The Darkest of Shadows (48 page)

“Lawrence is still sleeping,” I said after a while, the toast sitting uneaten in my hand.

“He didn’t sleep on the plane,” Nicholas admitted.

That sounded like Lawrence. “That’s stupid,” I told him.

“Did you sleep last night?” Nicholas queried with a raised brow.

Smartass
. I didn’t have to answer him, because he already knew that I hadn’t, and he was only emphasizing the point.

“Are you OK?” he asked.

I thought about it. “I don’t know,” I finally admitted. “I’m trying not to think about anything. If I can try and keep neutral, I might be able to get through this.”

“Well, I think you’re going great.”

“I don’t do well with death,” I told him. “Until I met Lawrence, I only had two people in the world who mattered to me. Reed and my dad. They were the only ones I allowed myself to keep hold of. To love.” I’m not sure why I was telling him this. “I think if it had have been Reed, then I wouldn’t be OK. I would be so far from OK. But I always knew that Dad was close. He was old. It was his time, and I think it’s easier to accept, because he wasn’t taken from me. He just left to be where he should be. With my mum.” I took a deep, calming breath. “At least that’s what I’m trying to convince myself.”

Just then the bedroom door opened, and Lawrence walked out into the room. He hadn’t bothered to dress; he had pulled the pants on that he had been wearing the night before. Without the belt, they sat indecently low on his hips; and without the benefit of a shirt, he looked enticing enough for me to forget just about everything else.

A slow smile spread across my face, and I heard Nicholas sigh in exasperation beside me. Lawrence crossed to the table, where Frost and Charlie sat devouring breakfast, and grabbed himself a pastry. He joined Nicholas and me on the balcony a moment later.

I admired the view of him as he relaxed casually against the railing in front of us. He matched my stare, and I saw instantly that he knew I wasn’t wearing anything under the bathrobe. His hunger matched my own, and he stepped toward me and kissed me, a very thorough and satisfying kiss.

“Must you?” Nicholas complained from the seat beside us. With a grin, Lawrence gave me one last kiss and then plucked Nicholas’s coffee from his hands and went back to leaning against the railing. “Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Nicholas complained, and stomped back into the lounge to make yet another coffee.

We had to stop to get more clothes on the way to the funeral home. Lawrence and I had a few outfits, but neither Frost, Charlie, nor Nicholas had been so lucky. Much to Nicholas’s frustration, Newcastle was definitely not his usual caliber of shopping establishments. The closest I could get him to Armani was Myer Department Store, and even they didn’t carry any labels that Nicholas recognized. He got only as much as he absolutely needed. Frost and Charlie were much easier to please and had a suitcase full in quick order. Lawrence and I grabbed a few items to boost our own sad wardrobe, and then we headed off.

In hindsight, it would have probably been better if I had not been at the funeral home at all. I stared blankly at the ladies as they offered their sympathies. I found it condescending when people apologized for the death of someone they didn’t know, and it was either ignore them or scream at them. Lawrence advised against the screaming.

I absolutely refused to go in the room where the coffins were lined up. Like it mattered to anyone, least of all me, what coffin he was in; and when they asked me for song preferences and an obituary about my dad, I just maintained the blank stare.

Just put him in the ground and let me get the hell out of here
. He was already dead. To me, I had already done the grieving and the loss. I couldn’t understand why we had to have a big funeral so that everyone else, people who never really knew him like Reed and I did, could gather and cry.

I hated funerals.

It was left to Reed and Duncan to organize all the details. Finally, after a long, exhausting two hours, I was allowed to go back to the hotel. The funeral would be Thursday morning, 11:00 a.m., and there would be a wake at my sister’s house after the service—which there was no conceivable chance in hell of me attending.

The only way I had been allowed to leave the funeral home was on the condition that I have dinner at Reed’s house the following night. I was going to need a buffer for that, so I accepted on the condition that Lawrence, Nicholas, Frost, and Charlie come. No one seemed eager to fight me about it, so it was agreed on with relatively little fuss.

I ran again that night, and thanks to the purchase of running shoes earlier in the day, it was a less painful experience. It didn’t bother Charlie to run; he and Frost kept fit as part of the requirements for their job, so he was always happy to come with me when I wanted to escape.

Lawrence and Nicholas were sitting quietly together when we returned. Charlie disappeared off to his own room, where I assumed Frost was, and I slipped into the bedroom to shower.

It was a difficult night. By the time I emerged, Nicholas was gone, and Lawrence spent a good hour trying to get me to eat something. He sat down across from me and watched while I pushed the food around the plate and ate very little.

“You have to eat, and you have to sleep,” he told me and I could hear the worry in his voice.

“I will,” I told him, as I rose from the table. “Just not now.”

Lawrence slept better that night; maybe it was because events were a bit calmer, maybe it was the way he had made love to me for hours after we went to bed. Whatever the reason, he was calm and quiet the whole night, his breathing deep and content. I knew, because I lay there and listened to him breathe.

We went for a long walk around the harbor the next day. We walked out to the break wall and along the ocean to the baths, then back to the hotel. Frost and Charlie walked a few meters behind us, and I forgot they were there. Nicholas gave up halfway around and told us that he was going to check out the hotels in the city, possibly find a bar, and would meet us back at the hotel in time to go to Reed’s.

We were staying about ten minutes from Reed’s, but it felt like the trip took half an hour that night. I knew what was coming, and even after trying to prepare myself, I wasn’t ready. I sent Nicholas in with Frost and Charlie first, and I held back with Lawrence.

Already I could hear them. The squeals of joy, of excitement, the thumping sound of their feet as a tribe of small bodies raced over the timber floors of Reed’s home.

“Do you think they are as bad as seven girls?” Lawrence asked, when he became aware of the noise from inside.

“I’m not sure.” I shrugged. “But they are very intense.”

“You don’t have to do this,” he told me, but I shook my head.

“Yes, I do,” I sighed. “Because those four little boys don’t understand what happened. They don’t understand why Aunty Lil doesn’t come to see them anymore. They think they have done something wrong, and I can’t be that selfish that I would allow those innocent babies to think those thoughts.”

Lawrence nodded in understanding. “I’m here,” he reminded me, twining his fingers with mine.

I was surprised when we walked through the door to find all four of the boys pressed against the opposite wall of the room. They looked stunned, maybe frightened, and very silent, but when I looked at Duncan and saw that he had an amused grin on his face, I relaxed. Whatever had stopped the tornado wasn’t going to do them any harm.

“I’d not have believed it, had I not seen it with my own eyes,” Reed told me, as she walked around the island counter that separated the kitchen from the main living room of the house. “But I believe that your friends have done what no one else has ever managed.” She grinned at me, then explained. “They frightened the boys into silence.”

“Really?” I shot a look at Nicholas, Frost, and Charlie, where they stood with Duncan in the lounge. They were large, certainly, but I never thought of them as frightening. But then, I wasn’t a child, either.

“Hello, boys.” I drew their attention away from the sight of the men who had invaded their lounge. I indicated for Nicholas, Frost, and Charlie to sit; at least that way they wouldn’t seem quite so big.

Reed’s sons made a large circuit around the room toward me. They stayed as far from the men sitting on the lounges as they could get. I squeezed Lawrence’s hand and motioned for him to go join the others; his presence wouldn’t help the boys gain their confidence back.

“Hello, Aunty Lilly.” Four little faces gazed up at me, their voices echoing each other. Eleven, nine, seven, and five—Reed and Duncan had been as reliable as the tides in relation to the birth of their children. Two years separated each of them. Reed had been pregnant a lot in the last ten years.

“Did you bring us a present, Aunty Lil?” The youngest of my sister’s boys piped up. He edged closer to me, his face alight with anticipation.

I smiled down at him and realized that regardless of what had happened in the past, I did truly love these boys. “Is it your birthday, Ryan?” I gasped in false shock.

“No,” he said and his bottom lip dropped.

“Oh, I thought it must have been, for you to be getting presents.” I smiled at Reed, and she laughed.

“Nice try, Ryan.” Reed ruffled the top of his head. “Now, give Aunty Lil a hug, and then you can come and meet the big scary men.”

I got four very exuberant hugs, one of which was decidedly sticky, and then Reed and I walked the boys around the table and into the lounge to meet the others.

“Boys.” I had to draw Ryan out from behind me, so that he could see the men sitting on the lounge with his father. “These are my friends. Frost, Charlie, Nicholas, and Lawrence.” I pointed to them each as I made the introductions.

“This is Ryan.” I placed my hand on his head so they would know who I was talking about. “Oliver, Daniel, and Marshall, aka Toad,” I added with a grin. Ryan was the youngest, then Oliver, then Marshall, and Daniel was the eldest at eleven.

“Toad?” Lawrence queried with a smile.

“Yes.” I ruffled Marshall’s hair and gave him a grin, which he returned. “Because he is a little toad.”

“Aunty Lil started calling me Toad, and now everyone does,” Marshall explained helpfully.

I shrugged. “It kind of stuck.”

“Much to my horror,” Reed added.

The boys were infatuated with Frost and Charlie, which was fine with me, because it kept their attention away from me enough to allow me to breathe. I stayed in the kitchen with Reed and helped her get dinner ready while the boys climbed all over the men in the lounge.

And then, once dinner was over, which was a very noisy affair, the boys were sent to bed, the men settled in the lounge and watched TV, and Reed and I cleaned up.

“I’m glad you came,” Reed told me, as she hugged me good-bye later that night. “That wasn’t so hard was it?” she asked with such hope in her eyes that I nodded.

“No, that was OK,” I lied. She still couldn’t understand it, how much it hurt to see her boys grow, how much it hurt that I couldn’t see my own child grow in their image. Every time I saw her boys, I pictured my own son, and how he should have looked as he grew up alongside his cousins. The pain never changed, the intensity never wavered—you could never get over the loss of a child, and because Reed had never had to think about losing one of her boys, she couldn’t imagine what it took for me to stand there and see them so alive.

I made it out the front onto the road before I couldn’t handle it anymore. I tried to keep it all in, I tried to keep the walls strong enough, but after dealing with the pain from Dad and the energy it was taking me to try and keep from freaking out about Lawrence, I just couldn’t handle it anymore.

I doubled over in the gutter and vomited my guts up. I hadn’t eaten much for dinner, just enough so that no one would notice, but what little there was all came up, and then some.

“Lilly.” Lawrence held my hair back from my face and wrapped his other arm around my waist to keep me from collapsing in the gutter.

“Get me out of here,” I whispered to him. I had to leave before Reed saw.

The car trip was a daze for me. I made them stop again so that I could be sick, but nothing came up except bile.

“Fuck this,” Lawrence groaned after that stop. “Frost, go to the hospital.” He picked me up in his arms and hopped back into the car.

“No,” I begged, the words barely audible. I couldn’t seem to stop shaking. “No, I’m OK,” I told them, but no one was listening, and so I found myself in the emergency department of the hospital. Then the effort of holding my eyes open was more than I could manage, so I allowed my mind to rest in the peaceful void of unconsciousness.

When I next opened my eyes, it was daylight, and I was lying in my bed back in the hotel. It took me a long while to work things out in my head, to figure out where I was and to get my head free of the numbness that seemed to fill it. A familiar, scary numbness.

When I sat up, my head spun, so I stayed still for a while and let it settle. It wasn’t until I looked up that I found Lawrence sitting in a chair by the window, his head resting on one of his hands and his gaze locked on me.

He was silent, watchful, wary. It worried me. I’d seen that look before, but never on him.

Did I go to that dark place again? Did I scream and cry and wish myself dead? I couldn’t remember. The numbness took away my memories. “Did I go crazy?” I asked fearfully.

Lawrence shook his head and then walked over to sit on the bed, facing me. “No, Lilly.” His voice was low and calm. “You didn’t go crazy.” He looked immensely sad.

“Why can’t I remember?” I asked him, becoming aware that tears were falling down my face.

“You exhausted yourself.” He reached up and gently wiped the tears away. “You haven’t slept in four days, and you haven’t eaten in even longer. You pushed yourself too far, emotionally and physically.”

“What happened?”

“The doctor gave you a sedative that made you sleep. They had to feed you intravenously to rehydrate your body. You could have died.”

“I didn’t mean to,” I sobbed and buried my face in my hands. “I just want it to end. I want to leave. I can’t breathe here.”