by Carys Jones
“Work?” Meegan tilted her head to look at her mother with wide, inquisitive eyes. She was getting older, starting to become more observant. In her young mind she knew that she always saw her father before he went to work.
“He had to go in early today,” Isla quickly added. “He’s working on a big case.”
Meegan seemed appeased by this and went back to focusing on her dinner. She smacked her lips together appreciatively each time she was given a fresh helping of spaghetti.
“Good girl,” Isla smiled tenderly at her. “You’re eating your dinner so well today.” She almost added that she wished Aiden was there to see it but she stopped herself.
“Park?” Meegan quickly tried to exploit the benefits her good behaviour could bring.
“Tomorrow, sure,” Isla nodded. She knew that she’d need to get out of the house sooner or later. She didn’t want to spend all her time wondering where Aiden was, wondering if and when he’d come back to her.
“Park soon?” Meegan bounced slightly in her highchair with excitement.
“Yes, baby, park soon.”
“Daddy come?” Meegan asked hopefully, her eyes sparkling with delight.
“No,” Isla shook her head sorrowfully. “I don’t think Daddy will be able to come. He’s very busy with work at the moment.”
Usually Meegan would howl with despair at such a statement but perhaps she sensed something in her mother; sensed the air of grief circling around her. Instead of crying and banging her chubby fists against her highchair, she merely dropped her head covered in curls and uttered, “Oh.”
Isla sniffed and forced back tears. She’d rather endure one of Meegan’s tantrums than see the little girl show such sad acceptance.
“But it will be fun just the two of us.” Isla wiped a hand across her eyes to stop anything falling from them.
“Yes.” Meegan instantly brightened, the shadow of sadness gone from her little face in less than a second.
“Now let’s go play in the garden for a bit.” Isla scooped her daughter up into her arms and kissed her gently on the forehead. Each time she held Meegan, she felt a little heavier.
“Garden,” Meegan echoed happily. Isla carried her out into the late afternoon sunshine. As she watched the little girl merrily play with her building blocks, she tried to push all thoughts of her husband out of her mind but she couldn’t. Aiden, and the lie she had told him, were like a storm cloud in her mind, preventing any sunshine or happiness from filtering in.
*
“The FBI?” Aiden leaned forward, still holding the piece of report emblazoned with the ominous classified stamp.
“I know.” Alex moved and glanced behind the thin curtains. His heart was racing in his chest and despite the constant whir of the ceiling fan, small beads of sweat had developed on his forehead.
“I mean, that shit’s bad right? Having to get the FBI involved?”
Aiden tried to think. All his thoughts were bombarding him at once, making it difficult to decipher any of them. He’d dealt with sealed FBI files before. It could mean anything from a national security issue to an unresolved murder. But why had Justin’s death attracted the attention of the FBI? It was suddenly starkly clear that Justin hadn’t died in a motorcycle accident that night.
Lowering his head into his hands, Aiden sighed deeply.
“So it couldn’t have been an accident that killed Justin, could it?” Alex asked, his tone insistent.
“I don’t…I don’t know,” Aiden was staring at the stained carpet beneath his feet. If the FBI were involved it went beyond his knowledge, beyond his abilities to be able to get answers. But like his friends, he desperately wanted the question mark hovering over Justin’s death removed.
Aiden felt sick to his stomach. The town gossips had been right all along. There had been no accident, there couldn’t have been. But then what happened to Justin? Guilt pierced the base of Aiden’s neck, making his eyes water. How could he not have known? How could he not have realized? He was a lawyer, it was his job to question, to search for truth.
“What do we do now?” Alex wondered helplessly. He was already spooked at being so close to an FBI investigation.
“You do nothing.” Aiden ran his hands over his temple and through his hair. He felt dirtied by it all. The shower he’d previously taken in his small motel bathroom had done little to cleanse him. “You could lose your job if you go poking around on this,” he added, giving his friend a grave look. “Leave it with me, I’ll get us some answers.”
“You will? How?”
“It’s better that you don’t know,” Aiden told him ominously. “Trust me, you want to stay as far away from this as you possibly can.”
“Aid—” Alex didn’t know what to say. This was all terrifyingly beyond what he knew.
“We’ve basically just opened Pandora’s Box,” Aiden sighed. “And when you do that, nothing good ever comes out.”
Chapter Seven
Love Will Tear Us Apart
Welcome to Avalon.
The sign was faded but still readable. As Aiden drove past it, he felt his stomach tighten. In Greensburg the distance had helped him forget about his argument with Isla, but now he was headed straight for the maelstrom of his marriage and he didn’t know what to expect.
He knew he was too tired to argue. The long drive, coupled with the weight of unanswered questions surrounding Justin’s death, had exhausted him. Numbly he turned the corner and saw his house up ahead. He suddenly wished that Avalon was larger, that the drive would take longer, but he had to accept that he had arrived. He was home.
Upon entering the house, Aiden was met with complete stillness. The only sound was the ticking of the clock hanging in the hallway. Aiden dropped his bag by his feet and paused in the doorway. The tranquillity made him uneasy. He’d expected fireworks. He thought that the moment he opened the door Isla would set upon him with a ferocious intensity, telling him that they were both partly to blame for the lie she’d felt she had to weave. But his wife wasn’t there. The house felt empty.
“Isla?” Aiden called her name and cautiously stepped further into his home. “Isla, I’m back. Where are you?”
As he spoke, he walked. He glanced into the small kitchen. The table was bare, the sides clean and clutter-free. No Isla. He progressed towards the living room. The door was closed and as he opened it he thought he heard a sharp intake of breath.
“Isla?” he stepped through the door and surveyed the room. His wife was sat on the sofa. Her deep-red hair was collected at the base of her neck in a tidy bun and she was wearing jeans and a jacket. Before Aiden could wonder why she was wearing a jacket inside the house, he spotted the three suitcases stacked neatly on the floor in front of her.
“Isla?” he repeated her name, trying to make sense of what he was seeing.
“Hey, Aid,” Isla lifted her head to look at him. Her voice was hoarse but her eyes showed no signs of tears. He could tell that she wasn’t wearing any make-up which allowed her natural beauty to shine through.
“What’s going on?” Aiden glanced at the suitcases. Were they for him? Did she want him to leave?
“While you were gone I did some thinking.” As Isla spoke, she began to play nervously with her hands. Aiden carefully lowered himself on to the sofa beside her, listening intently to what his wife was saying.
“I kept thinking about what I did,” Isla explained. “About how I told you such an awful lie just to…keep you here.”
“Isla—”
“When did we become these people, Aid?” She didn’t let him speak. She delivered the question and looked at him with fierce intensity burning behind her eyes.
“I’m not the sort of woman who lies about being pregnant to keep her man. Yet I did it. I knowingly did it. I felt you slipping away from me and I panicked.”
Aiden clenched his jaw as guilt washed over him. Isla had been right to sense him slipping away.
“I used to think that Avalon was the pr
oblem. That I was just struggling to adapt to living here. But when you left, I realized that Avalon was never the problem. The problem was always us.”
All of the air was suddenly sucked out of the room by her words, causing Aiden to shiver and hold his breath.
“We tried everything we could, Aid. We moved, we stuck by one another, but the problems we had in Chicago, they just came with us. I don’t want to be the kind of person who lies, who is deceitful.”
Tears began to gather in Isla’s eyes and she used the sleeve of her jacket to hold them at bay.
“I wanted us to be a family, I wanted it so badly,” she continued as a lump began to form in her throat.
“But I’ve never been happy here, Aid. Yet you have. We each want such different things from life.”
Aiden wanted to say something, anything, but he didn’t have the words. All he could do was sit and numbly listen.
“I don’t like the person I’ve become,” Isla said with conviction. “I’ve become a bitch living here, we both know it. I miss my friends, my comforts, my city. But most of all, I miss myself. And as I thought about everything, I realized that if you truly loved me you’d never have taken me away from all the things that I cared about. We’ve each been hurting one another for such a long time that I don’t even think we realize we’re doing it anymore.”
A rogue tear dropped down Aiden’s cheek, landing silently upon his shirt.
“I’m finally doing the right thing by us,” Isla reached over and held Aiden’s hand in her own. She gave it a gentle squeeze.
“I’m moving back to Chicago with Meegan. Aid, I want a divorce.”
It was a word Aiden had so often heard in his line of work but he’d never appreciated its full power until that moment when it exploded out of Isla’s lips in his lounge and made the room begin to swirl around him.
He didn’t have the energy to oppose her. He felt like they’d been engaged in an arduous boxing match and she’d just delivered the final blow right into his rib cage, knocking the air out of him. Knockout. The fight was finally over.
“Meegan?” He managed to utter his little girl’s name. Where was she? Was she still in the house? His heart suddenly seized in his chest at the thought of her returning to the city, of him not being able to see her every day.
“I’ve taken her to my mother’s,” Isla explained as she wiped at her eyes again. It was in vain as tears were now falling down her cheeks like melting icicles.
“I can’t…” Aiden shook his head, trying to collect his thoughts. Everything was moving so quickly. He felt like the teenager who was late to the school dance. Everyone else had found their partners and made their plans, leaving him alone and confused.
“I can’t lose my daughter!” He finally vocalized how he felt. The veins on his neck protruded as adrenalin began to surge through him.
“You won’t lose her.” Isla gave his hand a reassuring squeeze and Aiden felt oddly comforted by it.
“You’ll never lose her, you’re an amazing father. Meegan will have the best of both worlds. She’ll live in the city with me and be able to come and enjoy the country with you. I mean, let’s face it, Aid. We were never going to send her to a school here in Avalon. Meegan deserves the best education she can get.”
Aiden could heart the pulsating of his agitated heart echoing in his ears.
“It would be unfair to make her grow up in a house where her parents didn’t love each other. Tell me I’m wrong, Aid. Tell me that actually we are soul mates and this is just a rough patch?” Isla’s voice was gentle. She wasn’t begging him to make her recant her decision to leave, she was just urging him to see that she was right.
Aiden looked at her from behind sorrowful eyes and said nothing. He didn’t love her anymore. He didn’t know if it had happened suddenly and he hadn’t noticed or if it had been a more gradual process. The people they’d been when they met in college were now just shadows of their former selves. They had both changed since then. But they hadn’t changed together; each change served only to pull them further apart.
“I’m going to stay with my mom until I can get settled in Chicago. I’ve already spoken with my old boss, he said that if I want my old job back it’s mine.”
Despite her tears, Isla was composed and elegant. She spoke with a calm authority which Aiden hadn’t heard for quite some time. In Avalon she’d been so quick to anger, to cast judgements, but this woman he was sat beside was more like the woman he had once known. The confident, alluring woman he’d met in college and instantly fallen for.
“I’ve missed this side of you,” he admitted sadly. “I remember how you were always so calmly determined about things. It used to scare me a little bit.”
Isla gave him a bittersweet smile. “We’ll always be friends, Aiden. But I fear that you bring out the worst in me. I need to go back home, back to Chicago and get back to being the person I once was, a person I could be proud of.”
Aiden looked at the suitcases which were obviously already packed. Isla planned to leave soon and Meegan was already gone. He’d be left in the house, in Avalon, completely alone.
“I don’t want to be just some weekend dad,” Aiden told Isla as he released his hand from hers and ran it through his hair.
“And you won’t be,” Isla promised him. “But tell me, did you truly want her to go to school here? In Chicago she’d have access to the finest teachers, the best resources.”
Isla was right, they both knew she was. Aiden hung his head in defeat.
“Handle the divorce yourself, dictate whatever terms you want for your time with Meegan. It should be fifty percent, I’ve no objection to that. My only stipulation is that she is educated in Chicago.”
“That’s fine,” Aiden choked out the words. Isla was talking so clinically about their imminent separation. She had clearly made peace with it but he still felt blindsided. Forty-eight hours ago he thought she was pregnant with their second child, he thought he knew exactly where his life was headed. Now everything had changed. The bombshell of divorce meant that he was just left amongst the rubble to try and gather himself together.
“I should get going.” Isla stood up and looked at her suitcases with a pained expression.
“I’ll help you.” Aiden immediately shot up beside her and moved to lift the largest of the cases.
“Whoever thought we’d end so amicably?” Isla laughed slightly, sounding nervous.
“I thought you’d have at least broken a couple of dishes,” Aiden teased.
“Or set fire to some of your clothes,” Isla added, “I can’t say I didn’t think about it,” she smirked.
“But, then I realized that it wasn’t all your fault, nor is it all mine. This latest lie is just the final nail in the coffin of our marriage.”
Aiden manoeuvred the suitcases out of the house and stacked them up in the trunk of his car.
“Need me to drive you to your mom’s?”
“If it’s not too weird,” Isla gave him an apologetic grin. “She came to pick Meegs up, but I couldn’t ask her to keep coming back and forth. She’s getting on now.”
“It is weird,” Aiden confirmed. “But I’ll do it.”
“You see!” Isla pointed at him and sighed wistfully.
“See what?”
“You’re such a nice guy, Aid. It drives me crazy sometimes! You’re willing to drive the wife who is leaving you on an eight-hour round-trip to drop her at her mother’s.”
“I’ll get to see Meegan.”
“You’re too nice for your own good,” Isla said as she got into the passenger side of the car. Aiden glanced at the steering wheel and prepared mentally prepared himself for another long stint behind it. He really was too nice for his own good. He was shattered, he needed to rest, to take stock of what was happening with his life. Instead he was embarking on another road trip, probably the last one he’d ever have with Isla by his side.
“So are you ready?” Isla called to him from within the car.
“Yeah,” Aiden pulled out the driver’s door. “Let’s go.”
*
Aiden returned home in a daze. Meegan had been sleeping when he reached Isla’s mother’s home, so he hadn’t even been able to see her. The feeling of isolation was beginning to creep across his skin. When he opened his front door to be greeted only by the sound of the ticking clock, it finally consumed him and the tears came. Leaning against the wall he covered his face with his hands, his tears splashing against his palms.
He cried for the marriage he could not save and for the dream of Avalon which now seemed to have died.
*
“I’m not sure you’re doing the right thing,” Isla’s mother, Veronica, noted as she raised a judgemental eyebrow at her daughter.
“Trust me, Mother, I am,” Isla insisted as she began unpacking her suitcase in what had previously been her bedroom. All traces of her childhood years spent in there were now gone. Veronica had been brutally thorough in turning it into a tasteful spare bedroom. Gone were the posters, the photographs tacked to the walls, even the pink curtains had been replaced by understated floral ones.
Meegan was sleeping in one of the other, equally soulless, spare bedrooms.
“You’re not getting any younger,” Veronica scanned the items Isla was unpacking with a critical eye as she spoke.
“You’ll struggle to find another man, especially with a child in tow.”
“Really, Mother.” Isla paused with a cashmere sweater in her hand, glaring angrily at Veronica. “You need to stop overwhelming me with all your support.”
“I’m just being honest,” Veronica raised her hands defensively. As she lifted them, the collection of golden bangles she was wearing slid down her thin arm and made a sound almost like sleigh bells.
“Like I told your father, this wouldn’t have happened with Jude.”
“Now you’re just being cruel,” Isla objected. “You shouldn’t bring up Jude.”
She felt like she was ten years old again, facing her mother’s fierce judgement. She kept reminding herself that she was grown woman now, it didn’t matter if her mother didn’t approve of her decisions. That her mother liked to compare her to ghosts.
