Page 1 of Rectify

Prologue

JAY

Dropping the pen onto the pad of paper, I sink back into the rickety, wooden chair that accompanies the lone fold out table. The house is empty. Every surface scrubbed clean, the old, stale smell of alcohol and cigarettes is now masked by a pungent overdose of bleach and fresh paint.

While everything in my childhood home looks and feels different, the new sterile and lifeless walls aren’t able to erase the dark memories that still dance around like shadows taunting me.

It’s been years since I’ve had any reason to be here, and for a while, I convinced myself there wouldn’t be anything that could bring me back.

At twenty-five leaving this place was the easiest thing I’d ever done. Walking away from the cycle of failures that was my life, I became focused on the new possibilities. My future was a blank canvas. I made plans to fill the empty road ahead of me with experiences so different, it would be unrecognisable.

Here, at home, I was the guy everyone loathed. The guy everyone feared, and I loved it. When people said keep your friends close but keep your enemies closer, I was the enemy they were talking about. Loyalty came at a price, and lucky for me, everyone was willing to pay.

I thought there was nothing more important than being at the top of the food chain. I was drenched in hate and vengeance, convinced I was the only person who had the right to own those feelings. The only person who had earned the right to flaunt them. They were my signature. My armour. My motivation.

In these four walls insults hung over me like a black cloud, and out on the streets, I expelled them on to everyone I came in contact with. I projected whenever I could. Lying, teasing, and seducing, everything was a game; until I met someone who didn't want to play.

Life fooled me into thinking I was the king of my world, and whatever I laid my eyes on was mine. I was invincible. Untouchable. Unbreakable.

Until I wasn't.

With translucent skin and hair as black as night, she was the painful dose of truth that dusted my life of lies. With her, it wasn’t about how pretty she was, or how hard I fell. It wasn’t that she was an angel, and everything about me would taint her. It wasn’t even the fact that if I pushed hard enough, I could’ve had her. Lured her into hell and enjoyed it. It was the realisation that everything I’d done before her, was for nothing.

I wasn’t happy.

I wasn’t loved.

I wasn’t anyone that would ever be worth remembering.

Footsteps sound from the hallway, and the plethora of mispronounced words out of a child's mouth follow. I rise and watch the woman walking toward me. Her hand holding on to the centre of my universe, her face looking down at her in wonder. Meeting them in the middle of the hollowed out space, I crouch and open my arms. She looks up and leaps toward me. She’s all bouncing curls, and loud giggles, as she shouts, “New home. New home.”

I catch her and hold on tight. My lungs expand with the scent of innocence and love, while my eyes find those of the woman who lured me back to hell, and whisper into her hair. “I hope not, baby. I hope not.”

1

Sasha

“Dakota,” I shout out from the kitchen. “You better get up and start getting ready unless you want to miss the bus and be late for school.” I mindlessly stir the sugar into my tea while my other hand holds my Kindle, switching between reading and watching the minutes pass on the microwave clock. Every morning I wake up a little earlier than her, desperately trying to steal some quiet moments with my fast growing daughter. It’s subtle, or I hope to be, and more often than not, not very successful. I end up sitting alone in silence and eating up a few chapters of whatever it is I’m reading before work.

I don’t want to smother her, but I don’t want to miss one single moment. When I was her age I was already a mother, my childhood had come and gone faster than I had ever anticipated. And in the blink of an eye everything I thought I had planned out changed. While I don’t have an ounce of regret when it comes to my daughter and being a teenage mum, I believe I’m still entitled to want for her the simplicity of life that I never had.

She shuffles out of her bedroom with her eyes barely open, her hair a bird’s nest, and the legs of her pyjama pants rising to the middle of her calves. I smile at her as she walks toward me, a dishevelled mixture of somewhat tired and refreshed. Like she’s still wearing yesterday’s experiences, but eager for those of today. I count my blessings that I haven’t raised her to be too naive, but she’s unflinchingly inquisitive, her fear radar almost non-existent, and that’s what scares me the most.

Sliding on to the stool on the other side of the counter, she burrows her face in her hands and groans. “I can’t wait to never have to go to school again.”

“I thought you loved school.”

“I do, but sleep is coming in a close second.”

“Spoken like a true teenager.” Placing down my Kindle, I pick up my tea and take a quick sip before turning my back and getting her breakfast organised. “You’ll realise soon enough that sleep’s overrated.”

She scoffs, “You’re obviously doing it wrong.”

One by one, I place the bowl, cereal, and milk in front of her. Opening the cutlery drawer, I grab a tablespoon and hand it to her. “Are you ever going to get sick of eating this stuff?”

She takes her first mouthful with an exaggerated crunch before swallowing and answering. “That would be a negative.”

Dakota has eaten that stuff every morning for five years straight, her answer not surprising me in the slightest. Even her food choices make her the easiest child that ever walked the earth.

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