Heart Of Marley (2 page)

I watched his disgusting body fall to the ground, his mouth agape and eyes wide as he clutched his stomach and leg.

Looking down at the gun in my hand, I immediately snapped back to reality.

“Cam…” Marley exhaled through her sobs. “You just shot him.”

I ran to the bed, her frail body illuminated by the full moon, bringing attention to the scars and bruises on her legs. Wrapping my arms around her, I tried to comfort her the only way I knew how.

“To the moon and back,” I whispered. It was our code. Her way of knowing that no harm would come to her.

“From the stars to the ocean, Cam,” her sweet voice squeaked out in response.

“He’s never going to hurt you or anyone else again.” I rubbed her back, mindful of the scratches and welts from where he had used his belt on her. “I’ll never let anything bad happen to you ever again, Mar.”

I held her all night long, comforting her sobs and soothing her fears when she woke up screaming. I kept the gun clutched in my hand as I watched over her, keeping one eye trained on the body that had lost blood throughout the night, making sure that he didn’t move. I would hear him moan out and beg me to call for help, but I refused. I wanted him to suffer and feel pain that was worse than what Marley had endured those past three years. I wanted his death to be slow and agonizing.

Once the sun rose, bathing everything in light, the reality of what I had done set in. I knew that I had to tell someone. The only person I could think of was my grams. Rummaging through my mother’s things, I finally found her address book and made the phone call that would be the start of our new lives.

Six Years Later

“M
ARLEY
? W
HAT
ARE
YOU
doing out here?” I asked, peeking out of my bedroom window to see my twin sister lying on the roof of our house.

“Thinking, Cam.”

“Can I come and think with you?”

She tilted her head and I could see the sadness within her brilliant blue eyes. “Of course…if boys know how to think.” She giggled at her dig at me.

Shaking my head, I carefully climbed out the window, crawling a few feet to where she lay right outside her own bedroom window. When we came to live with our uncle Graham and aunt Terryn all those years ago, we shared a room. After a while, they thought we were getting too old to have the same room and had a wall built in our formerly spacious bedroom. It took time to adjust to the new arrangement. Marley despised the separation, hating that I wasn’t there to calm her down when the nightmares found her. And they always did, even though six years had passed.

About a month after the “Great Wall of Bowen”, as Marley referred to it, was erected, she began sitting out on the roof every chance she could.
“I can forget about everything out here, Cam,”
she would say to me.
“Being here and staring at the stars reminds me that the world is a bigger place and my problems are insignificant in the grand scheme of things.”
She always had a way of putting things that made me feel better about our past. The guilt for not protecting her all those years still ate away at me, but her smiling, readjusted face put my concerns at ease, even if only for a fleeting moment.

Settling down on the roof next to Marley, I grabbed her hand in mine.

“Do you think Grams is happy now? Do you think it hurt when she…?” Her voice trailed off.

The past few weeks had been difficult for her…for both of us. The matriarch of our family had lost her battle with breast cancer. The doctors said she had six months to live. That was nine years ago. That was why we couldn’t go live with her when we finally got away from
him
. She had fought her disease tooth-and-nail since getting her diagnosis. One day, she just stopped fighting. It hit both of us hard, but it affected Marley more than me.

“I think she’s happier now. You saw how much…” I stopped short, the image of the weakened version of my grandmother that I had seen over the past few months still ingrained in my memory. The hardest part was watching her health fade over the months after she had begun to refuse any more treatments. I resented her for making that decision. I still remember having that dreadful conversation with Mama during one of our weekly court-approved supervised visitations just a few months ago.

“Cameron, baby,”
she said to me
. “You can’t take your anger out on Grams. She doesn’t have much time left. Treasure each and every moment you can spend with her while she’s still here. This is her decision. She has fought this disease long and hard for the better part of the last decade of her life. She’s ready to go and be with your dad now. Let her go…”

And I had, at least I thought I did. Grams was the first close relative that I had lost since Dad was killed by a drunk driver when I was eight. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the solemn look on Mama’s face when Uncle Graham dropped us at her house outside of Columbia for our visitation time two weeks ago. At that moment, I knew Grams was gone. And for the first time I could remember, I actually thought about death and how dying would feel. I wondered if Grams felt the same pain that I felt in my heart at that moment. I hated how much it hurt to lose someone I loved. And I knew I never wanted to lose anyone again.

“I think she’s finally at peace,” Marley said, breaking into my thoughts. She squeezed my hand and, out of nowhere, a light streamed through the night sky and disappeared into the ocean. “See, Cam. Look! Grams is okay.” She raised her hand and wiped the tear that she was trying to hide from me off her cheek. “Remember what she would always say when we went to go visit her? And when we would talk about Dad?”

I nodded my head slightly. “The shooting star…”

“She’s okay, Cam!” she exclaimed, her normal vivacious self returning after having been absent for the past few weeks. “Grams is okay. She said that’s how we would know she made it to wherever she was going and that she was looking down on us.” She rolled over and gave me a quick kiss on the cheek. “I feel better knowing that, don’t you?”

Smiling, I gave Marley the answer she needed to hear. “I do.” I wished I could believe it.

She nudged me and I turned my head toward her. Raising her eyebrows, she said, “Say it. I can’t say my part unless you say your part first.”

“To the moon and back, Mar.”

“From the stars to the ocean.”

We remained on the roof, contemplating life and how that precious gift could be ripped from you when you least expected. I often wondered what my life would have been like if that drunk driver had never killed Dad. Would we still be a happy family like we were before his death? Or would Mama have eventually found her way toward drugs and alcohol anyway? Would he have left her if she did? And would Marley have suffered abuse nearly every night for three years, the horrors still haunting her to this day?

“Do you think we’ll always have this, Cam?” she asked several hours later as we pointed out the constellations to each other, making up new ones as we went.

“Of course we will, Mar. We’re unbreakable…inseparable…indivisible…”

“Don’t start quoting the
Pledge of Allegiance
now.” She laughed and the sound filled the night sky over Myrtle Beach, the only other noise that of the crashing waves of the ocean a few blocks away.

“What I meant to say is that nothing can change this. No one can ever touch this.”

“Even a beautiful brunette named Brianna?” she teased, pinching me.

“No. Not even a beautiful brunette named Brianna. She has a boyfriend, anyway. She’s dating Mason,” I said sadly.

“Not anymore,” she responded, her voice sly.

“Well, how about a tall, gangly guy named Doug?” I asked, changing the subject to Marley’s relationship status.

“It’s not serious between us. We’ve only gone out a few times.” Her answer was hesitant and I knew it was because she was scared of becoming intimate with anyone, her fears of having her trust betrayed still present.

“I doubt I’ll be able to ask Bri out,” I said, clearing the air. “I mean, she dated my teammate and friend. They were together for nearly two years.”

“Word is that he cheated on her…with Jessica Harper, I think. Apparently, Grady was hitting on Diana Greene and, well…Jessica and Diana are pretty much attached at the hip.”

“So are Mason and Grady,” I replied. “But Grady has a reputation, and not a good one. So much for being the police chief’s son.”

“From what I’ve heard, Mason’s getting a bit of a reputation, too. He’s getting around. So this is the perfect time for you to finally make your move on Brianna. Be her knight in shining armor,” she said dramatically, her blonde hair waving in front of her face.

“Every time I see her, I clam up. It’s like my tongue is dead weight in my mouth and I can’t put a coherent thought together.”

“Just grow a set already, Cam!” she exclaimed. “She could use someone like you in her life.”

“I know. I just suck at this stuff.”

“You need to make the first move, especially with Bri. She’s not like a lot of girls at school.”

“Look at my kid sister, dishing out relationship advice.”

She punched me playfully in the arm. “Younger by five whole minutes.”

“But five minutes, nonetheless, Miss Bowen.”

I could feel her roll her eyes at me. That was the thing about having a twin. We felt each other. Even when I wasn’t near Marley, I could still feel her…her heart, her soul, her livelihood. Everything she felt, I felt. Everything that upset her, upset me. There was a connection between the two of us that not many other people would understand or grasp, and it was that connection that amplified the guilt for what would happen later in the school year.

W
E
BURIED
G
RAMS
TODAY
. I still don’t know how to feel about it. I miss her smile. I miss her laugh. I miss her voice. But mostly, I miss her heart. I feel closer to her than I do to anyone else…besides Cam, of course. Grams was the one who was horrified when she found out what Cam and I had to go through after Dad died. She was beside herself with guilt over it all, wishing that she had pushed harder to stay in touch with her daughter, our mama, but she had already begun to fight the cancer that would slowly kill her.

Those years after Dad died and before we were sent to live with Uncle Graham, my dad’s brother, and Aunt Terryn still haunt me. And I think they still haunted Grams up until she died. I’ve tried to move past it all and, over the last few months, put on a smile for Grams so that she could go to her final resting place knowing that I’m okay. But that’s not the real me and I think she knew it. Her sickness took a toll on her and she no longer had the strength to call me out on everything like she had been doing the past few years. She’s one of the few people who could see through the façade.