Can’t say I agree on that one, but I’m glad for her.
I almost slip three times on my way down the muddy bank, but it’s worth it. The tarn is never busy. It feels like my own private space here, more so than my room. The memories that haunted me here—a hand holding me underwater, water in my lungs—are fading, replaced by lazy afternoon swims, floating on my back and watching the birds flit between the trees.
At the water’s edge, I tug off my skirt, tights, and jumper to reveal my swimsuit beneath. I slip my phone into my boot, but not before I click on a notification from one of the stupid financial news sites I subscribed to.
Green Aviation has rallied after the dip it took last week following the arrest of COO Mike Wilson and the surprise decision of CEO Alex Corbeau-Green to step down after just five months in charge, something he states was always part of the plan. Shareholders find confidence in new CEO Luis Bennett’s five-year strategy to reshape and rebuild the company. Corbeau-Green retains control of Synx, the cybersecurity firm he acquired in January, and remains on the board of Green Aviation.
I send it to Alex. His decision to keep Synx was a surprise even to me, but I think he secretly enjoys running a company. Just notthatcompany.
Ophelia
It’s doing just fine without you.
Alex
Who’d have thought appointing a CEO who isn’t twenty-three and completely passionless would help?
I smile at the screen as I type, blanketed in my tranquil surroundings.
Ophelia
Going for a swim.
Alex
Be safe, baby.
I wade into the freezing water, letting it snatch my breath away, letting it sting my toes, letting it turn my skin white.
No pool could ever compare.
I swim until my arms burn, and then I float onto my back and stare at the rumbling sky. The wind licks across the surface of the water, chilling my face.
“Hey, Mom and Dad,” I whisper, for the first time in a while. “I … uhh … I did it.”
They probably don’t even know what I mean.Idon’t even know what I mean. My list of accomplishments is getting longer than I ever imagined.
I took down Cain Green. When you type his name into Google, none of the results are good.
I killed Bancroft. Erased his miserable existence from this earth.
I went to university, like they always wanted me to.
I fell in love.
My tears are lost to the inky mass of water as I tell them about it all, wishing so badly that I was doing this at our kitchen table with their smiling faces looking back at me.
“I made a seventy-six-year-old friend called Mabel. We play Scrabble online once a week. We met for dinner in York last week.”
I think I talk to them for longer than I ever have. So long that I feel my final shred of resentment against them, my frustration that they got in that helicopter to save a short amount of time on the journey home, sink to the bottom of the lake.
I don’t have the energy to hate my mother for what she did.
I don’t have the energy to hate myself for telling them to rush home that day, either.
I think that one day, maybe, I could accept that it is Cain Green who is ultimately responsible for Laura’s death.
By the time my legs carry me up the bank of the tarn, it feels like the cold has sunk all the way into my bones.
