WAKE (Wattpad edition)

64. Wake.

Soundtrack: 'Ulysses' - Josh Garrels

{Cary}

The following weeks were full of packing, cleaning, and moving into their new neighbourhood—too full for Cary to think much about the verdict. He gave himself completely to the work of being part of the White family, and it felt more like he belonged with every day that passed. He packed up the dismembered pieces of his old family and set them aside for a time. He figured he would sort them out when he needed and Split-lip would help.

He was in his new room, listening to the sounds of the old house settling underneath him. The attic bedroom did indeed have a massive drafting table, taking up most of the space. His bed was tucked under the slanting ceiling, and the wall hugged close to him at night, making him feel safe and secure. The rumbling sound of Pete's voice and Mel's soft answering laughter in the room below him helped.

There was a window in the peak of the room, with airy curtains he had helped Mel hang up stirring lightly in the cool night air. A single star hung in the indigo sky and Cary smiled, thinking of how many more stars Tru could see from the porch of her house. Next summer he would be on her farm again, with plenty of time to watch the constellations swing overhead, drink strong coffee together and say as few words as possible.

There were no windows where his father slept. This thought walked in uninvited, and for the first time Cary let it stay, holding still to look at it directly: his father, confined to a tiny prison cell, stripped of his fine clothes, expelled from his respected work, and cut off from his influential connections.

He took a tight breath, knuckling his eyes. Conall had a bed, a toilet, and three meals a day. It was more than Cary had had in the basement. It was still some effort to tell himself that his father was living with the consequences of his own actions.

He unpacked the memory of the trial day with cold hands, remembering the burning ember lodged in his chest as he'd sat in the witness box and said all the words that were needed. It was as if the cave fire had blazed up hot and bright, keeping him from freezing so he could finish what he'd started.

It was his father who had been cold. Cary had expected Conall to fight back—he'd had his feet dug in for Conall to come at him one more time and batter him bloody with his angry, powerful words. But he had been silent. Cary saw his father's face again, white as a mask, something glittering far back in his black eyes. Cary's own eyes stung as they had that day, recognizing the look of the dead—the face of a person labouring under a weight of wrongdoing too heavy to carry.

He put the heels of his hands against the heat of his eyes and went to his father's study in his memory for the last time. The room was bare, the fireplace empty and cold. The only object the room still held was a large bag full of something bulky, a dark stain spreading on the carpet around it.

The hair on the back of Cary's neck stirred, looking at it. The walls seemed to echo with the anger that had poured through him like flames when he had last faced his father in this room. He looked around for Split-lip. He didn't feel angry anymore. Something different moved inside his chest—something that needed release.

Cary heaved the bag onto his back with a grunt, staggering under the weight. He carried it, damp and heavy against the small of his back, and let it drop with a thump on the sand beside the pool.

Split-lip. Please, I need you.

While he waited, he opened the bag and arranged the pieces on the sand, tucking his father's torn limbs next to his empty chest cavity in an attempt to make him look whole again. Conall's grey face was spattered with his own blood, rigid and open-mouthed, dead in mid-scream. Cary turned away, swallowing. Kneeling at the edge of the pool, he washed the blood off his hands, then laid his wet fingers against his dry, burning eyes. We are the same.