The Bitch You Killed

Chapter Forty Five

Song of the chapter is Biffy Clyro's Mountains 

CHAPTER FORTY FIVE

Three days after the talk with Mackenzie, Caleb Benson passed away quietly in his hospital bed. Effectively he died peacefully in his sleep after the doctors advised that keeping him on life support was no use. His organs would never be able to function at a rate that would keep him alive due to the prolonged exposure to highly lethal drugs and from the effect of the stronger than usual overdose that he had taken.

When word had reached my mother and father, they were distraught that the young man who had proven himself to them as a suitable person to care for their only daughter was now dead too. My mum cried and my dad locked himself in his office with a bottle of whiskey and the crystal tumbler I had bought him for Christmas two years previous.

The rumors going around mainly suggested that Caleb's overdose was deliberate and that he had done it as he had missed me too much. Complete bullshit but at least it was family friendly bullshit.

I think that hearing that he was actually dead was what brought a sense of guilt back that wouldn't really leave me until I left this state. It was my fault that Caleb had become involved with drugs in the first place. It started as performance enhancing and progressed to cocaine and prescription painkillers.

Yes, his death was tragic, but in the time since the overdose I had reconciled myself with it. I knew that Caleb was inevitably going to be pronounced dead. Comas aren't just things used to make a story good. He wasn't just going to wake up with temporary amnesia and fall in love with someone all the while he tried to regain his memories. That's not real life. In truth, real life isn't always realistic, but that's what makes it hard to deal with. Miracles and tragedies happen but not always in the way you would expect.

    "I called Annabelle," Chase said as he came into my bedroom quietly and sat down on the bed.

    "And?"

    "She's agreed to meet me," he replied with a sigh of relief.

A small smile rose on my face at the idea. Truthfully, I didn't like Annabelle but I had figured that she couldn't be completely bad if Chase had somehow become smitten with her.

    "That's good."

    "Yeah, it is," there was a brief pause as we both listened to the sounds of the house creaking as a harsh wind battered outside. "Mum called Caleb's mother."

   "Oh," I mumbled, the smile dropping as I turned to look at him.

    "The funeral's in two days," he replied, "are you going?"

Deafening silence was all around us as I looked away from his sad eyes. Going was something I should do to scare Mack and Tyler, but actually watching him get lowered into the ground was not something I would take joy in seeing. Like me, Caleb's life had ended too early and the only reason that he was not in the same position as I was now is because it was the world's way of reinstating the balance. Caleb played a part in my death and I played a part in his. If it was just him that was involved then maybe I would have moved on but there's still two people who need proper retribution. It's like Marnie said, Caleb passed over because he served his punishment.

    "Probably, I don't know," I responded, confusion clouding my tone.

     "I suppose I better go, I'm meeting Annabelle soon," with that, Chase was up from the bed and out the door before I could even reply to wish him luck.

I continued to sit on my bed, soaking up the atmosphere. The room had slowly becoming dusty as no-one but Chase really ventured into it, memories making it too painful for my parents or Jack. I knew that the lack of conviction and motive was really playing on their minds and I also knew that getting a confession was the only way they would ever be able to move on. Jackson had proved useless as his duties as a police officer would always come over his need to find my killer. He wasn't prepared to condone crime and there is no doubt in my mind that he knew I played a part in Caleb's death.