A Different Shade of Violet? (13 page)

“Hudson, it wasn’t your fault. Not at all. Please don’t blame yourself. Mad Dog is exactly that – he’s mad in the head, and even if you knew something was wrong you couldn’t have made Adam change his mind. If he was in deep with them, then there’s nothing you or anyone could’ve done. Please don’t blame yourself, Hudson,” I say as another tear falls down his cheek. I wipe it away and he leans into my open palm.

“It feels good to finally tell you about Adam. I hated keeping it from you, but I haven’t spoken about him to anyone since it happened. Only the force councillor and that was mandatory. I didn’t even tell Mum and Dad what happened. They ended up finding out from Hannah... Thank you for listening and letting me get that all out. Seems like now you’re
my
rock?” he says while he shakes his head and wipes his tears.

“I’m always here for you, Hudson… always. And I get loss, trust me I do—”

“I know, that’s why I knew I could tell you and you’d understand, but your loss was far greater than mine. I’m sorry I didn’t even think bringing this up might make you think about your husband and son. Sorry Vee, I don’t want to upset you.”

I shake my head. “It’s okay, yes it reminds me of my boys, but I’m doing okay. It’s been six years and even though it hurts every second to think they’re not here with me, I can think and talk about them now without breaking down. I know Danny is looking down on me and guiding me through this crazy life I’m living, and I know that Caiden is happy up there with his dad and Grandma and Grandpa. I know life would be so different if they hadn’t gone out for that stupid ice cream cake, they might still be here and we would be happy. I would be happy. But everything happens for a reason and if they didn’t… die, then I would never have met you,” I say and his hand tightens in mine.

“I guess we have more in common than we both realised.”

“I guess so,” I say.

He sniffs and sits up taller trying to regain his composure. “If you’re up to it, do you think you could tell me a little about Danny and Caiden?” he asks and I scrunch my eyebrows.

“Really?” I ask a little confused.

“It seems to be a time for sharing, and I always wondered what kind of guy Danny was. How he treated you, and how he was with your son. I want to know what life you had and how different it is to the one you have now but, of course, if it is too hard, you don’t have to—”

“No, it’s okay. I’m just shocked that you want to know.”

“I want to know everything about you, Vee. No more secrets.”

I nod and take a deep breath. A slow smile crosses my face and my body relaxes as I think about Danny.

“Where do you want me to start?”

“At the beginning I guess. How did you meet?”

I smile again and look down at our hands entwined. “I met Danny at high school. We hit it off almost instantly and by the time we were sixteen we already knew we would spend forever together. We were polar opposites. I was the nerd girl.” Hudson smirks. “And Danny was the football playing star of the school. We were so different, but something drew us together. From the moment he asked me out I thought it was a prank. Even though we had been spending some time together I thought it was a joke, and when he actually showed up at my parents’ house the night of the date I was beyond ecstatic. I never thought in a million years that Danny Dyson would ever want me that way. And, of course, being horny teenagers everything was heightened for us, our emotions were all over the place and even though things happened quickly, the love was always there. He was an amazing partner. He would always stick up for me against the bullies of the school. I know it is hard to believe, but I was shy and very quiet. I hardly ever spoke unless spoken too, and I had no self-confidence. Until Danny came along that is and showed me unconditional love. He brought me out of my shell. By the end of high school, we were so mad about each other that we decided to get married. We were eighteen and very young, but the love was undeniable. Even our parents could see that, so they both agreed to our marriage and Danny being as smart and talented as he was, managed to land a job quickly in an accountancy firm. Before long he was earning the big dollars and we had enough to buy our own home so we could start our family. I was already pregnant with Caiden when we moved in. It was our own little place away from everyone else and a place we could call our own and raise a family.

“I was beyond happy Hudson. I never knew a love like I had with Danny was even possible, and we found each other so young. He was the best and most supportive husband you could imagine. He bought me flowers every week and he showered me with gifts. Not that I was materialistic or anything, but it was nice that he showed me how much he cared. When I was pregnant, he ran after me everywhere we went making sure I was feeling okay and not too exhausted. He prepared my food and rubbed my back whenever it got too sore and I never had any doubt of his love for me. I knew because I loved him with such a fiery passion that I would combust every time I was around him. Every part of him was captivating to me… I found him irresistible. I loved him with every fibre of my being, and I never… ever… thought I could love anyone the way I loved Danny.

“That was until Caiden was born. Danny was in the delivery room with me every second of the nineteen hour labour. It was torture, and I know Danny hated seeing me in so much pain, but he was amazing holding my hand the entire time and rubbing my aching body wherever I needed it. I’d never known such adoration from anyone before, he was my world and every inch of me loved him beyond a love imaginable. We were simply meant to be.”

Hudson looks down at his hand in mine and squeezes gently.

“When Caiden was finally born, Danny cried for hours with tears of joy. He held his son so tightly I was worried about him squashing him. But deep down I knew he would never hurt me or his son. The amount of love flowing from Danny in that delivery room was undeniable. He never left my side the whole time I was in the hospital. I was twenty at the time, so I was young, but I was very happy. You have no idea the amount of love you can have for something so tiny the first time you meet them. Caiden was placed in my arms and… I can’t explain it, the bond you have instantly to them is life altering. I never knew I could love two people at the same time equally, but with Danny and Caiden, my heart belonged to them both, and a part of my heart will always belong to them.”

Hudson nods slightly and tightens his hand in mine.

I swallow hard and continue with my story. “Danny was the best dad you could ever imagine. He was so hands on with Caiden. Most men are scared of changing nappies, feeding and bathing newborns, but Danny got right in there. He wasn’t scared at all. He wanted every experience imaginable and we helped each other through the best and the worst times of bringing up a child. One day Caiden wouldn’t stop screaming while Danny was at work. He had colic and I just couldn’t settle him, he was so upset he was vomiting all the time. I hadn’t been sleeping, as he had been unsettled for weeks, I was so worried we were going to lose him. I know it was my stupid, irrational mother fear creeping in. I called Danny in tears, he came straight home from work and reassured me everything was fine. He saw I was struggling, so he took a week off work to spend with me and Caiden. He let me sleep for a couple of the days just so I could catch up and then we took it in turns nursing and caring for Caiden until his colic finally cleared up. Danny was so supportive and I couldn’t have gotten through it without him. He was so caring, loyal and above all he adored me. He loved us from the tips of his toes to the end of his sandy hair.” I take a deep breath.

Hudson looks at me like he’s seeing me for the first time. It’s a strange feeling, but I decide to keep going. If I’m going to tell him everything, I may as well tell him the bad as well.

“Caiden was growing quickly and life got in the way. We always wanted another child, in fact, we wanted a ton of children. We never discussed exactly how many we would have, but we knew more were on the cards. Danny got promoted at work and even though he was crazy busy at work, he always found time for me and our boy. Weekends he would turn off his phone and it was our time to spend as a family. Danny was football mad and every chance he got he was outside with Caiden kicking the ball around. They were honestly the best of friends and they were inseparable. When Caiden would go to bed, the nights were all about us. I never once, not once, felt anything but undying love and affection from Danny. I knew we were one of the lucky ones, who were going to grow old and wrinkly together, sitting on the front porch drinking tea and watching our great grandkids playing while we held hands. I knew that was the plan for us. I never had to worry about Danny cheating or leaving me because, in my heart, I knew… he was the one – the only one.”

Hudson exhales and cracks his neck from side to side. I’m not sure how he feels about me telling him this, but I can’t stop now.

“Everything was perfect, just like it had always been. Danny and I were going to start making baby number two that night, it had taken us five years to get to that point because of Danny’s work. It was never a finances thing, we had the money, but I guess time goes fast when everything is perfect. I was working as a checkout chick two days a week for a local grocer. I did it just to occupy my time really, it didn’t bring in any amazing amount of money or anything, but it was nice to feel like I was contributing somehow. The rest of the time I was a stay at home mum with Caiden. And I loved every second of it. I was struggling with the idea that in two months he would be leaving me during the day to start school. He was growing so fast, and he was such a cute little angel. Of course, he could be a little bugger sometimes, but for the most part he was an amazingly good child. He ate his veggies and went to bed when we told him to. I don’t know how I was so damn lucky to have two of the most amazing boys in my life, I must have done something great to have been given such an unbelievable gift. Little did I know that night in November, everything would change! The woman I was would cease to exist. Danny and Caiden would be taken from the world and I would be left on my own. I had already suffered a great loss two years earlier when my mother died from cancer and two months later my dad had a heart attack and died as well. All I had left in the world was Danny and Caiden, and they would ultimately be taken from me.”

“You don’t have to continue if you don’t want to, Vee,” Hudson whispers making me look at him and he’s frowning and his eyes are drooping like he’s beyond sad.

“No, it’s okay. Full disclosure… complete honesty with you, Hudson. I need to tell you this.”

He nods and holds my hand a little tighter. I sniff and take a steadying breath preparing to tell Hudson about the day I lost my boys.

“Not at all, I think you know when someone you’re undeniably linked with is in trouble,” Hudson says and I nod.

“Anyway, identifying them was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. Looking into Danny’s eyes as they stared back at me lifeless and empty, well, I never want to have to do that again. To be honest, I don’t even know how I survived looking at Caiden. It’s a blur. I remember falling to the floor and heaving, I was sobbing so hard I couldn’t breathe. My world was over. I had nothing. No one to fight for. No one to love or to love me. I was utterly and devastatingly alone, and I knew it would be that way for the rest of my life and that nothing would ever change that fact.

“The time between identifying their bodies and the funeral, I can’t remember at all. I fell apart, but I couldn’t cry anymore… I don’t know why? I think it was because the only way I could get by was to turn off my emotions. Don’t ask me how I did it because I have no idea. I’m just thankful Danny’s family were there to help with the funeral arrangements otherwise there may never have been one. They’re buried next to each other and I haven’t even visited them once since their funeral. I can’t do it! Seeing their names on the plaques on the wall broke something inside me. I needed to be with them. I wanted for so long to die with them. I don’t even know how I kept myself alive the first few months. I know Danny’s family were really helpful for a while, but I couldn’t talk and I wasn’t functioning and eventually they stopped coming around.

“I was sitting in our home, our family home and I realised that Danny and I hadn’t filed the papers for the life insurance. That’s when I realised I was going to lose the house. My shrine and all my memories. The only connection I had left to them. I couldn’t lose them Hudson, and I didn’t care about myself. I lost ten kilos in four weeks and the bills were stacking up. I was drowning, and there was nothing I could do to keep the house. But I had to keep it. You don’t know what it’s like having a memory of the people you love the most in the world and then the thought of their memory being taken from me was unbearable. I couldn’t stand the thought of losing everything Danny had worked so hard for… for us. He did it all for us, and I couldn’t let the house we shared be sold to some stranger. The thought of moving Danny and Caiden’s belongings was unbearable and an impossible thought. Even to this day Caiden’s room is exactly how it was that day he left me. Nothing has changed, not even his bed sheets.”

Hudson winces and shakes his head slightly, I’m not sure if it’s from disapproval or from sadness. “The house meant everything to you,” he whispers looking at our entwined hands.

“The house meant more to me than my life, Hudson, and I’d made my mind up that I would do anything, absolutely anything, to keep it. So I went looking. I looked for jobs that paid highly, but you needed qualifications and I just didn’t have any. Yes, Danny and I had savings, but it wasn’t enough to cover the mortgage in full.

“I was walking in the city, I don’t even remember how I got there, to be honest. Everything was just one big grey blur of blah. Nothing felt right and everything felt off. I didn’t feel right. Colours seemed duller, noise was irritating, my whole world was… different and nothing was as it should be. The woman I was, the weak woman who was a mother and wife, couldn’t function in that world anymore. So to get by and keep the memory of my boys alive, I had to become someone else. The girl I wanted to be when I identified their bodies, the girl I became when I shut off my emotions—”

“The Violet Widow?” Hudson asks.

I nod and he exhales.

“She was oblivious to the fact that the world was a shitty place, her objective was one thing and one thing only – to save the memory of Danny and Caiden. So she went looking for something else, something to pay the bills. She could have turned to drug dealing, but I don’t even think the Violet Widow would stoop that low. Drugs kill people and she didn’t want to be responsible for a mother grieving over her teenager who had overdosed. So she walked the city streets until she found a brothel. She didn’t want to do it, it made her feel sick to degrade herself like that, but once she talked it over with the pimp of the place, she realised the money she made in a year would pay off the house and she would be safe to keep all of her memories alive. She didn’t do it because she liked it, Hudson, she did it as a means to an end. It was the only way—”

“Then why once the year was up and the house was paid off did you keep doing it?” he asks. I look at him and I can see his chest rising and falling quickly like he’s struggling with my story.

“When you degrade yourself to that level of madness, it becomes second nature. My self-esteem was nonexistent. The only way I felt any kind of attention from another person was doing that job. Even though I was numb to the act itself, knowing people wanted me made me addicted to it. I needed to feel wanted and I wanted to feel needed and as hard as I tried, I couldn’t feel… anything. I fought for five years to feel a skerrick of something. Something to remind me of my humanity. Something to remind me of why I was put on this earth, but nothing worked. After two years of working on call, working with less than desirable people, I wanted to make myself feel better than the level of guilt and betrayal toward Danny I was feeling. I thought if I opened my own establishment and ran things in a much classier way, I could still have the attention I craved, but with a much better class of people. People who weren’t cruel and punishing, people who not only wanted your affections, but the pleasure of your company as well.

“See Cupiditas is not just a local brothel. We take people out to functions and spend time with them. We form connections and that’s why it’s so exclusive, but I realised not long after I created Cupiditas that I was done with that lifestyle. I hated who I’d become and I hated that I could do that to Danny… the woman he loved, the mother of his child was selling herself to the highest bidder. My self-worth was gone, I had nothing but the shrine to my boys to keep me company. Yes, all my employees are great and I love them all, but there was nothing like going home to my boys every night and being with them. I could feel Danny, all the time. It’s strange, but I knew he was with me, every time I was there. He made me comfortable, he made it so that I loved being at home with my boys.

“Do I regret making the money to keep their memory – no fucking way! That house, what it represents, was the only thing keeping me alive. I know it probably doesn’t make any sense to you, but that house was the only thing worth living for—”

“And now I’ve made it so you can’t even stand to be there,” Hudson whispers. His eyes mist up and he blinks rapidly, but he’s looking at me with nothing but love in his multi-coloured eyes. “I’m so sorry, Vee. I hate that I have done that to you, after everything you went through and everything you did to save the house—”

“It’s okay, as much as the house is a crutch holding me up, it’s also an open wound that keeps reopening and bringing me down. If it wasn’t for you Hudson, I would have never felt again. I would have never known what it was like to be loved again, and even though I know what I just said doesn’t change the past, it doesn’t change the future either. I’m not unrealistic, I know telling you my story won’t make the images in your head of me disappear. I know, knowing you, that what I went through won’t make it easier for you to forgive me and for us to move on. I know that there’s no hope for us, because as much as you’re disgusted about my past, I’m even more appalled that I let myself do the things I have done. I can never gain any kind of confidence back knowing the things I’ve done and the people I’ve been with. I don’t regret it, I needed my house and my boys, I just wish there was another way to have accomplished it. Another way for us, but it’s okay I know there’s not. You don’t just stop thinking badly of someone just because you know their full story, so I don’t expect you to either.”

He shakes his head and huffs. “I—”

“It’s okay Hudson, you don’t have to say anything,” I interrupt and he holds my hand tighter and brings it up to his mouth and kisses the back of my hand. I half-smile and he closes his eyes and swallows hard.

“I want to kiss you so badly right now,” he whispers and my heart thuds against my chest wall.

“Then kiss me,” I whisper.

His eyes shoot open and he looks at me like he’s fighting an inner battle. His chest is heaving and so is mine while we stare at each other inching closer and closer together. His forehead rests on mine and I can smell his minty fresh breath and the warmth of it caressing my skin. Every inch of me is on fire and I haven’t kissed him in so long that my body has an aching for it. I lean in closer and our lips touch infinitesimally. A spark shoots through my lips and straight through me to my heart, which is now racing a million miles a minute. His lips on mine are as soft as I remember and as I go to kiss him fully, his mobile phone rings forcing us to separate. He rests his forehead against mine and we both breathe in staccato.

“Fuck’s sake,” Hudson says and then he moves away from me pulling his phone from his pocket and looking at the screen. I try to catch my breath from our
almost
kiss as he scrunches up his face and shakes his head. “Great timing, Cassie,” he murmurs.

I look at him and he swallows hard and swipes the phone answering the call.

“Hey Cassie,” his voice sounding a little distant.

I cringe at the mention of her name, of course, she’d be the one to ruin our moment.

“Hey H, where are you? I tried coming over last night and you weren’t home. Midas wasn’t even barking when I rang the doorbell. You haven’t gone back to her have you?” I can hear clearly because her hideous voice is so loud, but I pretend not to have heard what she’s saying by looking down at my hands on the table.

“No, I haven’t, but that’s really none of your business anyway, Cass. As for Midas, he’s staying with Mum, Dad and Brige for the moment—”

“What, why?” she interrupts.

“I’m out of town for a little while and they’re looking after him for me, and they’ll be popping in to look after Lizzy and the fish too.”

“Well, where have you gone? And why didn’t you tell me? Who are you with, H. Are you with her?”

I try my hardest not to look up to see his reaction, but I casually glance in his direction, he’s rubbing the back of his neck like he feels some tension there.

“It doesn’t matter who I’m with, Cassie. I’m on an assignment. I can’t tell you anything, you know how it works,” he replies and I feel a little deflated that he’s said he was on an assignment. I know that that’s exactly what he’s doing, but I know as well as he does that there is something still here between us, and even though we’re both angry at each other, I know he wouldn’t be here if he didn’t want to be. He would have found a way out of it if he really couldn’t stand the sight of me. And if he didn’t still feel something then why wouldn’t he have gone there with Cassie again? She obviously wants him, badly.

“Well, I hope you're safe, H. I would hate for you to get hurt. Come back to me in one piece, okay?”

My eyes open wide and I huff out of my nose not being able to hide my emotions. Hudson looks at me and raises an eyebrow and then stands from the table and goes to walk away. He’s obviously figured out I can hear her.