Ethan Walker's Road To Wonderland (Road To Wonderland #3)

by L. J. Stock

  When I heard the groan from the body on the chair and saw the flail of the kid's limbs, I knew he couldn't be feeling much better himself. Rubbing my hands through my hair roughly, I pushed up and offered the lad a hand, which he took. When he was on his feet, we stood there bewildered for a second before shuffling into the kitchen, ignoring our old man sitting at the table as we worked to make a pot of tea and found something to take the throbbing pain from our heads.

  We didn't say a word to Dad, and he was just as happy to ignore us as we sat there staring down at our mugs of tea. He only seemed inclined to say something when he put his cereal bowl in the sink and got ready to leave.

  "Funeral is Tuesday. If you need a new suit, I'll give you my bank card."

  "Where's she at now?" Dean asked, pushing his half drunk cup of tea away. He dropped his hands and I could imagine they were balled into fists like mine.

  "You don't gotta worry ‘bout that, kid."

  "Don't we?" I asked, as my eyes bounced from Dean's briefly, silencing him before they met Dad’s. He was still standing by the sink, his posture rigid as he glared at me. At least it hadn't been Dean contradicting him. He and Dad always argued, and no matter what he said, it would be turned into an argument. I was the older brother, and if I could spare Dean even an ounce of pain, I would do it. Mum had always been the one to step between the two of them when they were at one another's throats, so now that responsibility fell on me, and I did it that morning without much thought.

  "I sorted it yesterday."

  "You say goodbye for us, too?" I asked, spinning my cup, my eyes still on him.

  "That's what the funeral's for, innit?"

  Dean's chair scraped along the linoleum with intent, and once again we were of one mind. I put up my hand, hoping to God he'd heed the advice to stay quiet, even if it was just for a minute longer. The anger had finally given me a reprieve from the pain, and I found myself gripping onto it with both hands to stop my emotions from falling too far in the opposite direction.

  "You want us to say goodbye to a wood box?" I asked sardonically, my lip curling in disgust.

  "You're not to see her," he retorted, his anger rising and applied neatly to his gruff tone.

  "Why not?"

  I wasn't expecting the outpouring of emotion in response. He'd been getting more frustrated the further the conversation progressed, but it was like a switch being flipped. Maybe I was resigned to the fact that he was a selfish bastard that just didn't care about us or how we were feeling, but in that one moment, my father surprised me.

  In an amalgamation of anger and despair, he slammed his hands on the table and leaned forward, the dishes jumping at the force of it, the silverware clanging on the surface before taking a leap to the floor below. His steely glare was trapped behind glazed and bloodshot eyes, but they met their mark.

  "Because I don't want that to be the last memory you have of your mum." He retrieved his hands, his eyes moving back and forth between us before he turned and marched out of the kitchen. Only seconds later, the front door opened and slammed behind him with so much force I could have sworn the house shook around us.

  "Wha' da fuck were that ‘bout?" Dean asked, staring in the general direction of the door before his eyes slowly moved back to me.

  "Who the fuck knows, Dean?"

  I meant it, too. I had no idea what the hell had just happened. The words hit and run danced around in my head before I finally accepted the conclusion. I didn't want to imagine it being that bad, but what else was I expected to think?

  "Mate, you fucking stink." Scott, my best mate, was never one for pulling punches, and he was kind of stating the obvious. Cracking an eyelid and looking up at him, I groaned and tried to roll over, falling off the table in the dining room.

  The sudden rush of pain through my body had me on my hands and knees in an instant, one arm lifting to my ribs while I panted, fighting back the nausea. "What. The fuck. You doing, Scott?"

  "Waking your drunk arse up, you smelly tosser. You think your dad was gonna do it?"

  "What the fuck are you on about?"

  "Mate, it's Tuesday."

  Dropping back to the floor, I pushed my forehead against the carpet and squeezed my eyes closed. It was Tuesday. Mum's funeral. I was missing almost two full days from my life and I was clueless as to where they'd gone. There were little odds and ends flashing around in my skull - Scott turning up, me hanging over the toilet, a lot of throwing shit around, and wrestling with Dean.

  Like always, my best mate had stepped in and been the most logical person in my life, looking after Dean and me when we couldn't look after ourselves in our alcohol-induced haze. In all honesty, neither of us had left the house once. I wasn't positive why Dean decided to stay holed up with us, but for me it was the thought of everyone's pity - the looks of consolation and the apologies. It was just a constant reminder of what had happened. It was hard enough to escape the memories of the worst day of my life without help from well-meaning friends and neighbours.

  Dean and I were ghosts of ourselves. It was ironic really, considering we were the ones that were still alive. I think it was safe to say we were all wandering around without any destination in mind, not just for the week after her death, but for years. Some days I still look back and wonder what the hell happened to the days when I got lost in a memory of my mum.

  "Come on, E, shower and a shave. I got you a suit," Scott said, his arm looping through mine as he dragged me to my feet. When I was on two legs, he let go, but grabbed me when I leaned too far forward and the jackhammer started in my head. "Fucking hell, mate. Go. I'll put some coffee on and find some paracetamol."

  "Just a hangover, Scott."

  "Yeah, just a hangover. You have to be at the church in two hours. What the fuck happened to laying off and going to bed early?"

  Looking up at him sheepishly and rubbing the back of my neck, I raised my shoulders, and then dropped them again. "We found the vodka."

  "You can be an absolute idiot. Where's Dean, anyway?"

  If there was anything that could have got my attention, it was that. My kid brother had been my only conscious thought in the days that had passed in the numbness afforded to me by copious amounts of alcohol. It wasn't like Dad had cared. The routine had been the same since Saturday night. He came in drunk, stumbled to his room in a shower of swear words, and then slammed the bedroom door before crying again.

  "He ain't in his room?"

  "Didn't look. It's not like you two have been exemplary in finding your way up there the last couple of days. You go check. I'll make strong coffee."

  "You're a good man, Scott Jenkins."

  "You'll return the favour. You always do."

  I slapped him on the shoulder and took the stairs two at a time, knocking once on Dean's door before sticking my head inside. He was there, showered, groomed and in a suit, just staring out of the window as though it held some kind of answer for him.

  "There you are. Why didn't you wake me up?"

  "I tried."

  "Scott's downstairs, but by the suit I'd say he’s a lying bastard and you've already seen him."

  Dean nodded, but there was no other response. I knew without asking that he'd be staying right where he was until I was ready to go. If he needed a couple of minutes alone, I could give that to him, even if I did spend my whole shower worrying about the lad and just how we were going to get through this day in one piece.

  The answer was, we weren't. No matter how brave of a face we put on or how tall we stood, both of us were leaving a part of ourselves behind with the first love of our lives - the woman who had given us life and nurtured us. There was no walking away from that unscarred.

  I stared at myself for a while in the first suit I'd ever owned, and barely recognised the person reflected back at me. There were dark circles under my eyes, my cheeks were narrower, and even I could see the lack of life in my eyes. The ghost analogy actually went a step further when I was forced to look at the man I'
d become.

  Dean's door was stood open when I finally found the courage to leave my own room, and rather than going into the living room first, I headed into the kitchen and while staring out into the back garden, drained two cups of the tar Scott had made. There wasn't a bloody room in the house that didn't hold some memory of Mum in it, and the back garden was no different. Failed attempts at gardening were littered everywhere along with the old towel she used to kneel on. Dad had bought her a small trowel set with daisies on the handle, and even they looked bereft and alone in her absence.

  Unable to take much more, I dropped my mug in the sink and headed back into the living room, feeling somewhat human in comparison to how I’d felt only an hour earlier.

  "Where's Dad?" I asked, finding Dean and Scott sat on separate couches in awkward silence. I wasn't the only one who was at a loss for words for Dean. He and Scott had always got on well, but this was one of those situations where I'm not sure anyone knew what to say to either of us. It was only because Scott and I had been friends for longer than we could walk that he was able to talk to me without feeling weird about it.

  "He left just before I woke you up about an hour ago, grumbling about flowers or something," Scott said, rising to his feet and offering a sad smile. Opening his suit jacket, he pulled out the painkillers and shook the bottle. He'd always been dependable and actually knew me better than Dad ever had, which is exactly why he leaned forward and dropped a hip flask into my pocket. "Enough to help, but not enough to get you stupid."

  "You're a fuckin' legend!" I grunted, hand on his neck, pulling him in for a brother-like hug. "Thanks, mate. For everything."

  His returning smile was filled with sadness. I knew that he wouldn't have given me the flask if he'd thought I could make it through the service without the numbness it provided, but I couldn't and we both knew it. I appeared to be teetering on the edge of losing rationality completely. I'd suppressed every emotion I'd had until I felt there was an itch, deep inside, that I couldn't scratch. Dean... Well he was just wading through the shitstorm, holding onto his distractions as best he could.

  As cliché as it sounds, it was raining that afternoon. It had been decent all morning, but the damn weather whipped up as we left the house, the dark clouds closing in around us the closer we got to the church. I was tugging on my tie before we’d even made the halfway mark, and Dean, hands in pockets, was dragging his feet. It wasn’t that we didn’t want to be there; of course we wanted to say goodbye to our mum. It was more putting off the inevitable. It was as though we both understood that this would make it real. This was the last goodbye. After today, there could be no denying she was gone, because her name would be etched in stone.

  The church was exactly where it had always been. It wasn’t one of those huge gothic looking things, but it was small, the old stone giving away its age. Mum wouldn’t have minded the run down maturity so much, but the haunted visage sent shivers down my spine, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Seeing Dad didn’t do much to help. His scowl made sure I was told off for being hungover, his raised eyebrow was a question about the tie I was wearing, and the curled lip was absolute disgust that we dared to draw breath while Mum was lying in a box.

  He didn’t offer any comfort. He couldn’t even force himself to embrace either of us as Scott’s parents had. They’d always been like a second set of parents to me, and they were happy to have me in their home when I’d had a barney with Dad. They knew what he was like. Mine and Scott’s mums were best mates, after all. Even Liam and Beth, Scott’s older brother and sister, were able to offer condolences and one-armed hugs as I stood at the doors.

  Walking into the church was the hardest thing I’d ever had to do. Staring at the box at the other end of the aisle sent a flood of panic through my body until I was forced to ball my trembling hands. God forbid I let the old man down and actually allowed my emotions to show. With all eyes on the three of us, we shuffled down to the front and slid into the pew. For a moment, we felt like a family, and maybe we were. We were there, together, for the same reason.

  I could feel Dean rocking on his heels next to me as the ceremony started, his teeth furrowed in his lip as his eyes stared blankly at the last link we had to Mum in corporeal form. On my other side, Dad stood weeping. I didn’t doubt the authenticity of his sadness, but there was no doubt in my mind it was amplified for public consumption. Me? I stood in the middle of it all, the anger slowly boiling in my gullet. I was so angry. Rage felt like another layer of skin over my cold flesh as every memory I cherished ran through my head. There were so many more I should have had to cherish, but all of that was taken away.

  I would never have realised I was rocking if it hadn’t been for Scott’s steadying hand on my shoulder. Dad had turned to look at me with a glare, but I’d ignored him, my eyes looking past him to the window where the water trailed down the panes like the unshed tears that were building up inside of me.

  The burial was a rush of dirt and rain, and as we stood there by the hole in the ground, it all started to sink in. All I was able to understand was the devastation that consumed me from the inside out. Staring at the water sliding in perfect rivulets down the highly polished surface of that box, it looked so much smaller than Mum had been. It was hard to process.

  I just stood there, feet planted, body gravitating toward the coffin until it was there like a slap in the face. She really was gone. She wasn't coming back, and the finality of that moment was a weight in my chest. My hands balled into fists at my sides to hide the trembling as the emotion washed over me. The sudden belief that I couldn't do this settled heavily inside of me, nagging away at the resolve and strength that were the only things keeping me standing in the slowly intensifying rain.

  I think the casket disappearing into the pit of a hole was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Mum's friends were crying behind me, Dean, though I'm sure he was unaware of it, let out a quiet "Oh God," and Dad... I don't know if sinking to his knees would have been worse, but instead he sucked in his breath and stood up straight, his eyes clearing as though he was finally pushing through the barrier of grief, while my world continued to fall apart.

  The only thing he'd managed to do right in all of this was give Mum what she'd have wanted. The headstone was to be placed under the limbs of a tree that was just starting to transition from a sapling. In a few years, it would be big and beautiful, offering shade and cover from the elements. She'd have loved watching it grow.

  Stood with my eyes fixed and my mind wandering, I missed the speeches and the end of the ceremony. Dad led the procession of grievers away, all of them muttering about his strength and how lucky we were to have him, when the truth was, it was all part of the façade he wanted people to see. The Walker men were just that. Men! If we couldn’t adhere to that, there was the door.

  The moment the silence sank in, I looked to either side of me, Dean and Scott the only people left standing there as I wiped the rain from my face and grappled for the flask Scott had given me earlier. I took a mouthful and handed it to Dean as I tried to feel the burning of the scotch as it headed for my stomach. My hands ran through my hair as I stepped to the edge of the hole, looking down at the flowers that covered the wood below.

  “I miss you already, Mum," I whispered quietly, my fingertips brushing my thigh. "I just needed you to know that.”

  It was on the procession out of the cemetery that the numbness finally settled in completely. People came and offered their apologies for our loss, hugged and kissed us, wailed and cried, and all I could feel was nothing - just an emptiness that drifted around me like a bubble that stopped everything and anything from getting close enough to touch me.

  I didn't eat during the gathering afterward, just sipped from the flask while no one was looking, and slowly slid into an alcohol-induced haze of nothing, yet again. The pub Uncle Dave had arranged the gathering at wouldn't serve Dean, so I was smuggling drinks to him all night, ignoring the glares of concerned
relatives and family friends. He was my brother, and if he wanted to drink away his sorrow... Well fuck them all.

  I wasn't having any of it, and thankfully, neither was Dean. He mumbled obscenities to everyone that so much as tried to take away his beer, and it was only when Uncle Dave started to chastise people for being so judgmental of two lads who just lost their mother that people started to lay off. That was about the same time Dean, Scott, and I sat in a corner and ignored the world around us in favor of giving Mum a good send off.

  Scott, somehow, managed to get us home, while Dad decided he was going to say and talk to the people who loved Mum. Translated, he was going to get shitfaced drunk, start a fight and maybe do some gambling while he was at it. Even inebriated, I could see through his bullshit. Once again, the fact that his sons could have used his love and support was apparently completely lost on him, as he surrounded himself with the sympathy offered for his loss.

  Whatever. I was so lost in being numb, I couldn't find it in myself to care.

  "Where the fuck are we going, Scott?" I asked, my head rolling on the headrest of his rusty old Beetle. The damn thing chugged like a train, black smoke billowing from the back as we idled at the light. I'd promised him I would fix it two weekends ago, but with Mum, that just went down the shitter. "I thought you said we were going to a party?"

  "We are, lad, but Liam's been acting weird as shit lately. More distracted than normal."

  "We're following your brother?"

  Scott looked over at me with both eyebrows raised and his signature smirk in place. It was a question - one I already knew the answer to and was emphasised with my eye roll. Of course I was bloody curious. Liam was, at times, an enigma to us. The lad had game. He was that rugged fucker all the girls swooned over, and neither of us had figured out why yet. This was an opportunity we couldn't pass up.

  "Exactly what I thought." Scott snorted, the Beetle sputtering as he ground it into second.