What Lasts in Us

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

"Do you miss it?"

I turn away from the window, from where I can see Nate outside, standing by Robbie. All I get is a very good view of his back, so I can't see his expression. But I can definitely read Emmi's, as she sits on the bed I'd slept in only hours before, her face sombre. "What's that?"

"Do you miss – you know ..." She pauses, eyes dropping to Dog who lies on the blankets at her feet. "Do you miss the way everything was? Before it became like this?"

I catch one final glimpse of Nate before I release the tiny bit of curtain that isn't attached to the plank of wood nailed to it. "I do," I admit finally, voice low. "But I try not to think about it."

Her blue eyes, so much like her father's, follow me as I sit down on the bed beside her. "I never got to see it," she says. "I want to."

My brain tells me to abort, that I should keep my hands to myself, but what does my brain know? I reach out and push Emmi's hair behind her ear. "One day you will," I say. "One day the world is going to go back to how it used to be."

It takes a good forty five minutes to get Emmi to go to sleep after that. She knew and I knew that it's a bit ridiculous to get her to try and sleep, considering it's well into the morning and she's wide awake after everything that's happened. But I insist and never leave her side as I proceed to tuck her into bed, pushing the blankets right up under her chin so she's comfy and warm.

After my admission of missing what used to be, I get the feeling Emmi does yet doesn't want to talk about what had happened, so in the end I stay seated on the bed beside her and tell her more about the world before, because as I'd worked out, she was about six months old when the world went to hell. She knows next to nothing about life before then. So I allow myself this brief window into the past, of what life had been like for me growing up.

Emmi particularly likes the idea of Barbies, how cool it is that she can practically be anything, from a nurse to a doctor to an astronaut. So I promise her if I ever come across one, I'd give it to her.

"If I find one," I say to her, as I notice her eyes grow heavy, "you can have it."

I leave her only once I know she's fast asleep. I slowly get off the bed, careful not to move too much, before I give Dog a quick pat. "Look after her," I say to him, but he's fast asleep as well, curled up next to Emmi, enjoying their close proximity.

When I close the door behind me, when the only sound in the house is the creaking floorboards beneath my feet, do I hear the lone gunshot from outside.

It only took Nate forty five minutes to put Robbie down.

It's hard not to feel anything when someone breaks through the walls you've put up to keep yourself sane. I've gone so long without feeling, and trying not to feel, that suddenly, it feels as though all my fail-safes are cracking, and are just about to crumble if only a finger were to touch them.

I feel sick and light-headed. I need to find a safe spot to hide, to let the walls come down and be swept away by the tidal wave of feelings, emotions, and memories of everything I've successfully locked away for seven years.

The hallway upstairs and the dead guy slumped against the wall flash past me; the stairs rush at me in a blur and I stumble down them, avoiding the faces peering out from the photos nailed to the wall. My boots very nearly get caught in the rug that covers the steps, but the balustrade is my very good friend and helps to keep me upright.

There's a wide doorway to my left, right at the foot of the stairs. I lurch in there, into the dark room, stacked high with books, with little but well-worn furniture. A piano sits in the corner, and an old fireplace takes up the back wall. But it's the centre of the room, dominated by two recliners and two couches that face each other, that grabs my attention. As does the corpse lying on one of them, the blood dripping from the wound in his temple, drip, drip, drip, as it pools and collects on the cream rug beneath him.