Page 84 of Dark Ink

“Just tell me you won’t leave me,” I said, stumbling over my words because I was aware that with each thud of my heart the officers were getting closer. “Till we talk. Just tell me you won’t leave me till we talk.”

The rain fell between us and Eithne remained silent. Her eyes again lifted, but only when the officers called my name. And only to then step back. To step away.

“Eithne,” I said, voice suddenly ragged as I felt hands on my shoulders. “Tell me you won’t leave me.”

When I resisted, the officers grew more forceful.

“Let’s go,” they said, but I couldn’t go. Not yet.

“Eithne!” I called out over the pounding of the rain. “Just tell me you won’t leave me.”

The officers began to drag me backwards and Eithne just stood there, eyes on her muddy boots, wet hair shadowing her pale face.

“Everything’s going to be alright,” I shouted, but I wasn’t sure if I was convincing her or me. “Just tell me you won’t leave me and everything will be alright!”

The officers twisted me around, shoved me forward. I tried to look back, but a black coat streaked with rain blocked my view. When I tried to move to see her, a pair of cuffs closed painfully around my wrists. I caught only one last glimpse of her as I wrenched my neck around. She’d begun walking, too.

Just not in my direction.

Eithne

It was all the same. Me shivering in the torrential downpour. Me shaking from something deeper than the cold. Rian’s plea in my ears, over and over and over again: don’t leave me, please, don’t leave me.

I’d waited inside the groundskeeper’s building till he’d glanced for the last time at his wristwatch and told me he was sorry, he had a family to get home to. I went out into the rain, running for the tiny bus shelter near the graveyard entrance. There I checked the fogged-up plastic cover over the bus times, despairing that nothing, absolutely nothing was coming that night.

Finally realising my last resort was to ask for help.

“Aurnia,” I said, struggling to keep my phone in place against my wet cheek with my numb fingertips, “please, just…please don’t tell Mason or Conor. Okay?”

There was a hesitation on the line. For a moment all I heard was the rain against the gravestones.

“Aurnia,” I said when the silence continued, “I called you because I thought I could trust you. I need you to keep this to yourself.”

I rubbed at my arms to try to bring some warmth. None came.

“I’ll make something up to tell Conor,” Aurnia said at last. “I’m on my way.”

I mumbled a “thank you” and hung up. The bench inside the bus stop was half rotted and I feared I would just keep falling and falling and falling if it gave way beneath me. So I stood, shifting from foot to foot as I waited. Just like before. All those years ago.

I’d stood up to my father when he kicked Stewart out of the house. It was the night he unleashed his rage on me. Calling me the words I’d not so easily forget: whore, bitch, slut. I gathered my things as he broke everything he could inside the house. His parting gift to me had been a shattered plate just inches from my head as I walked out the door. I could still hear it falling on the old wood floors.

Stewart and I had waited at a bus stop not unlike the one I waited under now. He made me all those promises. Everything was going to be alright. He was going to take care of us. He was going to be the big brother. The protector. The defender. He’d get a job. Get us a place. We’d be better gone. Safer. Happier. Everything was going to be alright. I don’t think he intended to break them, the promises he gave me as he hugged me in the rain that night. I think he believed them as I did, as I hugged him tighter, held on stronger. But those promises were washed away as easily as the mud from the road just inches away from my frozen toes.

Aurnia’s headlights were the first headlights I’d seen for hours. I waved my arm out from under the dilapidated bus stop outside the cemetery and she pulled up alongside it. The passenger door was flung open before I even reached for it. Rachel was climbing from the passenger seat into the back as Aurnia leaned over and shouted at me, “Get in.”

I ducked out of the rain and slumped into the seat, the rain outside numbing as I closed the door. Finally some peace. Except I frowned at the music coming out the radio. Was that The Dubliners? It was music Pa listened to. Jesus, it’d been an age since I’d heard them, not since I’d left home. I reached out for the dials.

“Don’t touch the radio,” Aurnia snapped as she pulled back onto the road.

Rachel laughed from the backseat. “Seriously, don’t. She’ll cut your fingers off.”

I was so far removed from that world—girlfriends and joking and the intimacy of fighting over music in a car—that it took me a second to process.

“That’s, er, interesting taste in music you have there, Aurnia,” I said, taking back my hand.

Rachel let out a snort. “Just cause you’re dating an old guy—”

“Shut up, lads. The Dubliners are class,” Aurnia said with a sniff even as a smile toyed on her lips.

---