Maloney's Law by Anne Brooke

Author:Anne, Brooke [Anne, Brooke]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Gay & Lesbian
ISBN: 9781611244083
Publisher: Amber Quill Press, LLC
Published: 2013-04-23T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

Time stops. It hangs like dark clouds over the earth and blocks out the movement of the sun. The stars are unhooked from their moorings, and the sky floats down. There are questions, so many questions, from men with hardness in their eyes and from men with pity, and there's blood on my hands I can never cleanse, even though I didn't wield the knife.

If only I'd been there. I should have been there. I might have been able to help.

I should have been there. This is a phrase I repeat over and over again, sitting at tables, drinking harsh coffee, standing up and leaning against chill white tiles as I piss the coffee away, while outside a policeman waits.

I don't know how long the questions continue or how long the police go on thinking that the murderer might be me or that I know something more they can't get me to say. What I know is outside my capability of telling. Even if that were untrue, I still would remain silent about the things that don't matter now, for a reason I can no longer handle the reaching after. My grip on passing time, which has sustained me for so long, tumbles away, and I'm left spinning.

The thought of Jade fills me with memories so sharp they are almost real, almost happening in the now. I see her smiling up at me from behind her computer, the warmth of her eyes, her laughter, even her disapproval, each subtle change of her face mirroring who she is.

Who she was.

Pictures of her mingle with dreams of Teresa so that instead of the office, the pub, the flat, I remember the garden, the swings, the way my sister loved the roses my father grew. Other memories too: the two of us blowing bubbles from a tube in the living room and laughing when they burst; the time I ran away with her favorite doll and she bit my arm to make me give it back; the time she sneaked me squares of chocolate when I caught chicken pox and then caught it herself from me. I'll never see Teresa again, but it seems impossible I won't see Jade, that I'm left without her, like before.

I know these feelings are selfish, that there are others whose loss is far greater, but I can't summon the strength to glance outside the fragile boundaries of my own existence. As much ask a drowning man to save himself. Besides, knowing the facts has never helped the truth of a thing. It's never been enough to save me. The facts have nothing to do with the truth, and they are powerless to make a difference.

So, during the dark days of September, in the first tides of autumn, I fall down the lines to the dark.

The hours mesh into one. The only things I see are the knowledge of my own failure to act on any of my promises and the terrifying impossibility of a future I can live by.

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