by Ryan Casey
She wanted to make her pay.
Wanted to make her suffer.
But then she took a deep breath and let it all go.
“I forgive you,” Aoife said. “I’m sorry for what I did. I forgive you. It’s okay now. It’s okay.”
She held on to Grace’s hand in the pouring rain for what felt like forever.
As her grip loosened.
As her body went limp.
As her last breath crept from her lungs.
Then silence.
Chapter Fifty-Five
Aoife looked out at the remains of the estate and took a deep breath.
It was a gorgeous day. Felt like spring was approaching. The air felt warmer to breathe. It hadn’t rained in days, which made for a nice change. She still felt soaked from that night a week ago when she’d fought with Grace. When Grace had died in her arms.
She thought about that day all the time. That moment all the time.
Not with any kind of sense of justice about what had happened. Not with any pleasure at getting revenge on the woman who’d destroyed her home and killed the most important person in the world to her.
She thought of it with sadness and regret.
Sadness that things couldn’t have worked out differently.
And regret that the cycle had ended exactly as Grace predicted.
With one of them dead.
She took another deep breath of that mild air. Rex sniffed around at the grass by her side, wagging his tail. She could hear birds singing in the trees. Feel the sun’s warmth shining down. A winter’s day still, sure. But a sign that spring was coming. That better days were coming.
Another year without power.
She saw it all laid out before her, and she felt a deep sense of dread. The thought of going into a new year in this life, completely alone but for Rex. Her worst fear of all. The loneliness. Having to start all over again.
But then she felt that dread dissipate.
She felt that reluctance to bond with someone new dissipate.
She had to be willing to let people in.
She had to give whoever was out there a chance.
It wasn’t going to be easy moving forward. Definitely wasn’t going to be easy moving on. She wasn’t sure she ever would, not truly.
But she’d be damned if she wasn’t going to try.
She looked at the crosses there in front of the estate. In front of her. She’d put seventy down in total. Fifty to remember the people of her estate. But also some extra to remember those of Christopher’s people who’d lost their lives, too.
Because as bitter as it felt, as mixed as her emotions were about it… she knew it was the right thing to do.
Christopher’s people had done horrible, unforgivable things. But some of them weren’t bad people. They were afraid. They were cowards. They got behind a leader doing awful things instead of standing against him and rebelling because they genuinely didn’t see another way for themselves.
And Aoife knew she was wrong for taking their lives. She knew she was wrong for not giving them another opportunity to be better. Another chance to be better.
She looked at one of the crosses and thought of Grace. Losing her brother. Being disfigured beyond recognition. The hatred she must’ve felt. That lust for revenge, all along.
But deep inside it, an inability and an unwillingness to kill Aoife. Because having Aoife alive gave her life purpose.
And without Aoife, she was as good as dead.
That was sad. And as much as Aoife detested Grace for the things she’d done… deep down inside, she understood.
Didn’t empathise. Didn’t relate.
But understood.
She let the thoughts of Grace and Christopher and all their people drift from her mind, and she thought of her own people. She thought of Hailey and her bossiness. She thought of Sam and how joyful he was. She thought of Geoff… Yeah, even Geoff was just lost. She hated him for his betrayal. For his role in what happened to their people.
But he was just dangling onto hope, too.
Could she really blame him for that?
But above all those people, it was one person she went back to thinking about. That same person, every single time.
Max.
She thought about Max, and she felt a knot in her stomach. She closed her eyes. Took a few more deep breaths and felt like he was here, in her presence. Imagined he was right here, in front of her. Listening to her every word.
“Hey,” she said. “Me again.”
A silence responded. A breeze. No words. Nothing.
But a sense that he was listening.
A sense that he was out there.
Or right here. In her heart.
“I know it’s kind of cheesy. But I… I made you something.”
She reached into her pocket. Pulled out a little wooden boat she’d carved over the last couple of days. It was shit, far worse than the many efforts she’d mocked Max for. But still… it was something.
“I know it’s crap,” she said, walking over to the cross in front of the estate. “If you were here, you’d be taking the piss out of me for it. But yeah. It’s my first effort. So give me a break, you grumpy old git.”
She laughed. That silence responded, again. An emptiness. And yet… like there was something there. Like she wasn’t totally on her own.
“I wanted to take it to your house. But I realise… your heart was right here, in the end. With everyone else. You changed. You… you changed, and you taught me how to change, too. And I’ll never forget that lesson you taught me. Never.”
She looked up again. Tears welling in her eyes. Rex sitting beside her, staring on, panting.
She felt that instinct to apologise kicking in. To apologise for her part in what had happened. To apologise for her role in everything.
But then she tightened her jaw and held her breath.
Because Max wouldn’t want her apologising.
It was all just the flow of experience.
It was all just life and death in this crazy, unpredictable world.
And she’d learned a lesson. She’d learned a hell of a lesson about conducting herself in this world. And she’d learned a lesson about revenge, too. Revenge and its value. Its worth.
She’d learned that it got her nowhere.
All it brought was pain.
It never brought satisfaction. Not at all.
Not even the times when her revenge had felt justified. Like over her ex, Jason.
It never brought peace.
She stood up. Walked back from the crosses. Looked at them, lined up against one another. Every single one of them a reminder of what had happened. A reminder of the futility of revenge.
And a reminder of the many lives that had been lost.
Lives that didn’t need to be lost.
A mistake that would never happen again.
Because she’d always be the better person from this point on.
Always.
She took another deep breath of that warm air.
Looked at the crosses.
At the crosses of the fallen on both sides.
Grace’s cross.
Max’s cross.
She looked at them all, tensed her fists, and then let her breath go.
It was time to move forward.
It was time to walk on.
She looked at the remains of the estate—the place she’d called home for a year—one final time.
“Goodbye,” she said. “And… and thank you. Thank you for everything.”
She looked back at the crosses, thought of Max.
Looked at the wooden boat.
The metal motorbike model.
And the little pouch of porridge oats, too.
“I love you.”
And then she turned around with Rex by her side, and she walked into the woods, out of the sun, and into the unknown.
Somewhere in the distance, not far from Aoife, the electricity sizzled, the lightbulbs burst t
o pieces, and the power sparked back to life again.
END OF BOOK 4
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In memory of Pebbles, the best little dog anyone could wish for. Rest in peace. 2009-2021.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. Any reference to real locations is only for atmospheric effect, and in no way truly represents those locations.
Copyright © 2021 by Ryan Casey
Cover design by Miblart
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Published by Higher Bank Books
