AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Thirty-Three
Connie
I did leave justlike I promised I would.
And I came back because I never promised I wouldn’t.
A few days after leaving for the mainland, I returned on the last ferry back to the island knowing that another wouldn’t set sail until the winter storm they’d predicted would hit our little island had passed. Outside that same storm blows violently beneath the ebony darkness of a day that hasn’t quite yet been graced with the first tendrils of dawn. The house creaks and groans, battered by the high winds and the angry sky filled with thunder and freezing rain. It wasn’t an easy decision to return. I knew only too well how Malakai would feel, so I drew up a list to help me to decide. In the end, my need to return home to the people I love won out.
Malakai might never forgive me for my decision, but I won’t let him, or Grandma, face the King on their own. Right now Grandma is asleep in bed, oblivious to the extreme weather that rages on. She’s still sick, but it isn’t a physical condition that can be cured by medicine or drugs. No, Grandma’s illness is one that has been years in the making. She’s stayed strong for me. She’s refused to give in like my mother had and, apart from this island, remained the one and only constant in my life.
But that energy is waning.
She’s tired.
Though, if I know my Grandma as well as I think I do, she’ll never give in. Unlike my mother, she loves me enough to stay and because of that, I loved her enough to return.
Malakai will be livid. He will no doubt punish me for disobeying him, and I will accept his cruel words and angry glares because they’re inconsequential in my absolute conviction that I had to return to the island to helphim.
He doesn’t have to do this alone.
Neither of them do.
So, late last night, I came back, probably crossing Malakai as he sailed his boat to the mainland. Grandma wasn’t happy, not in the slightest, but she accepts that I’m as strong-willed as Malakai and that trying to force us apart will only make me fight back harder. I’m not a child anymore and I refuse to be coddled like one.
Gently, I tap on her bedroom door, pushing it open when I hear her muffled greeting.
“Hey, Grandma, how are you feeling?” I ask gently, stepping into the room which is lit by a nightlight more suited to a child than an elderly woman.
“I’m not dead yet, darling,” she retorts, cracking her eyes open and sitting up in bed.
“Don’t joke,” I scold her gently.
“Death is an inevitability, Connie.”
“It’s not one I want to think about today of all days.” Tonight she is going to dinner with the King whilst Malakai and the gang he’s collecting from the mainland, right this moment, rescue their friend who’s held prisoner.
“You don’t need to worry, child. We can count on Malakai.”
I nod. “I know.”
“You’re worried about seeing him?” she asks, cocking her head to the side.
“He’s going to be furious.”
“Honestly, I wouldn’t blame him. You were safer on the mainland.”
“You understand that I couldn’t let you do this… what would I do if something happened to you, Ma, or to Malakai? I’d have no one.”
“You’d have your life.”
Sitting on the bed beside her, I reach for her hand. It feels cold, her skin papery and thin. “I’d be empty without either of you. I’d be a ghost. I don’t want to live like that. I won’t.”
For a long time Grandma just looks at me, then she nods, smiling sadly. “I understand that better than most.”
“Do you wish you had died with Grandpa John too?” I ask quietly, my voice a whisper. Tears well in my eyes at the thought. This is the closest I’ve ever got to admitting that I know about Mum and Dad’s suicide.
She squeezes my hand tightly, and with her free hand lifts my chin so that I’m looking at her. “I do not regret one second of my life,” she says fiercely. “I loved Grandpa John with everything I had, but I love you child, so very, very much. Do not think for one second that I haven’t been happy, that I haven’t experienced joy. I have, because ofyou.”
