by Evie Nichole
“And what would I do in Florence?” she asked with a hint of teasing.
He smiled. “Me.”
Harbour fell into a fit of giggles and hid her face against his neck.
Derek’s eyes drifted closed once more, content and safe, with her warmth breath upon his skin. He tightened his grip and felt hers tighten her too.
~ END ~
HEADLIGHTS
Prologue
I remember the rain. That’s what comes to me the most. The sound of it tapping the roof of our car, our headlights barely cutting through the downpour, darkness all around. In the passenger seat, I felt safe. When I was a kid I loved the sound of rain when I was inside. It always made me feel cozy somehow, as if there was a barrier between me and the dangers of the outside world. Even on that night, at the age of 26, I still believed in that sense of safety. Now I know it was all just an illusion.
Though much of it still seems fuzzy, I remember the date; it was November 21st. We’d been at our friend Al’s birthday party. Al was good fun, and, unlike some twenty-somethings, he didn’t seem sad about turning 30; in fact, he’d embraced it. We’d headed to a local bar on Main Street where Al was holding court. I’d had a few drinks, perhaps more than I should have, but my fiance, Daniel, didn’t touch a drop. He wanted to drive that night and be home early because he had a big meeting the next morning. I felt like he had something on his mind, but then since his business had taken off he was often preoccupied with thoughts on how to expand, how to better himself. Of course, I insisted on staying until after midnight, I was having too much fun. How I wish I had listened to him; that we had gone home earlier and been snuggled up in bed together well before then. That was just not to be.
We left the bar, and that was when the rain started. There was little warning, one moment the night seemed clear, and the next the sky had opened, pelting the almost empty street with a million droplets of water.
Daniel took off his dark blue sports jacket and gave it to me. “A makeshift umbrella” he’d called it. I lifted it above my head trying to keep the rain at bay. We ran down the street towards his car, laughing as the torrential weather increased. By the time we reached the car and jumped inside, the rain was so thick and violent that it sounded like shrapnel hitting the roof.
“Well, this’ll be fun to drive in,” Daniel said sarcastically. He turned to me. “I hope you brought a paddle, we might have to row our way home.”
I giggled. Daniel always made me laugh. I remember looking at him from the passenger seat. His black hair still neatly slicked to the side, his dark red shirt soaked through. He smiled, his designer stubble - one of many things I always complained to him about - dripping wet.
He drove. It wasn’t far. It shouldn’t have taken long.
We lived twenty minutes from town. Daniel was a financial wizard, and even at the young age of 28, he’d amassed enough money to buy a five bedroom house in the woods, just on the outskirts of Ellison Town where we’d both grown up. He loved it there because he’d played in those woods with his dad when he was a kid. While he adored our hometown as well, it was always the woods which called to him. I think he needed them, to be outside surrounded by nature. It was a different world from the concrete skyscrapers and office blocks he’d spent most of his working life in.
That was another thing I complained about - he was away on business trips too often, but that was sure to end once we were married, once we had a little one of our own. He’d have made enough money for several lifetimes by then, and that was more than enough for anyone.
The car moved along the deserted roads carefully. As we left the town and headed onto Myer’s Lane, the winding road which cut through the woods, Daniel remarked that we had to be careful. If the car skidded in the now water-logged surface, it would be easy to come off the road and to hit a tree head on.
I remember looking up at the trees around us. Obscured by night and rain, they were like shadows, indistinct yet ominous somehow, as if they held the world at bay or protected a dark secret. As I was marveling, drunkenly, at the ferocious weather, that was when I noticed it first. A light, one lonely beam some way behind us, struggling to penetrate the rain.
“That car behind us only has one headlight, must be a nightmare in this weather,” Daniel said.
I peered at the wing mirror and quickly realized that Daniel was wrong. “It’s a biker, I think, just one headlight on those things.” It seemed such an obvious observation.
The light moved closer to us, gaining easily as we drove slowly.
“He’s driving fast…” Daniel said. “If he’s not careful, he’ll come off the road.”
“How do you know it’s a ‘he’?” I asked disapprovingly.
“Yes, yes, women can ride bikes too,” he said with a wry smile.
The beam of light which began as a pinpoint in the night now drew near, and as it did the inside of our car lit up. Closer and closer the bike came, until it seemed only inches away from us, the headlight blinding. The rain was still thunderous, and yet mixing in with it perfectly, the roaring engine of a bike at speed was loud enough to pierce the noise.
“What’s this idiot playing at?” Daniel seemed concerned, and started to press down on the accelerator to give us some distance.
The bike then pulled back for a few minutes, I wasn’t sure why, but to me it almost seemed like a predator in the night, a lone wolf sizing us up. At that point, I noticed the atmosphere in the car had changed. It was tense, filled somehow with dread. At what I didn’t know, but like animals escaping a tsunami miles out, I felt as though something was coming, a relentless force lurking in the woods ready to jump out and shake our world to pieces.
“Don’t worry, Baby, we’re nearly home…”
Daniel was right, we weren’t far. Just a few minutes from the comfort of our house. When we were home I’d take a warm bath, and then snooze the alcohol off in bed; at least that was my intention. But life had different plans for me, for us both, that night.
“What the hell?” Daniel had seen something in the rear view mirror, something which bothered him.
I turned my head to look behind through the rain, and could now see two headlights, as if the bike had been replaced by a car. The two lights now drew near again, increasing in speed. As they approached, I could hear the engine noise once more. It sounded feral, a roar through the torrential downpour, stalking, intent and unforgiving.
The noise increased, and within seconds the two headlights had filled our car once more from behind.
“Why are they so close to us?” I asked, agitated.
“I don’t know… Maybe they want to get past us…”
As Daniel said those words, the two headlights split in two, one remaining behind. The other darted out around the side of the car, flanking the driver’s side. It was a biker, dressed in black leather with a dark helmet which obscured the face. The bike stayed level with us, driving on the opposite side of the otherwise empty road, the rain blew across the glass of Daniel’s window making the biker appear almost nightmarish, ill-defined, obscured by the relentless rain.
“Let them by us, Daniel…” I said, the growing sense of danger bubbling up from my stomach.
“I’m trying, but I can’t slow down, the one behind isn’t backing off.”
Suddenly, I realized that the biker to the side of us was no longer looking at the road in front, that long stretch of slippery tarmac obscured by sheets of rain; no, the rider was staring at us.
“Christ!” Daniel screamed.
I looked, and saw the biker with something in his hand. Daniel slammed on the brakes, and we skidded along the road. It was as if the world moved in slow motion, at quarter speed. I watched… Watched as Daniel fought with the steering wheel for control of the car. I watched as we lurched violently to the side of the road. I watched as we careened over the edge of a sharp drop. I watched as the front of our car mangled on impact when we hit the ground below.
I then watched Daniel, th
e love of my life, smile reassuringly at me, his head resting on the steering wheel as he lost consciousness for the last time. Something was on fire. The light flickered in his eyes, but there was no life to his gaze. It was glazed over, two windows to the soul now broken. He was dead, and my world had changed forever.
Chapter 1
They say time flies when you’re having fun, but I would like to alter this to: Time flies when you’re feeling numb. When Daniel died I didn’t understand. Of course I knew what those words meant: “Daniel is dead.” I grasped that he was gone, but I didn’t understand why. More than that, I didn’t understand how life could go on. That’s not to say that I was suicidal - I wasn’t - but the pain of losing your other half is difficult to convey. Things don’t seem real anymore, the world seems to go on, people everywhere get up each morning and go to work; they plan holidays and study for qualifications to get that ideal job; they invite some friends round for a barbecue on a bank holiday; and when Christmas comes, they exchange presents laughing and smiling as if there are an infinite number of Christmases in the future to be enjoyed together. But for those of us left behind, the world has lost its flavor - there are no more Christmases together, no more stolen moments, no more smiles and kisses. No more.
Yes, left behind. That’s the closest I can come to describing the feeling. Everyone else continues to move forward, while you’re stuck on the side of a lonely highway without a ride, watching everyone else disappear into the sunset. Then night comes, and with it the tears.
After the grief diminishes to a point where you feel you can breathe again, you look at your life and say to yourself, Maxine, this is it now, you have to move forward… But you don’t, not really. You don’t actually get on with your life, you just travel through it as if merely a passenger. Sure, you now have a ride, albeit a battered one which barely moves, but a ride nonetheless. You’re carried by the numbness, like an autopilot pushing you through each day. The trouble is, you’re not paying attention to what’s coming up ahead. The engine’s running, but your eyes aren’t on the road anymore, you don’t care if the wheels come off, and you don’t particularly care where you’ll end up. Why? Because life is now just a detached thing. Something which was alive, vibrant, but now just a pale mirror image of what it once was.
It was my family and friends who organized an intervention, as such, to pull me out of this way of thinking. My sister, Jill, was the ring leader. We’d always been very close, but through the numbness of loss I’d inadvertently pushed her away, and hadn’t spoken to her in months. I had retreated into my and Daniel’s home, wandering around like a ghost, haunting the rooms and belongings of a life I thought we’d share together, now just reminders of the pain. In some way, though, I wanted to hold onto that pain, it was all I had left, and I would guard it jealously if anyone tried to take it away from me. Somehow grief had become a constant companion, and if it was gone I doubted whether I’d ever be able to feel anything ever again.
I remember the three knocks at the door. They were like a lightning bolt of uncertainty. Living in the woods can do that to you; the larger world fades away, and eventually it’s as if nothing outside of your own little evergreen bubble exists. When someone does enter it uninvited, it can be quite a shock. It certainly was to me, all I was used to was the house, me, and the trees around. There was a safety in that, me alone with my pain, but there was a bitter loneliness there too.
There they came again. Another three knocks, this time louder than before, more pronounced. They echoed out through my home, and the sound only reminded me that the place was empty, devoid of life except for Maxine: You know you’re in trouble when you casually refer to yourself in the third person!
Dressed in grubby sweatpants and a t-shirt, I shuffled through the living room and then into the hall, almost frightened to answer the door. I didn’t want to be disturbed; leave me and my grief alone, would you kindly? I hoped it was just my imagination, that the knocks were the product of some phantom memory, of a time when people visited and greeted me with smiles rather than expressions of sympathy.
Through the peephole I saw the familiar loving faces of my sister Jill and two of my friends, Cheryl and Heather. Their faces were warped by the glass, fitting in with how skewed everything appeared to me. At first I didn’t answer the door, I just stood there in a daze. Suddenly, I was aware of how much of a mess I was and didn’t want anyone to see me like that, but had I had time to have a shower and get changed and put my face on, it would only have been for show. I looked a mess because inside that’s exactly what I was.
“I’m not the big bad wolf!” the muffled voice of Jill shouted from the other side of the door. “But if you don’t let me in, then I will huff and puff and blow your house down…”
I sighed, and yet it was good to hear another voice in my empty world, so I unlocked and opened the door to my sister and two friends. “You’re 5 foot 2 inches, Jilly, I’m not sure you’d manage to blow this place down.”
“I’d give it a damn good go!” Jill said, her caring smile like a light in the dark.
We hugged.
Quickly I was embraced by Cheryl and then Heather too. It was strange to feel the contact from another human being; the heat, the smell, the feeling of reassurance. There’s something about being close to people which makes you happy, even when you want to be alone. It was almost too much to handle. In that moment, I realized how much I had missed the company of those I cared about, how much I had needed it.
Jill walked in, her brunette hair bobbing around as she looked from left to right as if appraising my home for a realtor client. “Well, it’s not as bad as I thought. I was certain that you’d have the place in a mess like your room when we were kids; clothes everywhere and unwashed plates lying on the floor.” She turned and smiled at me, showing that she was just teasing.
“No,” I said. “Daniel doesn’t like the house untidy.”
There was a silence, and a strange look on the faces of Jill and my friends. It took me a moment to gauge what was wrong, what I’d said that was so out of the ordinary. It was merely a statement of fact; Daniel did not like mess. He didn’t. In fact, he hated it. Me as a more, shall we say, less enthusiastic tidier, it had taken me a while to realize that keeping the house in order was worth it to stop any arguments. When it comes to domestic bliss, someone always has to concede, and it’s usually the messier of the two.
Then I slowly began to realize what was wrong. “Daniel didn’t like the house being untidy.” I’d corrected myself to the past tense, but it was too late. Those words had convicted me of a great crime - living in the past, perhaps even holding onto the dead a little too literally.
“Sweetie, why don’t you sit down and we can have a chat?” Cheryl asked, her infectious carefree demeanor much more somber than usual. Cheryl was always up for a laugh, she hated when things seemed too downbeat, so this was a real departure for her, and an indication of how seriously they were taking my situation.
I quickly got the feeling that I was being hoodwinked into another life, that my friends were there to somehow jump start me back to life, get me going once again. But they didn’t get it, I was going, I was moving, I just didn’t care where I’d end up. I shrugged my shoulders and sat down on my leather couch and started playing with my nails, tapping them together. That was something I’d always done as a kid, especially when I was stressed or under pressure. I half smirked to myself thinking how little I’d changed deep down, and how much it used to drive Jill nuts.
But she wasn’t annoyed this time, she was just troubled about her sister and how she was coping. Jill sat next to me, tilting her head to the side as she always did when she was concerned. “How are you, Sis, none of us have heard from you in a while?”
“I’m fine.” A rehearsed phrase I’d used one too many times, their faces showed clearly that they did not believe me. “I… I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch. Things have been… Busy… You know how it gets. Honestly, I’m fine.�
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“Are you sure?” Jill continued.
“Let’s stop beating around the bush,” said Heather forcefully. “Maxine, we’ve been worried about you for some time.”
I shouldn’t have been surprised that it was Heather who pulled no punches, she was a little firecracker. A heart of gold, but a pocket rocket no doubt.
A feeling of discomfort started to bubble under the surface, and I increasingly felt the need to be defensive. “There’s no need to worry about me. I wish people would stop trying to treat me like a child. Really, I’m fine.” As I listened to those words coming out of my mouth, even I didn’t believe them. It had been easy to avoid the phone calls, to make excuses not to meet up, but when confronted face-to-face like that, the lie was easily undone. It surprised me how quickly my mask slipped.
Jill leaned forward and held my hand. “I just don’t think it’s doing you any good being out here.”
“Why?” I said. “It’s a lovely house. I like the forest. Daniel loved it here...”
“Don’t you think you’re spending too much time here, Maxine? I mean we don’t see or hear from you for weeks at a time, and we’re all really worried about you,” said Cheryl, concern etched deeply across her face.
“I know you’re not okay, Maxine,” said Jill.
Heather finished off that thought, clearly saying what was on their minds: “It’s been two years since the accident, and we’re not having you waste your life out here in the woods. It was a tragedy what happened to Daniel, you had your life set out in front of you, but you need to face the fact that that life is gone. All you can do now is start afresh, and we think it would be best for you to get a new place where you can do just that.”
She was harsh, but always fair.
I wanted to argue with them. I wanted to say to them that they were wrong, that I was fine, that everything was going to be okay, but that was when I realized that I’d been saying that for both of those two years. Each day, in fact, I would find some time to say, This is normal, Maxine, just stay right here where the woods are quiet, Daniel loved that.
