock in the morning and the adrenaline rush had begun to wear off. Fatigue slowly wrapped its warm arms around him and he struggled against the urge to give in. He didn’t see any sign of the car he had seen a few days prior, and convinced himself that after what happened to Jack, Jimmy and his henchman had proba
bly high-tailed it out of town. Still, he was reluctant to leave Ally alone, knowing that they knew where she lived, and with the image of what they had done to Jack still so fresh in his mind.

  Pulling into her driveway twenty minutes later, he killed the engine. The security light came on, bathing them in cool, white light, and he glanced over at her.

  “Do you mind if I crash on your couch tonight? I’m wrecked.”

  She shook her head but other than that, made no move to get out of the car.

  “How are you doing?” he asked. “You’ve been pretty quiet.”

  “I’m fine. Just tired.”

  He followed her up the front path to the house. As she unlocked the door and let them in, he put his finger to his lips and urged her silently to stay put. She didn’t argue. He carefully checked each room in turn, just in case. Satisfied finally, he came back to the hallway to find her closing the front door and locking it.

  “Sorry. I just wanted to be sure. After what happened tonight, well… y’know.”

  “Yeah, I know,” she said quietly. “And thanks.”

  “I don’t know about you, but I could really do with a drink. You got any whisky or anything lying around?”

  “There’s some in the cabinet in the living room.”

  He found the whisky and poured them each a healthy dose as she made herself comfortable in the armchair. Handing her a glass, he sank into the couch.

  “I hate hospitals. Damn misery factories. Just the smell is enough to make me want to puke.”

  “He didn’t even look like himself tonight,” she said quietly. “I hardly recognised him. Did I look like that, after the accident?”

  He saw no reason to lie. “Not beat up like he is. In fact, you barely had a mark on you. That’s what made it so hard to believe, I think.”

  What might’ve happened if she had been conscious throughout the accident and its aftermath? What if Jack had given her a choice that night? What if he had said, “Ally, I smell gas. I can either move you to safety or we can stay right here. What do you want me to do?” What would her answer have been?

  He glanced over at her but she was staring into the glass in her lap. She seemed so far away from him.

  “You know that saying, ‘everything happens for a reason’?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you believe it?”

  Too many holes in that theory for his liking. “Not really, no. Why, do you?”

  “I don’t know. Sometimes I think I do. Other times I’m not so sure.”

  “Discuss,” he said simply, taking a swig of whisky while he waited for her to continue.

  “I could’ve died that day, but you saved me.”

  He felt as if he’d been kicked in the chest. He didn’t like thinking about that, much less talking about it, and he knew she felt the same way. Why bring it up now?

  “I don’t think I ever thanked you. I wasn’t too grateful at the time, I know that, but I am now. I feel like I was given a second chance. If you hadn’t found me… ” She took a shuddering breath, her head still bowed. “And I think maybe I had to lose Tom to get Jack back. Maybe this is how it had to be?”

  Tom had been on his mind, too. Sitting at the hospital, waiting for the news from the doctor, he would have done anything to have been able to talk to him. “I miss him too.”

  “What do you think he would’ve said, about what’s been happening these past few days?”

  Callum shook his head, staring somewhere into the distance, between the present and the past. “I think he’d have wanted to help, just like we did.”

  They lapsed into silence.

  “After I… after that day, I spent a lot of time thinking,” she said finally. “I wanted so badly to be stronger, but I didn’t know how. I was lost, and tired – so tired. I kept thinking about my Dad. I was afraid that if he was watching over me, like Gran said he was, he’d be ashamed of me, of what I did.”

  She seemed so young suddenly. So fragile.

  “It took a while,” she continued. “But I finally realised that sometimes you have to have a little faith – that things will get better, that this isn’t how it ends, that there’s more to come.”

  He saw her as she was that day – lying on her bed, surrounded by photos and an empty pill bottle. His blood ran cold.

  “I guess you have to hit rock bottom before you can start climbing again,” he mumbled. “I think that day was your rock bottom. It changed you. Just when I thought you’d maxed out on courage, you proved me wrong.” He sighed, running a hand down his face. He was too tired and too damn sober for a conversation like this. “You make me want to be a better person, did you know that? Someone like me, with all the crap I’ve done, when I’m around you, you make me feel like I’m better than that, that I can be more than just that guy.”

  “What guy?” she frowned.

  He held his glass aloft. “The guy who drinks too much. The guy who screws everything up. The guy who uses his fists more than his brain – that guy.”

  “What are you talking about?” she mumbled, wiping her eyes. “Don’t you know how grateful I am? How much I love you for who you are and for everything you’ve done for me? I wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for you.”

  He cringed at her choice of words. Maybe it was the whisky, or the late hour, or the fact that he was just so damn exhausted, but there was something niggling at him that had to be said, and after four years, now seemed as good a time as any. “If you blamed me – even just a little bit – because of what happened to you, I get it.”

  Ally stared at him, dumbfounded. “What? Why would I blame you?”

  “Because if I hadn’t been in the car, you would’ve been sitting in the passenger seat, right beside Jack. You would’ve walked away, just like I did.”

  His gut wrenched as the words tore out of him. Buried as they had been for so long, it was terrifying and strangely liberating to hear himself say them now.

  “It happened the way it happened,” she said, shaking her head. “That’s all.”

  “But if I hadn’t been there –”

  “You don’t know that. Maybe everything happened exactly the way it was meant to happen?”

  There it was again – that strength, that courage. Acceptance. It was a loaded word.

  He got up and crossed to the cabinet, topping up his glass with a generous measure. “Another shot?”

  “No, thanks.”

  He capped the bottle and sank down on the couch again, leaning back into the cushions. The events of the past few days were beginning to weigh him down. He glanced over at Ally, who had leant back in the armchair, looking the way he felt. They should get some sleep. It was going to be a long day tomorrow.

  Neither of them moved.

  Ally picked up Jack’s hand, stroking his fingers. She had always loved his hands. They were large, strong and square – almost the exact opposite of her own. Right now though, they were limp and still, just like the rest of him.

  Callum came back into the room with two polystyrene mugs of hospital coffee.

  “Here you go,” he said, handing one to her.

  “Thanks.”

  Callum took a seat on the other side of the bed, sipping his coffee.

  The morning had been long. Maggie and Jane had spent a couple of hours with them, but they had decided that having four of them hanging around in the small room, just waiting for him to wake up, didn’t make sense.

  Jack’s doctor had visited about an hour ago, on his rounds. Apparently, he’d had a quiet night, his stats were good and they should expect him to regain consciousness anytime now. They’d been warned that he might be disorientated, confused and even nauseous when he woke up, but all of that was normal and should pass quickly.

  In the meantime, all they could do was wait.

  Jack’s hand twitched in Ally’s. She looked over his bed at Callum, wide-eyed. “He just squeezed my hand.”

  Callum sat forward, watching him. Jack’s eyebal
ls moved erratically beneath his lids. Ally immediately reached for the call button on the pillow beside Jack’s head.

  Two nurses obliged not long afterwards, all professionalism and calm. They confirmed that he was indeed waking up, but warned them that it could be a while before he came back to full consciousness.

  Once again, they settled in to wait.

  The minutes turned into hours, but eventually he began to show further signs of regaining consciousness. The call button was pushed once more and two different nurses arrived this time. Giving them room to work, she and Callum reluctantly retreated into the hallway.

  Ally could hear Jack responding to them, moaning and squeezing a hand on demand. Her heart soared as she peeked into the room. The nurses checked him over and made notes on his chart, talking to him all the while.

  Waiting for the all clear to go back in, Ally fiddled with her grandmother’s ring. Finally, the nurses came out into the corridor. One disappeared with a quick smile, while the other laid a comforting hand on Ally’s shoulder.

  “He’s awake and he’s doing fine,” she smiled. “He seems a little anxious, but that should pass soon. Just go with the flow, don’t worry if he’s not making too much sense. He’s likely to get pretty tired so he might drift off to sleep, but you’re welcome to stay. The doctor will be around later to check on him.”

  “Thank you so much,” Ally smiled gratefully.

  The nurse disappeared and Ally re-entered the room. Jack stared blankly at the ceiling as she wheeled slowly towards him, fighting back tears of relief to see him awake finally.

  “Hey stranger,” she said gently, pulling up beside his bed.

  His eyes grew wide as he looked her up and down, staring at her as if he had never seen her before in his life. She put it down to the meds and wheeled closer.

  “I’m so sorry,” Jack croaked.

  “You don’t need to be sorry for anything,” she soothed, reaching up to take his hand.

  He shrank away from her.

  “Just relax, you’re gonna be okay,” she insisted, thrown by his reluctance to let her touch him.