Absolution(19)

She nodded silently, thinking back over the past four years and all the times she wished he would come back. And now that he was here, it was all wrong. Tom wasn’t here to help smooth things over. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

She glanced up to find him staring at her. “What?” she frowned, afraid she had unconsciously vocalised her thoughts.

“I don’t know – you tell me.”

It was like he could read her mind sometimes, and it scared her. She pushed all thoughts of Jack aside with a mental sweep, just in case.

“I had the running dream again.” The moment the words had left her lips, the dream came flooding back.

“What happened this time?”

It unnerved her sometimes, having a giant hole in her memory, entire days gone. Her dreams varied wildly. Callum had told her what happened that night, but her brain chose to fill in the gaps in any number of weird and wonderful ways. Callum was always honest with her, pointing out what really happened and dismissing other details as pure fantasy. Her heart swelled with gratitude.

“I started off in the park. Then I ran along River Road.”

She remembered the soles of her feet tingling as they relentlessly hit the asphalt.

“Then what happened?”

“I saw the ambulance from the turn-off. The lights were flashing. No one was around. As I got closer, the ambulance was empty. Then I saw the car.” She shook her head, the image of the pile of mangled metal that had once been Jack’s pride and joy burned into her brain. “And I saw us.”

“And then?”

“You were trapped under the car. Jack and I were trying to get you out. There was blood everywhere.”

Callum reached for her hand, enclosing it with his own. “That’s just your over-active imagination making stuff up again. It didn’t really happen.”

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

“You okay?”

She nodded again, taking a few moments to rein in her emotions. “Yeah. I just wish today was over.”





CHAPTER 4




“Be not afraid of growing slowly; be only afraid of standing still.”

- Chinese Proverb




Callum left Ally’s overwhelmed with a sense of impending doom. He wanted to punch something – or more to the point, someone. Specifically, Jack. Even more specifically, he wanted to rip Jack’s head off his shoulders and ram it down his selfish neck. He climbed into his car and slammed the door shut with more force than he intended. He sat there for a moment, gripping the keys in the ignition. Finally, he gunned the engine and pulled away from the curb.

He was grateful that Maggie was there when Jack had finally fronted up, because Ally had made it clear she wasn’t ready. He wondered if she ever would be. He had no idea how much of what she was feeling was grief over Tom’s death, and how much was anxiety over Jack’s return. The two were clearly linked.

Who the hell does he think he is, showing up like that? I told him she didn’t want to see him!

Tom’s death was like a bolt from the blue. From the very beginning of his friendship with Jack, he had taken a shine to Tom. He was everything his own father wasn’t and he was a little jealous of Jack at first. After his father had walked out on the family, he began to spend more and more time with Jack and Tom, appreciating the stable home environment and relationship that they shared, wanting to share it with them. Tom took over as the role model he never really had, even when his drunken father had been around. Losing him like this, so suddenly, left a hole that he wasn’t sure he would ever be able to fill. It was Tom who had sat with him when he broke the news to Ally about her injury. Tom had been the one to help organise her rehab placement and later, her release. He had spent many a night with Tom as they talked and drank into the early hours of the morning, discussing how they were going to help her through this.

He knew Jack had been calling Tom – he was there when the first call had come through, the day Jack disappeared. He had tried to wrestle the phone off Tom but by the time he had, Jack was gone.

He called him back immediately – against Tom’s wishes – only to go straight to voicemail. Jack’s phone had gone to voicemail from that moment on. Jack had cut him loose – cut all of them loose, including Ally. Even knowing this, Tom had been a stubborn mule, refusing to hand over Jack’s new number. No amount of shouting, needling or taunting had moved him, and eventually a tentative truce had been struck. Tom’s loyalties remained with Jack, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to be there for Ally – or Callum. Reluctantly, Callum had accepted that.