Page 46 of Free to Live
While I was getting ready for tonight, I thought about Joe and everything he lost. I just hope he eventually finds it within to forgive himself for what he couldn’t have prevented. Time doesn’t heal all wounds, but the life that comes after can help scrub away the bloody mess left.
My own life is precious even though maybe without love I’m missing a huge key to my own happiness. I set off a cataclysmic chain of events the day I pulled that trigger. But I also found my salvation. I hope when it comes time for my judgment there’s a mercy for what I contemplated—for what I did.
In my mind, the scales are balanced, so I dare not ask for more.
“I thought I taught you not to dwell on things,” a familiar male voice murmurs directly in my ear, startling me from my thoughts. I whirl around and find Phil in my space.
“I wasn’t…” I protest. He shakes his head, stopping the denial on my lips.
“You’re taking photos of people who have been through so many similar emotions to what we’ve had to endure.”
“Really?” I drawl sarcastically.
“Yes really,” he bites back. “Pain, loss, desperation. And if you’re not seeing that on their faces, what are you seeing through that lens of yours?”
“It’s different,” I argue.
Phil throws up his hands. “Why are you so damned stubborn about this? Do you think the men and women in this room haven’t felt what you have at taking a life? Some part of them is glad—damn glad—they did it, and the other part is suffocated in guilt.” He leans in. “Does that sound familiar?”
I’m taken aback by my brother’s attack more so because he’s right. That’s precisely what I feel.
Constantly.
Fiddling with the dials on my camera, I hear Jake announce the band’s done for the night and the DJ will be up soon. “Why are we talking about this here?” Why now, is what I really want to ask.
“Because I’m so tired of coming into a roomful of people who care about you and finding you hiding instead of living, Holly. I want to grab that camera out of your hands and smash it so you see what’s waiting for you if you just look for once with your own eyes.” Phil’s stares hard down at my face. “I just want you to be happy, baby.”
“Until just a few minutes ago, I thought I was,” I whisper before I push past my brother.
Cursing, Phil moves to follow me. “Damnit, Hols,”
I wave him off. I pray the back deck to Tide Pool is open so I can escape for just a few minutes because Phil isn’t wrong. I’ve spent so much time being afraid my happiness is going to disappear if I dare to ask for more than I now need to question whether or not I’ve been really living.
And I’d really like to do that alone.
* * *
I’m takingin the chilly March night sky. I know I’m slacking on my job, but after the words my brother flung at me, if I didn’t get some air, I was going to vomit in the overheated bar that is smelling particularly ripe with spilled alcohol. I need to get back inside soon, but even in a room full of people that are pushing the limits against the fire code, I feel so alone.
Is it possible to feel such love and such self-loathing at the same time?
You didn’t mean to do it, I remind myself.But you don’t regret it, the other part of me forcefully states.
Of course I don’t. I’m alive, and they’re not; Maria by my hands and him due to the prison sentence he couldn’t endure. So, the battle I’ve been fighting internally for years rages on.
Life in this world wouldn’t have been better if Maria had lived, that’s for sure. My father would have forced me into taking a man within twenty-four hours of overhearing him tell my stepmother “She takes Boyd as her first customer tomorrow night or I’ll find some other way to deal with her,”
But even through absolution by governors, ministers, and shrinks, I still question the validity of my decision. Because there’s never a time it’s not in the back of my mind, when I’m not both guilted and freed by what I did. The truth I know is this: I wouldn’t be standing here if I didn’t pull the trigger, even accidentally. Even if what I did was evil, my intent wasn’t toward her. And doesn’t intent count for something? It must have, as I was pardoned so I could begin a new life as a free woman.
Shame courses over me, heating my skin, thinking of the words Phil flung at me. His observations aren’t wrong, just his reasons. I’m terrified I’m going to somehow taint any love I find with whatever enabled me to think about pulling that trigger on myself.
I’ll continue to pay a life sentence as surely as if I were sitting in a cell, only my bars are constructed of guilt and self-flagellation.
I shiver in the cold night air. None of this is going to get resolved tonight; some of it may never get resolved. But I can’t let my family—the family that saved what’s left of my soul—down. I start to head down the wood deck when I hear a shrill voice ask, “Want some company? You look so lonely out here.”
Turning the corner of the building, Joe Bianco’s being pushed against the railing by an aggressive blonde. And before I know it, my mouth’s opening without hesitation.
“That’s because he’s been waiting for me.”
