Page 47 of These Tears

Happiness rises in me so quickly it almost feels like physical pain.

But reality pushes it right back down.

Everything realigns: the men in the grey vehicle. Arthur Crane’s legacy and the people who wanted to keep Elias behind bars. Elias chained to a table asking me not to poke at this. Me, standing too close to all of it with my stupid camera and my stupid belief that truth only needed enough light for things to be set straight.

Knot after knot, my stomach tightens.

My fingers press harder against the phone.

This is not a tragedy. Not just a broken man in a prison room. Not just a case with missing pieces.

Whatever circles the Crane name is dangerous, and I have been treating it like a love letter.

‘Okay,’ I say, though the word feels as if it doesn’t belong here and now.

Conall exhales quietly, reminds me to keep my phone on me, and we hang up.

I sit there a little while longer. Staring at the envelope beside me.

I should really post it. I should just get out, walk back to the box, and choose the only thing that can get me away from here.

The ignition light flares on. The wipers drag hard across the glass and the engine rumbles as I pull away from the kerb, leaving the post office behind in a blurred streak of red. I check the mirror twice before the car reaches the end of the street. No grey car ahead of me. No car following behind me.

My hands strangle the wheel as Conall’s warning keeps ricocheting between my temples, knocking against the part of me that is still, stupidly, glad.

The trial is happening.

I can already see Elias somewhere beyond Stonebrook, beneath a bright sky, all that violence softened by snow. I see him chopping wood outside some impossibly beautiful little cabin.

I hang on to that image like a drowning woman as the anxiety bleeds out of me in small drops.

The road narrows ahead. A sign for the cemetery leans out of the rain, its white arrow pointing right. Then it suddenly flares.

Headlights bloom in the rear-view mirror next.

My eyes flick up, struggling against the reflection.

A car comes around the bend behind me, too fast for the wet road. When the battered grey bonnet cuts through the curtain of rain… my breath stops.

The engine behind me revs low and the car surges closer until its headlights fill my mirror entirely. The light floods the inside of my car and turns the envelope beside me bone-white against the dim surroundings.

My heart breaks into a gallop so hard it seems to move the steering wheel beneath my hands all on its own.

‘No,’ I whimper, but the word is swallowed by the rain and the rising growl of the engine behind me.

The road kinks sharply ahead. The car behind me surges once and clips my rear bumper with a dull, warning thud. The jolt snaps me against the seat belt, the wheel jerking beneath my palms, tyres hissing over the wet edge of the lane as the car lurches towards the verge.

Mud spits up against the side panel.

My insides fall through so violently, bile burns the back of my throat.

I stamp on the brake and scream as the car screeches to a halt, half on the road, half sunk into the muddy verge.

Behind me, the grey car slows.

And my soul leaves me.

But it doesn’t stop. Just moves slowly enough for me to feel them there.