Page 96 of Break The Ice

My uncle’s mouth drops open. “That fucking bitch!”

I wince. “It’s fine. It was better. I met a travelling photographer who showed me the ropes, bought my camera with the money, and was able to work my way around.”

They’re all staring at me. I shift from foot to foot and click my tongue. The pity is so thick in the room I feel like I’m going to choke on it.

“Stop it! It was fine, and I enjoyed living and working with Danyal.”

“Is Danyal the boyfriend?” Raider asks with a touch of menace.

“No, he’s not!” I spit back hotly. “Danyal is my mentor and forty years older than me. So, knock it off.”

Kit chuckles and moves between us. “So, what happened to Rusty?”

“No one knows. After my brother and his wife died, Rusty disappeared. He was supposed to be charged, but the charges were dropped a few weeks later, but, by then, he was in the wind. There was no one to care what happened to him. I guess no one noticed because we were all mourning Dave and Shirly. But he snuck off one day, and no one has seen him since.”

My uncle runs his hands over his face. He ages before my eyes.

“I mean that literally, Rusty Diernan disappeared off the face of the planet. I’ve searched. I’ve hired people who have searched. He’s just gone.”

“Are you sure it’s him?” Wren asks and sits down on the couch.

“Who else could it be?” Uncle Pat says almost hysterically.

“I hate to be the one to ask this, but how did Ryann’s parents die?” Callan asks. “Was it…?”

I knew it was going to come up. I knew someone was going to ask. I’m not prepared. Nothing can ever prepare me for that question.

“They’d put extra locks on the doors to keep him out.”

My uncle’s words bring the guilt right back to the forefront. My parents did everything they could to protect me, and it took their lives.

“The cameras Dave set up to try to get some evidence showed them trying to get out. He wasn’t a big shot hockey coach, he just taught kids. We didn’t have much money. The circuit breaker sparked. That’s what the fire inspector said. Accident due to an overloaded circuit, probably all the extra things they were running to catch this kid. They couldn’t get out because they couldn’t remember in their panic where the keys were.”

I push a hand against my chest. The ache feels like it will never heal. The silence is thick, heavy, filled with grief and horror as the words echo in my brain.

My fault. But for me, my parents would be alive. But for my fear, they wouldn’t have burned to death locked in their own home. If I didn’t need to be safe, they would have had the keys. They wouldn’t have overloaded the circuit breaker.

But for me.

“It wasn’t your damn fault!” My uncle shouts, spit flies, and his face turns red. “It was his fault. This little, cowardly little shit. It wasn’t your fault!”

I stumble back, startled by how unhinged my uncle looks.

Callan crosses the few feet between us and takes my shoulder. “Are you listening to your uncle? It’s not your fault!”

“I wasn’t home.”

“What?”

“I wasn’t home. Look, just listen, I wasn’t even home. I’d snuck out to go and skate. I was supposed to meet up with a friend, but they didn’t show. Just for an hour. I needed to be away from the house, but I fell over and hurt myself, and I just lay there crying. And a couple of hours passed before I got up and walked home.”

“It’s not your fault!”

“If I’d walked faster, if I’d have stayed at home-”

“Then you’d have been dead, too!”

I don’t say the words that I’ve said a thousand times, that maybe it would have been better if I died, too, because, right now, staring at them, I don’t think I’d mean them. And that makes me feel even guiltier. I should want my parents back more than anything, right?

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