“I think I did the night I went out there.”
“When you came back without your shoes?”
I nod, look off in the distance. “It’s the first time I’ve been back since everything happened. Finding her shoe out there—she always wore ballerina slippers—I didn’t expect to find that. I thought they’d cleaned it all up when they took her away. But seeing it, I don’t know, in a way, it showed me that it was in the past or something. Like somehow, some way, my own feelings about that night, my rage about what happened to her, they didn’t rule me anymore.”
Cilla’s watching me when I turn to her.
“The one thing that nearly destroyed me was the fact that I’d let her down. That I hadn’t protected her like a brother should. Not that she hadn’t come to me, but that I’d been too blind to see. Impotence for a man is a cruel sort of death. That helplessness, powerlessness, I felt even when I killed the man responsible, it stayed with me for a long time. Too long. I don’t know when it left me, actually, but it has. And that night, I was drunk.” I shake my head. “I was so fucking drunk but maybe I needed to be because it felt like she had left her shoe for me to find. Touching it again, putting it between my own, bigger ones, it finished something.”
I walk to the window, look outside. Cilla comes up beside me, slips her hand into mine.
“What I did to my uncle, maybe back then I thought I could bring her back by taking his life. I don’t know. But she’s gone and I think she’s at peace. Maybe more so than she could ever be here.”
“I’m sorry for what happened to you. To both of you,” Cilla says, taking both hands now.
I look down at her. “I’m sorry for what happened to you. To both of you.”
She gives me a weak smile and I have a feeling she’s also let go of at least some part of the past. That now, she can start to heal.
Epilogue 1
Cilla
It’s three months to the day that Jones tried to hang himself. I can finally say those words without breaking down, without it breaking me. It’s a cold, clear day and snow blankets the fields, outlines the bare branches of the trees. It’s so beautiful. White as far as the eye can see. Clean and new and filled with promise.
“I’m freezing my ass off, Cilla.”
I smile.
Kill and I are standing outside the entrance of the Dover Recovery Village. He’s holding my hand and I can feel him watching me as I stare at the double doors. I take a deep breath in and nod. Kill pushes one of the doors open and we step inside, the gust of wind that sneaks in around us ruffling the papers on the desk in the lobby.
Today will be the first time I see Jones in three months, although I’ve been talking to him in brief conversations over the phone for a few weeks now. He’s doing so well, remarkably well. And so am I. At Kill’s urging, I’ve been talking to someone too, talking about everything.
I underestimated the power of spoken words. I didn’t realize they can heal as surely as silence can destroy.
“Good morning, Mr. Black. Ms. Hawking.” The same nurse who’s always here stands to greet us, the smile on her face easier than I’ve ever seen it before.
“Good morning. Dr. Moore is expecting us,” Kill says.
“Yes, he is.” She turns to me and gives me a smile. “And so is your brother.”
I’m reassured by this. I don’t want to push Jones but it’s taken all I have to let things play out like this. I know it was the right thing to do, though. For both of us.
Kill squeezes my hand as we follow the nurse to Dr. Moore’s office instead of directly to Jones’s room. “Is something wrong?” I ask, confused by this.
“No, the doctor just wanted to talk to you for a few minutes first.”
“Okay.”
Once we’re seated in Dr. Moore’s office, he opens a folder and arranges some papers.
“Did he change his mind?” I ask, my heart racing. I’ve been looking forward to this for more than a week and I don’t want him to have changed his mind.
“No,” Dr. Moore says, looking up at me as he turns the papers around so Kill and I can read them. I’m surprised at the glimpse I get. They’re release papers. “He’s looking forward to seeing you.”
Kill picks up the pages, shuffles through them.
“I wanted to meet with you to discuss Jones’s departure from Dover Recovery Center.”
I’m both elated and terrified by this. “Is he ready?”
“I think so. I don’t think there’s more we can do for him. But I do think he’s scared, which is natural.”