Sliding Down the Sky (32 page)

“How long have I been doing it?”

“I first noticed it when I was staying with you, at your apartment. You’ve been doing it ever since, sometimes a couple times a week, sometimes less often. It depends on how stressed you are, I think. It’s a kind of release, a pressure valve. When things get too much, you sing.”

It made sense. Somewhere deep inside, it did. But it still scared me. I could feel the control I had been trying so desperately to get back lately tumbling further and further away from me. Milestone after milestone, slipping through my fingers like sand.

I wasn’t going to cry. I wasn’t.

“Sass, listen to me.”

I didn’t look up.

“Your music isn’t gone. Maybe it was out of sight for a while there, but it’s still inside you. You just have to reach out for it.”

I huffed out an exasperated sigh. I was so sick of hearing that.

“I mean it. Your
voice
is still there, you haven’t lost it. You’re singing all kinds of songs, from Dad’s old songs to ones you and I wrote together, and everything in between. It’s still there, because it’s a part of who you are. Even when you try to deny it, when you try to tell yourself that you’re not ready to face it, it’s there, waiting for you. Whether you want it or not, it’s there.”

Whether I wanted it or not.

Was he kidding? Of course I wanted it! So why the hell was I hiding from it?

Maybe I don’t deserve it.

I wiped away the tears that ran down my cheeks, my stomach curled up into a tight ball. Then I glanced down at the stump of my left arm, peeking out from beneath the sleeve of my robe.

Before long, I was going to have reporters knocking on my door, camping out at the bar, stalking me, showering me with questions. I had nothing to tell them. I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything. I was still trying to figure it out myself.

I didn’t need questions. I needed answers.

“What is a soul? It's like electricity - we don't really

know what it is, but it's a force that can light a room.”

– Ray Charles

Callum

It was dark when they dragged me out of the cells and into the processing area. It had been light when I’d entered the bar, and light when I’d been hauled out of it for fighting. I think. The details were hazy. I remembered punching someone. I didn’t remember who. Was it Dad? My head was pounding. I’d managed to grab a couple of hours sleep while I was waiting, but I still felt drunk.

I swayed at the counter while the middle-aged cop dug out my personal belongings from a police-issue paper bag, a number and my name scrawled on the front in black ink. In it were my car keys, my phone and my wallet. It was all I had on me when I’d been thrown in the drunk tank to cool off.

It was slowly coming back to me. They wouldn’t release me early unless someone bailed me out. So who had?

“You’re free to go,” the cop said, and I was dismissed.

Just like that.

I turned around, shoving my phone and keys back into my pocket, to see Jack sitting in one of the chairs lined up beside the front door.

It took me a moment to register what I was seeing, then it all came back to me in a flood.

I’d called him. Jack had been my one phone call – he’d bailed me out. He stood up and I walked over to him.

“Some mess you’ve gotten yourself into,” he said, running his hand through his hair. “Come on, let’s get you squared away.”

“Where are we going?”

“Back to the motel.”

I hoped like hell he knew where it was because I wasn’t sure I did. I stumbled out into the night after him, and the cool air hit me like a slap in the face. I sucked in a breath and stopped near the steps that led from the police station door out onto the pavement. I grabbed for the railing, my stomach churning, then I threw up into the garden alongside it.

“Jesus Christ,” Jack mumbled, from somewhere to my left.

I glanced up, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.

“Sorry, about dragging you all the way over here,” I said, tripping over the words.

“Easy, dude,” he said, putting his arm around me and literally dragging me down the steps to the parking lot. “Come on, let’s get you back to the motel and under the shower. No offence, but you stink.”

I let him throw me in the car, and then somehow – I’m not quite sure how – we found ourselves back at my motel. He pointed me at the shower, tossed some clean clothes into the bathroom with me and shut the door. Then he called through the door that he was going out in search of some food and some black coffee – extra strong.

I stood under the shower stream for God knows how long. It felt like hours. I leaned on the wall with one hand and hung my head, the warm water cascading over my head and neck, onto my shoulders and down my body. I wanted to wash everything away. The smell of the jail cell, the guilt over what I did to Sass, the pain of knowing I should’ve been with Mom, the shit-storm of feelings I had about Dad – all of it.

Disappointingly, all the water did was wash my skin.

I climbed out of the shower and stood there, dripping water all over the bathroom floor.

Jack rapped on the door.

“You coming out anytime soon? I’ve got food, and coffee. Lots of coffee.”

I stared at myself in the mirror. There was a fresh bruise on my cheek. I had dark circles under my eyes. My five o’clock shadow was turning into a full-blown beard. In short, I looked the way I felt. Like shit.

I dried myself off and threw on clean boxers and jeans, pulling a t-shirt on. When I came out of the bathroom, Jack had laid out enough food for a small village. The table was groaning with it, and he was already tucking in.

“Come on,” he said, through a mouthful of burger. “It’s getting cold.”

Suddenly, hunger reared up from deep inside me. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten. I sat down at the table with him and unwrapped a burger. We sat in silence for a few minutes, eating.

“Thanks,” I said. “For coming. I owe you.”

“You’re welcome. So, what happened?”

I shrugged, chewing. Where to begin?

“Dad happened.”

He frowned. “Yeah, and?”

“What do you mean?”

“I spoke to the nice officer at the police station after you called me, making zero sense. He said you were picked up drunk and disorderly, fighting in a public place – a bar. So?”

I took another bite of burger, which was surprisingly good, and tried to remember the details.

“Dad was at the hospital,” I said, chewing around the words. “He tried to talk to me, but no way. Not happening. So I hit him, and damn if it didn’t make me feel better. They threw me out of the hospital. Apparently, they don’t like that kind of thing there.”

The sarcasm filtered through as I sobered up. I could hear it, but I couldn’t stop myself. It seemed to be the only way to handle the madness my life had descended into.

Jack regarded me carefully over the top of his burger.

“So, reading between the lines, you ignored the advice I gave you about not letting your Dad get to you, you punched him, and then you went on to celebrate your success at the nearest bar, where you promptly got into another fight with someone you don’t even remember, about God knows what. That sound about right?”

Apparently, sarcasm wasn’t just my own personal talent.

“Yep.”

“Wow,” he deadpanned. “Sounds like you’re really winning there, dude. Go you.”

“I feel better,” I said, ignoring him as the food worked its way through my system and began to make me feel more or less human again. “This is a good burger.”

“Glad you’re enjoying it.”

He was frustrated with me, I could tell. He fought fire with fire. The frustration level must’ve been higher than I thought, because he didn’t try talking to me much after that. We ate our burgers in silence, then devoured the fries and the coffee. I’d have preferred a beer, but I wasn’t pushing it. He got up a while later, went into the bathroom, then came back with my phone. He sat down on the bed with his coffee and switched it on. Seconds later, we both heard the messages begin to beep through.

“You’ve got a tonne of missed calls,” he said, flipping through them. “And three messages. No name attached, but all from the same number.”

“Probably Coop.”

“You should listen to them.”

He was right, of course. But I didn’t want to.

“Mom’s probably out of surgery by now,” I murmured.

“Then you need to find out what’s going on. You need to get back there and see her.”

“Like this?”

“Yeah, like this,” Jack said firmly. “Drink your coffee.”

He played the first message over the speaker, so we could both hear. I was right.

“Callum, it’s Coop. Call me back, okay? I need to know you’re alright.”

He played the second message.

“It’s me again. Your Mom’s out of surgery. I need to talk to you. Call me back. Please.”

Jack and I exchanged a glance. Coop’s voice was different. Something was wrong, he might as well have said so.

The third message was worse.

“I’m not screwing around here. Call me or get back to the hospital, I don’t care which, but your Mom needs you. Pull yourself together, for Christ’s sake!”

I buried my head in my hands and groaned. I’d never heard Coop angry. I’d also never heard him desperate. It had to be bad.

“Jesus,” I murmured. “I don’t want to be here. I just want all this shit to go away.”

“I know you do,” Jack said, gently this time. “But you need to see your Mom. Everything else – your Dad, all that crap – let it go, at least for now. You owe it to your Mom to be there for her, and Coop needs you. You guys – you, Coop, Steph – you’re in this together, like it or not.”

He was right. It wasn’t about Dad, it was about Mom. One problem at a time. I held out my hand and he handed me my phone. I called Coop back.

We made it to the hospital half an hour later. When we got there, I didn’t think they were going to let me back into the ICU. It was thanks to some smooth-talking by Jack and Coop that they did – and a promise from me, one that I wasn’t a hundred percent sure I was going to be able to keep. I guess I didn’t look like much of a threat now. I could barely manage to put one foot in front of the other. Everything was hazy, and it wasn’t the alcohol this time.

I left Jack talking to Coop and went straight to Mom. She was still hooked up to the machines, a breathing tube in her mouth, but her head was swathed in bandages. The surgery had been and gone, and now we had to face the brutal reality.

The drugs weren’t having any effect. They couldn’t find a way to stop the bleeding, they could only drain the blood, and they couldn’t keep doing that forever. We needed a miracle.

I sat down beside her and held her hand. I was six years old again, but she looked ancient. She didn’t look like my Mom anymore. Where was her strength, her will, her dignity? There was no evidence of it there, in front of me.

I closed my eyes, and I tried to remember the good times, but it wasn’t that easy. I kept thinking about Robbie, about the day he died, and how frantic she was. She wailed on Dad like a woman possessed. It was a side of her I’d never seen before and would never see again. In the months that followed that day, she was hollow, withdrawn, a shadow of herself. She wouldn’t come out of her bedroom for weeks afterwards. I had no idea how it felt to lose a child, but I know how much it hurt to lose a brother. I wondered if the grief was similar. I wondered if all grief was the same.

I thought about her life with Coop. She seemed happy, relaxed. She didn’t have to look over her shoulder or wonder what mood he would be in when he got home. I thought about how much I admired her courage. She didn’t let her life with Dad ruin her life with Coop. She let it go, and I couldn’t imagine how hard that would’ve been. I couldn’t let it go. I was haunted by it, by him. She was stronger than I was. I was the coward of the family, maybe even moreso than Dad.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, squeezing my eyes shut, keeping the tears prisoner behind them.

“Callum.”

My blood froze. That voice seemed to penetrate the air, pushing its way into my face like the fist it was so often attached to.

I opened my eyes and turned around, but I didn’t let go of her hand. I needed to protect her from him, even now. Especially now.

Dad stood there, looking for all the world like he belonged there. He didn’t. This was her space, her time. She deserved to have peace, especially from him.

“I’m not here to make this harder for you,” he said, more than a little trepidation in his tone. “I’d just really like to talk to you. I think there’s a lot we haven’t said that we need to say, and whatever you’ve got to say to me, I’ll listen. I owe you that.”

I didn’t want to talk to him about what he owed me. I didn’t want to talk to him, period.

I let go of Mom’s hand and stood up. He steeled himself, as if he thought I was going to take another shot at him. I wasn’t.

I just walked past him, past Coop, Steph and Jack, standing watching us from the waiting room, and to the elevator.

He didn’t try to stop me. No one did.

“I feel sorry for people who don't drink. When they wake up in the

morning, that's as good as they're going to feel all day.”

– Dean Martin

Callum

I’d picked a different bar this time, one in the opposite direction to the one I’d been thrown out of. I turned my phone off. I didn’t want to talk to anyone, I knew what they’d say and I was sick of hearing it. All I wanted was a bottomless glass of whisky.

I wasn’t used to drinking like this, not anymore. Since I’d met Sass, whether consciously or unconsciously, I’d cut back. Sure, I’d sat at the end of the bar during her shift, but that had been mainly to talk to her, to see her. Beer had been the last thing on my mind.

God, I wished she was here now. What I wouldn’t give to wrap my arms around her and breathe her in. I wanted to call her, but I didn’t know what to say. Too much time had gone by, too much had happened. It had only been a couple of days, but nothing felt the same, and I was drowning in the unfamiliar.