The Darkest of Shadows

by Lisse Smith

  “How do you do it?” I turned so that I could see him without looking at his reflection in the mirror. I watched his body stretch from a half crouch to his full impressive height.

  “How do I do what?” he asked, throwing the towel into the bath.

  “How do you know me so well?” I stepped toward him, having to tilt my head back so that I could see into his eyes. “How do you understand me when I don’t even understand myself?”

  He hesitated, and I knew that he wanted to say something, the words were right there, but he pulled them back at the last moment.

  “What?” I prompted.

  He sighed. “I don’t want to scare you,” he said.

  “You don’t scare me Lawrence,” I assured him. “The rest of the world scares me, but not you.”

  He rested his forehead against mine. “I understand you because I know you. Because I love you, Lillianna Owen. I love every bit of you, every single annoying, frustrating, and scary part of you,” he admitted almost fearfully.

  “Oh.” I waited. As did he. We both waited. “OK,” I told him.

  “OK?” he repeated.

  “OK,” I agreed. I thought it was OK. I didn’t feel like it wasn’t OK that he said those words. I didn’t feel desolate or scared or frightened. If anything, I felt exactly the opposite, I felt a lightening of the fear, a wholeness that helped fight the darkness.

  “OK.” He nodded more to himself than to me.

  Nicholas, Frost, and Charlie eyed me with worried expressions, almost like they expected me to break at any moment, or to run screaming into the distance. Either way. Lawrence gave me a bottle of mineral water, one of those hydrating energy drinks, and a sports bar when we walked down to the car, and both he and Nicholas watched me with a great deal of determination as I slowly ate my way through the small bar and drank about half of the drink.

  “We’re not getting out of the car until you finish it,” Lawrence said as we pulled up in the carpark at the cemetery. Our arrival had drawn a certain amount of attention from the crowd gathered inside the gates, which I was sure had a lot to do with the style of the vehicle that we were in. Black BMWs tended to draw a second look, especially those with darkly tinted windows.

  I really did feel much better, calmer, and there was no trace of sickness. “I ate the bar,” I reminded him.

  “And you are still dehydrated, so drink the water, Lilly,” he responded forcefully.

  “If I drink anymore of that now, I’m going to need to pee in the middle of the service,” I reminded him, but he didn’t care. He pushed the bottle back into my hands and ignored my protests.

  “I’m going to explode,” I complained as I forced the rest of the drink down. “If I vomit this time, it’s all your fault,” I warned him.

  We were definitely not the first people to the cemetery; actually, from the look on Reed’s face and the large crowd already gathered, I would estimate that we were probably the last to arrive.

  “Where have you been?” Reed hissed at me when I stopped beside her.

  “I’m here now,” I responded, ignoring her frown and the eyes of all the people gathered. Being last to arrive was not a good thing.

  The service was quick, thank God, and I spent most of the time with my eyes glued to a pebble on the ground in front of me. When I did venture a glance across the gravesite to see the mass of people gathered there, I was met with stares. These were mostly my family, cousins, distant relations, and the like. But one thing that they had in common was their curiosity, and of course the pity, and it was all directed at me. I held onto Lawrence’s hand like it was my lifeline to the world and counted down the minutes until this was over, so that I could get the hell out of this town.

  “I don’t belong here,” I whispered the words quietly, and it was almost comforting to finally accept the truth of the statement. Lawrence lowered his head closer to mine.

  “No, you don’t,” he agreed, and I loved that he understood. He had known me for a much shorter period of time than the people standing around us, but of them all, only Lawrence actually understood me.

  “They look at me like I’m crazy.”

  “Do you think you’re crazy?”

  “I think that at some point in the past that I might have been,” I admitted.

  “Are you that same person now?”

  “No,” I said. “No, I’m not that person.”

  “I see someone different than they do,” Lawrence told me. “They don’t know you anymore.”

  “No, they don’t, and I don’t want to know them.”

  “We’ll leave as soon as this is finished.”

  The second the coffin was lowered into the ground, I was moving. I backed up a step and bumped into Nicholas, who had to steady me with his hands. Charlie and Frost were standing beside him, blocking my exit.

  “Move,” I hissed at them. They shot me surprised glances but complied by moving back a pace, so that we could get out of the crush of people.

  Just when I had a clear sight to the car, Reed’s hand caught my arm and stopped me.

  “Are you leaving?” She sounded sad and confused, and I remembered that I had promised her I would say good-bye.

  “Sorry.” I pulled her into my arms. “I’m sorry, Reed. But I can’t stay here,” I told her, and I knew she didn’t understand. “I don’t belong here anymore. We’re going to Sydney tonight. I’ll call you when I get there.” I hoped she understood, but from the hurt look on her face, I doubted that she really did.

  “Fine.” She stepped back from me and walked back to the gravesite.

  “Lillianna.” Oh, God. I was too late. Reed had delayed me too long, and the curious had come calling.

  I closed my eyes for a long second, and when I opened them, my Aunt Cecilia was standing in front of me.

  “My dear.” She leaned forward to kiss me, but I pulled back so that she missed. She staggered a little but managed to catch herself.

  I stepped closer to Lawrence and I felt the solid strength of Frost, Charlie, and Nicholas step up to strand at our backs.

  “Hello, Aunt Cecilia.” My voice dropped to a level and unemotional tone. Lawrence squeezed my hand in concern, and I breathed deeply.

  “What a shame it is about, Billy.” Billy Thomas Gardner was my father, her sister’s husband, and they had never really liked each other; so her comment was just another false statement typical of death.

  “We were just leaving, Aunt Cecilia.” I motioned to walk around her, but she kept talking like I hadn’t spoken.

  “So good to see you better, after everything that happened to you.” She said it in way that only the old can manage. Insulting, but with just the right amount of dottiness that you have to forgive them, just because they’re old and their minds don’t work as well as they used to.

  “Thanks.” What else was I supposed to say to that?

  “I really wasn’t sure that you would ever be quite right again.” It just kept on coming. “You know how you were, a little crazy there for a while.”

  “Yes, I do remember, thank you, Aunt Cecilia,” I responded in a tight voice. “I remember it very well. Now, we really have to get going. It was a pleasure seeing you again.”

  This time I wasn’t waiting for her, I stepped around her and kept going— all of about five paces before another of my annoying relations stepped into my path and wanted to offer their heartfelt and totally false condolences. “You seem much better,” my second cousin something or other told me, quickly followed by two great aunts, one uncle, and someone else I had no recollection of every having met in my life. Everyone was just astounded at how wonderful I was. How much more recovered, and how good it was to have me back.

  We were nearly free when I spotted trouble stalking toward us. “Oh, God! Quick move.” I shoved Lawrence and Nicholas toward the car, and after a confused stare at my horrified face, they moved. “Hurry,” I pleaded. We couldn’t very well make a run for it, but I did get them moving in a fast walk toward the
car. Apparently not fast enough.

  “Lilly.” Twin echoes spoke loudly from right behind me. We couldn’t run, but apparently the twins could.

  I gave a wistful glance at the car and then turned to confront the source of my trouble. “Annabelle and Alicia,” I sighed in exasperation.

  Lawrence had stopped beside me, and while I spoke he twined his fingers casually through mine and moved a step closer, so that I was pressed against his side. I felt Nicholas move to stand on my other side, and Frost and Charlie took up their usual positions behind us.

  It was far too much maleness for my cousins to ignore.

  “It’s been like ages since we last saw you,” Annabelle gushed—but then it could have been Alicia, for all I knew. I could rarely tell them apart.

  “It sure has,” I admitted. The twins were my maternal uncle’s only daughters. They must be about twenty-seven or twenty-eight by now. They were only in their early twenties when the accident happened, so I could only guess at their age now. But just by looking at them, I knew nothing had changed. They had been, and still remained, total sluts.

  “Are you going to introduce us to your friends?” the other twin asked, as she sent a speculative and assessing gaze over my companions.

  “This is Annabelle and Alicia. My cousins.” That was about as much as they were getting.

  The twins gave one of those matching high-pitched laughs that they thought turned men on. It grated down my spine. I knew my companions well enough to know that these women were nowhere near in their league.

  “I’m Annabelle,” one of them announced. “That’s Alicia.” Alicia raised a hand in a small wave.

  Seriously they had forgotten that I was there already. I rolled my eyes at Lawrence, and he hid his smile by burying his face in my hair.

  “What’s your name, handsome?” Annabelle and Alicia said at the same time. Obviously assuming that Lawrence was off limits, considering he stood with an arm wrapped around my waist, they moved straight toward Nicholas. He shot me a startled glance as the twins moved close enough that their bodies, which were actually beautiful, rubbed against Nicholas in places that really wasn’t appropriate for a public forum, let alone a funeral.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” I snapped and pushed them away from Nicholas. “Will you ever grow up and stop being such sluts?”

  “Takes one to know one,” Annabelle snapped back.

  “What are we, in high school?” I sighed.

  “You are such a prude, Lillianna,” Alicia pouted, and on a twenty-eight-year-old woman, it was not a pretty sight.

  “Grow up, Alicia.”

  “Ah, ladies,” Nicholas interrupted, in his best high-couture voice. “If we could try and remember that we are at a funeral, I think that would be advisable.”

  Annabelle couldn’t have cared less where she was. “How about we go somewhere else? Then you wouldn’t have to think at all.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Are you serious?” I was astonished.

  “They can’t both be yours,” Annabelle responded. “I think this one is big enough to make up his own mind about who he wants to play with.”

  “They are both mine,” I corrected her. “They are all mine, and I would appreciate if you would refrain from throwing yourself at my friends in such a vulgar manner. Try not to advertise that you’re a slut, it turns men off.”

  “Fuck you!” Annabelle spat at me. “You’re a fucking crazy bitch anyway. Go back to crazy land and kill someone else.”

  “And you will be leaving now.” Lawrence stepped in front of me, and whether it was his size, his manner, or his voices, the twins hightailed it out of there double time.

  We were about ten minutes down the road before anyone spoke.

  “How come I get claimed as yours, but I don’t get any benefits?” Nicholas asked casually. “It seems unfair to me.”

  I shot him a confused look, and then I caught on to what he was saying. I burst out laughing.

  “And that is exactly why I never come back here,” I told them, and almost instantly the tension lessened, leaving only a hint of apprehension. “I hate those two,” I told them. “They have the brain capacity of a flea, and when they don’t get their way they start screaming. I’ve been hearing them tell me to fuck off for half of my life. I don’t care what they say. I stopped listening years ago.”

  “None of your family seems anything like you,” Lawrence noted.

  I shook my head and settled more comfortably beside him. “They’re not. Reed and I are probably the most normal, but as for the rest of them, I’m pretty sure they’re missing a few DNA strands. Intelligence does not run in my mother’s side of the family.”

  “Was there anyone there from your father’s side?” Lawrence asked.

  I nodded. “Only a handful, and they were the ones who kept to themselves and left as soon as the service was finished.”

  “Shame we didn’t meet them.”

  “Only my mother’s side of the family would be crass enough to approach me at the funeral of my father and tell me how much better I look now that I’m not crazy,” I said.

  “Were you crazy?” Nicholas asked hesitantly from beside me.

  “Probably.” I ran my fingers up and down the back of Lawrence’s hand as it rested in my lap. “Maybe.” I shrugged. “Never officially, but I wanted to be, which I guess means that I probably wasn’t. If I can still remember enough to comprehend that I wanted to be insane, then I guess I didn’t lose my mind totally. I just wanted to escape, and losing my mind seemed like the only way to forget.”

  “I see.” He hesitated for a moment and then added, “Did you really kill someone?”

  I felt Lawrence stiffen beside me.

  “Yes,” I answered him and found astonishingly that it was easier to say than I had thought.

  A fierce thunderstorm blew up as we drove toward the airport. It was ferocious, and the heavens dumped hail and rain down in bucket loads. We took shelter in an underground carpark while the worst of the hail fell, but when Lawrence called through to the plane, they said that the storm was heading that way, and there was no chance of taking off in the next few hours, not until the storm abated some.

  “We’ll drive,” Lawrence announced when he hung up. “Frost, head for the freeway and drive down to Sydney. We’re staying at the

  Intercontinental.” Charlie got busy with the GPS, and before long we were heading toward Sydney with the storm raging behind us as the sun finally set on the day.

  The further the car took me from Newcastle, the more I relaxed and lost the fear. I could feel myself gradually returning to myself, to the Lilly that I had become over the last few years. The Lilly who was able to eat, so much so that I made Frost stop halfway along the freeway. I found myself suddenly ravenous, and I wasn’t about to wait another hour or more until we reached the hotel.

  “I’m glad to see you’re feeling better,” Lawrence announced, as he stole a fry from my stash.

  I gave him a grin and finished the burger and fries and coke, much to his satisfaction. “I’d have rather you had eaten something a little healthier,” he admitted. “But whatever works.”

  Being full and feeling much calmer than I had been in a week left me tired, so tired that I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore. I squirmed around so that I rested against Lawrence; he lifted his arm and put his back more toward the door so that I could cushion my head on his shoulder, and I feel asleep a second later.

  “That was some of the most fucked-up shit that I’ve seen in a long time.” Nicholas spoke quietly, his attention focused on Lilly as she lay sleeping in Lawrence arms. “It’s no wonder she’s screwed up.”

  Lawrence chuckled quietly. “I thought those twins were going to tackle you to the ground then and there.”

  “Normally I’m all up for a bit of twin action,” Nicholas said. “But Christ, it was a fucking funeral.”

  “Lilly does have some interesting relatives.”

  “I can’t believe she is
related to them.” Nicholas shook his head. “I understand why she moved half way around the world. I know I would have if I had to live with them.”

  “She loves Reed,” Lawrence noted. “They have a special bond.”

  “Yeah, but that’s her sister.”

  “She doesn’t understand Lilly, though. She tries, but she sees some things differently than Lilly.”

  “I’m not sure that anyone really understands Lilly,” Nicholas corrected. “Unless you have been through what she has, then I don’t think that anyone can judge what she is, or how she chooses to cope with the aftermath of that.”

  Lawrence nodded. “She’s getting much better at talking about it.”

  “Did she really kill someone?” Nicholas eyes stared starkly in the darkness of the night.

  “Yes and no,” Lawrence replied. “There is a great deal to the story, and none of it is simple. Technically, legally, Lilly was responsible for the death of two people, but it wasn’t a conscious act on her part. It was an accident.”

  Nicholas nodded in understanding. “She killed her husband and child, didn’t she?” he finally asked.

  Lawrence just nodded.

  “Shit. It’s no fucking wonder she went crazy.”

  We arrived at the Intercontinental just past nine o’clock that night. Lawrence woke me with a gentle shake and led me through an underground carpark to an elevator, which we took straight up to the penthouse suite, skipping the reception. Back to our normal standard of accommodation.

  I didn’t stop for anything, just headed straight into the bathroom and washed the past week off my body. I grabbed every piece of clothing that I had with me, threw it in a garbage bag that I found in the bathroom, and tossed it out the bedroom door. I would never wear any of it again.

  Then I climbed into the huge bed, totally naked, and instantly fell deeply asleep.

  I slept for sixteen hours straight. It was past lunch on the following day, Friday, when I sat up in the bed and felt OK. I pulled a robe from the back of the bathroom door and strolled out into the lounge.

  Charlie, Frost, Nicholas and Lawrence were lazing around the room. Charlie and Frost were, not surprisingly, watching American football. Lawrence and Nicholas looked like they might have at one point been watching the game, but now they were both relaxing on the loungers in conversation with each other.