Authors: NC Marshall
I
stand unmoving, looking at Adam, who is still at Jess’s grave. It’s strange. He
doesn’t look like I thought he would. I had imagined him to look like Sarah but
they look nothing alike, you wouldn’t even guess they were brother and sister.
However, I can see immediately what attracted Jess to him. He’s incredibly handsome,
there’s no denying that; his short hair is blonde and has a slight curl to it,
his build is tall, broad and muscular. His skin is a golden shade of brown.
Even in the dark shadows I can make out that his eyes are the brightest, most
intense shade of green I think I’ve ever seen. He wears deep blue denim jeans
and a short black jacket, his hands are buried deep in his pockets. I can see
his breath in the freezing air as he starts to speak.
“Are
you Nat?” His voice is thick and smooth, his accent broad.
I
nod, looking him in the eyes, I let my vision adjust further to the darkness,
and only now see that his own eyes are glistening with tears.
“Yes,
you must be Adam?” It seems a pointless question to ask, as I already know he
is, but I’m not sure what else to say.
He
looks off into the distance and then back to me. “This isn’t really how I
pictured us meeting. I was going to give you a call later in the week. Sarah
passed your number on to me.”
I
nod, feeling awkward. Although I had imagined this meeting in my head, the
reality was different, so much harder, so much more surreal. I can’t seem to
pull my eyes away from him. He catches me staring.
“What's
wrong?” he asks, glancing behind him, as if looking to see what I find so
interesting.
“Sorry,
nothing, you're just not what I expected,” I say, embarrassed.
“What
were you expecting?” he says, then pauses, considering. “Don't tell me... you
imagined a stereotypical surfer dude to pull up in a ute, with a koala on the
back seat and a surfboard under my arm, right?” he jokes. “Actually, I do have
a ute back at home, but I’ve always been a crappy surfer, and I’m not the
biggest fan of koalas. They stink.”
I
can't help but laugh, already something about him makes me soften around the
edges. I have no doubt that most women would become nothing but putty in his
hands. I suddenly remember why I’m here, and stop chuckling abruptly.
Adam
sighs, looking back at Jess’s grave, directly behind him.
“I’m
so sorry about the accident,” he says, his tone now deadly serious. “I had no
idea until Sarah called me. I was back in Australia by then and...”
“Why
didn’t my sister tell me that you and she were together when she travelled to
Australia, that you two got married?” I ask, cutting Adam off mid-sentence. My
voice sounds hard and unsympathetic, but I don’t care. Adam has a lot of
explaining to do, so he needs to start doing it, and fast.
“Should
we go inside?” He points to the church that I have just left. There’s a small
adjoining room that I know will be empty today, so I agree. Normally I would be
reluctant to follow a complete stranger anywhere, but I have to remind myself
that this man isn’t a stranger; he was my sister’s husband.
We
stay silent until we get back to the church. As we walk away from Jess’s
graveside, I have a strange feeling that someone is watching us. The feeling is
so intense that I actually turn around, half expecting to see Dan and Josh
there. I shrug the feeling off, and pull my phone from my pocket. I should call
Dan, he will start to worry if I’m not home soon. I call him and make up an
excuse, that I have decided to stay and watch some of the carol service at the
church. Dan doesn’t even question my lies, and tells me that he and Josh have
settled down with Mum to watch a film on television. As I hang up, the phone
slips from my gloved hand and lands in the thick snow near Adam’s feet. He
swoops down to quickly pick it up and pauses briefly, looking at the wet
screen, before he wipes it off on his coat sleeve and gives it back to me.
As
we reach the church, Adam swings open the heavy oak door and holds it for me to
enter. I head through a small corridor to the adjoining room of the chapel. I
know the room won’t be used today, so Father Dempsey won’t mind me borrowing
it. I walk in slowly and sit down on a plastic chair at the far side of the
small room.
The
place brings back memories from when Jess and I used to come to Sunday School
here. Now it’s just an empty space, used to store tables and chairs for the
church hall events. Only an old blackboard on the back wall gives any hint
towards its past use.
Adam
pulls a chair from the top of a full pile, positioning it next to mine, and
sits down so that he’s facing me. I look at his left hand and notice that
there’s no wedding band, and feel a small sense of relief wash over me.
“Jeez,”
Adam pauses, evidently seeing me in the light for the first time since meeting
me. “I’d seen photos of you that Jess showed me back in Australia, but you look
even more like her in person,” he says.
I
ignore his statement. I’d heard it a million times before. From him, I feel no
compliment. I shift uneasily in my chair, trying to find a position to make me
feel a little more relaxed, but soon give up and settle on crossing one leg
over the other. “Were you and Jess still married when she died?” I ask, just to
confirm my assumption.
Adam
instinctively moves his right hand to his left, rubbing the place where I
suppose a ring would have once been. There’s no mark there to prove it’s only
recently been removed. I feel a sense of optimism as he shakes his head.
“No.
Jess filed for divorce a year after she returned back to England. She told me
she had fallen in love with Matt. I signed the papers and sent them straight back
to her when I received them. It was evident it was over between us, there was
no point in making things any more complicated than they were already.”
“Did
you love her?” I ask.
“Yes,
more than anything. I still do.”
“Is
that why you looked for her, when you came to visit your sister last year?”
Adam
shuffles uncomfortably in his seat, just as I had moments ago. I find myself
wondering if he feels as out of his comfort zone as I do mine.
“Yeah,
I didn’t know that she lived so close to Sarah, but once I was here I realised
Jess’s mum’s house wasn’t far away at all. I remembered the address from when
she used to send letters and postcards to your mum and dad.”
“You
know she married Matt, don’t you?”
“Yeah,”
he sounds quite bitter. “I had a feeling she would marry him. She told me when
we met up again, but it didn’t exactly take a rocket scientist to figure out
that would happen.”
“So
why did you still want to see her when you knew she was already happily married?”
Adam
smirks smugly. I feel like punching him in the face. Any softness I felt
towards him in our initial meeting has gone.
“Married,
yes... not so sure about the happy part,” he says, matter of factly.
Smug
bastard. How dare he pass judgement on someone else’s marriage when he couldn’t
even make his own work! It was true that Jess and Matt hadn’t been happy for a
while, but I begrudge Adam saying anything about it. He has no right.
Adam
continues. “The only reason Jess even got with Matt is because of your dad. She
wanted to honor his memory and didn’t want to disappoint him. She told me your
father always hoped she and Matt would get together. The truth was she loved
me
she was in love with
me
. She couldn’t let the family down.”
I’m
shocked. I always thought Jess loved Matt with all her heart. Maybe I was
wrong. It wasn’t the first time I’d learnt something new about sister. I’m not
sure if anything would surprise me about her now.
“So
she didn’t tell anyone about you because she didn’t want to disappoint them?”
“When
we first got together she was just nervous about telling anyone, especially
Matt. Then things just got out of hand, and too much time had passed to tell
anyone.”
“Then
you got married?”
“Yeah,
we got married three days before she left to come back to the UK. She was going
to tell you all, but then when your dad died, she couldn’t.”
“So
why didn’t she come back to you?”
“I
told you. Because she knew Matt was in love with her, and she wanted to do what
your dad had wished. I tried to get her to come back. I tried for months, but
she wouldn’t. Then she filed for divorce. She said she loved Matt, that she
didn’t love me anymore, but I knew that was a load of bull. I knew the real
reason she was with Matt.”
“Then
you didn’t see her again?”
“Not
for five years, until I came over to the UK to visit Sarah and Sam. They had
just had their first baby. I came over to meet my niece.”
I
nod. “Were you there? The night she died?” I ask outright. I really don’t care
if I hurt his feelings. “Did you argue? Are you the reason my sister killed
herself?” I fire the questions at him one after one, they roll off my tongue so
easily because these answers are the only ones I really want to know. I don’t
care about their marriage. I don’t care about the time they spent together in
Australia and how much they loved one another. All that is gone now, finished,
in the past. I want to know what happened when he came here, and how the hell
he persuaded my sister to move to the other side of the world with him.
Adam
looks startled, like a deer caught in headlights. “Whoa, whoa!” he stutters. He
lowers his voice and holds his hands up in the air in protest. “Sarah said it
was an accident, that... she fell.”
“Nope,”
I say. “I thought it was an accident too, but there was a witness who called it
in to the police. They said they saw her not long before the police discovered
her body. The witness said she looked upset—distraught, actually. The police
say there’s a high chance that she could have jumped.” I recite what Ryan had said
to me only a couple of months ago. The words still sting, like salt to an open
wound. I'm ashamed that I’ve had to go against Ryan’s wishes and tell Adam.
Adam
gets to his feet. I can see that I’ve upset him, he looks shaken. But I
continue, regardless. I want to question him more while he’s off guard. “What
if she jumped, Adam? Tell me, is it a coincidence that the night before the day
my sister was due to flee the country with you, she decided to kill herself?”
“You
knew about us going back to Australia together?” he asks, apparently shocked.
“Yes,”
I say, “I found booking confirmation for your flights in an e-mail. That’s how
I knew your sister’s address.”
Adam
bows his head and speaks to the floor. It’s as if he finds it hard to look at me
and I wonder if it’s because he sees Jess in front of him.
“When
Jess didn’t show up at the airport that day, I knew we were over. I’d given her
an ultimatum. I knew that part of her still loved Matt, so I’d said if she
loved me she would meet me at the airport and start afresh with our lives. I
made her choose between me and her husband. I thought she would come. After
all, when we booked the flights she was all for it. When she didn’t show, I
assumed she’d made her choice, and she’d chosen Matt.”
Adam
walks over to a large arched stained glass window. He rubs his head as if
trying to concentrate, piecing together the information I have given him as if
it’s a puzzle. He is facing me. The bright street light outside shines through
the stained glass, spreading green and red shards of light across the area. I
can hear the church choir starting up. The beautiful voices of children singing
Christmas carols begin to flow into the room.
“We
had seen each other a couple of times while I was in England. It wasn’t some
seedy affair, and Jess was going to tell you and her family about it before she
left. I know it was going to be last minute, but everything just happened so
fast. As soon as we saw each other again, it was like all those feelings from
the past just came flooding back. Only this time, they felt even stronger.” He
bows his head, “For me they did, anyway. I cancelled my original flight home so
I could spend a little longer here, with Jess. I couldn’t bear to leave her
again. For that to be it. I just wanted to be with her.”
“Even
though you were splitting up a marriage?” I ask, raising my eyebrows.
“The
marriage was over, Nat, you know that as well as I do, Jess talked to you all
the time. She and Matt had been arguing for months. In any case, he broke up my
marriage, so let's just call it payback.”
I
laugh sarcastically “That’s completeley different, Adam.” I raise my voice over
the loud sound of the choir so he can hear me more clearly. “Matt knew nothing
about you, he didn’t even know you existed.”
Adam
looks at me with those piercing green eyes, which catch my attention and hold
it.
“I
don’t know what he’s told you Nat, but I’m the reason Matt and Jess had argued
the morning before she left for your mum’s place. They had decided to separate.
Jess told him everything. He knew all about me, Australia, our relationship,
our marriage, everything. So, if you're going to quiz anyone on the reason Jess
died, I think you should start with her husband.”