by Jack Jordan
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said and looked up.
Heather stared back at her, her eyes widening.
‘Rose,’ she said.
Heather looked better than ever. Her skin was taut and without a blemish. Her body was toned in all the right places but still with womanly curves. She was immaculately dressed, from the cashmere coat to her high heels with red soles. She wore her hair short now, clipped close to her head.
‘Heather,’ she replied curtly.
People swerved around them. The day kept moving as they stood still, taking each other in.
‘You look. . . good,’ Heather said.
Rose looked down at herself: air-dried hair poking out from under her hood, baggy jeans that thickened the sight of her thighs.
Liar.
‘Well, I won’t keep you,’ Rose said and headed down the street.
‘Rose!’
She stopped and turned. Heather was making her way towards her, trying to find something to say to keep her from walking away again.
‘What are you doing now? Shopping?’
‘Coffee.’
‘I should have guessed,’ Heather said with a smile. ‘Can. . . can I join you?’
‘You don’t need to do this,’ Rose said finally.
‘Do what?’
‘You don’t need to see me to clear your conscience.’
‘I know,’ Heather said. ‘I want to, that’s all.’
‘What’s changed in the last three years?’
Heather sighed, aware of the people on the street, weaving around them on the path.
‘I owe you an apology.’
‘So apologise.’
‘I’m sorry, Rose. I just. . . I didn’t know how to help you.’
‘So the mums at the school had nothing to do with it? You weren’t embarrassed of me?’
Heather looked away.
Rose threw the cigarette to the path and ground it beneath her sole. ‘I needed you, Heather, and you cut me out, a year after my daughter died. I lost everyone – my daughters, my husband – and I needed you. I needed you and you turned your back.’
Rose walked away, but this time, Heather didn’t stop her. She walked on, past the coffee shop, and another. She couldn’t stop now, or the grief would hit her. She kept walking until her legs ached and her face flushed red with the cold. She was better off alone.
Rose sat at the table furthest from the window and sipped her coffee. The card for the therapist sat on the tabletop before her. She eyed it as she took another sip, reading the therapist’s name over, and tried to straighten out the creases between her fingers.
If she didn’t get help, she would remain in the vortex of grief, swirling around and reliving every memory. It wasn’t the thought of talking to someone new, it was the judgement she feared. Would this man, this therapist, struggle to hide his disdain for her too?
She looked down at Dr Hunter’s card.
The idea of opening up to a man was nerve-racking, but certainly better than meeting with a woman, who might be a mother and judge her even more fiercely. No, it was better to see a man, however uncomfortable the thought seemed.
She took her phone from her pocket and typed in the number on the card. The phone shook in her grasp. She looked around the coffee shop, eyed those closest to her, and pressed ‘call’. She placed the phone to her ear and turned towards the wall to muffle her words.
‘Dr William Hunter’s office,’ a woman said on the other end of the line.
‘Hello, I. . . I would like to make an appointment.’
‘Have you been with us before?’
‘No.’
‘Can I take your name?’
‘Shaw. Rose Shaw.’
She listened to the tap of the keys on a keyboard and the distant murmur of reception-area music. She bit her fingernail.
‘Mr Hunter has availability in two weeks’ time. The morning of the second of November, at ten o’clock. Shall I book you in?’
That was too long to wait. There were too many nights for her to talk herself out of going.
‘Isn’t there anything sooner?’
‘I can speak with Mr Hunter and get back to you, if you like. In the meantime, shall I pop you in for the second?’
‘Yes, fine.’
‘Is this the best number to reach you on?’
‘Yes.’
‘Thank you, Ms Shaw. We’ll be in touch.’
She wanted to correct her, tell her she was Mrs Shaw, but it felt wrong. Perhaps it was best she wasn’t listed as Mrs after all.
Rose placed the phone on the table and picked up the cup, finished her coffee in three gulps. The café buzzed with people. A grandmother was cutting up a cupcake for her grandson; a woman breastfed her baby as she talked with her friend; a man sat alone reading a book; but it was the woman around her age drinking hot chocolate with her college-aged daughter that she focused on. They smiled and laughed. The woman swiped whipped cream from the tip of her daughter’s nose with her finger. It was agony.
She looked down at her phone and opened Instagram, scrolling through her timeline filled with photos from the only person she followed: Lily.
Rose’s own profile was blank: no photos, no followers, and under a false name. The same for Facebook and Twitter – they were all created to keep up with Lily’s life; it was her only way in. It worried her that Lily would let a profile so vague follow her, but she was grateful to have the opportunity to be a part of her life, even if she didn’t know it. Rose swiped through the timeline, looking at photos of Lily with her friends, iced-coffee drinks with her name on them, a book she had read the week before. Rose read the comments left by Lily’s friends, mostly girls, but some boys too. They wrote in another language, using emojis in place of words: flames to indicate she looked hot; girls calling Lily their ‘wifey’, both genders posting drooling faces or a face with hearts for eyes.
She worried about Lily. There was so much she had to learn, so many things she should know to avoid, and Rose couldn’t help her with any of it; she wasn’t even allowed to try. It wasn’t Rose who Lily came to when she got her first period, it was Christian. Would he think to warn Lily not to send nude photos of herself the way so many teens did nowadays? Teach her to know her worth, and God forbid, tell her she had the right to say no?
Rose stopped scrolling when she stumbled across a photo of Lily and Christian together, in a place Rose didn’t recognise. It was sunny, and sunglasses shaded their eyes, their smiles bright. But it wasn’t the photo that made her heart jolt – instead it was the caption.
Can’t wait for Daddy/Daughter night. #DaddysGirl
Jealousy coursed through her as she locked her phone with a shaking hand. Christian wasn’t blameless – he had left her alone with them most of the time, including the day of the crash. Lily should hate him too.
‘You look like you could let off some steam.’
Rose glanced up at the sound of the man’s voice. He was tall and pale, with thinning red hair and a tired smile. His clothes looked old and worn.
He placed a card on the table with Rearwood Rifle Range printed across it.
She looked around the café to see if he had placed any other cards on the nearby tables. No one glanced their way.
‘Do you approach everyone you meet in cafés like this?’
‘Just the pretty ones.’
She scoffed.
‘I didn’t think people with impaired vision could have a gun licence, let alone a range.’
‘Come on,’ he said through a laugh.
‘I don’t like guns,’ she said, choosing not to add that she thought men who did had something else to make up for.
‘Well, if you change your mind –’ he nodded towards the card and winked – ‘name’s Rob.’
As he turned away and headed for the counter, a short laugh cut from her lips. But the smirk stayed on her face. It felt good to be admired, even for a second. She stood to slip into her coat. The thought of therapy returned and wiped the smi
le from her face.
If she wanted to move on, she had to help herself. But the fear of letting someone in, a strange therapist she had never met, was too much to bear. She headed for the door with her head down, but not before sliding Rob’s card off the table and slipping it into her pocket.
SIX
It was dusk by the time Rose made it to the graveyard. The church windows were emblazoned with the last of the sun’s rays, and the grass between the dead was illuminated with rare flecks of gold. She walked up the gravel walkway and stopped before their graves.
Although the coroner had declared that her mother Lorraine had died of cancer, Rose knew that she had died of a broken heart. For years, Rose had watched the grief eat away at her until she was all but skin and bone, sitting in the same spot on the sofa until the cushions moulded to her shape and the ceiling was marked with a brown halo from the constant stream of cigarette smoke staining the plaster. Rose had resented her for allowing herself to be consumed by grief. As Rose entered adulthood, her mother was noticeably absent, even when they spoke or occupied the same room. Her eyes were vacant and her words were distant, as though she was running on autopilot as her core continued to fester in the past. It was only when Violet died that Rose understood her mother’s grief, and mourned her all over again. Without even realising it, she had become her mother, the woman she had spent her whole adult life resenting.
Rose took a pair of scissors from her bag and trimmed the grass on her mother’s grave, picking at emerging weeds. The gravestone was weathered with moss sprouting in the grooves of the words. She took a mini screwdriver from her bag and worked out the moss until she could read the inscription clearly.
Here lies Lorraine Bartholomew, a devoted mother and wife.
She surveyed the grave for any last blemishes, and finally forced herself to look at her brother’s grave lying beside their mother’s.
Jay had been too young to die. It physically hurt to think of him in the ground, like a migraine waking behind her eyes. His bones had never been given the chance to fully form. He never knew the sensation of a first kiss or a tender caress. He had never known what it was like to be loved by a partner, the unconditional bond that made sense of the mess of one’s teenage years. At seventeen, he should have been happy, with the whole world before him.
Tears bit at her eyes as she remembered finding him, and looked around the graveyard to check she was alone. When the memory came, it was like an unstoppable wave, pushing into her and dragging her under. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath as the memory came flooding back.
She had passed the bathroom so many times that evening, banging on the door for him to hurry up and get out. All she had been thinking of was getting inside to prepare for her date with the guy from the local pub. She couldn’t even remember his name now; the man’s existence instantly became irrelevant, as did so many other aspects of her life. When two hours had passed without a word from him on the other side of the door, fear hit her suddenly. She took a coin from her purse and slipped it in the groove of the lock. She could still remember the quiver of her hand as she held the door handle and pressed down. Part of her knew what she was going to find. When the door drifted open, her whole life changed.
Jay was lying in the bath, the water red with blood. His skin was stark white, and appeared bruised in the grooves of his ribs where he had starved himself. A razor blade lay on the white tiled floor.
It had felt as though someone had taken over her body, moved her limbs for her, screamed without her consent. She snatched him up with such urgency that red water splashed over the rim of the bath and soaked into her jeans. She looked into her brother’s eyes. She would never forget the emptiness of them, the serenity frozen onto his face. When she spotted the cut from his wrist to the crease of his elbow, her legs buckled. All she remembered after that was the sight of her brother’s blood snaking between the floor tiles and the echo of her mother’s screams.
When Rose came to, her gaze settled on the tombstone.
Jay Bartholomew 1982–1999
Twenty years, she thought. I’ve been an only child longer than I was a sister.
She swiped the tears away and took a deep breath. The cold air scorched her lungs. She tidied her brother’s grave, picking at the dead leaves from the trees at the top of the hill.
‘Rosie?’
She froze. Dead leaves crinkled in her fist.
‘Don’t,’ she said and stood with her back to him.
‘Rose, please.’
She turned and looked at her father with a piercing glare.
Tony had gotten so much older. His back had begun to curl. The skin on his cheeks drooped below his jaw. The few tufts of hair he had left were bone white. Sun spots littered his nose, with broken capillaries on his cheeks. But his eyes, they were the same, filled with the same shame and pain.
‘You shouldn’t be here.’
‘I come most days,’ he said.
‘Well, you shouldn’t. They wouldn’t want you here.’
Night was falling. The sky had lost its glow of the setting sun and the shadows in the yard were thickening. Silence grew between them. She bent down and packed away her tools.
‘I see you here sometimes,’ he said. ‘But I know you don’t want to see me. I usually wait until you’re gone.’
She stood and slipped her bag over her shoulder. Blood rushed to her head and made her dizzy.
‘But I had to see you,’ he said finally. ‘Even though you hate me.’
She moved past him, trying to ignore his familiar scent, the musky cologne he dabbed behind his ears and the bitter undertone of cigarette smoke clinging to his clothes. She noticed his hands were flecked with paint. He hadn’t stopped painting either.
She turned back suddenly as hot rage crept up her throat.
‘You don’t get to do this,’ she spat. ‘You don’t get to come to me after all these years and try to make amends. Where were you when my daughter died?’
‘You. . . you didn’t want to see me,’ he said, baffled. ‘You wouldn’t come to the door when I called by.’
‘Then you should have kicked the damn thing down. You should have tried harder.’
‘But you’ve never forgiven me for. . . everything. How was I supposed to know what you wanted?’
She could see that her words were hurting him. His eyes began to sheen over, his bottom lip trembled and his words stuttered. She hated herself for it, but she had to hurt him, just as he had hurt her, Jay, and their mother.
‘No, and I never will forgive you.’ She stormed back to their graves and pointed to where Jay laid beneath the ground.
‘He’s down there because of you,’ she said, watching tears build in his eyes. She moved her finger to her mother’s grave. ‘She’s down there because of you too.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. The tears finally broke. She had only seen her father cry three times before: as each of them was lowered into the ground, and when she swore never to speak to him again, just hours after her mother had been packed beneath the earth.
‘It’s too late for that. No apologies will bring them back.’
‘Rosie. . .’
‘Don’t call me that!’
She stormed past him for the path and strode towards the exit, shaking with rage that only began to ease when she reached the gate of the graveyard. She looked back over her shoulder and could just see him through the lowlight, kneeling before their graves.
She could never forgive him. It was the only way she could withstand the hate from Christian and Lily; she understood their resentment well.
Rose walked through the graveyard gates and onto the street. The sun had almost set and had leached the last bit of warmth from the air. She dashed the tears away and felt how her cheeks had numbed with the chill.
The street was deathly quiet, with nothing but the sound of a siren calling from afar to break the silence. The air was so still, not even the trees made a sound. A fox froze mid-step by
a parked car and dashed across the road as she drew near.
Rose walked on with her head down, thinking of Lily. She thought of ways to coax her out of her room to spend time with her, even considered bribing her with a shopping trip at the weekend or her favourite takeaway. But she knew that Lily would ask to go shopping with her friends instead, and come down from her room to collect the food, only to sneak back up again without a word.
And then it hit her: Lily. Birthday. Cake.
‘Shit!’
As if on cue, her phone began to vibrate in her pocket.
Christian’s name flashed on the screen.
She immediately began to shake. However much she tried to love them, prove that she wasn’t as awful as they thought, her exhaustion and poor memory were proving them right. She had forgotten Lily’s birthday cake and hadn’t turned up for dinner. She sighed and answered the call.
‘Where the hell are you?’ Christian asked.
‘I’m so sorry, I lost track of time. I—’
‘Did you at least get the cake?’
‘I. . . I haven’t slept properly in weeks. My memory, it’s awful. I completely forgot. I’m so sorry.’
He sighed heavily into the receiver. She heard a door shut, perhaps to keep Lily from overhearing.
‘So Lily won’t have a birthday cake this year because you forgot about her?’
‘I’m so sorry. Perhaps if I call now, I can—’
‘I knew I shouldn’t have left you with this.’
‘Christian, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to.’
‘What were you doing that was so important?’
‘I was at the graveyard. I completely lost track of time. I bumped into my father and—’
‘Christ, Rose. You forgot about our living daughter because you were pining over the one we lost?’
‘It wasn’t like that.’
‘I need to leave. Lily’s staying over at a friend’s. I’ll pick up the cake tomorrow.’
‘No, I’ll do it. I promise I won’t forget.’
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea, do you?’
He sighed again.
‘I have to go.’
‘Christian. . .’