Page 69 of Vow of Revenge
Our lives turned into a living nightmare of condolences and wreaths. Her pearly white coffin was mounted on a wooden stand in our family home, the casket lay open with her devastatingly rigid form on display.
My father was a broken man. He sat by her rigid side the entire night, whispering secrets and telling her deaf ear’s tales from when she was his little girl. I listened from afar with my heart weeping, my tears flowing.
Wendy didn’t leave her bed for the whole week Syrah’s body remained at the morgue, waiting for the post-mortem to determine if Danny had killed her before the fall. The doctor prescribed Wendy with heavy sedatives to stop the panic attacks and convulsions. Even when the coffin was carried into our sitting room, she refused to accept the lifeless girl with closed eyes and cold skin was her daughter.
I sank deeper into my own mind. Leaving the real world to carry on without me. There was no need to verbalise my feelings, it was written all over my face, sketched on my broken heart for all to see.
The day of her funeral took its toll on my father. Slumping his body over the casket as they closed it. His tortured soul shattered into a thousand pieces, his control and composure lost for a period in time that made him vulnerable and human.
There was no family line up to thank the guests for their attendance. The Beaumont’s were in a state of mourning, and no amount of social curtesy would make it acceptable.
My sister was dead.
My best friend was gone.
I didn’t care who came to wish the dearly departed well, or who spoke at her send off. She was immortalised in my memories, and they were all I had left of her.
“Freya.”
“Dad?”
“I’m sorry.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too, Dad.”
“Stay here with us. Don’t go back there.”
“I have to go back. I need to.”
His head bowed. “We never did have that chat. It needs to happen, but I need…”
“It’s okay, Dad. I’ll be back soon. We can talk then.”
He held me in an embrace, crushing my lungs and reinforcing his paternal love for me, like the father he had always been, to both of us.
The driver was instructed to not only drive me all the way back down to Dublin from Belfast, but to escort me to the door and check the apartment - thoroughly. I didn’t see the point, given Danny was locked up. After all, it was a tragic accident born out of anger. I wasn’t forgiving him for snatching her away from me, I was trying my hardest, and failing, to rationalise the situation to make it more comprehendible.
I was drawn to her bedroom – a shrine to our childhood with silly photographs of our teenage faces pinned to the walls. Her heavenly floral scent infused the space. I almost felt her behind me, waiting to say my name.
A sudden swell of emptiness overcame my soul, shaking me from the inside out. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t stand. My pulse whooshed in my skull, deafening my ears. I fell to my hands and knees, doubled in grief, my torso shuddering with sobs. A crash of emotions weighted my lungs, pressing heavily on my organs and weakening my spirit.
The rawness of my loss still hoped she would walk through the door with naughty stories of Brett. Scrambling across the floor, I snatched her pillow from the bed and held it to my face. My hot tears soaked into the crisp cotton. The fabric still held a faded trace of my sister, like she was still with me. But she was gone. Calvin lied when he promised me all those years ago that I would always have a sister. Now I was all alone, without her, with only a faint smell of her skin and shampoo to keep me company.
This was the cost of love and loss. The price I had to pay for loving someone.
Slumping to the carpet, I hugged the pillow like I was hugging her. I willed the pillow to be her. For just a moment I spoke, pretending it really was my beautiful sister pressed close to my breaking heart. She didn’t reply, so I prayed that when I opened my eyes, she would be standing over me laughing at my foolishness. Peering out through slitted lids, a bubbled sob filled the still silence when she wasn’t there. Syrah really wasn’t in the room with me, I was just gripping her fucking feather pillow.
All I could see through blurry eyes, were collections of her past. Chucking the fake comfort away with an angry toss, I screamed from the depth of my despair. I wasn’t ready to accept my sister’s life as something that belonged in the past. Denial was better than reality. Pretence was better than acceptance.
My lungs juddered.
The slow rocking movement, back and forth, became manic.
I couldn’t stop the tears from choking me as I wept. Not even when I crawled onto her mattress and wrapped myself up in her sheets, like her loving arms were holding me.
