Absolution

by S. Kirkpatrick

  Moms have the look. Dads have a fresh perspective.

  “Did you even ask her what happened that night?” Dex asks, bringing the conversation right back around to him.

  “No.” I admit. “I was so pissed that all I could focus on was getting to Oaklynn.”

  “She had a damn good explanation for the last eleven years, dude. I’d bet my shares in DRAB that she has an equally good explanation for why she did what she did in LA.”

  He scrubs a hand over his face as if he’s trying to wipe away the bone-deep exhaustion he feels after the shit storm we’ve all just recently survived.

  “I was pissed at her for a long time because I hated how much of you chipped away each time she left. Every time you lost her, we all lost a little piece of you too. I hated her for that, I’m not even gonna lie. But things are different now. I know that and you know that. She saved your fucking life, dude. No matter how mad you are, you owe her.”

  He’s right. They all are. I know that. I’ve always known that. But how do I reconcile what I know with what I feel? How do I force myself to stop feeling anger and betrayal?

  “I need some time to calm down first. The last twenty-four hours have done a number on my fucking mind.”

  “Don’t take too long.” My mother says, standing and pulling me up into a hug. “She’s been surrounded by misery all her life. She deserves to get to start the next chapter in her life and she can’t do that until you clear the air.”

  The conversation dies out and we all make our way into the yard to play with Oaklynn and the twins. We all end up in a game of freeze tag where the rules consistently get changed in Oaklynn’s favor, but no one dares to call her out on it.

  Once the sun starts to set, my mom calls us all inside so that we can wash our hands and eat dinner. Yes, she threatened all the grown men in the house that if she couldn’t smell the soap on our hands, there would be no food at our place setting.

  Some things never change.

  After dinner, Oaklynn eats the biggest bowl of strawberry ice cream I’ve ever seen while everyone lounges around watching ‘The Emperor’s New Groove,’ which is apparently her favorite movie. When Kuzco says ‘Look at me and my bad self,’ my little hummingbird jumps up, strawberry ice cream dripping down her chin, and acts out the whole scene. The room erupts into laughter watching her little legs go all jerky when she reenacts the ‘uh huh uh huh uh huh’ walk.

  Halfway through the movie she passes out in my lap, curled up in a little ball. Her Tar Heels jersey has grass stains and food stains all over it, but she refused to change out of it when my dad offered her one of his shirts instead.

  “Your Grandpa Oakley would have loved her.” Mom whispers when she walks me out to my truck, opening the backdoor so that I can buckle Oaklynn in.

  “She would have quickly taken my spot as his favorite.”

  Mom laughs, kissing Oaklynn on the forehead before lightly closing the door. She turns to me, searching my eyes, for what I don’t know. It takes several minutes before she finds whatever it is she was looking for staring back at her.

  “Did I ever tell you what your grandpa said to me after meeting Remi for the first time?”

  I shake my head, knowing she’s never told me this story before.

  “He said ‘That girl reminds me of my dear Rosalind. He’s going to have a long journey with that one. But I know in my heart, she’ll wear Rosalind’s ring until the day she dies.’ He saw something in her, something in the way you looked at her, and he knew. He had your grandma’s ring professionally cleaned the next day. He knew before you did, that she was meant to wear it.”

  “She did for a while.” A small amount of frustration seeps into my voice, even as I try and stop it from happening. “Then she took it off and left it behind.”

  Mom nods her head. “Can you think of any time in your life when your grandfather was ever wrong?”

  I look at Oaklynn’s sleeping form, tucked in nice and safe in her booster seat, as I try and recall one time my grandfather was wrong. When I come up empty, I shake my head, refusing to look at my mother because I already know what she’s going to say and I honestly don’t know if I’m ready to hear it.

  Time. I need time.

  She steps in front of me, lifting my chin, refusing to let me back down from this. When my eyes finally, reluctantly, meet hers, she flashes me a soft and loving smile.

  “Grandpa Oakley said that Remi would wear that ring until the day she died. She’s very much alive, Brody. You’ve still got time to make this right. I have to believe there’s a good reason behind all of this. And once you calm down and process the last twenty-four hours, I think you’ll realize that you’ve known that all along.”

  With a quick kiss to my cheek and a final squeeze to my arm, she disappears through her front door, leaving me alone with my thoughts and the most adorable little girl who’s ever lived.

  My little girl.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Remi

  As I finish taping the fresh dressing back in place on the back of my leg, Liz walks into my room and softly sits on my bed. Our injuries are healing, but the demons my uncle left behind visit Liz in her sleep every night.

  “Couldn’t sleep?” I ask, glancing at the clock that reads 2:11 a.m.

  “Can’t sleep without the meds but the meds make it harder to come out of the nightmares.”

  I’ve been where she’s at. I know that feeling all too well. I lived like that for more years than I care to count. You’d think after all those years that I’d have some advice or a secret little trick to help her.

  I don’t.

  There isn’t one.

  All you can do is wait. Wait for your body to heal as best it can. Wait for enough time to pass that eventually some new horror takes root in your mind instead.

  It’s the world’s shittiest advice, which is why I keep it to myself. The last thing I want to do is cause Liz to grow hard and cynical. She’s too good of a person to have to live with that kind of toxic burden.

  Maybe, just maybe, she’ll be lucky enough to heal and come out whole. Maybe all she really does need is time. She hasn’t suffered the long-term brutality that I did, perhaps that will be her saving grace.

  “Well, let me check your dressings while you’re in here at least.”

  I hobble over to my only friend in the world, bringing the medical supplies with me. Lifting her shirt up over her head, I remove her old bandages while she adverts her eyes, unable to take it all in even after a week of being discharged from the hospital.

  I’ve been there too. Lying to myself about the roadmap of scars on my body. Convincing myself that they don’t matter, that they didn’t change me. That I’m still the same person on the inside.

  If I don’t look, I win. They don’t have power over me.

  If I can’t see them, they’ll go away one day.

  Or, my personal favorite, my go-to lie that I’d always tell myself.

  No point in looking, they don’t matter anyway.

  But they do matter. They always did. They always will.

  The trauma we survive changes us. It warps our hearts and minds as much as it warps our bodies. People always say stuff like ‘You’re not a victim, you’re a survivor.’

  Talk about a bullshit statement.

  One that only serves to piss me off more rather than providing me with some type of eye-rolling, cliché type of empowerment.

  What people who have never experienced trauma don’t understand is that in order to be a survivor, you had to be someone’s victim in the first place. No amount of surviving will ever change that.

  Liz still won’t talk about what happened to her. She’s trying with all of her might to bury it and pretend like it didn’t happen. Or that it doesn’t matter that it did. There are so many signs that prove to me that she’s not coping, that she’s living in a state of denial that I fear will one day come back to drain her.
/>   I’ve seen the sheets that she has draped over the mirrors in her room and in her bathroom. I’ve seen the yoga pants that she traded for baggy sweats, something she used to complain about being too much to wrangle.

  She’s suffering, by herself, refusing to get help from anyone. Not everyone is like me. Not everyone can bottle that shit up and tuck it away. Liz has never been that kind of person, and that’s what worries me. She’s always had a plan, always had a clear goal in mind. Always been focused on fixing everything around her.

  But when push comes to shove, when the time has come for her to get help to fix herself… She brushes it off and walks away. And I’ll be honest, I’m so fucking worried about her.

  She flinches when I clean her wound, the bruising around her stitches still very tender.

  “Sorry, Henry was always better at this.”

  His funeral is tomorrow, which is why I can’t sleep tonight. Every time I close my eyes I see him getting murdered all over again. Liz wanted the details of how her dad died, but I’ve refused to give them to her. Her last moments with him were brutal enough, I don’t want to add to that.

  “Will you ever tell me what happened in the bar?”

  “Every time you ask, the answer stays the same. You need to remember all the good times, Lizzy. You don’t need to add any more bad ones.”

  “Yet you think you should shoulder the memory of his loss all by yourself?”

  “All I do is keep secrets, remember? It’s what I’m good at.”

  The sarcasm, and ever-present emotional pain, is hard to keep from my voice. I can also tell that she’s trying to keep the conversation off of her, so I fall into her denial spiral with her, trying to convince myself that maybe she’s like Brody and just needs time.

  “He still won’t talk to you, huh?”

  I suck in a sharp breath as I tape the final dressing back in place and help her put her shirt back on.

  To say Brody is still pissed at me would be an understatement. When he brings Oaklynn by, he won’t even look at me.

  “Not unless it’s about Oaklynn.”

  “I never wanted it to be like this, Remi. You know that right?”

  I nod my head because, yes, I do know. I know that the last thing Liz ever wanted to do was rip my family apart before we ever got a chance to be one. I also know that we didn’t have much of a choice.

  “I told him his anger shouldn’t be directed at you. I did, I swear.”

  “He’s right though, Liz. I should have told him when I told him everything else.”

  “Do you honestly think it would have been better for him to know before he could be with her? How much more pain would he have been in knowing that she was alive but knowing he couldn’t hold her, see her, or know her? I know you hate what’s happening, Remi. Trust me, the guilt that pours off of you is damn near suffocating, but that is guilt for me, not for you.”

  “He’ll never forgive me for this.”

  “One day, when we can both walk without limping, we’ll duct tape him to a chair and force him to listen to your side of things if that’s what it takes.”

  I snort at the obscene visual. “You’ll need something a lot stronger than duct tape if you want to hold onto that beast.”

  “I’m mad at him for how he’s treating you right now, so don’t give me any fun ideas.”

  I smirk at the truth in her insanity and climb into bed, snuggling under the covers. Liz rises from the edge of my bed that she was perched on, gathering the old dressings on the bedside table.

  “I’ll help make him see, Rem. I promise you that.”

  I shake my head, not wanting her to get involved. She’s got far too much on her plate to be focused on the chaos in my life. That was her job for far too long, she doesn’t have to live like that anymore.

  “You’ll just make it worse. I can live with whatever happens. As long as Oaklynn has her dad, that’s all that matters.”

  Even if it kills me.

  She closes the door behind her, taking the dirty bandages when she goes. When I hear her door down the hall close for the night, I feel the first hot tear burn a path down my face, reminding me that as much as I pretend that I’m okay…

  I’m really, really not.

  I cry into the darkness, silently, and all alone, just like I have for as long as I can remember. The pain I live with, physically, mentally, and emotionally, has always been mine and mine alone. It’s not something you can share, something you can forget. It devours you.

  A ping from my phone pulls me out of my misery for a moment, knowing that the only person who would be texting this late at night is Brody. And we all know that the only reason he communicates with me anymore is because of Oaklynn.

  The hair rises on the back of my neck as I pull open the message, my heart beating so fast that I can feel it in my ears. I’m confused when I see the words staring back at me.

  B: My Immortal. Evanescence.

  R: Is that code for something?

  B: Kind of. It’s a song. I’m ready to let you talk, but I’m struggling. This song says more than I can at the moment. I want to go to Henry’s funeral tomorrow but I can’t go until I can stand being in the same room as you. I figured this would help.

  R: Help me or help you?

  B: Both? Idk, Rem. I know you’re fucked up right now too. Just go listen.

  It’s the first time he’s acknowledged that this hasn’t been a cakewalk for me either. It’s a step in the right direction at least.

  I hobble off the bed and make my way across the room to my desk and boot up the old ragged laptop Henry always had for me to use when I was in town. I really should get a new cell phone now that I don’t have to use a burner anymore.

  That requires money and a job though.

  Things I don’t have since Henry was killed.

  I shake that thought away before I go tumbling into the black hole I find myself in anytime I think about my pseudo father. Bringing up YouTube, I type in the song Brody sent and then sit back in my chair, closing my eyes as I let the song wash its way through me.

  ‘You used to captivate me by your resonating light. Now I’m bound by the life you left behind. Your face, it haunts my once pleasant dreams. Your voice, it chased away all the sanity in me. These wounds won’t seem to heal. This pain is just too real. There’s just too much that time cannot erase.’

  The lyrics make the tears stream down faster, hotter, and less silent than they’ve ever been before. I knew he was hurting, but I had no idea what his pain felt like. How conflicted and twisted up he was about it. He’s never let me see it before. He’s always kept it in, just like me.

  ‘And I held your hand through all of these years. But you still have all of me. I’ve tried so hard to tell myself that you’re gone. But though you’re still with me, I’ve been alone along.’

  It’s such a mixture of him and me, blending together in a perfect contradiction that has always been who we are together. Between the lies, the secrets, and the half-truths, the love we always shared was real. It was the most real thing I’ve ever known. The strongest driving force of my life.

  But he’s right.

  The song is right.

  In our own ways, no matter if we were together or not, we were so very much alone. We were never able to fully come together, laid bare before each other. I could never fully let him in. I had to run and hide, keep secrets, and tell lies, to keep us both safe. To keep Oaklynn safe. To keep us alive so that one day, when the battle was won and the monsters that lurked in the basement paid with their lives... We could finally live our lives.

  But what I’m just now starting to realize, is that after the first time I had to run, Brody couldn’t let me all the way in either. I think he was afraid to give me all of him because he knew I couldn’t keep it. He knew the girl with the gypsy soul would leave again, taking the parts of himself that he willingly gave.

  We both did what we did based
on our own needs for survival.

  I needed to survive my uncle.

  But Brody… Brody needed to survive me.

  I’ve spent eleven years so focused on me and my survival, making plans without including him that I never stopped to consider the fallout. The personal cost that I forced Brody to pay without ever telling him why.

  I once told him that loving a girl like me was a death wish. I see now that’s true in more ways than one. When I originally said it, I was worried he would physically die trying to save me.

  But now?

  Now I see that I killed Brody a long time ago.

  I was the death of his ability to trust. I was the death of his ability to forgive. I was the death of his ability to cope. I was the death of his sanity.

  R: I’m so sorry I did this to you. To us.

  B: I need to know why. I need to let you try and make me understand, I know that. I’m ready to hear your side.

  R: Just tell me when.

  B: My mom wants to watch Oaklynn so I can go to the funeral. We can talk after.

  R: I can do that.

  B: I’ll find you after the service.

  I close the laptop, bathing the room in darkness once again. Limping my way over to the bed, I make slow work of climbing in, sinking below the covers.

  It feels like hours before I can finally find a comfortable position to lay in. Gunshot wounds and stab wounds take a lot longer to heal than most people might realize. Whatever damage is reflected on the outside, the inside is five times worse. It hurts to sit, to stand, to move. Hell, it hurts to fucking breathe. Considering I’ve got multiple wounds on the front and backside of my body, it’s a damn miracle that I can find a comfortable position at all.

  Lying in bed, dread keeps me wide awake all night long. I stare up at the ceiling as my mind whirls in a hundred different directions. The ‘what if’ scenarios play in an endless loop as my brain refuses to shut off.

  As sunlight creeps in through the blinds, I realize that once I get out of this bed, the day ahead will bring the end of so many things. Firstly, it will bring an end to Henry. Together, Lizzy and I will say goodbye to the unconditional love, understanding, support, and acceptance that he always provided us with.