Page 123 of Forever, Maybe
Scrolling through his friends list, she found Ryan. Being a typical young person, his account was public.
She skimmed through his posts, her breath catching when she landed on a recent selfie. Ryan’s face was pressed against that of an attractive girl around his age, both grinning at the camera.
Her heart lurched.
God, he looked just like Danny.
The ache sharpened into anger, reigniting the resolve that had brought her here in the first place. Fine. If Danny wasn’t at the office, she’d go to Trish’s house. She’d beard the lion in his other den. Let him squirm. Let his mother see what a piece of shit he really was.
She would make sure of it.
Chapter fifty
WhenDanielpulledupon Paisley Road West, his usual parking spot was occupied. With a resigned sigh, he continued along the street, finally finding a space around the corner. It wasn’t ideal—he’d need to remember to check on it later to avoid a parking ticket.
Tomorrow, he decided, he would delegate the task of flat-hunting to Holly. It didn’t matter what the place looked like, as long as it was a one-bedroom apartment with basement parking and close enough to the city centre office.
He shut his car door with more force than intended, the thud echoing in the quiet street. As he approached his parents’ house, an unsettling sensation prickled at the edges of his mind. Something felt off—not anything obvious, but a definite undercurrent of wrongness.
The door of their car was wide open, though the driveway was empty of people, and the blinds on the front window were drawn—highly unusual for this time of day.
He let himself in. “Hello? Anyone home? I brought some of Joe’s meal kits. Thought we could try them out for dinner!”
No answer. His mother always kept the radio on, tuned to a mix of easy-listening music and news bulletins. If his father was home, the low drone of old westerns or Second World War documentaries would spill from the living room.
This silence felt oppressive.
He pushed open the living room door. It was empty, but the space felt abandoned. A coffee cup sat on the small table by his father’s recliner, an inch of murky liquid at the bottom. His father’s newspaper lay discarded on the floor, pages fanned out haphazardly.
Unthinkable. His mother prided herself on her immaculate housekeeping—this kind of mess simply didn’t happen.
Frowning, Daniel made his way into the kitchen. No sign of them there, either. But the back door was open, and from outside came voices—low, urgent whispers. Angry, by the sound of it.
His pulse quickened as he stepped closer, drawn toward the scene awaiting him in the garden. He poked his head around the door.
His mother paced the patio, a cigarette clutched in one hand like a lifeline. Trish had been a heavy smoker once, back in the nineties, puffing her way through two packs a day until a doctor warned her in no uncertain terms of what awaited if she didn’t quit. Seeing her with a cigarette now felt like stepping into a time machine, though the years had added sharper cheekbones and veins that stood out on her hands, like rivers on a map.
Jack sat in one of the garden chairs, his face set in its usual expression of mild aggravation as Trish kept up an unstoppable monologue.
“… I ask you, Jack Murray, where did I go wrong? What sin did I commit that my children have fallen so far from the church’s teachings? No respect, no morals, no compass to guide them…”
“Mum?” Daniel interrupted.
She froze mid-stride, her face contorting with rage. For a moment, she reminded him of Medusa, one of the mythical figures he’d adored reading about as a child. The look she gave him could’ve turned him to stone.
Jack glanced up at him, his expression flickering between relief and apology, before shuffling past without a word. The back door banged shut behind him, followed by the living room door for good measure.
“Mum, what’s going on?”
Trish took a sharp drag of her cigarette, exhaling smoke in a way that instantly transported Daniel back to his teenage years—her painted nails tapping impatiently, the gold and ruby ring flashing on her right hand.
“Your wife—or is it ex-wife now?—showed up earlier!”
Nell? Here? That was impossible or so he would have thought. A million years wouldn’t have prepared him for that.
Trish took another pull from the cigarette, her movements jittery. On the garden table lay a crumpled packet of Silk Cut—the same brand she used to chain-smoke years ago. Either she’d gone out and bought them earlier, or she’d been keeping them stashed away for emergencies.
She coughed harshly, waving him off with an impatient flap of her hand when he asked if she was okay. “Don’t fuss.”
