Rewriting Yesterday

by Wright, Candice

  They are all smiling at me like I’m adorable.

  “I said all of that out loud, didn’t I?”

  “Yep,” replies Ryan, “but don’t worry, we all know we are hot shit. How are you feeling?”

  “Happy, safe, loved, and like I’m inevitably going to walk like John Wayne tomorrow.”

  “Makes sense as we are all hung like horses. Feel free to ride me whenever you like.”

  Caleb reaches over and smacks Ryan up the side of the head, making me laugh.

  “Seriously, I’m good. I didn’t know it could be like that. I’ve read about it, you know, but reading about it and experiencing it, especially after what I’ve been through, are two very different things. You guys blew my mind. I know it’s not normal to have a relationship with three guys, but I just don’t care. I’m keeping you all. We are going to have arguments and disagree with each other. We will face prejudice from the outside world and even hear hurtful things said about us, but I don’t give a flying fuck. Thank you, all of you, for loving me and showing me that I’m worth it, that I am more than the things that have happened to me.”

  “Anytime, gorgeous,” answers Ryan with a surprisingly serious expression on his face.

  “We love you, too, Frankie. I dare any fucker to try and mess with that.” I smile at Caleb, knowing that he would destroy anyone who tries to hurt me.

  “You are ours. Fuck what anyone else thinks,” Sam tells me, his words filled with stark conviction.

  “I love all of you. Now someone needs to feed me because I’m starving.”

  Epilogue

  FRANKIE

  The chime of my phone rouses me from my sleep and has me leaning over Caleb’s delectable body to snag it. Once I have it, I find myself pulled tight against his deliciously hard chest, his breath fanning against my face.

  “Morning, gorgeous. What time is it?”

  I lift my head slightly so that I can glance down at my phone and see what time it is when I see a message from an unknown number on my screen.

  Found her.

  I sit up sharply, causing Caleb to grunt. I have no idea how he got my number. I haven’t seen or heard from Mr Professor in over a year, not since that fateful day, and yet I know with every fibre of my being that this is from him. Caleb’s hands slide around my hips, happy to find me straddling his morning wood, I’m sure, but I’m a million miles away. Another text comes in whilst I’m staring at the screen.

  It’s not good. I don’t think she is going to make it.

  I scramble off Caleb, making him grunt again, before heading to the bathroom, texting my reply as I go.

  Let me help. Where are you?

  I take care of business and have the world’s fastest shower before stepping out to see if he has replied. Sure enough, there is a message flashing on the screen. Drying my hands, I grab the phone to look closer and have to seize the counter to steady myself when my legs turn to jelly.

  Graystone’s Memorial hospital in Birmingham.

  What are the odds?

  The place where I first met Joe and my life changed irrevocably.

  When Joe and I got married we relocated over a hundred miles away to the outskirts of London, wanting to put plenty of space between my family and me. I have never been back, not even to sell the property that Joe had there, grateful when Malcolm offered to take care of it for me.

  I guess it’s time.

  The bathroom door opens to a rumpled Caleb. I’m not sure what my face is showing, but whatever it is, he goes from sleepy to alert in seconds.

  “What is it?" he asks, crossing his arms over his broad chest, and even though my mind is swirling, I take a moment to appreciate the glorious specimen standing in front of me in only a pair of black boxers. I’m distracted, not dead, after all.

  “I need to get to Birmingham as soon as possible.” I raise my hand to stop him when he goes to speak. “I will explain everything later, but right now I need you to trust me and help get me there.”

  He is quiet for a moment, and I know it’s killing him not to have all the information at hand. He takes his job as my protector very seriously. They all do.

  “Please, Caleb.” I’m not above begging.

  He nods before engulfing me in his arms.

  “Okay, I will arrange everything whilst you get dressed but I’m coming with you.”

  I nod because I know there is no way that he would agree to this otherwise, plus, I’m not stupid. I might trust this professor guy for whatever reason but I’m not about to take any unnecessary risks. My family means too much to me.

  Thirty minutes later, after calling Ryan and Sam at their offices and promising them that I will explain everything when I get back, I find myself in the passenger seat of Caleb’s car, pondering how my life is about to come full circle.

  My mother’s stay at the mental health facility took a turn for the worse when she attacked one of the other patients, mistakenly thinking she was me. She now spends the bulk of her time in solitary confinement. She has still, not once—to my knowledge, at least—mentioned the professor. I often wondered if he'd injected her with the mystery drug that apparently stole your free will and made her confess, and effectively erased himself from her mind. It seems far-fetched, though, even to me, but with the drugs never being found and me not being able to ask without giving something away, I decided to just push it aside and get on with my life. The what ifs, and should have, would have, could haves could drive a person insane if they let them.

  Coming here to this place now is probably the craziest thing I’ve done, and that includes marrying a man three times my age a week after meeting him. I have no idea what I’m doing, but something is compelling me to go, and I have absolutely no idea why.

  I must have dozed off, because the next thing I know, Caleb is nudging me awake.

  Gazing out of my window, I watch as we pull up outside the hospital with a feeling of trepidation. Not so much because of the professor, but because of the feelings this place evokes.

  Caleb drops me near the entrance before heading out into the sea of traffic to try and find a space to park. It dawns on me that I have no way of locating the professor without an actual name, so I pull my phone out and drop him a text telling him I’m outside. He responds immediately with the ward and floor that I need to head to.

  Texting Caleb to tell him where I’m going, I head to the lift and press the button for the third floor. When the lift stops I find myself on and eerily quiet corridor. I walk slowly towards the waiting room located at the far end, the loud clapping of my heels on the tiled floor drowning out the thunderous beating of my heart.

  The waiting room is decorated in a familiar off-white and blue, and boasts a single receptionist at her desk. The two people seated there are either waiting to be seen or waiting for news on their loved ones. One is an elderly woman in a pink house coat, sat in the corner, knitting. The other is a blond-haired guy with faded blue jeans and a soft grey t-shirt that has been washed so often that it has faded in places. With his head bowed and his elbows on his knees, it is impossible to see any more distinguishing features, but it’s enough to eliminate him as the professor. Or at least I assume it is, until he looks up and I see recognition on his face. A face that looks remarkably younger and leaner than the last time I saw him. However, it’s the devastation on his face and the stark bleakness in his bright blue eyes that has me walking towards him.

  I recognise that look. I have spent many years looking in the mirror at a girl I didn’t recognise with the same demons fighting to get out. His appearance is a radical change from before, taking years off his age. The hair in particular, showing no signs of the silver streaks through the blond. His casual clothes, glasses-free face and slumped posture make me think he is only five to ten years older than me. I would never had known that the professor was just a disguise or a persona he adopted for anonymity if I wasn’t looking at a completely different version of him now.

  I open my mouth to speak but
the moment is stolen from me when he abruptly stands and folds me within his arms and squeezes just this side of painful. His whole body shakes from his God-awful heart-wrenching sobs. I do the only thing I can and hold him just as tight. I feel my own tears sliding down my face, my chest cracking with emotion for this virtual stranger who could still prove a danger to me. It’s irrelevant now. Nothing matters beyond his pain and my ability to weather the storm with him. Finally, after what feels like hours but was likely only minutes, he composes himself enough to step back and face me.

  “I’m sorry. I have no one, she has no one else except me, and I don’t know what to do.”

  I hold his hand in mine, offering him a silent measure of support.

  “I didn’t think of anything beyond saving her. Every day I repeated the same mantra to myself, ‘just find her and get her out’—and I did. After three years, I finally found her. The problem is that she may be free from the cage she was kept in, but she is still trapped in a prison in her mind. As soon as I fell asleep on the flight home, she cut her wrists. I’m lucky we were due to land and that the hospital isn’t far from the airport, or she wouldn’t have made it. She is so angry at me for saving her.” His voice cracks with anguish. “She just wants to die, and I want so badly for her to live. Tell me honestly, am I being the selfish one for wanting to keep her here? Tell me what to do.”

  “How old is she?”

  “She is seventeen. She went to the movies with her friend Sarah the weekend of her fourteenth birthday. Neither girl came home. She—” He stops abruptly when a harried looking nurse comes running into the room.

  “She’s gone.”

  “What the fuck do you mean she’s gone? Find her.”

  He starts to gag before he can say any more. I thrust the waste paper bin that is next to the chair he was sat on towards him. He throws up until there is nothing left inside him before putting the bin back on the floor. His fingers pull and tug so hard at his hair, I half expect to see clumps of it come away in his hands.

  “Not again, please not again,” he pleads to himself. I need him to snap out of it, so I grab his arms and shake him. He looks at me in surprise, like he completely forgot I was here.

  “We will find her. You take the top two floors with help from staff, and I will take the ground floor with Caleb, who is outside, and see if you can find security to help. Do you have a photo of her on your phone?” When he nods in confirmation, I ask him to send it to me before running out of there, retracing my steps from before.

  Deciding to start outside, I turn my phone back on before tugging my thick grey coat tighter around my body, grateful that I remembered to throw it over the black skinny jeans and white long sleeve t-shirt I slipped on in my haste to get here. The cool breeze in the air feels icy now that the sun has dipped behind the clouds, and without the coat I would be freezing.

  When my phone dings with a notification, I pull it out and see the picture he sent. Long, honey-blond hair and sky-blue eyes that are so much like her brother's stare back at me. A small, narrow nose sprinkled with a liberal number of freckles and a wide smile showcasing brace-covered teeth tell me that this picture must be one from before she was taken, as she looks young but more than that, she radiates happiness.

  I choke back the lump in my throat, knowing that no matter what happens now, the girl in the photo is dead. She might be here physically but everything that made that little girl who she was died the first time someone put their hands on her after she screamed no.

  I forward the picture to Caleb and ask him to help me find her, telling him not to approach her but just to text me with her location. He replies that he’s on it, and my heart squeezes, this time in a good way. That man has no idea why I’m here or who for, but instead of badgering me with questions he trusts me enough to know everything I do is for a reason, and that I will explain it all to him later.

  I turn my head towards the bench where I met Joe. It’s the same bench from before but with a plaque mounted on the back that I had sent in remembrance when Joe passed. It reads ‘In memory of my hero, who sat beside me then and who stands beside me now.’ I promise myself that before I go I will sit for a minute or two and just remember. What I don’t expect to see when I look over is the girl from the picture, or at least a version of who this girl used to be. Her hair has lost its vibrancy and her body is thin, too thin, to the point of emaciation. The hospital gown she is wearing offers no protection against the elements, and I watch as she sits shivering, tears falling down her cheeks as she cries without making a sound.

  I send out texts to say I have found her but to stay away while I talk to her.

  I walk to the bench and sit down next to this beautiful broken child and offer her a tissue, struggling to wade through the eerie sense of déjà vu from a lifetime ago, when I was the broken girl who wanted to die.

  She looks up when I offer her the tissue, mistrust and caution clear in her stance. I know I’ve got one shot at this or this girl is going to be lost forever.

  “Don’t let them win," I tell her.

  “You don’t know what you are talking about. Everybody is sympathetic, pity oozing from their eyes, but they don’t know what I’m feeling or what I’ve been through, so fuck them and their pity and fuck you, too.”

  Angry is good. I can work with angry.

  “I’ve been you. I’ve walked on your path… different shoes but the same path. I sat on this very bench just over six years ago trying to decide if I should let the monster at home kill me or if I should do it myself on my terms. I was completely and utterly alone. I screamed and screamed, and nobody heard me, even when they were standing in front of my face. There was no escape, but that didn’t stop me from dreaming about freedom. It seemed to me that death might be the only way I was ever going to get out of there. Turns out I was wrong. A man sat down beside me. He had just been told he was dying of cancer. He was devastated, as most people would be, but do you know what I felt? I felt jealous. Jealous because he was dying, and I wasn’t. How messed up is that? That man that day… he saved my life. Now I’m here again but this time on the other side. Let me help you.”

  “What happened to the man who hurt you?”

  “He found me a few years later and tried to hurt me again but by then I had people in my life whom I loved, who had filled me so completely that I knew with absolute clarity that I had everything to live for. He had already taken so many pieces of me that I wasn’t prepared to let him take any more, so I killed him.”

  That’s when I see it, that tiny spark in her eye, the glimmer of hope.

  “My brother Jason…” I hide my reaction to finally finding out his name as she drifts off, unsure how to finish, but I understand what she is trying to say. She doesn’t want to lose him or hurt him, but she needs more than he can give.

  “I know your brother. Don’t worry about any off that. If you want my help, all you have to do is ask and I promise you, my sweet girl, that I will fight every battle with you. You have all the strength inside you to slay your demons. I will just be your shield for a while."

  “Help me,” she sobs out before crumpling into my arms, much like her brother did before her.

  I stroke her hair until she calms slightly then sit her up and wipe the tears from her eyes.

  “I’m Frankie, by the way,” I tell her as I slide my arms out of my coat and drape it over her shoulders.

  “My name is Josephine,” she whispers, clutching my sleeve, afraid that I will disappear. “But you can call me Jo.”

  * * *

  “Missy, you’ve got some explaining to do.”

  I ignore Ryan for a minute as I take in the faces of the people around me. After returning Jo to her bed, I left the hospital with the promise that when she was discharged, Jo and her brother would be staying here with me. Calling everyone that I thought should be here on the way back home, I now find myself the centre of their attention, and I’m unsure where to begin.

  I’m sat in the mi
ddle of my sofa with Caleb on my left and Ryan on my right. Jacob's sat on the coffee table in front of me and Sam is in the cuddle chair. Malcolm is standing by the door, next to Steve, and Conner is balancing on his crutches by the window.

  I take a deep breath and tell them the story of what really happened the night my mother took me, not leaving any of the details out. When I’m finished, the room that was quiet and captivated by my story erupts into shouting and cursing. Caleb slips his hand into mine and squeezes it in support. He may not agree with what I did but he met Jo today, so he saw first-hand what was at stake.

  “All right, guys, shut the fuck up,” Steve yells, and everyone quietens down.

  “You should have told us, Frankie.” I don’t think I’ve ever seen Sam this angry before, and I hate that his anger is aimed at me.

  “Sam...”

  “No, Frankie. Do you have any idea what we went through when you were missing? We didn’t know if you were dead or alive. Jacob was a mess, Steve nearly broke his other leg trying to help search for you, all whilst Ryan, Caleb and I blamed ourselves. When we got the call to say you were in hospital but you were alive, I nearly passed out in sheer relief. I vowed to myself that nobody would ever put you in danger again. What I didn’t realise was that you would be the one putting yourself in danger. How could you have been so stupid and reckless, not just with your life but with Jacob's, too? You didn’t know this guy from Adam. He could have tracked you down and done anything to you at any time. Why in God’s name would you do that?” he shouts at me, his hands gripping the chair as if to stop himself from throttling me.

  “Sam, that’s enough,” Caleb snaps at him.

  The tears are streaming down my face, my guilt a heavy burden to carry. I hate that I’ve hurt him, but I stand by my decision.