Between Now and Goodbye (35 page)

'She said enough for me to know that she didn't want me snooping around and finding him. I knew what I was doing was wrong, if I didn't then I would have told her or I would have mentioned it to Charles. I didn't, because I knew that it would make them mad. I just kept going anyway because I was too stubborn to stop. Even when we found that article and the possibility of it being dangerous to contact him arose. I still did it, because it's what I wanted to do. Charles and Libby were right about me. I'm selfish.'

'No you're not.' Carly shakes her head, 'You were trying to do something nice for her.'

'For all the wrong reasons. Think about it, why did
I really do it? Because I was curious, because I was annoyed that she wouldn't tell me about her dad, and because I wanted her to think I was amazing for bringing her dad back to her. I'm not stupid Carly. I knew what I was doing, and I knew that she wouldn't want me to do it.' I get up out of bed and push open the doors to my balcony. It's too hot in here. 'I was selfish.'

'Ok, you need to stop with the pity thing. Get dressed, we're going out.'

'I don't want to go out.' I sigh.

'Too bad.' She walks towards my closet, pulls open the doors and then shrieks loudly, 'Julie what happened to your clothes?'

'I was done with them.' I say, walking back over to the bed.

'Done with them?' She turns back and narrows her eyes at me, 'Ok, enough. This has gone on long enough. You made a mistake and you apologized, no need to keep punishing yourself until they decide to forgive you. Now, go take a shower because frankly, there's a smell in here, and I'm fairly certain it's coming from you. I'll try and find you something to wear,' she turns her nose up at the few items left in my closet, 'and then we're going shopping. You need clothes for France, because you cannot turn up like a... a... whatever it is you're dressed like right now.'

'Carly I really don't feel like going to the mall.'

'Shopping,' she takes me by the shoulders and leads me towards my bathroom, 'fixes all problems, so get in the shower and we'll fix this.'

I can't be bothered to fight her on it, so I go into the bathroom and take a shower, and prepare myself for a day of shopping.

Forty Three – Libby

'I don't understand.' I look at my mom and then Matt, who's sat next to her, holding her hand. 'I thought that we'd been told we would need to fly out and give evidence at the trial.'

'I know.' My mom looks as though she's aged ten years after all of this, there's a streak of gray in her blonde hair which wasn't there a few weeks ago. She looks closer to fifty than forty and it's painful to see. The bruise on her eye is starting to fade, but we all still get reminded of him whenever we see it.

'So what happened?' I ask, 'Something must have happened. First, they tell us that just a written statement will do. Then he gets moved back to Oregon, and we're told that there will be a trial and we'll have to speak at it, and now, we don't.'

'Libby, your father worked in the police force for several years. He knows how to work the system. I don't know all of the specifics, but he worked out a deal. Basically, he confessed to the crimes that we charged him with, and he's worked out a deal. There won't be a trial, which means that we won't need to fly out and testify.'

'But...is he going to jail?' I ask, curling myself up tighter on the couch. I take Pippa's hand.

'He will,' Matt replies, 'he just managed to get a deal which knocked the time he'll spend in jail down. He was looking at twenty years in jail for a first degree assault charge after what he did to you Libby. However, he's managed to strike a deal, so he'll have a fifteen year sentence, with the option to get out after ten years for good behavior. He's also agreed to have weekly anger management counselling, while he's in jail.'

'That's not right.' Pippa shakes her head, 'He could get out after ten years? He almost kills Libby and he manages to get himself a deal. He doesn't even have to go to trial. It's not right. He should be up on an attempted murder charge.'

'Pippa, at the time of the...attack...your sister and I both gave a statement saying that there was a break-in. Now, it's years later and there's not evidence left tying him to that. If he'd gone to trial, it could have very possibly ended with him getting no time in jail, or just being charged for what he did here that you got on camera. It may not seem like it, but him confessing and making a deal to avoid trial, is actually a good thing.'

'Even with all three of us speaking up at his trial, he might have gotten less than what he has now?' Pippa asks, while I'm just sitting here feeling frozen.

'It might have persuaded the jury that we were telling the truth,' my mom says, 'but we didn't speak up at the time, and now it's been years and there's no evidence. We don't have bruises we can show from that night, Libby has a few scars, but there's no way to prove that he caused them.' My mom sighs heavily, 'I know that it's really tough, and it's not what we were hoping for, but ten years minimum is good.'

'How?' Pippa shouts, her hand slipping from mine as she leaps off the couch to her feet, 'In what universe could this be considered a good outcome? He managed to settle out of court.'

'We're finally free.' I say quietly.

'What?' Pippa turns her head to me.

'How we lived before, even after we moved here, there was always a little doubt. We always worried that he'd show up, find us. Now, though, he's in jail for at least the next ten years, and because he pleaded guilty to domestic violence and first degree assault, we can get a court order saying that he can't have contact with us, right?' I look at my mom and Matt.

'Right.' Matt nods.

'So then,' I look at Pippa and give her the most confident smile I can muster, 'this is actually a good outcome, because it's far better than what we had before. All those other times dad tracked us down, we just ran. We started our lives over and over again, and we were always afraid. We don't have to run this time. He didn't expect us to call the police when he came here, because we never had before.'

'We should have called them a long time ago.' I say, 'Before it got to the point of us running.'

'I am so sorry that I wasn't strong enough to stop it back then.' My mom's tears start rolling down her face fast. Matt squeezes her hand.

'None of us were.' I reply.

'But I was your mother, and I couldn't protect you. I should have spoken up the first time he hit you. You were just a child. I should have done something.'

'We can't look back on it.' I dash away my own tears. 'It's over now. We need to move past this.'

'How?' My mom asks. 'What do you need to do to be able to move past this?'

'We all need to move past it.' I say quietly.

'Libby,' Pippa sits back at my side and takes my hand, 'I saw some awful things while we were living with dad, but besides one or two slaps, he never hurt me. Mom was hit a lot of the time, but there's no doubting that even before that night when he...when you ended up in the hospital. You always got the worst of his anger.' Pippa's tearful words break something in me, and I start sobbing uncontrollably. Pippa's arms wrap around me, and my mom moves to my other side, encasing me in her arms.

'Pippa's right,' my mom says softly, 'you were hurt the most, and I've found a way to put all of it in my past. I found Matt, and we created this life. What do you need?'

'I...' My voice comes out choked. 'I just can't be here, right now.'

'Here?' My mom asks.

'This town, this house. Seeing him here, I just...I love our life here, and I don't want to leave. I don't want him to have enough power to make us uproot our lives again. I just need to get away from here and Julie for a while.'

'Ok.' Mom rubs my back, 'ok, we'll sort something out.'

By the time evening rolls around, I'm feeling completely drained. I spent the afternoon sitting with Charles in his back yard, talking over everything that had happened with my dad's trial being cancelled. He sat and listened, and comforted until he had to leave to take his mom to her hospital appointment. More test results coming in today.

I stayed at his house, watching the kids, and now as the sky starts to dip into darkness, I'm up on the roof waiting for Charles to join me.

He got home about an hour ago, but since then he's been talking to his mom and my mom, and I'm guessing they're talking about the events that happened after my father was moved back to Oregon. I'm just not up to going through that again. So I climbed up here and told Charles that I'd wait for him.

When he joins me, he looks tired, but there's something else in his expression. Something swimming in his eyes. Defeat.

All my own worries and problems that have arisen since the shock of seeing my father, slip away in a few seconds and I turn so I'm facing Charles.

'What happened?' I ask him.

'You're too good at reading me.' He laughs. His laugh is low and dark. He's not happy enough to be joking around.

'I'm good at reading your emotions, I can't read your mind though,' I smile gently, 'What's the matter?'

'Libs,' he shakes his head and his eyes fill with tears, 'the cancer has spread. It's become more aggressive than they expected it would. They're putting her on different medications to try and deal with the spread, but they've told us...' His voice breaks and he's weeping now. I pull myself towards him and take him in my arms, letting him sob into my shoulder. 'They've told us that any treatments now, all they're going to do is prolong her life, they won't...they can't save her.'

'Oh Char.' My heart breaks for him and my own tears come now.

'They've given her weeks, she's...she's not expected to make it until the end of summer.'

'Char.' I don't have words. I'm breaking into tiny pieces for him, so I can only just begin to imagine what this must be doing to him.

'My mom wants,' he stops and pulls back from my arms, wiping his tears away and trying to be strong, 'my mom wants to spend the last weeks away from here, she...she doesn't want to die in the hospital and...' He's sobbing again, but I know now that he needs to get this out, so I don't interrupt him. I don't pull him back into a hug. I just sit with him and wait, crying myself as I try and find a way I can help him through this. 'She,' he starts again, 'she doesn't want to die in this house, because she doesn't want us to live in a house that she died in.'

'So where are you going?' I ask.

'My mom wants to go up to the lake cabin. One last time.' He forces the words out between tears, 'We're leaving tomorrow evening and driving through the night until we get there. We'll stay until...' He can't say it, but he doesn't have to. I know when they'll be coming home, and it's not something either of us want to think about.

'What do you need?' I ask. I'm already thinking about the amount of organizing that will need to be taken care of. All of the kids will need to have a few weeks worth of clothes packed. Everything will need to be cleaned in the house so he doesn't have to face that when he gets home. He'll need to load up the car, make sure there's fuel. Make out a route.

'I need you.' He says simply.

'I'm here.'

'Come with us.' He catches my eye.

'What?'

'Your mom has been talking to my mom, she said that you want to get away from here for a while. My mom needs to get away from here, and I...I need you.'

'Ok.'

'Think about it first,' he says, brushing his tears away with the back of his hand, 'this won't just be a fun lake vacation. You know why we're going there. It's not going to be easy. So take some time, take tonight and think it over.'

'I don't need to think about it Char. If you need me with you, then I'm with you.'

Forty Four – Charles

'Thanks for coming over.' I clap Colin on the back as he comes through the door. His eyes catch onto Libby's as she continues the half hour long struggle so far to get Georgia to go to bed. The smile on Colin's face falters for a second, until Libby is out of sight, back in the lounge. He looks back at me.

'So I'm guessing you know what happened there.' He waves his hand in the general direction of where Libby was just standing.

'Yeah.' I nod. 'I didn't know if you wanted me to know.'

'I figured she'd tell you.' He shrugs. 'Listen man, I'm really sorry about...well everything. Your mom is great and all of this, it just really sucks.'

'Yes, it does.' I've already broken down once tonight up on the roof with Libby. I can't do it again, there isn't enough time. I need to keep busy.