Gone for Good
Page 33
But it was difficult to argue with a headstone.
Frosty came back and nudged at my calf with his snout. I could tell he was growing impatient and wanted to move on. He didn’t like to stand still when there were sticks to fetch and trees to mark. I shooed him away, lost in my own thoughts. I resented Abby for the ease with which she chose to move on, to accept that our lives would go forward without any hope of seeing our daughter again. I’d crusaded on behalf of my daughter’s memory, and for what? To find out that life progressed without me as well as Caitlin?
‘Frosty. Come here.’
He wandered back, happy, tail wagging. I crouched in the grass and placed my hands on either side of his head. He opened his eyes wide but didn’t resist, perhaps remembering the swat he’d received earlier. I felt his hot, stinking breath in my face, saw the stains on his long teeth. I asked the dog a question I had asked him several times before, ever since that day he came home from the park trailing his leash with Caitlin nowhere in sight.
‘Frosty? What did you see that day? What happened?’
He stared back at me, his panting increasing. He didn’t like the way I was holding him, and he squirmed.
‘What did you see?’
He started to slip away, so I pulled him back. He shook his head as though trying to knock the feeling of my hands off his body. I stood up.
‘Fuck you,’ I said. ‘Fuck you for not being able to talk.’
I looked at the headstone once more, letting the image of my daughter’s name and possible – likely – date of death burn into my brain, before giving the leash another tug.
‘Come on, Frosty,’ I said. ‘We’ve got someplace to go.’
THE BEGINNING
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First published in the United States of America by New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, under the title Never Come Back 2013
First published as Gone for Good in Great Britain in Penguin Books, 2014
Copyright © David J. Bell, 2013
Cover design: www.mavrodesign.com
Cover images © Joanna Jankowska / Arcangel Images; Luna4 / Dreamstime.com
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The moral right of the author has been asserted
ISBN: 978-1-405-91061-3