Beneath the Silence by Charlene Carr

Author:Charlene Carr
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: secrets and deception, family situations, broken by lies, contemporary canadian fiction, family life fiction, betrayal, canadian authors
Publisher: Coastal Lines
Published: 2015-07-07T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY

***

Rhett’s Bend

Brooke lay in an old-fashioned bed, slowly entering consciousness. Photos of strangers hung on the wall before her—slightly browned, faded, a few in sepia. The clothing was foreign: garments from a time, a world, that had long passed. The photos were of people who had once been born, taken that first breath of life, had laughed, cried, fallen down, and gotten back up again. They had loved and probably hated. All of those faces had taken their last breath too and now lay somewhere beneath the ground, going through the phases of rot. Brooke shuddered. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Just like her mother.

Brooke rolled over, pulling the old quilted comforter above her head. “What am I doing?” She breathed into the pillow. She could go back to Molly. She could. She could pretend the last few days hadn’t happened. But she’d already made the decision to let go of Molly. She’d been making that decision for weeks. Brooke felt her pulse start to race. She focused on the pattern of breath: in—out—in. What was she doing here? Leaving didn’t have to mean going back to Molly. She could start a new life. After all, that had been her plan, what she’d been saving for. It’d be easy. Simple.

Just like the framed people hanging on the wall, ghosts from Brooke’s past appeared before her mind’s eye: images of those who had come before. Her grandparents, whom she never remembered meeting. There had only ever been a few photos of them in the house and she hadn’t seen those in years, but the photos always made her wonder. Who were they? Where were they? Why were they not in her life? Were they even alive? Her mother’s parents, strong and noble—or so Virginia had said the one time she spoke of them. Immigrating to Nova Scotia after the trials they’d faced in Ontario, they arrived with hope of a better life for their only daughter. They had had such dreams. Brooke had seen her mother holding the picture one day, crying. That was the day she told Brooke their story, the way they overcame racism and oppression to make a life for themselves. When Brooke asked why they never saw them, Virginia had brushed away her words.

Brooke knew next to nothing about Jack’s parents. She didn’t even know what they looked like. All she knew was that Jack’s mother died when Jack was still in high school, just months after his younger sister died, and that his father was an abusive drunk—like father like son—and in prison.

The next images to float through Brooke’s mind were of her mother and father. Their wedding day. The picture she held in her memory didn’t look like the people she remembered. The couple in the photo were happy, hopeful, in love. Is that why Virginia had stayed—because once, a long time ago, she’d loved Jack? The next image to pass was Virginia looking young and sweet, tenderly holding a newborn Riv in her arms.

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