AllFreeNovel
Share Us
In a quiet, scratchy tone, Luke says after another loss of time, “Please go. I don’t want to see anyone.”
Rory lets out a small breath like he had been expecting this. “You don’t want to see anyone or you don’t want anyone to see you?” he asks with the edge of a rhetorical question, to which Luke doesn’t respond. “We’ll go,” Rory agrees, raising himself from the wall. He gives Luke one last long hug that Luke is too numb to return. I lean across to him and squeeze his shoulder. At this, Lukedoesturn his head, glancing down at my hand, pale white and spidery in the candlelight, his dark eyes registering nothing as he takes me in.
“I just need space,” he says slowly, which seems to be a contradiction when space is at a premium behind the fireplace.
“We’ll give you time,” Rory says instead, as his final goodbye. “You know where to find us.”
As we clamber out of the fireplace, I feel uneasy about leaving Luke behind like this.
“He’ll be fine,” Rory says quietly, looking tired. “If he’s truly desperate, he has the passage to the library. I’ll bring food up for him in the morning.”
As the moonlight shines down on us, Rory pauses and asks in a strange tone, “Do you remember how you felt after…?” He stops, as though thinking better of it. “Grief. Because I remember it like it was yesterday. I don’t think I ate for a week. I believe Armstrong had to force-feed me in the end.”
“I try not to think about it,” I answer honestly, wondering which part of my father’s death had led to my slide into mental deterioration and complete breakdown — the initial shock of it or my mother’s senseless reaction?
Rory nods. “Understandable. I know I’m not one to talk much about my feelings, but… nothing has hit me as powerfully as the day I learned my mother was gone.” As we slowly make our way across the long stone corridors again, Rory casts a sideways glance at me. “Except you. Which makes me think perhaps death and love are faces of the same coin.”
“Griefislove,” I say, feeling awkward, because even now I’m still unprepared to talk about my innermost pain in any great detail. But this is more than I have ever spoken about it, and my tone is steady, my voice certain. “To grieve for someone means you loved them once. That you stilldolove them. Death is the end of life but it’s not the end of love, it’s the opposite: it’s ongoing, a continuation, even when that person is no longer with us.”
It’s wiser than anything I’ve ever said. It’s the distillation of a millionI miss you, Dadthoughts that swirl like ravens and descend and provoke me to tears in the castle darkness when my brain refuses to sleep. It’s the perpetual weirdness that clenches my airways when someone mentions the worddadorfather, and I have to remind myself, like ripping off a scar every time, that mine is gone. That I’m different. That I can’t relate to others anymore. That, ultimately, I don’t belong.
Life had burdened me with death so young that my only option, I’d assumed, had been to join in.
But I know now that grief doesn’t belong just to the dead. You can grieve the living, too.
Rory looks at me, contemplative, and says, “Yes.” I wonder how deeply he feels this way, about his mother, because surely everyone who’s known death must. The pain. The loss. Surely it isn’t just me who feels permanently injured, the blood and cells of my body weeping at all times.
Unbidden, Oscar Munro flashes to the front of my mind, sinking in his armchair and downing whisky by the measure, in a dark room filled with dead things, in a room he’d called the Death Room.
“Love,” Rory says, measuring his words carefully, as though the L-word is not something to be scatter-gunned in speech, “can heal the scars of grief. More love heals the pains… of love.”
It’s equally rare that I hear Rory speak so openly like this, and I wonder if it’s because he feels he owes it to Luke, to be there for him when Luke is finally able to talk. With an unexpected, boyish quirk of his lips, he adds, “It’s a good job, then, that it’s not just us. Together we must all be unstoppable.”
I agree with him — falling for four very distinct personalities has softened the roughness that I’d arrived with to Lochkelvin, when the spike of grief had been raw and violently embedded within my heart. But right now, our togetherness seems like a pretty fantasy, with Luke curled and isolated behind a fireplace, and Danny and Finlay still searching the classrooms around the castle.
“We should tell the others,” I murmur, joining hands with Rory, and Rory nods.
* * *
Danny doesn’t seem to understand. He blinks, owlish, when Rory explains the radio in Dr. Moncrieff’s class, and, sounding stunned, asks, “The queen is dead?”
Even Finlay isn’t pedantic enough to correct with a prissy, “Queenregent.” He looks troubled, his bright green eyes passing wordless messages to Rory and me.
“Died o’ whit? A heart attack? A number seven bus?” His glance bounces between both of us, and for an ardent anti-monarchist, he appears utterly distraught. “Fuckin’whit?”
“Luke seemed under the impression Antiro was involved.”
“But they huvnae claimed it?” Finlay asks sharply. “Right?”
Rory spreads his palms by his sides. “All we know is what Moncrieff was listening to on the radio. That’s it.”
“He seemed shocked, too,” I add, and Finlay sneers.
“Oh, aye, I’m sure he fuckin’ was. He’s sittin’ in class, wi’ a’ the informationweshould have, whisperin’ shite tae Arabella? Cunt can piss aff.” His brows are dark slants above his green eyes and he looks utterly enraged. “The whole o’ the fuckin’worldknows whit’s happenin’ right now and we didnae? Ye dinnae think that’s monumentally fucked up?”
“It’s not politics Luke needs,” Rory says tiredly, not in the mood to calm one of Finlay’s rages, as he opens the door to their dorm. “His mother has justdied.”
“Aye,” Finlay agrees, pushing past Rory, “and as you very well know, the personalisthe political when it comes tae Luke.”
