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He’s finally happy.
I wait. I wait for Mase to come back out, but he doesn’t. And when the churning in my gut doesn’t ebb away, only getting more twisted, I stumble to the alleyway and vomit.
My hands scrub over my face when I’m done, harshly wiping away the wetness around my eyes and cheeks.
What the fuck are you doing?
“Mr Sullivan, I’ve flagged down a taxi. Do you need anything?” I twist to look over my shoulder, finding one of the club owners standing at my back.
I shake my head. “I’m fine.” I stagger toward the waiting taxi and slide inside. Everything hurts. My head, my chest, my gut.
“St. John’s Wood,” I tell the driver.
I dig out my phone and pull up my messages but get caught off guard by the missed call from Scarlet.
I sit forward in the seat, my head spinning. It’s the first time she’s called me since her dad died.
My fingers move on their own accord, like a sequence they’ve learnt from repetition. I stare down at the picture of us at the Hamilton Gala.
God, I miss her so fucking much.
And now she is calling me. While I’m blind drunk and stinking of vomit.
I snigger. I wasn’t there for her when she needed me, when her dad fucking died from years of being a drunk. And I can’t be there for her now.
My shoulders slump, my head hanging low as I stare at the image.
I swipe up and pull up a new message to Ben.
Lance: Change of plan. Call it off
It’s not until hours later, my phone waking me as it rings and rings, that I sit up in my bed and see the multiple missed calls lining my screen. I squint at the light, trying to read the names.
I have missed calls from everyone but Mase.
And one text.
Ben: Too late
TWENTY-SEVEN
Scarlet
One year later
My dad told me my mother’s diaries were breaking apart at the seams, and he wasn’t lying. They’re just as big of a mess as life is right now.
But amongst the ripped, faded pages are entries that never made it to my copies. The ones my dad had reprinted were void of some of my mother’s hardest days. Days when she so clearly knew her fate and decided to write to Mason and me personally. It’s been a year since we found them stuffed in boxes at the bottom of my dad’s wardrobe, and I’ve been lost inside them ever since.
Scarlet,
There’s a guilt that seems to weigh heavy whenever I write these letters to you. Mason’s contain memories—moments he’ll hopefully never forget. And yet you, my sweet baby, might never even know my voice.
I try to picture it sometimes. How you might be. Like now, my eyes watch as you sleep spread out on your blanket, the wind fussing you every so often as it rolls through the meadow. And all I can wonder is how old you will be when you eventually get to read this. Until you can read these letters and know me. I tell you out loud. I tell you every word I desperately want you to remember. But you won’t. I thought I had a good imagination until I tried to picture you as a grown woman.
So instead, let me tell you what I do know.
You’re going to be strong, Scarlet. Likely stronger than the people around you if what I know is true. It’s in the small things. The way your eyes watch me. The way you seem to wake in the moments I find despair in the middle of the darkest nights, never crying or in need as I embrace you. It’s like you know, and you’re there solely to comfort me.
