Absolution (2 page)

“
There are four questions of value in life; what is sacred? Of what is the spirit made? What is worth living for, and what is worth dying for? The answer to each is the same. Only love.
”

- Johnny Depp

Jack bolted upright, bathed in sweat, his heart racing. It took him several long moments to remember where he was.

The sky is darkest just before the dawn.

The small window revealed very little light. It was early. How long had he slept?  A couple of hours? It felt like less. How could one nightmare squeeze such a lot into such a short space of time? One of the many mysteries of the universe.

The fear subsided slightly as he recognised the nightmare for what it was. When he was young, his mother would soothe him with “It’s alright, it was just a nightmare. It wasn’t real.”

But this wasn’t just a nightmare, and it
was
real. He collapsed back onto the pillow and stared at the grimy ceiling.

Four years had passed and still he could recall every last detail of that night. In his waking moments he had control for the most part, but when he slept it was a different story. Memories, grief and guilt soaked him like acid, eating away at him.

Pushing the covers off, he swung his legs down onto the threadbare carpet. His entire body ached. The trembling hand he ran through his short brown hair left it standing on end, the nightmare still nipping at the edges of his subconscious. Ally’s face flashed in front of his eyes. He squeezed them shut, trying to block her out as he fought to regain control.

In, one thousand. Out, one thousand. In, one thousand. Out, one thousand.

Cautiously, he opened his eyes again, staring blearily at the stained carpet beneath his feet. The day hadn’t yet begun and already he was bone-tired. He stood up, his shoulders still sore from the fight the week before. The recovery time was longer these days but he didn’t care. He needed somewhere to channel his frustrations and inside the ring suited him just fine. He was fighting again tonight, instructed to take a dive – being paid good money to do it, too. Wearily, he pushed his pride aside one more time. The fact that it had become easier to do these days sat like a lead weight across his aching shoulders.

Padding across the room in his boxers, he grabbed his sweats and pulled them on. He took the stairs from his apartment down to the street two at a time, breathing through his nose. Running through the deserted streets, cloaked in despair, almost invisible in the dark, he tried to block out the world. The sun had begun to rise by the time he ran back towards his apartment, having come full circle.

He showered quickly, unable to ignore his battered reflection as he shaved. The skin was still healing over the bridge of his nose and he had a dark bruise around the cut on his cheekbone, the result of last week’s fight.

“You’re a disgrace,” he mumbled to his scruffy self in the bathroom mirror.

Changing into his work clothes – faded jeans, checked shirt, padded jacket, work boots – he threw down a cup of strong, black coffee. It did nothing to settle his stomach. Driving to the work site, he cranked the radio up loud in an effort to silence the voices in his head.

The day passed much like any other. He put in a solid day’s work on site and declined an invitation from his workmates to hit the local bar after their shift ended. Drinking alone was less complicated. One day soon they would stop asking. He had held plenty of jobs just like this and the invitations always dried up eventually. He had nothing to share with any of them – nothing he was proud of, at least. The less they knew about him, the happier he would be to stick around longer.

That evening, he sat at the tiny table in the dingy apartment that had passed for home over the past few months and ate lukewarm pizza in silence. The light bulb had blown in the living room a couple of days ago but he hadn’t gotten around to replacing it yet. The borrowed light shining through from the small kitchenette gave everything a sombre glow that suited his mood.

He felt like he was running in circles. Just when he finally felt like he had made progress, that the memory of what happened that night was fading, he would have the nightmare again and everything would come flooding back. At first it frustrated him, but then he realised that this was how it was supposed to be. The guilt he carried around with him like a chain around his neck, belonged there. Sometimes he thought that this was God’s way of punishing him for what he did. Leaving like that was an act of cowardice, and cowards deserved to be punished. He wasn’t an idiot – he knew that he looked for that punishment every time he got into the ring. He was grateful for every punch that found its mark on his body. He deserved it.

Of course, his father would disagree. Tom seemed certain that forgiveness awaited him – from Ally, from Callum and from everyone else he had left behind. The truth was, as much as he loved his father and appreciated his support and loyalty, he didn’t believe him. Some things were unforgivable.

Their terms of engagement were crystal clear. Jack kept in contact, Tom didn’t push him for more details than he was willing to offer. Jack appreciated the phone calls as the lifeline they were. He just wished he could allow himself to believe when Tom said that all was not lost.

Jack found himself staring into Ally’s blue-green eyes, her lips tilting into a seductive smile.

He blinked, quickly pushing the vision aside. One day, he promised himself, he would go home and apologise in person. But not yet. Four years had passed and he was no more ready to face them now than he was back then. He wasn’t strong enough, and to face up to them after what he had done, he had to be strong.

He took another swig from his beer bottle and set it down on the table in front of him, staring at it as if it would provide him with answers. He had fantasies about going home, about just turning up on his father’s doorstep out of the blue. He imagined talking to Callum, hearing him say that he understood why he left and that he didn’t blame him for anything. He fantasised about Ally forgiving him, throwing herself into his arms and everything going back to the way it was.

But they were just fantasies. The reality was that he would never be able to go home, that Callum would never understand why he left and that Ally would never be able to throw herself into his arms again.

Sometimes, in the moments just before waking, he almost felt her curled into his body on the bed, her hair tickling his nostrils. He could swear he felt her long, smooth legs entwined with his, his hand curled around hers beneath the pillow.

And then he woke alone, his arms empty, his bed cold.

He had taken something from her that she would never be able to get back. As she lay in the ICU that night, he remembered thinking that she looked whole. But she wasn’t. A shattered spinal cord did invisible damage, damage that could never be repaired. She would never walk again and it was his fault. He carried that knowledge around with him like an anchor that simultaneously tied him to her and tore her away from him.

Questions haunted him, but he was afraid to ask them. He told himself it would be easier if they didn’t talk about her, warning his father that it had to be this way. The delusion was paper-thin. Just because they didn’t talk about her didn’t mean she was far from his mind. He shook off the musings, taking another swig from his bottle. He didn’t deserve to know.

Staring down at the untouched slice of cold pizza on his plate, he saw his whole life stretched out in front of him. Alone in some grubby little apartment, working a dead-end job miles from home. Throwing himself into harm’s way – tempting fate, but too much of a coward to take matters into his own hands. Working himself to the brink of physical and mental exhaustion, trying to block everything out. How had he ended up here? 

He stood up and stared out the dirt-covered window into the back of the building in front of his. After a few moments, he took what was left of his beer over to the couch and sank into it, the fabric on the arms smooth with the ingrained grease and dirt of previous tenants. His gaze crawled over the faded, peeling wallpaper as he tried to psyche himself up for the fight tonight. He had been instructed to take a dive in the third round, which got under his skin. He knew his opponent, had seen him fight. He was bigger, but he was clumsier too. If he put his mind to it, he could take him, but he had his instructions. Didn’t matter if he could take him or not.

The trill of his ringing cell phone broke into his thoughts and he picked it up off the stack of pizza boxes that passed for a coffee table. An unfamiliar number blinked at him from the screen.

“Yeah?”

“Jack?”
The hair on the back of his neck stood on end.
“Hello?”

“Who is this?” he asked tentatively, although the voice was far too familiar to be mistaken.

“It’s me. Callum.”
His heart thumped in his ears.
“You still there?”

“I’m here.”

How the hell did Callum get this number?  

“I’ve got some bad news. It’s your Dad.”

The words hung in the air between them, his heart breaking as if it knew the truth before he did.

“He’s dead, Jack.”

Silence. Utter devastation.

“He had a heart attack.”

Jack stared at the wall opposite him. “When?”

“This afternoon. I came over to –”
Callum’s voice broke and he cleared his throat.
“He was in the living room.”

The world stopped spinning.

“Your number was in his phone. I thought you’d want to know.”

Jack nodded blankly.

“I’m sorry.”

He nodded again, forgetting that Callum couldn’t see him.

“Funeral’s on Friday.”

The pause was long and uncomfortable. He imagined Callum’s face on the other end of the phone. He felt dead inside. Empty. Alone.

“Are you coming home?”
His heart hammered in his chest, fear pulsing through him at the thought.
“Jack? Are you planning on coming home, for the funeral?”

The harshness in Callum’s tone shocked him into answering. “I don’t know.”

“I don’t care one way or the other. It’s your call.”
Jack closed his eyes against the obvious distaste in his voice.
“I just thought that if you were, Ally should know.”

His eyes flew open at the mention of her name.

“She said she doesn’t want to see you. So if you decide to come, stay away from her – I mean it. She doesn’t need this shit from you, not now.”
The anger was unmistakable.
“Funeral’s Friday, at eleven. Father David’s handling it. You can call him for all the details.”

Callum rattled off the number as Jack scrawled it on the top of the nearest pizza box with a pen he dug out. He stared at the number, barely able to read his own writing, his hands were shaking so badly.

“Thanks,” he mumbled automatically.

“I mean it, Jack. Stay away from her. You owe her that much.”

The line went dead. His heart thundered in his ears. He blinked once, twice, as the colours around him faded until he was staring at a wall of grey.

Jack pushed the conversation with Callum into the back of his mind, compartmentalising it, as he had done so often over the past few years. Shadowboxing, he bounced on the balls of his feet. He didn’t want to think about anything right now. He just wanted to get into the ring and fight.