The cemetery stared back at him sombrely, offering no comfort.
He switched off the car’s ignition and as the engine died, a hush suddenly filled the void. It cloaked him, throwing an invisible blanket over him so dense he felt like he was suffocating. His lungs burned as the silence around him thickened like a living, breathing entity, growing and gnawing at him.
Ally’s voice filled the vacuum in his head as he relived their conversation, snatching snippets here and there and beating himself with them as if they were weapons. In the brief conversations he had had with his father over the past few years, none of this had been mentioned. He gripped the steering wheel tighter.
Why? Why didn’t he tell me? Why did he keep this from me?
The answer blazed through his consciousness.
Because I told him I didn’t want to know.
He felt like screaming. Callum’s words came back to him, grabbing him by the throat. What would he have done if he had known then what was happening? Would he have come back? He saw Ally as Callum had seen her that day – lying on her bed, quiet and still and waiting for death to claim her.
The truth did so much more than just hurt. The agony gouged at him, leaving a gaping wound. Now he knew why he had stayed away so long. Torturing himself with the unknown for all this time was one thing – but hearing the reality was another matter entirely. He gripped the steering wheel until his fingers were numb and he closed his eyes, willing the pain to stop.
Help me. Please?
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d prayed.
What he did remember was attending church with his parents when he was younger, sitting between them with his neatly pressed dark trousers and crisp baby blue shirt. He would sit with his father on the back doorstep on Saturday afternoon and they would polish their shoes together, him taking as much care as a child of his age could, his father overseeing his clumsy ministrations with the polish and rag. His mother fussed over his hair every Sunday, smoothing it and brushing down the stray ends and the wisps at his crown that refused to lie flat. All the while, he would grimace but not dare move. He knew this was important. Going to church on Sunday was an Event.
He would sit as still as he could on the hard wooden pew between them, until he could stand it no longer. Then he would fidget until an elbow in the ribs or a sly whisper from his parents would force him to stop. He wanted to make his parents proud.
The enthusiastic voice of Father David – younger then, and with twinkling eyes that fascinated him up close – rang out from the altar, in Latin and in English. He understood that it was important, but as a child it meant nothing to him other than the milkshake he would get at the diner on the way home.
As he got older, it became more of a curiosity. He had questions that needed to be answered. What would happen if he didn’t go to confession before he took communion? Would God be angry with him? And what about heaven? If you couldn’t see it when you were in a plane, could you see it from a spaceship? Why didn’t angels fall right through the clouds they were sitting on? He got used to the tiresome looks his parents would give him when he asked. Eventually, he stopped asking.
It had all been so easy then. He had been seventeen when his mother died. It had changed his view on everything, skewing it permanently. After she passed away, neither he nor his father could bring themselves to go to church regularly. What was the point? If God really existed (and he was seriously starting to doubt that), He obviously didn’t care about his mother or He would never have let her suffer like that. They went to church at Easter and for Christmas Eve Mass, and that had mainly been out of a sense of duty.
And during the last four years, Jack hadn’t gone to church once. He thought himself beyond forgiveness, so what was the point in asking for it? He couldn’t face going to confession, he would never be able to receive communion. If God could torture his mother the way He did, then He must surely have forsaken him.
Yet from the brief conversations he had had with Father David since his father’s death, apparently Dad had been attending church regularly during the past few years. Why, after all this time? Did it have anything to do with the accident, with what happened to Ally? Or was it because of him – Jack – and what he had done? He found himself wondering if his father had been praying for him, and it made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. The guilt and shame seemed to multiply suddenly, and he found his breath coming in short gasps as his lungs failed to respond.
Please… do something. Help me.
All it took was one night – one moment – and the world turned upside down. He tried to slow his breathing and concentrate as he played The Game. He squeezed his eyes shut tighter, putting all his energy into trying to visualize how his life would be now if the accident had never happened.