Cover Your Tracks [HS][2014 VERSION]

Epilogue

In the end, there was no trial.

During the months that we'd been gone, the police department had gone over Harry's files. The information there proved conclusive to their suspicions, for on his record were several assault and battery charges, as well as a domestic violence charge that'd taken place back in England. He'd taken a sudden turn, on the last night that I saw him, and now I understood why, for the officers had answered the majority of my questions with a mere sentence. A mere statement.

"Harry Edward Styles, you are hereby placed under arrest for the murder of Desmond Styles and Arthur Reese, as well as the kidnapping of his daughter, Lyza Reese."

Now, I knew that the latter two accusations were only true in the eyes of the law, but I knew nothing of the first. Harry had never mentioned anything about his family, and I suppose I should have seen the signs, for they were written boldly across his back in the form of painful scar tissue. I would later come to learn that his father had undoubtedly beaten him as a child, and when the hardly identifiable corpse of his abuser had been found badly burned in his childhood home, the scene would first come to be labeled as self-defense. It was not until after our running away that suspicions would grow and that labeled would be ripped away and replaced with another.

Homicide.

There was little that I could do, because I knew this was what Harry wanted. He told me so in his letter, not to worry about him. He'd always told me that.

After my father's murder, the house sale fell through. No one wanted to live there, not even me. I'd lost both of my parents in those walls, and perhaps, lost a piece of myself. The ranch was exactly as I'd left it—horses roaming the paddock, a half-eaten sandwich sat on a plate at the table. There was something entirely morbid about the situation, returning to an empty, broken home. Forced to live within walls that once held so much love, now replaced with a lingering sadness.

The memories were suffocating—they still are.

Tiptoeing through the hallway as Harry and I always had, I'm greeted with the chilly night air and summer stars. My feet carry me across the expanse of tall, unkempt grass. I halt just at the outskirts of the paddock. Heads thrown up in recognition, the horses look to me with wide-eyes before continuing to graze. Gypsy, the epitome of youthful curiosity, trots over to my position there along the fence. My smile widens upon hearing her shrill whinny pierce the night air.

I place my hand along her muzzle, cooing to her as she bobs her head. A gust of wind blows her forelock through my fingers. My mind must be playing tricks on me, because the black of her mane turns chestnut brown against my pale complexion. Winding the tendrils between my fingers, the straightness of it goes wild.

His features have haunted me for years. I find bits and pieces of him in strangers—similarities in the green eyes of another or the rosy color in a pair of lips that have yet to grace my skin with a feather light touch resembling that of a flower. It's in missing him that I've found any replacement I could possibly conjure up would simply pale in comparison to the dark beauty he possessed. He'd enamored me from day one and refused to leave me alone.

Forest green eyes now haunt me in dreaming. A sinful, mischievous grin in nightmares. His presence in shadows.

They loom over me now, trees swaying with the wind, casting a picture show along the grass. And there, amidst the leaves and branches that seem to claw at the earth, is movement of a distorted figure. Backing away from the fence, I bury my head in my hands and will the mirage to go away. A sadistic, wicked little trick on my conscious is all it is.

A hand places itself on my shoulder.

"Leave me alone!" I scream, sobs wracking at my body in an instant. The ghost-like touch slips from me just as my knees come in contact with the plush blades of grass below. My hands are digging in my pockets for the inhaler in an instant, bringing the medicine to my mouth. This has become routine, worsening with the passing of time.