Paper Hearts

THEN: Chapter 34

“But we are all sorry when loss comes for us. The test of our character comes not in how many tears we shed but in how we act after those tears have dried” – Michelle Moran

Eden:

A month had passed since I sent the letter, and still I had received no reply.

How could I even begin to keep my good opinion of him after that? In my head, I made excuses for him; illness, grief, letter lost in the post...but I never fully committed to any of these excuses, because I didn’t believe that they were good enough. There was no excuse for ignoring that letter, especially when it impacted George’s life as well as mine. I couldn’t forgive him for that.

Nor could I forgive myself. I’d made George’s life a confusing mess for the past few weeks, caught up first in my fear that Ollie might be dead, and then in my fear that he would never respond to the letter I had so carefully, eagerly composed. George was confused, and anxious, and even quieter than usual. And one day, as we were sitting there eating dinner, I realised something.

Ollie wasn’t going to turn up like a Knight in Shining Armour. He wasn’t going to ride up on his big white horse and make our lives better. Life isn’t a fairytale.

Ollie wasn’t going to turn up and be a father to the son he had only just discovered.

He wasn’t going to reply to my letter.

And I had to stop waiting for him to show up and make things okay. I had to take control of my own life. I had to take control of George’s life. I couldn’t afford to hold on to this ridiculous pride and hurt and pain for any longer. I had to accept that I had lost him.

And I had to do what was best for George.

That night, once he was in bed, I took the crumpled white card that I had almost forgotten about from the drawer in the kitchen – and I dialled the number.

Ollie:

We were a sorry group, the three of us – the leftovers. None of us were quite complete without the others, and the state funeral with full Army honours was to be our last act of service, as well as our final tribute to them.

The three coffins were waiting to be carried into the church; they were draped with wreaths, flowers piled high and smelling sickly sweet. The three of us stood opposite them; Dan in his wheelchair, Josh trembling as he had been doing constantly since the explosion, and me still hobbling, wincing as each step jarred my chest. I saw Jane, and wished I hadn’t. Beatrice and Alice, girls who had once been so happy and golden and bright, clung to her hands – they looked confused, or shocked, I couldn’t quite tell, and then –

“Ollie?”

I didn’t want to look at her. I didn’t want her to read in my eyes that the death of her brother was completely and utterly my fault. I squinted to hide the fact that I was close to tears, using the sunlight as a ruse.

“Abby. Hey”

“Hey”

She looked terrible – I hadn’t seen bold, brash Abby so beaten down since her Goth phase. Her hair was lank and tangled, her eyes ringed with dark circles of tiredness, her heavy makeup unusually blotchy and uneven. Her smile was a shadow of what it had once been.

“I’m glad you’re here”

“I – “I looked around, wary, “Where – how’s your Mum?”

Abby shrugged, looked away from me, “Bad. No parent wants their kid to die before them, I guess”

The thought of Kieran’s cheerful, bustling mother - the woman who sang as she cooked dinner and told Irish legends to her children – in tears over her dead son made my chest hurt even more. I put a hand to it instinctively, and Abby’s eyes followed the movement.