Edge of Darkness Box Set

by Margaret McHeyzer

  Turning my head, I watch as Dad stares at nothing, but recollects this painful memory.

  “My heart stopped. I knew Ivy was at school, and I had no idea if it was someone on a killing spree. My knees went weak, and I collapsed to the floor. All I could think was that if I lost Ivy, my life would not be worth living.”

  “You love her,” Elizabeth says.

  “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to protect her. Nothing.”

  “Dad…” I whisper as I wipe at my tear-filled eyes.

  “The news was reporting that there were casualties. They wouldn’t say much at all, except a gunman had stormed the school. I sat on that floor and made a plan for my own death if Ivy was…” He can’t say the word. “The radio went silent for a moment, it was the longest moment in history. It felt like that one moment was a decade in length. I jumped up off the floor, and ran for my car. I didn’t say anything to anyone. I simply ran. I had to get to her. I didn’t want my baby being alone. Not for one moment.”

  “What did you think when you were driving over to the school?”

  “I don’t remember how I got there, or even what route I took to get there. I don’t recall stopping at traffic lights or even what speed I was doing. I just knew I had to get to her.” Dad turns to me, his own eyes shimmering with tears. “I couldn’t leave you alone. I just couldn’t. No matter what happened, I needed to hold you so you knew you were never alone.” A tear falls from his eye and he wipes it with the back of his hand.

  “Dad,” I choke back the sorrow wanting to escape.

  “I got to the school, and there were people everywhere. I had to park nearly a block away and run. I ran like my life depended on it, and it did.” He clutches my hand and squeezes it. “I didn’t see her right away, and my heart was breaking with every second that passed that I couldn’t find her. I felt like I’d failed.”

  “But you didn’t,” I say.

  “I couldn’t keep you safe. My only job and I couldn’t do it.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “I kept thinking, what if I took a personal day at work and we went to the lake. Or we went to the movies. You wouldn’t have been there, and you wouldn’t have been in danger.”

  “Dad, that’s not how life works. You can’t protect me from things like this.”

  “It’s my damn job, Ivy. I have to protect you. I have to. I made a promise to your…” Dad stops talking.

  My body shivers. “You made a promise to who? Mom?”

  Dad stands and walks to the window. It’s a large window overlooking a courtyard with several benches surrounding a huge tree in the center of it. Standing, I look over toward Dad.

  “She made me promise that whatever I do, I’d love you and protect you. And I love you more than my own life, Ivy. But I couldn’t protect you. Not against something like this. Which means I failed you and I failed your mother.”

  “Dad, when did you promise Mom you’d protect me?”

  Dad rakes his hand through his hair. He takes several breaths before he places his forehead to the window pane and closes his eyes. “The day she died,” he whispers.

  Dad told me Mom was caught in a riptide at the beach and drowned. That’s all I’ve ever known. But now, this doesn’t make sense. “Dad, how could you have talked to Mom, when she drowned?”

  My stomach stirs as I hold my breath. I walk over to him and put my hand on his back.

  “Your mother was the most beautiful woman I ever met,” Dad says as he turns to stare at me. “You look exactly like her.” He smiles, and gently reaches to tuck some of my hair behind my ear. “She could walk into a room, and stop conversation. Her hair was long, and her eyes were the most beautiful shade of brown I’ve ever seen. Much like yours. Hers sparkled like she was hiding the best secret in the world.”

  “Why haven’t you ever told me this before?”

  “I couldn’t.” He turns, taking a step backward and leaning against the wall. “I had promised your mother that I’d never tell you about…” his voice trails as his gaze reflects his distance.

  “Tell me what?” I step closer, and now there’s an urgency to my words.

  Dad shakes his head; more tears fall from his eyes. “Tell you why your mom drowned.”

  “You told me she got caught in a riptide.”

  “She made me promise I wouldn’t tell. That’s why I made up the story about the riptide and the beach. She never wanted you to think she didn’t love you. She did, so much. Her heart was so big, and all she ever wanted was to be a good mother to you.”

  “Dad… I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

  “When we married, she wanted a baby right away. She couldn’t wait to start a family, and I loved her so much that all I wanted was to make her happy. We started trying for you the night we were married. By the time we had our first-year anniversary, we were already pregnant.” He smiles warmly. “We were so happy. She was always rubbing her belly and singing to you. And I loved seeing her happy.”

  “Dad.” I stand beside him and place my hand on his forearm. He slowly glances down then lifts his gaze to me. “Please, I want to know.”

  “Then she had you, and you were more perfect than a snowflake. You bought us so much happiness. You slept perfectly for us from the moment we brought you home. You were the baby everyone hopes for.” I smile at Dad’s fond memories of me. “It was the best times of our lives.”

  “Why have you hidden this from me?”

  “Because those moments in time didn’t last. Your Mom was sick. She had always been sick.”

  “Sick? Like how?”

  “She suffered from a lot of mental health issues. She went through times of depression, and she was schizophrenic.”

  I breathe heavily. My head is spinning. I stagger back a few steps and sit in the seat Dad was in. My heart leaps back and forth, threatening to escape my chest. A rash of goosebumps rise on my skin, and suddenly my messed-up head becomes even more frantic. “Mom had mental health issues?” I ask in a small voice.

  “She had them from a young adult. She told me about it all from the moment we met. She begged me to turn and walk away from her, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t leave a person whose heart was so big that she was willing to sacrifice our relationship just so she wouldn’t hurt me. She begged me, Ivy. We fought over it. She even disappeared to her grandparents’ house in Kansas so I wouldn’t find her. But my life wasn’t worth living without her. She was a spark so bright, and so powerful that I knew I had to take the good with the bad. Marriage isn’t smooth sailing; it’s hard work every single day.”

  “She was sick?” I can’t get over this. My head is reeling, and I’m barely making sense of anything. “I’m not sure how to feel.” But my body is responding the way it wants. I turn to the Elizabeth and plead with her to help me. “I don’t know what to feel,” I say again.

  “Ivy, do you need a moment?” she asks, her notepad balancing on her knees.

  “I need you to tell me more,” I say turning back to Dad.

  “We kept on top of her problems. But it’s not as easy as just popping a pill or two and everything will be fine. There were so many factors affecting her. We managed to control them all, one at a time. But…” This ‘but’ sounds painful. And I suspect, it’s going to hurt bad.

  “But?” I need him to tell me everything. “It’s okay, Dad. I have to know.”

  “Something changed for her. She got worse, and nothing was helping her. She’d stay in bed all day and cry. I’d wake in the middle of the night and she’d be talking to no one. When I tried talking to her, she’d stare through me like I was talking a different language. One night I was going to cook dinner, but she took a knife out of the drawer, and slit her wrist in front of me. She told me the man beside me told her to do it. There was no one other than the three of us in the house.”

  The man standing beside Dad. Was Azael Mom’s demon before he was mine? I clutch at my chest as I listen to his words. “Go on,” I croakil
y say.

  “It was getting bad. She told me she needed to cleanse herself for all her sins. She got worse and worse. She’d try to hurt herself every moment I wasn’t watching her. The drugs her psychiatrist put her on ended up causing her to sleep most the time. But the good thing was, when she woke, she had her clarity. But that was short-lived because the drugs were so strong they’d make her drowsy.”

  “Ivy, are you okay?” Elizabeth asks. I nod, but I feel like shaking my head and running out of this room. But I have to know. I have to know everything. “Go on, Stephen.”

  “She’d tell me how she couldn’t live her life in fear of her voices wanting to kill her again, or them telling her to kill one of us. She hated living the way she was. She’d tell me sleeping for eighteen hours a day was not what she wanted for her family. I did everything I could. But her days were eclipsed by darkness. It seemed endless. I thought if I took you and your mother out to the lake, she could feel the sun on her face and maybe that would help her to fight her battle.”

  “The lake?” Flashes of my dreams keep playing in my head. “Was she wearing a white dress?”

  Dad nods. “It was a dress she bought when she was healthy, and she wanted to wear it on one of our date nights. But she rapidly declined after she bought it, and we didn’t get a chance to have another date night. I brought the picnic basket, but forgot the blanket in the car, so I ran back to get it.”

  Hot tears stream down my face.

  “I was only gone for a couple of minutes.”

  “She stood up and walked into the water,” I say.

  “Yes, she walked into the water, and kept walking until her head disappeared under it. She couldn’t swim.”

  “She was screaming for me, Dad. She was calling for me to help her, but I thought she was waving to me.”

  “She wasn’t screaming for you, Ivy. She was telling you how much she loved you.”

  “She loved me?”

  “She loved you so much she thought you’d be better off without her. I saw her in the water as I was coming back with the picnic blanket. I dropped it, and ran until I hit the water. Then I jumped in and swam out to her. By the time I reached her, she wasn’t breathing. I got her back to shore, performed CPR. I got her breathing again for a moment. She made me promise to only tell you the good about her, and not the bad. She never wanted you to know about her mental illness.”

  “Why? Was she embarrassed?” My sobs are making it difficult to speak intelligibly.

  “Ivy, she begged me to leave her. She even packed up and left just so I could move on. She couldn’t cope with her schizophrenia. She didn’t want you to know, because she didn’t want you to think she was weak.”

  “Weak? Dad, she wasn’t weak, she was ill.”

  “Sweetheart, you need to know she loved you with everything in her.”

  It strikes me like an arrow to my heart. “Dad, please tell me I didn’t do anything to make her like that. Please tell me on that day, I didn’t cause her to want to drown herself?”

  “You were perfect. Never think otherwise.”

  “Ivy, mental health problems present themselves in varying ways. What happened to your mother was certainly not your responsibility,” Elizabeth interjects into this intense conversation Dad and I are having.

  In a way, I’m really happy she’s here, but also, I wish she wasn’t. Now that she knows Mom had these issues, she’ll probably look at me closer than I want.

  And even though I’ve only spent this time with Elizabeth, I know she’s really proficient at her job.

  “Dad, why didn’t you tell me these things before? Why leave it until now?”

  “Because of what you did to yourself,” he says. Both our gazes travel to my arms, and I let out a long sigh. “And because of your dreams.”

  “Tell me about your dreams, Ivy,” Elizabeth says.

  In under an hour my life has drastically altered.

  I came here today with all intentions of skating by, giving Elizabeth as little information about myself as I could.

  Even though a small part of me feels betrayed by Dad for keeping this from me, I also understand it. Dad wanted to protect the image I had of Mom, and not tarnish it with words such as ’schizophrenia.’

  But really, I’m the one who’s letting him down by not telling him about my demon and how when he comes to me, he promises me sanctuary if I cut myself.

  I ignore Elizabeth’s request. This is the right moment, “Dad, there’s something I need to tell you, too,” I say. I close my eyes and reach for every ounce of strength I have in myself. I can’t keep letting him down. I can’t let this ruin what Mom died trying to protect.

  The only thing keeping me quiet is my fear of Azael. But the time has come for me to tell Dad what’s happening inside my head.

  The fallout may be hard, but I will never be alone as long as Dad is by my side, supporting me.

  “What is it, sweetheart?”

  The room falls silent.

  I can hear my heartbeat echoing in my ears.

  This is a defining moment in my life.

  One single second can change the path I travel on.

  “Dad…” Breathing in and tightly closing my eyes I say the words I’ve never thought I’d be saying aloud, “…I’m a cutter.”

  Dad gasps.

  Chapter 21

  Since our first appointment with Elizabeth, we’ve each been having a session privately, and one together each week.

  I haven’t said anything to Tobias or Jared yet, but tonight I’m going to tell them.

  They’re both coming over for a barbecue and we’ll talk about everything. It’s needed, for all of us.

  I want them to know I’ll be there for them, no matter what we go through.

  “How are you, sweetheart?” Dad asks as he begins preparations for dinner.

  Chopping the salad, I nod. “Good. I’ll be truthful, I was expecting you to react differently. But then again, I had no idea about Mom and her…” I stop to search for the right word. Mental illness isn’t right, it implies someone is sick and needs to be fixed. So, I decide to call it what it is. “…her schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.”

  Elizabeth explained the difference between depression and bipolar disorder, and the more she told us about it, Dad confirmed Mom wasn’t depressed, she had bipolar disorder. She would swing from happiness to an extreme low. If she had depression, she’d be on the low with no sight of relief.

  Individually, they come with their own challenges. But being schizophrenic along with bipolar disorder, man, that’s just fucked. Really, there’s no other word that can be substituted.

  “But it doesn’t mean it has to ruin your life. There are plenty of people who suffer with these, and who manage to live. True, it’s incredibly difficult for them, but it can be done.”

  At our first session, I opened up about everything. And even though I’ve only been seeing Elizabeth for a short time, I feel like I can cope with telling them. I can’t keep running from Azael, I need to confront him face to face, and I need to let him know I’m going to fight. I can’t let him control me anymore.

  “I know,” I say as I slide a cucumber over to the chopping board and begin cutting it into slices. Dad watches me intently, but he tries to hide it. “I won’t hurt myself,” I tell him wryly. His face says everything I need to know.

  “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I know I was staring at you, and I was hoping you wouldn’t notice.”

  “Dad.” I lay the knife down and lean against the kitchen counter. “You need to understand, I don’t have a constant need to cut.”

  “I know. It’s when you find times difficult.”

  “It’s my coping mechanism. It’s a way to release the hurt inside me.”

  Dad hugs me and kisses my forehead. “You’re beyond your years, Ivy. You understand so much more than a normal eighteen-year-old girl.”

  I chuckle at his words. “Really, Dad? Normal? Show me someone who’s normal and I’ll show you
a three-headed alien.” Dad laughs and nods his head. “Normal is subjective. What’s normal for you, may not be normal for me.”

  He lovingly pinches my cheek. “You are so smart. And right. I wish more people think the way you do.”

  “There aren’t enough psychologists and psychiatrists in the world for that.”

  Dad’s eyes widen in surprise, and for a moment he stares at me. I can’t help but laugh at myself. Dad’s still unsure, until I see his lips break into a smile. “Thank God you were joking.”

  “Who says I am?” I mumble under my breath, but I keep smiling. Dad heard me, and he was supposed to. There’s a knock on the door, and I move to open it. “Jared!” I almost screech. It’s so good to see him again.

  “Hey, girlfriend,” he says as he enters.

  He’s looking much better, but he still has bags under his eyes. His cheeks have filled out, and not quite as sunken as they were. But the dark rings under his eyes tells me he’s still not sleeping. “You look okay.” I hug him tight against me.

  “Hey, Mr. J,” he calls out to my Dad.

  “Jared, how are you, son?”

  “Hanging in there.” He walks over to Dad and gives him a hug.

  For a long time, Jared’s been a staple in my home. He’s welcome here no matter what time of the day or night he wants to come over. Dad’s always been accepting of him. When Jared came out and told Dad he’s gay, Dad’s response was, “About time you told me.” He knew, and has never had a problem with it.

  I mean, why should he? It doesn’t affect us in the slightest. Jared will always be Jared regardless of who he decides to be with.

  “You know, it’s been a while since you’ve crashed here,” Dad says to Jared.

  “It’s gonna be a while ’til I crash here again. With everything that happened, I’m still struggling with the outside world. My safe haven is home. Coming here was a challenge, but I know I’m safe.”