Finding Grace

by K. L. Slater

  I knew it! I knew our creepy neighbour had something to hide. All this time, Blake has trusted in him, wouldn’t hear a word said against him…

  ‘Lucie, move!’ I instinctively step aside as he swings a vase at Rhonda’s head. She swerves and lets go of the knife.

  Jeffery snatches it up and shouts at me.

  ‘The police are on their way… get downstairs with Grace!’ He never takes his eyes from Rhonda. ‘We’re taking her home.’

  He jumps in between us. I see Rhonda snatch up Angela’s knife and I rush out of the room with Grace just as Jeffery falls to the floor and as I turn, I see Rhonda pull a bloody knife from his back.

  I scream, staggering forward with Grace.

  My daughter’s eyes are wide but trancelike. If she falls into a diabetic coma, she could die.

  We get to the top of the stairs, Grace falling into me. I pick her up to carry her down and jump back at the terrific crash as uniformed officers smash through the door and flood into the stairwell.

  An officer takes Grace and we make our way downstairs, into the front room.

  Shouting, banging and heavy footfalls echo through the ceiling. I close my eyes against it and hold my daughter close.

  The door opens and I see DS Fiona Bean, followed by someone else.

  ‘Daddy?’ Grace whimpers as Blake rushes across the room to us.

  ‘I’ve come to take you both home,’ he says.

  Sixty

  We’re both uncomfortable. Dad sits with his fingers laced before him, looking up at me like one of those cute Facebook videos featuring a dog that knows it has done something wrong.

  I’m thinking how I can approach the issue from a supportive angle yet show him I’m shocked. Disappointed.

  He’s put us all at risk.

  A distant memory floats to the surface. When I was about eleven years old and in my first year at senior school, I got an invite to hang around after school with one of the ‘cool’ groups of kids. They were going to the bowling alley where someone’s auntie worked. I tagged along and ended up buying everyone cans of lager and spending all my lunch money for the week.

  I had to come home and admit everything to Dad. He didn’t lecture me, he said he could see I felt bad enough and I was suffering because I felt guilty and foolish. And he was spot on. I never did anything like that again.

  Standing here now, our roles are now reversed and it feels wrong. Awkward. I’m trying to think how best to broach the subject when Dad speaks up.

  ‘I’m truly sorry, love,’ he croaks, his chin on his chest. He looks wretched. Pale and unshaven. I can count on one hand the number of times Dad hasn’t had a shower and shave first thing in a morning.

  ‘Why, Dad? Why did you let it get so bad without asking for our help?’

  He looks up at me, his eyes red-rimmed and sore. ‘It happened too fast. It sounds stupid but I didn’t know I needed help, love. I thought I had it under control but… it seemed to get out of hand so quickly.’

  Will it help to lecture Dad? Will it make things any better?

  Perhaps not, but it might help me.

  I feel like I’ve lived life so long now, biting my own tongue, considering everything I say before I say it. Part of me feels I should tell him how bloody disappointed I am, how he’s put us all at risk.

  One of the things I’ve promised myself is to accept the truth of who I am and what I’ve done. Easily said, but it’s a work in progress.

  ‘There are things I need to say to you,’ I begin, as a heat begins to burn inside my chest.

  He looks up quickly, recognising the new, hard edge to my voice.

  I realise his blue eyes have paled a little over the years without me really noticing. The lines around his eyes, at the edges of his mouth have deepened. My dad is getting old.

  I remember how he put his life on hold to raise me alone when Mum left and then died. How he worked double shifts at the chemical factory for years to give me a decent standard of living.

  In my teen years, I’d come home from school and he’d be fast asleep in the chair, still wearing his coat and boots and he’d wake with a start to make my tea when I got home from netball, or art club.

  I’ve seen those tired, beaten eyes before.

  And I know I can’t do it. I can’t tell him how disappointed I am in him because I’m not.

  ‘I’m proud of you, Dad,’ I say softly. ‘I’ve always been proud of you.’

  ‘Proud of me?’ He wipes his wet cheeks with the back of his hand. ‘I’m a mess. My whole life’s a damn mess. After what I’ve done, the trouble I’ve caused everyone, I couldn’t blame you if you never wanted to set eyes on me again.’

  ‘I’m proud of you for getting help, Dad. I’m proud of you for being such a brilliant dad to me for all these years and a wonderful grandad to Grace and Oscar.’ I sigh. ‘We all make mistakes. I’ve made some terrible mistakes I couldn’t even bring myself speak about.’

  ‘We all make mistakes, lass. Some of us worse than others.’ He shakes his head and smiles softly. ‘There’s nothing you could ever do that means I’d ever be anything but proud of you, Lucie. I want you to know that.’

  ‘Thanks Dad,’ I whisper and I take his words and tuck them away in a small, soft place in my heart that I’m nurturing just for me.

  Epilogue

  Six months later

  There’s been so much stuff uncovered by what happened to Grace, so much fallout to work through… the last six months feel like a mere six days.

  Dad has just been discharged from his rehabilitation programme for his gambling addiction. We begged him to involve the police in the intimidation he’d suffered from the loan sharks but he was adamant he wouldn’t do it.

  ‘I borrowed the money. I have to take responsibility for that, love,’ he told me as I sat holding his hand. ‘I didn’t know it would escalate like it did but you know, I would still have borrowed it if I had.’

  Blake said he had the right to deal with it as he saw fit but I still feel unhappy they got away with it to do it to others. But Dad is dealing with it in his own way. As part of the work the rehab centre does, he’s visiting senior schools and colleges in the area and speaking candidly about what happened to him.

  ‘Hopefully, I can warn young people not to follow the path I did,’ he told us. ‘At least some good can come out of it.’

  The detectives told us that Jeffery would be nominated for a posthumous bravery award for his actions. When I thought he’d been skulking around making a nuisance of himself, he’d been watching and monitoring and had noticed the woman – Angela – hanging around the house. He’d followed her to the park that day and tracked us to the house. He’d then called the police before coming in to assist me.

  The biggest shock has been that he left his house to Blake in his will. He described my husband as his ‘best and only friend’.

  Mike and Bev have been our rocks through it all and if anything, I think even more of Bev for helping Dad out like she did. They got over their differences together after Mike looked carefully into the remortgage she’d sorted out for Dad. Although she’d been a little lenient on one or two points, he was satisfied she hadn’t broken any regulations.

  DI Pearlman called to tell us Rhonda had taken her own life in prison. She’d left a note saying she wanted to be with her brother, even after everything he’d kept from her.

  We’ve all learned painful and valuable lessons about keeping secrets from the people we love the most. We’ve learned that when the truth comes out of its own accord – as it always does – it can be a hundred times worse to deal with.

  That’s why I never want to keep another secret from my husband.

  That’s why the time has come to speak to him about Grace.

  Blake sits in his chair and I sit opposite him, on the couch. I pick up a scatter cushion and hug it close to my body. He notices the gesture but doesn’t comment.

  Despite the calming effect of my medication, I can feel a
maelstrom of emotions swirling beneath the surface, kept at bay, for now, with Dr Mahmoud’s help.

  Blake’s voice is soft when he breaks the silence.

  ‘I know you have something to tell me, Luce, but I want you to take your time. There’s no rush now this nightmare is over. Grace is safe, upstairs in her bed. Now it’s time to draw a line so we can begin to live again.’

  I’m so grateful our daughter is OK. She was weak for a few days after coming home and spent some time each day at the hospital – both for treatment and therapy – but she bounced right back and seems her normal self again now, albeit a little more nervous. I now feel fortunate she was in a vague, semi-trance state when I found her because it appears she took in nothing of what was said and done in those awful last minutes in the house.

  Blake’s words are beautiful when he talks about learning to live again… but they are also naïve. I’m about to rip his world apart, this man who has loved and supported me through so many years, since the day I met him.

  But he’s right. It really is time to draw a line under the lies, the deceit… time to give up the secrets of the past and free ourselves from its vicelike grip. Whatever the outcome.

  It feels strange, just the four of us again in the house. No press gathered at the gate, no Fiona lurking in the hallway.

  The living room looks like ours again. Lamps glow warmly, and the fire glow is on. I even lit a candle earlier, and the air is laced with the tranquil scents of lavender and jasmine. It feels like home once more.

  ‘Lucie?’

  I look at him now, his handsome face lined with patient concern. I have kept him waiting long enough, but to show him how much I respect and love him, I have to break his heart into a million pieces.

  So I tell him what happened that day nearly ten years ago. I take him way back to the night he visited me at Dad’s house and I cooked his favourite meal.

  ‘Steak and chips, my favourite.’ He smiles faintly at the memory. ‘Some things don’t change.’

  I remind him how we chatted excitedly about our wedding plans, how we couldn’t wait for the bright, wonderful future we had planned so enthusiastically together.

  ‘And then you left, you went home,’ I tell him. ‘And I had another visitor. Someone I’d hoped never to set eyes on again after university. Stefan O’Hara.’

  ‘The abusive relationship you were in?’ He frowns. I’ve only given him the bare bones about my time at Newcastle, I never found the words to admit what I believed at the time were murderous deeds.

  I nod.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me, Luce? How did this man know where you lived?’

  ‘He’d turned up at The Carlton a few days earlier and begged me to give him half an hour of my time. He must have followed me, watched me.

  I shiver and press the cushion closer to my chest.

  Blake shifts in his seat as I continue.

  ‘He explained that he was a recovering alcoholic, and that an essential part of his treatment was to apologise to all the people he’d hurt in his lifetime.’ I try to disengage myself from the growing pressure inside my head. I’ve started this, and however bad Blake’s reaction is, I must finish. It’s the right thing to do and that is my only barometer from now on. ‘I accepted his apology and he went away again. I thought that was it, the end of the nightmare. I didn’t tell you at the time because I didn’t want him sullying our happy mood and I genuinely thought it would be the last time I saw him.’

  ‘I see.’ I note his annoyed expression, but I ignore it and press on. There’s far worse to come.

  ‘I thought it was you, you see, coming back to the house for something you’d forgotten. I just opened the door and… he forced his way in.’

  Blake’s face flushes deep red.

  ‘He… he raped me that night, Blake. When he left, he was involved in the road traffic accident at the end of the street.’

  ‘Oh no.’ He covers his face with his hands. ‘No. No!’

  He thumps the chair arm, then stands up and paces around the room, his hands clamped to the top of his head. ‘I can’t believe you didn’t tell me this, I can’t believe I wasn’t there to protect you. I’m so sad you had to deal with this alone and… hang on…’ He turns to look at me, realisation dawning. ‘I did come back to the house, because you had a flood!’

  He frowns, staring into space. He’s trying to remember, trying to join up the dots to make sense of his fractured memory, and he’s failing.

  ‘When you left, I set the bath running,’ I tell him. ‘Then I heard the door and rushed to open it. Stefan attacked me and left. It was only when the water started dripping through the ceiling that I remembered the bath.’

  He walks over and sits down next to me on the couch.

  ‘But why didn’t you tell me when I came back? You said you were feeling ill, that you’d gone down with some kind of bug. I remember being puzzled that it had come on so quickly.’ He’s lurching between a whole host of negative emotions. ‘We should’ve rung the police! Why protect him?’ He springs up again, shaking his head like he’s trying to expel the terrible thoughts that are flooding in.

  ‘I couldn’t get the police involved because I thought he’d use Rhonda’s murder.’ I cry out. ‘He had photos! I was innocent; I didn’t want to go to prison. It sounds far-fetched but you didn’t know him. He was so convincing, so plausible.’

  ‘We could have fought his allegation together, Lucie. If you’d confided in me, I would’ve believed you… surely you must know that? Instead, we’ve had all these… these lies, tainting our relationship for so long. Destroying your mental stability and making me feel like I was never quite enough for you.’

  It sounds simple now, but it was far from that at the time. Stefan had control over me when I was his girlfriend. I couldn’t see it then, but I can see it now. He was skilled at moulding my thoughts into what he wanted from me; so skilled, I thought I was making my own mind up.

  I totally bought into his manipulating nature, his ability to get what he wanted.

  I believed with every fibre of my body that he’d killed Rhonda that day, and that he would be able to convince the police of my guilt using his plausibility and the photographs he took of me with what I thought was a drugged-up Rhonda.

  ‘You’ve always been enough for me,’ I say, pushing the cushion away. ‘You are more than enough for me. I love you so much.’

  Blake sighs and reaches for my hand.

  ‘Look. You’ve told me now and I’m thankful the cloud above us has finally gone. My God, no wonder you’ve not been in your right mind at times.’ His face drops. ‘I wish you could’ve shared the burden. I wish I could’ve helped you through it.’

  I squeeze his hand gratefully.

  ‘We make a fresh start now, deal?’ he says, gazing into my eyes.

  I can’t speak. My throat feels like its closing up and it’s all I can do not to stand up and make an excuse to leave the room.

  ‘It’s natural for you to worry,’ Blake reassures me. ‘You’ve spent so long living in fear, but Stefan O’Hara is dead. He can never hurt you again, Luce. It’s our time now. No more secrets between us, ever… right?’

  ‘But there is another secret,’ I hear myself say quietly. ‘There is one more secret.’

  I wait for him to nod, to say something, but he just stares at me. His entire body seems to freeze, rigid and immoveable as something in him senses the gravity of my next words.

  ‘The night he raped me… ‘ My voice breaks but I push through it. I can’t turn back now. ‘A few weeks after he raped me… I found out I was pregnant.’

  Blake seems to diminish somehow in front of me. His broad chest, strong shoulders look smaller, his confident demeanour now timid.

  He utters one word. ‘Grace.’

  I finish his sentence. ‘Grace is Stefan’s child. I’m so, so sorry, Blake.’

  I can’t look at him.

  He stands up and walks out of the room. I hear the back door o
pen, and I think he’s going to leave, but when I go into the kitchen, he’s standing in the garden, staring up at the night sky.

  I creep silently out of the house behind him, the invasive cold seeping up from the earth through the thin soles of my slippers.

  I move closer to him, but he doesn’t look at me.

  The sky is black, but the odd star is visible.

  ‘You know, there are millions and millions of stars up there we can’t see,’ he says softly.

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ I say, desperate for him to touch me. Hold me.

  ‘There’s so much we don’t know about this world. Mostly we focus on the beauty we can see and enjoy and the miracles we take for granted every day.’

  He looks down at me.

  ‘The joy that Grace gives us, the love we have for her. Those things are real, Lucie; the rest of the stuff that’s gone, in the past, it doesn’t have to matter unless we let it.’

  He bends down and kisses me softly on the lips.

  ‘We can work through this together. There’s so much more to being a father than mere biology.’ I hear the pain threading through his words, see the agony-laced hope shining in his eyes. ‘Grace is mine and I love her with every fibre of my body. Anything else is incidental.’

  I press my face into his chest and sob softly into his warmth, inhale his familiar scent.

  We stand, in each other’s arms, for a long time before Blake tilts my chin up to look at him.

  ‘Let’s start living the life we’re lucky enough to share together,’ he says.

  I nod and slowly, together, we walk back inside.

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