Declare (Declan Reede: The Untold Story #4)

by Michelle Irwin

  My heart stopped as his Mini missed the barrier completely and sailed over the top of the fence that separated the crowd from the track. His car settled roughly in the middle of a scattering crowd. My heart raced and all I could think was that Alyssa could have easily been standing there. She would be in Brisbane by now, and if she hadn’t been off doing her wedding stuff, she could’ve been standing in the path of that deadly weapon.

  I managed to keep my wits about me enough to execute the final turns and finish the lap as the stewards cancelled the rest of the race. My hands shook wickedly as I climbed out of the car. I raced to the fence separating the scrutineering field from the Paddock to find Eden—I knew she’d be all across the incident.

  “How many people were—” I couldn’t finish the sentence.

  “I don’t know, Declan.” She held out a mobile phone for me. “But I’ve got someone on the phone for you.”

  I grabbed the phone, knowing who it would be.

  “I just heard about an accident or something there. Are you all right?”

  I sighed in relief as Alyssa’s voice washed over me. “Yeah, baby, I’m fine. I wasn’t involved.” I didn’t think I needed to clarify that I’d been only seconds away from being involved.

  “Oh, thank goodness.” I could hear her physically slumping in relief over the phone. “Do you need me to come there?”

  I debated being selfish for a moment and saying yes, but decided against it. “No, I’ll be fine.”

  Eden looked at me sympathetically. She knew I wasn’t fine, but she also wouldn’t argue with me or worry Alyssa unnecessarily.

  “How did you hear about it so quickly?” I asked.

  “I was actually on the phone with Eden about something else when she started swearing and shouting about a Mini that’d crashed. God, I was so worried . . .”

  I was too, I thought, but I didn’t want to add to her concern.

  “Actually, I needed to talk to you about something else too.”

  I knew from her tone of voice that now that she knew I was okay, she was back to business—wedding business.

  “I finally got a call back from Miss Wendy, the dressmaker. She said she can fit me in this weekend, but it’s got to be tonight. Is it okay if I meet you later on? Around eleven? Mum’ll come with me to look after Phoebe. But if you need me to be there for you when you get back to the hotel, I’ll tell her no.”

  I sighed and shook my head. “No, go. You should do this while we’re here anyway. It’ll be easier in the long run. I’ll see you later tonight.”

  “Thanks, Dec.”

  Even though she couldn’t see me, I plastered a smile on my face and wondered if it looked as fake as it felt. “No problems.”

  My second race was an unqualified disaster; I was too afraid to go near another car for fear of being involved in another incident and breaking the car. I couldn’t stand the humiliation if I was thrown out of the Micro Series on top of everything else. I took the pussy-line on every corner, braking early and accelerating late. I hated myself for being unable to get past the worry, but I just couldn’t find the thing that was missing. Missing to the tune of third last at the end of the race.

  After I finished at the track, and the Mini was wrapped up safely for the night, I headed toward Browns Plains. I had no idea where exactly I wanted to end up, but I felt the need to drive my old streets. I drove aimlessly until I pulled up in front of the Browns Plains cemetery.

  Once there, I knew my purpose. I knew why I’d been unable to find peace, why my heart had been clenched ever since my drive to Brisbane.

  The last time I’d driven to Brisbane on my own, I was in the middle of a crisis. It had been a crisis of my own making, and one that I’d only gone part of the way toward fixing. I was certain I would be able to find peace where I always found it—with family. I climbed from the car and followed the familiar path toward the tiny cherub in the back rows.

  Unlike previous visits, this wasn’t one filled with sadness or a need to make amends. I was purely visiting my son to spend time with him. I ran my fingers along the little headstone and stood beside his grave for a few moments. Resting on the marble of the headstone, right in front of the tiny cherub, were a few items that I assumed were the gifts Alyssa had left with Emmanuel before we’d moved to Sydney.

  Except the car she’d left to represent me was gone.

  Once upon a time, I probably would have taken that as an omen. Instead, I decided to see if it had simply fallen into the grass.

  As I bent to look around the base, I briefly examined the other items that had been left. A purple plastic ring—the kind you get out of a gumball machine. Despite it being faded by the sun, I recognised it as the gift I’d given Alyssa the day after our first kiss. I felt my chest clench to know that she had kept it through everything I had put her through and that she’d given it to Emmanuel as a keepsake. There was a tiny hospital band looped through it, but the weather had wrought a bit of damage on the paper inside so I couldn’t tell whose it was. I could only assume it was Phoebe’s.

  I brushed a small pile of leaves off the corner of the marble at the base of his headstone, and my hand brushed across something solid and metal. I picked it up and turned it over in my hands. The little Commodore was decked out in red with a flaming car along both sides—the traditional Sinclair Racing design. The paint on the toy car was patchy, faded to a soft pink in a number of places.

  Looking at the car, I felt something stir inside of me. I’d never been afraid when I drove its likeness.

  At least, not before my last race at Queensland Raceway.

  I turned it over in my hands again and again as I wrestled with the best thing to say. I settled for, “Hi.”

  I sighed and sat down on the grass where I had lain in agony less than six months earlier. I stared at the little car in my hands. “I’m sorry I haven’t been back to see you much lately. I hope you understand why we had to move to Sydney. Both Mummy’s and Daddy’s jobs needed us down there, but we haven’t forgotten you. Not a day goes by when you aren’t in our hearts. I just wanted you to know that.”

  I rested the car back in its rightful place and looked up at the cherub.

  “You know, I really regret never getting the chance to meet you and that you never got the chance to live your life. I know I would’ve been so proud of you. You would’ve been my little man. But I worry sometimes. I worry that you wouldn’t have been proud of me.” I stopped to inhale deeply.

  “I worry that I can’t be everything I need to be . . . for your mummy and for Phoebe. Don’t get me wrong, I love them both so much, and I’m never going to leave them again, but what if I fail them? What if I don’t get a chance to be back in a ProV8? Or worse, what if I get kicked off the team entirely one day? What if Hunter does something that I can’t fight?”

  Closing my eyes, the images from my dream assaulted me again, now with the vision of the Mini crashing into the crowd edited into the mix. I continued in a pained whisper, “What if something happens to your mummy because of me? I don’t know if I could live with myself.”

  I wrung my hands together and took another deep breath before pausing to look around. The trees at the back of the cemetery rustled slightly with a soft breeze. It was such a peaceful place, which was strange because it was the worst place in the world in so many people’s minds, and yet I found it calming.

  As I listened to the utter peace in the darkening cemetery, a realisation struck me, as if it had been whispered through the night. A revelation that untangled the knot in my chest in a heartbeat carried in on the breeze.

  “You wouldn’t actually care if I was kicked off the team . . . would you? You’d be proud of me anyway.” I felt a bubble of hope. “Phoebe and your mummy would be too, wouldn’t they? They wouldn’t care if I was a mechanic at a country servo earning squat for the rest of my life, would they? As long as I was with them, and being the best father and husband I could be, they would be proud of me. Because that’s wha
t family is about.”

  I stood as my epiphany settled over me. I felt an inner peace unlike any I had ever experienced before. It didn’t matter to my family if I won or lost. It didn’t matter to them if I ever drove a ProV8 again. They supported my efforts because they wanted me to do it, for myself. I smiled widely at the little cherub.

  “I can do this.” I didn’t know what this meant—marriage, fatherhood, racing—but it didn’t matter because I had realised that I could do it. All of it.

  And if I did fail, my family would be there to help me through.

  As I stood beside Emmanuel’s grave, I couldn’t help but think of my own father. He’d been making an effort to reach out to me, and I’d been steadfastly ignoring his calls. I’d done that to someone once before and, as I’d since discovered, it had had disastrous consequences.

  I said farewell and thank you to Emmanuel before walking back to my car. When I got there, I pulled out my mobile and rang a number I had been pretending didn’t exist.

  “Dad? It’s me. I was wondering if you wanted to meet up for a drink?”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: UNEXPECTED

  THE CALM I had found at Emmanuel’s side faded quickly as I edged closer to the city. I was going to see the man I’d once admired and looked up to, but whom I had lost all respect for in one fell swoop.

  I didn’t know if we would ever mend the bridge between us, but I had to try. I had to be the bigger man, especially after my epiphany that family was what mattered in the world. It might be what I needed to push the demons from the track out of my mind for good.

  After parking my car, I walked to our agreed-upon meeting place—an Irish pub on a busy corner in town. I think we secretly hoped that the loud music and busy atmosphere would help us to avoid having an in-depth conversation—at least that was certainly my hope.

  As I approached the bar and saw his familiar figure waiting for me, I breathed deeply. I began to wonder whether I was making the right choice, and was about to turn to leave before he had a chance to spot me. As if he’d sensed me behind him, or maybe because he was watching in the mirror behind the bar, he turned before I could make my escape.

  “Thank you. For, well, for agreeing to, uh, meet with me,” he stammered. He offered me his hand for a handshake before deciding against it and leaning in for an awkward hug instead.

  I stepped back quickly and held my hands up to him, palms facing out. Just seeing his face brought all my anger back to the surface. I might have been willing to try and be the better man, but I wasn’t going to blindly ignore everything he’d done.

  He’d cheated on Mum, he’d barged in on Alyssa when she was in the shower—accidental or not—and he’d allowed his whore of a girlfriend to sell me—his own son—out with a story that was utter bullshit. I wasn’t about to hug him in greeting as if all of that hadn’t happened.

  “I may have suggested a meeting, but I’m not completely ready to jump back onto the father/son bandwagon,” I told him.

  “Then how do you see this playing out?” he asked.

  I sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe I made a mistake. I should go.”

  His hand reached out and grabbed my arm. “Don’t. I need to talk to you about something. Please, just let me buy you a beer.”

  Against my better judgement, I agreed. I slid onto the bar stool beside him and ordered a Pure Blonde; if it was going on his tab it was going to be something better than a local beer.

  He asked about my race meeting, and I waved him off with an, “I really don’t want to talk about it.”

  “I heard about the big crash today. Someone died, didn’t they?”

  I shook my head in exasperation. Did he always have to fucking exaggerate? “No, two spectators had minor injuries, and the driver was taken to hospital to be safe.”

  Even as I started to explain the truth, his eyes wandered around the bar; he was clearly disinterested in everything I had to say. I followed his line of sight to a group of women in the corner. I couldn’t believe I’d ever looked up to him, or worse, that I’d actually been like him.

  He tried again to make some small talk, but I found that I just couldn’t keep it up. It was too exhausting, because I had nothing I wanted to say to him.

  “So, how are things at home for you?” His question surprised me.

  “Terrific. Alyssa is the absolute best. I couldn’t even imagine being with anyone else again.” I answered sincerely but with a touch of venom in my voice. I honestly meant it, but I also wanted to let him know that he was the one who’d stuffed up by cheating on his wife.

  He’d made his own damn bed.

  “So, you’re not sick of being trapped?” He laughed, sickening me.

  I clenched my fist. “I’m not trapped.”

  “Okay, so you’re happy.” He held his hand up in apology. “Then again, that little woman of yours certainly has a long list of assets.” His smile appeared more like a leer in my mind.

  A wave of red washed over me as the image of him watching her in the bathroom when she was pregnant grew in my mind. I slammed my hand down against the bar. “Don’t you dare talk about Alyssa,” I said with a tone that left no room for argument.

  He sighed. “Just sit and stay calm, will you please? I will not have you making another scene like the one at the café.”

  “I made a scene?” I scoffed. “You were the one who was all over a two-bit whore, who, by the way, is fucking younger than me!” I was shaking with rage and trying very hard to calm down. The last time I lost my temper with Dad was when he’d made up his mind to sell me out—or at least when he’d justified it to himself. I shook my head and turned away. “This was a fucking mistake.”

  “Declan, wait!” he cried desperately as I pushed away from the bar. “I need a favour.”

  I shook my head without looking back at him.

  “I need you to sign a statutory declaration stating that your mother stole the funds in our joint account.”

  I was livid. I turned back to him in shock, my rage mixed equally with disbelief. “What?”

  “I have nothing, son. Nothing. I can’t even get a job. All I want is my half of what was in that account.”

  I laughed. “You are fucking pathetic. You really want me to dob on Mum? You really think I would ever sell her out like that? Anything you got out of this, you deserve. I hope she spends every fucking cent.”

  “Please? I think Hayley is thinking about leaving me, especially now that my account is running low.” His voice was pure desperation. “I can’t let that happen.”

  I wasn’t surprised by the fact that he had all but admitted having a hidden account; I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had a handful of them. However, the fact that he honestly thought he had some claim over the money Mum took—money that I had no doubt he rightfully owed Mum, probably with interest—blew me away. To try to use me to steal half of it, and set Mum up as some kind of criminal, just pissed me off. “Not in a million fucking years. And if that gold-digging whore leaves you, then, well, I think you should consider yourself pretty damn lucky.”

  “How dare you!” he roared. “I don’t care what you say about me, but you will stop calling Hayley such horrid names.”

  Half the bar was watching us, but I didn’t care.

  “You had a perfectly good, loving, beautiful woman waiting at home for you every night, but you treated her like shit and fucked scum like Hayley fucking Bliss. That’s how dare I! How could you even think I would ever turn my back on Mum in support of you and that little slut?”

  I turned and stalked from the bar before I could do something that I would really regret; something that might give Danny a reason for kicking me off the team.

  Without looking back, or stopping at his shouts to come back, I raced to my car as quickly as I could. I practically ripped the door off in my attempt to get inside. I slid onto the seat before slamming the door shut with a growl on my lips.

  Where in the hell does he get off?

  I shou
ld’ve known better than to try to see my scumbag father. There was an old saying I’d heard a hundred times, “Let sleeping dogs lie.” The meeting had made me understand the exact meaning behind it.

  I sat in the car and waited, trying to calm down. The hood light clicked off after a few minutes, but I was still livid and breathing heavily. Definitely not in any fit state to drive.

  After the shitty start to the weekend, I’d finally managed to find calm and was ready to race after my visit with Emmanuel. Yet, a few seconds spent in Dad’s presence, and it had all been completely erased.

  My thoughts turned to Alyssa, and how she had been encouraging me to take the step toward forgiving Dad. She’d argued that I needed to look at Phoebe and decide if I would want her to forgive me if I fucked up badly. I already had and hoped that she would in the long run. But there was one key difference—I actually wanted to do better.

  I didn’t know if I could tell Alyssa about my failed attempt. I would have to admit just how big a piece of scum I came from. How could I be certain that no more of his shittiness rubbed off on me? I didn’t need to make a choice just yet. I wasn’t sure what time Alyssa was due back from her fitting, and I wasn’t even sure she’d bother coming all the way to Ipswich if she finished up too late. She might just crash at her mum’s.

  I took another couple of deep breaths to try to calm down a little more before finally putting the car in gear and heading back to my empty hotel room.

  It’s times like these I could use a drink, I thought to myself, even while knowing I could never go back to using alcohol to dull my anger.

  “DEC?” A hushed whisper echoed through my dreams. A giggle followed.

  I mumbled something incoherent, not completely awake.

  There was a bang then another giggle.

  “Alyssa?” I tried to see through the thick night. “Is that you?”