Absolution (39 page)

But then Jimmy turned everything on its head and she almost got hurt. Because of him. The fireworks dimmed and the void suddenly became bigger and blacker and far more frightening than before.

“All I’ve done is make things worse by being here,” he said. “I never should’ve come home.”

“For Christ’s sake!” Callum rolled his eyes.

Jack’s stomach spun in circles. Suddenly he wanted to throw up, but Callum wasn’t finished.

“Hey – you haven’t been here the last few years, you haven’t seen what I’ve seen. She needs you. She may not have said so in words, but she sure as hell has in every way that counts. She’s been different these past few weeks, and that’s down to you. Maybe you’ve been so wrapped up inside your own head that you haven’t noticed it, or maybe you just don’t know how bad it really was for her, but she has changed and I have no doubt it’s because you’re here. You’ve brought her out of herself more than anyone else ever could, including me.”

Callum’s blue eyes shone with an intensity that begged him to understand. Jack thought he saw something else in there too, something that looked a hell of a lot like sorrow.

“Don’t you get it?” Callum pleaded. “She needs you – she’s always needed you. Maybe that’s why she’s taking this so hard. You need to show her that it’s okay to need you, that you’re not going anywhere.”

Ally sat at her kitchen table, staring at the cup of cold coffee in front of her. Questions ate away at her, one after another after another, until she felt hollow inside.

Why hadn’t anyone told her about what happened that night? What would make Callum keep something like that from her? Had dragging her out of the car caused her injury – or made it worse? How should she feel about all of this? Should she be angry, and if so, at who? Jack or Callum? Or both of them?

She pushed the cold cup of coffee away with a sweep of her hand, folded her arms on the table in front of her and laid her head on them, closing her eyes. She heard movement from the kitchen doorway but couldn’t muster the energy to look up. A warm hand rested on her shoulder, squeezing gently. Long hair that smelt vaguely of oranges tickled her ears as Maggie draped an arm around her shoulders and enveloped her in a hug.

“It’s gonna be okay,” Maggie whispered.

She screwed her eyes shut tighter and willed herself to believe her.

Callum knocked on Ally’s front door with more confidence than he actually felt. The longer he stood there, the more he felt the weight of what had happened pushing down on him. When Maggie answered the door, she ushered him in with a wave of her hand, aware he was coming. She reached up to give him a quick hug, anger and disappointment forgotten now.

“Good luck,” she whispered.

He nodded, squeezing her tightly for a moment before releasing her. She picked up her handbag from next to the hall table and made a hasty exit, closing the front door quietly behind her. Drawing a steadying breath, he walked into the living room. Ally sat on the couch, the remote control in her lap. He glanced at the TV in the corner but it wasn’t on.

“Hey.” 

She looked up, and there was a vulnerability in her expression that he had not seen for a very long time. The façade that she usually wore – the bravado, the confidence – had been stripped away. He was partly responsible for that and the realisation sat like a heavy weight on his heart.

“We need to talk,” he said gently.

Reluctantly, she nodded. He made his way over to the armchair opposite her, perching on its edge. She seemed smaller somehow, and so much older than her years. A stranger would have taken one look at her and identified that she was hurting, and he was hardly a stranger.

“I’m not sure where to start,” he said, clasping his hands tightly together and squeezing.

“What happened that night? All of it this time. I want to know everything.”

Memories overwhelmed him, crawling over him and pulling him under again. He could almost feel the chill in the air as it was on that night, bringing with it the sense of panic and fear.

“After the car ended up against the tree, Jack and I climbed out,” he began uncertainly. “You were still unconscious and hanging in your seat and we thought you’d be safer there for the moment. I went to try and find the car that hit us, thinking that maybe they could give us a hand. Jack stayed with you. When I got back, he was sitting on the grass and you were lying on top of him,” he said quietly, a shudder of recognition running through him. “There was a really strong smell of gas in the air and he said he thought the car was gonna go up with you inside it, so he had to get you out of there. That’s it.”

It felt weird, talking about her like this. It was as if she were two different people. One Ally was hanging unconscious in the car, the other one was sitting right in front of him, staring at him with hollow eyes and zero recognition.

“Why didn’t you tell me any of that before?”

“Because I thought you had enough to deal with. It didn’t make sense to lay any of this on you then.”

“You could’ve told me later – you
should’ve
told me later.”

“It didn’t feel like it was the right thing to do then. I was wrong, and I know that now. I’m sorry.”

Devastation shone out of her.

“What would you have done, if I’d told you this back then?” he tried, throwing a safety rope, trying to ease himself back to her, to close this yawning chasm of distrust that had opened up between them.

Instead, she threw the rope back at him, shrugging half-heartedly. “I don’t know, but at least I would have known the truth.”

She was right. His high-handed attitude of ‘it’s not my place to tell her’ now seemed self-serving at best.

“He thinks it was his fault,” she said flatly. “That’s why he left.”

He nodded, feeling sick to his stomach.

“And you knew this.”

Reason flew out the window. He wished he could have known then the pain he would cause her now, by not telling her. He would have sucked it up and told her the truth then, and maybe she would be stronger for it.

“By the time I realised he wasn’t coming back, it was too late – too much time had passed. I thought that telling you then would just make things worse.”

She hung her head and he was grateful for the reprieve, as cowardly as he knew that was.

“You should be talking to Jack about this, not me. He was there with you the whole time.”

She shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know what to say to him.” 

“He was in an impossible situation. He had a split second to make a decision and he made the best one he could. I would’ve done exactly the same thing, and so would you have, if the situation had been reversed.”

His words hung in the air between them and he waited anxiously, his hand flexing nervously around his closed fist.

“I don’t blame him,” she murmured finally, looking up. “But it doesn’t seem to matter either way because he blames himself – he said so that day at the hospital.”

“It’s tearing him apart.”

“I know, and there’s nothing I can do about that.”

Her gaze settled somewhere between the two of them, seeing things he couldn’t.

“You could talk to him, tell him that?”

“What if it doesn’t make any difference? What if he can’t let it go?” She fixed him with a heartbreaking stare. “I can’t lose him again, but if he can’t let it go, I can’t be around him. I don’t want to be like some kind of trigger for this stuff he carries around inside of him.”

Callum stood up and walked over to sit beside her on the couch.  He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close. “You need to talk to him.”

Jack stood on the lawn in the rain, staring at his Dad’s house. His hair stuck to his head and his clothes were soon soaked through, but still he couldn’t bring himself to go inside. Callum had told him that the place needed some tidying up after Jimmy had trashed it and he couldn’t face that, not yet. Just another reminder of how he had failed him.

Instead, he got in his car and drove over to Ally’s. He had no idea what he was going to say to her, but he had to see her. Even if she yelled and screamed at him, it was better than this silence.

But when he pulled up outside her house, her driveway was empty. It felt as if his lungs were collapsing. The message she was sending was pretty damn clear. He had pushed her too far. There were no more second chances. He’d had his one shot to get this right, and he blew it.

With no idea what to do or where to go or how to fix anything, he headed for the one place he hoped he could find some peace.

He pulled up outside the cemetery gates and cut the engine. In the sudden silence, the rain drummed a steady beat against the roof of the car. He looked around him. On a day as wet and grey as this one, he hadn’t expected there to be anyone else here but him. But misery loves company, and there were three other cars parked outside the gate. Looking closer, he saw that one of them was Ally’s.

What was she doing here? Was she looking for the same thing he was?

He got out of the car and started up the central walkway, trudging through the steady stream of water running down the concrete path. The weather suited his mood, easing the near-constant ache in his head from the concussion, although the ache in his heart seemed to grow. With each step, new anxieties and self-doubts flooded through him. He had no idea if Ally was visiting his father’s graveside, but it seemed like a good bet. What reception would he get if she was? He almost turned back to the car and waited for her there, but something spurred him on.

When he finally saw her, he stopped. She was standing in front of his father’s grave, head bowed low, soaked to the skin. An involuntary shiver ran through him that had nothing to do with the weather. He stood there, glued to the path, watching her from a distance. Water dripped from his eyelashes and he blinked, running a quick hand over his eyes to clear them. She didn’t move for the longest time. He felt like he was imposing. Maybe she wanted to be alone?

A million thoughts rattled through him. Most of them didn’t even have words attached to them, just fleeting emotions, racing through his subconscious, leaving emptiness in their wake.

Grief. Love. Guilt. Shame. An all-encompassing desire to turn back the clock.

He didn’t even realise he had started walking again until she looked up and their eyes met. The rain made it impossible to tell for sure, but he thought she was crying. She slipped an arm out of one of her crutches and smoothed her wet hair back from her face.