❝Oh, Oakley. . . What have you done?❞
Well, they say it's best to start at the beginning, but when the story gets so twisted and out of hand, who really knows where the beginning starts?
The Outer Banks is not the paradise Earth talks about. It's n...
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REMORSE IS CERTAINLY AN ODD concept. It creeps upon us in the quiet moments, when the hustle of life slows and we are left alone with our thoughts. It's the echo of our conscience, a whisper of regret that lingers like a shadow over our past actions. It's both a burden and a teacher, urging us to reflect, to understand, and perhaps to change— if we're up to the challenge. Yet, despite its heaviness, it can also be a path to redemption, guiding one toward making amends and finding peace within oneself. But what happens to those who completely fail to feel even the slightest nudge of regret— of remorse?
Barely over a decade ago, when Arthur Clifton's middle child was only four years old, he made a terrible mistake.
In one of their family game nights, out in their old home's backyard, the man had accidentally swung the plastic baseball bat too strongly and it had made a whole 360°, hitting the child right in the face. It had been a joke for a couple of moments, but that is what it lasted, moments. As soon as the girl's nose started bleeding and her big, innocent blue eyes looked up at him with that glossed over layer of betrayal, Arthur felt the rawest, most overwhelming sense of remorse a man could ever possibly feel. He could not forget the incident for days, and could barely let go of the child in fear that any side effect might lurk out and snatch her from him.
It's strange, isn't it? How the very man who coddled his daughter over a nosebleed has now watched and made her bleed from many more dangerous places and, yet, has not seemed to feel even the mildest sense of regret. Her eyes are still their innocent blue, so full of life and emotions that he can see are so similar to his own eyes, to his siblings'. Perhaps it is exactly that similar innocence that makes Arthur get lost in the longing for her old self to return, ending up in him forgetting that, despite the years and despite the many bruises that have now become ghosts in her soft skin, she is still the same Oakley.
But Arthur is too far gone. Oakley is not his Oakley anymore. His love for his own child has cracked and crumpled little by little, with the only culprit of the assassination being no other than avarice— pure, senseless avarice.
"She really believe that shit about the magic bathrobe?" Rafe flings the tennis ball against the wall of Tannyhill again, Arthur rubbing his chin as he sits on a garden chair, feet propped on the table.
"Full-on. She got nothing else to believe in. Why not that?" Renfield replies.
Arthur continues distractedly feeling the pinch of the shaved hairs on his chin, squeezing a tennis ball with his free hand, "But this cross, it exists, right? It better." He looks up.
Renfield plops down on the lounging couches, a chair away from Arthur, who is looking him down so intensely he fears he might be burned to the bone.
