Page 121 of Waiting For A Girl Like You
Yet Charlie still thought he could save his son. He shouted Toby’s name. Pleading with him to see what he was doing and to stop and ask himself why. “Bryan drugged me. You know I would never hurt you two.”
“Yes, you would.”
The hits continued to rain down on him, the world blinking in and out. CeCe sat unmoving on the bed, cradling her favorite teddy bear to her chest. She shouldn’t see this. She should be safe in her bed at Haven House. SiSi should have raised her. What a fool he had been.
Tobias sat on his chest, the endless beating gaining new steam as the boy grunted with every slam of his fist. Charlie’s head whipped back and forth, and he thought he might be drowning from the blood gathering in his throat and mouth.
“Stop, Toby,” CeCe’s small voice pleaded. “That’s enough.”
Brandy hovered above them, her sick smile slicing across her face in the dim light. “It’ll never be enough. Not until he’s gone.”
With a roar, Tobias flipped him to his front, and so badly beaten, Charlie had no strength to rise. Not that he could with a six-foot teenager on his back. There was shuffling as if Tobias searched for something at CeCe’s computer desk. He tried to lift his head, but all he could see was the cabin doorway and the narrow hall leading to his bedroom. Two people were standing there. Two sets of bare feet. A woman and a child. Waiting. They looked as if they were waiting for something to happen.
The cold cord was the first thing he felt. The second was CeCe’s wail of denial, piercing his heart with the truest aim. She fell to the floor, rushing over to him on her hands and knees.
“Don’t, Toby.” CeCe’s beautiful face filled Charlie’s vision, blocking the bare feet of the woman and child in the hall. “Please don’t. We can leave. We’re old enough.”
“But you’ll never be free of him.” Brandy crouched next to CeCe, the fevered glee in her eyes full of crazed malice. “You can leave him, but he’ll always turn up. A bum with no one. He’ll be a thorn in your side forever, CeCe.”
The cord pulled tight, silencing any protest Charlie might have. CeCe screamed once more, but it was no use. When she tried to shove at her brother, Brandy was there, seizing his little girl by the hair on the back of her head.
“Watch.” Brandy shoved CeCe forward and directly into Charlie’s face. “You love him so much. You need to be the one to look him in the eyes when he goes.”
And that was it.
A simple thing, really.
His life.
Not that long, but long enough for him to realize that the pain would never end. It would forever be his burden. A haunting past that left no room for anything else.
It was better this way, maybe. As the pinpricks of light popped in and out of his vision, Charlie thought that perhaps it was better this way. CeCe was smart. She would escape and live a full life. He had to believe that. Ben would find her and bring her home. He would bring her home to Haven House, where she could live out her days in the one place she belonged.
“Toby, please,” CeCe begged as the darkness beckoned. “For me. Don’t do this for me.”
There was hesitation. Charlie got one ragged breath in when the cord’s pressure went lax.
But all it took for it to go tight again was for Brandy to want it. “For me, Toby. Get rid of him forme.”
Whoever was out in the hall was coming closer to watch. He could see them clearly now—a woman and a little girl. The woman was shrouded in darkness, with a pulsing red heartbeat at her center, the weight of her sins a constant companion for all eternity.
And the other—the little girl as bright as the sun—sang for him. Louder and louder until he could focus on nothing but her voice. His end would come at the hands of his son while his youngest daughter screamed for his life, but his oldest child… she would be the one to sing him to sleep.
He would leave this world as he lived in it, with nothing to show and no one to mourn him. Yet, that didn’t matter. Because in the end, Charlie Fairweather remembered everything.
You are my sunshine…
Viv and her baby blue eyes on their wedding day.
My only sunshine…
Ben and Trevor. His safe harbor when he was young, his enemies as they grew old.
You make me happy…
Rebecca aiming her sly smile at him from behind the bar of the Blue 42.
When skies are gray…
