Unexpected

| epilogue | light

epilogue~ day after day, give me clouds and rain and gray… give me pain, if that's what's real, it's the price we pay to feel

The slope of the hill is steep, and Ian's old car struggles and chugs along as it carries the two of them up the hill. Erin looks out the window, enjoying the humid, wet sight of the place that was the backdrop for her personal hell.

She is older, now. It has been more than five years since Grayson's death, and exactly three months since she was permitted to leave the asylum. She was only permitted to leave early due to the complications that emerged with the discovery of Grayson's jacket and his fingerprints all over Phil's mangled body. The court re-opened her file, and, after a careful investigation of the case and of possible side-effects to hypothermia, they came to a verdict that did not really please anyone else but Erin.

It was decided that Phil's death must have occurred the day that Grayson went missing, and that the boy was the one who killed him. The court inferred that Grayson must have been running from the law when Bryce murdered him. They decided that Erin's deranged and hallucinogenic mental state was caused by sharing a house with a corpse for several days and then staying in the snow for an extended period.

Several important things were looked over, such as Phil's date of death being several days after Grayson's. And the fact that Grayson was at the police office reporting Phil for emotional abuse the same day he disappeared. They also ignored the obvious hospital reports that indicated abuse inflicted on Erin.

But she could hardly complain. Rightly so, Grayson was remembered as a murderer rather than an innocent teenage martyr. And she was the poor girl who slowly went insane after witnessing her boyfriend kill her stepfather. She has become a person to be pitied, and while she is still treated like glass, she knows that she has been pressed to become steel.

The car stops on the top of the hill by a set of gates. Erin carefully steps out of the car, her shoes thin against the gravel path. Ian leans towards her, concerned, "Do you want me to come with?"

He is one of the few who believes everything. He knows from her that the court's verdict is bullshit, but he also knows that she is not in the wrong. He has been there with her since the beginning, since that overwhelming day under the bleachers.

Erin smiles at her old friend. "No, thank you." Her eyes catch something moving among the headstones. "This is something I have to do alone."

Ian understands. "I'll be here."

Erin leaves him and walks through the gates. As soon as she crosses the threshold of the graveyard, it seems that the air drops several degrees. Erin simply pulls her jacket closer around her and braves the cold. It is only a few hundred feet to a lonely grave set with an angel figurine.

It is this where Erin stops, and where the motion she saw earlier is stationed. Slowly, she kneels in the dewy grass and reads what is carved on the tombstone. "Grayson Daniel Carin. February 14, 1962 through February 15, 1980. Loving son and friend. He's not here, not anymore."

"I'm right here."

Erin tells herself that she is speaking to the stone, to the dead Grayson who was gentle and never would have tried to kill her. She is not speaking to the spirit whose shadow reaches over her.

"I loved you from the moment I was five. I've always loved you. Even when you weren't there, somehow… you were. You were the Tony to my Maria from the moment you climbed to my window all the way through… well, through the ending remaining the same." Erin blinks back tears and stares down at her hands. She is just barely aware of the shadow kneeling beside her.

"You have manipulated me. You have abused me. You have ruined my life." Erin is now angry. The shadow remains almost guiltily by her side. "But that won't stop me. I'm free, don't you see that? You've gotten in trouble for what you did after all. And you won't hold me back, not anymore."

"Erin, I love you," his voice is still eighteen years young.

"Goodbye, Grayson." Erin says simply.

She gets up and walks slowly back to Ian's car. He is smoking a cigarette, the plumes rising into the blue sky. She sits in the passenger seat as Ian starts the car.

He always asks her the same question. But her answer has changed. "Want a smoke?"

"Yes."