I run back to the house as fast as my legs will carry me. From the street, I can see the lights are on. I stumble to the fridge and pull out one of Deborah’s bottles of wine. I put it on the counter and stare at it.
Drink me. Drink. Me.
I twist it open and pour a glass, barely pausing before taking a massive gulp. Two seconds. That’s all it takes to break my sobriety. I walk outside, replaying the scene with Sebastian in my head. His confession to hurting Lisa was genuine. Almost like he wanted to tell someone about it. It needed to pour out of him. I almost felt sorry for him.
But it wasn’t the confession I was hoping for.
I gulp more wine and light a cigarette. My eyes glance over Deborah’s car and the pot plants in the corner of the garden, fading in the early evening light. I think of how Sebastian said all the right words, but that there was a big black hole in his story.
The part where he went back and finished what he started. Or didn’t.
If he choked Lisa the first time, and left her to call Alice, then he must have come back again. And that time, hurt her so badly that he had no choice but to push her off the dock to silence her. Or some version of that.
But he seemed to have remorse for not going back. Which means…
I think of Lisa calling me all those months ago, while I was drunk on my balcony. I’d told myself I wasn’t going to answer her call—that I wouldn’t be able to play professional Alice that night.
But something made me pick up that phone.
I made her feel like there was nowhere for her to go.
Sebastian’s in my head again, and I wish he’d leave. Lisa did have somewhere she could go that night, and she came to me.
He believed he killed her. But not like I thought.
Earlier, I’d seen Sebastian’s pain at taking someone’s life, driving them to surrender. I saw it in his eyes. I recognised it, because I see it in my own eyes every day.
I believe him. He didn’t go back to kill her, and he didn’t throw her off that dock.
Which means…
The wine softens my edges, but not quickly enough. I take another gulp. How did I ever stop drinking? It. Tastes. So. Good. With my newfound courage, I take my phone from my pocket and dial the person I’ve been avoiding the most.
She picks up almost instantly. “Cat? Are you okay?”
Emotion bubbles to the surface, and my lips quiver at the sound of her voice. “Mom,” I say. “I’m in so much trouble.”
There’s a rustling on the other end of the line, like she’s standing up from her bed. “What’s going on? Tell me.”
I lean against the wall and feel my body cave in. “I wish I’d opened that door.”
She says nothing.
“I can’t stop thinking that I could have stopped him.”
Fat droplets of tears course down my cheeks, one by one. I don’t need to tell my mom what I’m talking about. She already knows.
She takes a breath. “Oh, baby.”
Her voice is soft. “None of that was ever your fault. You know that.”
“It was.”
“No, baby. That’s not how it works. People have dark thoughts, they—”
“No,” I say. “You don’t know. It was me. I’m the reason he’s dead.”
There’s silence. Maybe she’s waiting for me to come out and say something truthful to her for the first time in months. Finally, I’m ready to.
“I didn’t tell you everything,” I say, licking the salty tears from my lips. “About how dad died. But I’m going to.”
Dad and I agreed to spend every second weekend together. The divorce left me feeling hollow, but the three of us dealt with it amicably. Well, as amicably as we could under the circumstances.
We sold the house. My mother moved into a townhouse, and my father moved into a shabby apartment block a few suburbs away.
On the weekends when I was broke—which was most weekends—I drove to his place, where we ordered takeout and watched TV as he sipped his whisky. Except now, he didn’t have to hide the bottles between the sofa cushions anymore.
Every now and again, women would move in with him, their eyes blazing with the need to mark their territory. Their toiletries would line his basin; their underwear would dry over the shower door. But they left just as quickly as they came, and the apartment remained his, stripped bare and perpetually smelling of smoke and aftershave.
Along with the women, the jobs my dad had came and went, too. One day we’d eat burgers for takeout, the next day convenience store pies.
I didn’t care. He was my dad. It was only during university that things started shifting. His inability to pay my tuition fees, his continuous jibes towards my mother, the emotional booze-fuelled scenes in restaurants. He seemed determined to break every relationship in his life.
And then, one day, it all came crashing down.
It was a seemingly normal weekend. We ordered pizza and watched a tennis match on TV. He tried making small talk. I was slumped on the couch, glued to my phone. With every whisky he drank, his agitation grew. Until he finally had enough.
“Hey, put that away.” He grabbed drunkenly for my phone. He could barely stand, clutching his chair to stabilise himself.
I shrugged at him. “You’re drunk. Sit down.”
“Cat,” he warned, his eyes bulging. “Don’t talk to me like that.”
That day, I felt daring. Thinking back, I was just plain stupid.
I looked him right in the eye. “Or what?”
He changed course, his tongue turning razor-sharp—as it did when he drank. “Do you think you’ll accomplish anything in life by using people? You don’t think I know you come here just for the food?”
“You’re one to talk.”
“Hey,” his words slurring from the whisky. “At least I’m not a spoiled little brat.”
“Do you like this?” I asked.
“Like what?”
“Ruining your life.”
“Cat, I’m warning you—”
There was no stopping me. “Drinking away the days, letting mom go, losing your job. It’s pathetic, you’re—”
And then he grabbed my arm, his eyes blazing. “Stop it!”
But there was something else there. A lingering pain. The corners of his eyes were too red. I went to bed and shut the door behind me. I listened to him pour another drink. And then a few more. By the time he knocked on my door, it must have been midnight.
I hear his words in my nightmares.
Bud. Bud, pleeease.
I closed my eyes and waited for him to leave. It was just another drunken fight, another one of his calls for remorse.
What followed was a moment I’ll regret for the rest of my life. My last words to him were brutal, spat out in anger.
“You know, sometimes I wish you’d just die.”
After that, he spoke his last words to me, too.
“I love you, bud.”
I found him where I left him. In the living room. Except he was hanging from the ceiling.
I felt confused, like I was dreaming. It wasn’t real. Surely the beam couldn’t hold him. And where did he get the rope? But as I kept staring at him, it became horribly real.
There was no way to get him down. He was too heavy. So I stood outside the front door, vomiting into a trash bin and counting from one to a hundred on repeat because I couldn’t go back into that apartment while he was still there. The police arrived, and then Mom, her face white with shock. He’d left no note, no explanation.
But my father didn’t need one. I’d given him the instructions.
My mom is silent on the other end of the line. Then she speaks.
“Cat… I wish you’d told me.”
But how could I have told her? Where would I have begun?
“People fight,” she says. “They say things they don’t mean. There’s so much we need to talk about. Your dad, he wasn’t well. Not for a long time. He—can’t you come home?”
And I wish I could. But home’s never been the same since that night.
Neil’s words sound in my head.
You’re like those snow globes. All shook up and too scared to let the snow actually settle.
“I can’t right now,” I say.
Because I’ve gone and done it again. I said something that brought someone’s life to an end. And this time, I won’t run from it. Because Neil’s right. I was the last person to speak to Lisa before she died. And what if I didn’t say enough? What if I let her slip through my fingers, just like the last time?
Sebastian might have driven her to the edge, but what if I gave the final push?