Page 61 of Searching for Hope

He sits forward. “Berkley?” It’s only then that I notice the glassy sheen to his eyes. It looks like it isn’t his first drink.

We haven’t talked properly since the night of the auction. Not really. There have always been others around. Barrett’s listening ear. Ette’s constant chatter. Other staff. At night I’ve lain in bed and thought of him, wanting to pad my way through the dark corridors and tap on his door. But I didn’t. And even though I held my breath to listen, he never knocked on mine.

“We need to talk,” I say, moving to sit on the other end of the sofa. I need distance between us. I need to be able to stay objective and not be overwhelmed by my need to be his.

“Okay.” He twists to face me. “What do we need to talk about?”

I take a deep breath. “Everything.”

chapter twenty

BERKLEY

He grins. There’s almost something lopsided about it. “That’s quite an extensive topic. I think I’m going to need another of these.” He holds up his glass. “You want one?”

I shake my head as he reaches for the bottle on the floor to fill his glass again. He drinks it straight. No mixer. No ice.

“So, which part of everything would you like me to start with?” There’s something unsettled about him. He’s restless and rather intoxicated. It’s a crack in his façade. A hint of weakness.

“The part that contains the truth.”

He frowns. “I’ve told you the truth.”

“All of the truth, nothing left out.”

He blinks slowly. His lip twitches and a smile creeps over his face. The etches of his skin seem deeper. Harsher.

“Just tell me the truth,” I plead.

He leans forward, elbow on knee. There’s something in his drunkenness that comes across as appealing. A blitheness. There’s a part of me that wants to push my persistence aside and melt into the moment with him. I’d climb onto his lap. Open his shirt, button by button. Press my lips to his skin. But I can’t. As much as I want to barge into his circus of a life, first I’ve got to find out exactly what sort of a carnival it is.

When he talks, his eyes harden. “I have. I’ve told you the truth. I was married to Hope. I still am.”

“But I need to understand the how, the why. I need to know if she’s out there pining for you. If there’s any part of her that’s expecting you to ride up on your white horse and rescue her.”

“I’d say after this many years there’s probably not a lot she’s expecting at all. She’s tough. She’s always been tough, but fuck knows what sort of shit she’s been through.”

I can’t help but think of what my father said, how he couldn’t break her. She was strong. But I can’t bring myself to tell Jericho any of that. I can’t have him knowing the admitted intimacy between Hope and my father without it risking how he feels about me. Getting to his feet, he begins to pace, his sobriety returning with each step.

“We grew up together. We were friends, best friends. I never lied about that. We looked out for each other. What else was I supposed to do? We weren’t in love or anything, we were just trying to wade through some shit together.” He stills, staring into space for a minute. “And then everything changed. Everything. She was gone and I had this, this kid.” He holds out his arm as though Ette were there, standing at the end of his fingers. “Hope was there for me when I went to juvie. She was the only person to come and visit. She tried to bring Gideon along a couple of times, but my mother wouldn’t let her. She said she didn’t want him to see him in there and change the way he thought about me.” He snorts. “And now he fucking hates me.”

I reach out to lay my hand on his arm but he pulls away.

“You want to know the truth? All of the truth?”

I nod, gaze fixed on him. His eyes are dark and wild now. Another degree of drunkenness falls off him like shackles.

“I’m fucked.” He runs his hands through his hair violently, back and forth, back and forth, before tugging at the roots. “I’m fucked no matter what I do. I can’t make it right. I can’t do the right thing. I don’t even know what the right thing is.” He stops pacing suddenly. “What if I never find her? I’ve never really stopped to consider it. Not truly. It just wasn’t an option. I was certain she was out there. Somewhere. Iamcertain.” He looks out the window. “But what if she’s not? When do I give up? When do I—”

He looks at me hungrily, his eyes raking down my body before tearing his gaze away. He paces back and forth a few times, his movements more determined.

“And what if we do find her? What then?” He steps over, kneeling in front of me and laying his head on my lap. I place my hand in his hair, running my fingers through it. “I never loved her, not in that way. I loved her as a friend. I still love her as a friend. There are things she knows about me that no one else does.”

I can’t help it. My hand freezes. It’s only for an instant but he senses it. Lifting his head, he looks at me. He rocks back, and sort of sinks onto the ground. He sits with his arms locked around his knees. His eyes flash with indecision. As though there’s something else. Another revelation. I brace myself for what it might be. When he finally speaks again, he blurts it out without hesitation. “I wasn’t the one who killed my father. My mother was.”

He looks up at me briefly, but I don’t respond. I don’t know how to. So I sit there not moving a muscle.

He flicks his gaze away. “I had just finished school for the day. I didn’t want to walk with Gideon even though it was his birthday, so I went ahead with Hope. Awesome big brother, I know. I remember pushing open the door, I was already steeling myself, you know, because I thought that Mum was going to give me shit for not walking home with Gideon. So when I look up, and I see…” His voice fades and he just stares blankly for a few moments. “We had this black and white lino in the kitchen, like a checkers board.” The usual gruff tone to his voice is gone. “And when I pushed that door open, the first thing I saw was this blood, this crimson sort of tide, creeping across the floor. It moved so slowly. It just inched across the floor.” Something snaps him out of his memory and he sits a little straighter. “That’s what I kept telling the police, the part about the blood creeping across the floor. It’s what convinced them it was me.” He snorts. “It gave my story the authenticity they needed because it was real.” He takes a breath, steeling himself to go on. “When I looked up from that dark blood, I saw my mother standing over the body of my father. She had this look in her eye. This wildness. In that moment, even though I was a lot bigger than her frail frame, I was scared of her. Something had broken. And it was my father who broke it, so it only seemed fitting that he be the one to bear the ramifications of his actions.”

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