Used To Be

Grief didn’t have a clock ticking down on it. She hadn’t told Darcey as much when he’d apologised for wearing his ring that first time around, but Sadie believed it whole heartedly. You couldn’t slap a deadline on it and wait for the cracks in the shell of someone to heal right on time. Some might’ve bounced back from the death of someone they loved in months, others just didn’t, ever. She’d never asked her mom if she still grieved for her dad, but the signs had always been there. The pall that seemed to fall over the house she’d grown up in in those weeks before her birthday. Her mom would paste on a smile, pull together some sort of birthday treat for her – even if they’d barely had enough money to handle the rent that week – and try to make sure she couldn’t see it. She always did though, feeling the grief like a black hole in the corner of the room.

Darcey didn’t only have the loss of his wife opening up something similar in the middle of his life now, he had his sister’s disappearance too. Was that vacuum drawing almost every ounce of life out of him, leaving nothing but that hollow shell behind? Oh, he was making a good show of trying to make it seem like there was something left, but Sadie would’ve called bullshit on there being much there. It felt like she’d turn up at the apartment one day and would close her hand around nothing, just the freckles that stood out dark against pale skin drifting away like dust.

It scared her as much as Mandy’s disappearance did. There weren’t many people she let deeper into her life than just the surface. She didn’t want to be that girl, clingy and constantly seeing every worst case scenario playing out in the back of your head, but when you started to really give a shit about people, it happened. You cared and you felt ripples of what spilled out from them rolling through you, like a startled breath bringing an all too still body back to life, or the nervous twitch of long, thin fingers against your own. That little sick feeling was there when you realised all the help you could give was trying to shove food down tight throats and hold up those shrinking frames long enough for them to do all the hard work. Was that how her mom had felt when her dad had recovered enough from his injuries to go off to war again?

On route Sadie had kept an eye on him, those little glances cast aside. Checking. Looking for the first sign of a crack opening up, one that didn’t come until they were seated outside the Diner. She scooted in close, trying to anchor the two of them at the table with that squeeze of her hand around those raw boned knuckles. Darcey sagged close, enough that she could feel that he wasn’t gone yet, that spare frame still filling the air next to her the way the vacuum of her dad didn’t. That grin was reassuring, the laugh, weak as it was even more so. Her grin grew, her head tilting like she was weighing something up. ”They’re the benchmark now … everything that passes these lips is gonna have me asking ‘are these like yorkie good?’” That pampering was in the rear view mirror, the book too, everything shuffled aside to make the room for the huge hole Mandy’s disappearance had carved out. All of that stuff could be picked up later, when things were back the way they had been and if they couldn’t be …

Nope. Not entering her brain. At some point Darcey, Nicky or the cops would turn up something and then Mandy would be back with her brothers fussing over her. The way it should’ve been with her dad, leaving the three of them sitting here getting pancakes some summer day when he showed his kid where he’d grown up, instead of her mom maybe being the one bringing those plates out.

It wasn’t her mom that appeared, but Sadie shot the familiar woman a smile as Darcey called her over. She pushed her hair back behind her ear, glancing up as Darcey looked at her for reassurance. ”Absolutely, yeah. Black for me, and as big as you’ve got them.” An added lifeline in unadulterated caffeine. Sadie’s brows hitched as Darcey’s language lingered in that darker pool of British vernacular, raw and as blue as her own mouth could be. ”Two forks, please,” Sadie added, although she was pressing most of it on Darcey, trying to fuel whatever still burned inside of him. Her thumb slid across Darcey’s knuckles, as knobbly as his spine – more familiar though – highlighting that gold band that circled his fourth finger.

The waitress was hovering, like she was waiting for her to slide her menu over too. Sadie went to reach for it, but the woman’s gaze had already moved on, fixing on that gold band like a magpie’s eye. The accent – her own shiny, catching her attention as Darcey had waded in at the club, what she’d fixed her teeth into and started building the book around. ”I’m definitely lucky,” Sadie started, before the awkward worked its way in and Darcey stiffened like a brittle twig, his fingers tightening around hers in a way that had her feeling that gold ring like an imprint again. That reminder that Darcey’s great love was beneath the ground now, marked by a stone that must’ve spelled out every ounce of what his wife had meant.

Heat rose in Sadie’s cheeks, a light stain that wasn’t embarrassment over getting slid into the woman’s place, but more the first sign of apology to Darcey. She’d made the grab after all and now he was … shaking her off. Sadie’s fingers loosened, although she still felt that imprint against her finger as she pushed the menu back across the table. ”We’re not. It’s … friendly. We’re friends … hungry friends. Those pancakes?” She glanced over her shoulder, like she could somehow psychically fire the order through the glass window to her mom, and the scruffy looking dude who’d taken over the place yet – the one she hadn’t interrogated yet – although her mom had called him a decent boss. It looked like there was something more on the tip of the woman’s tongue, but she blathered something about getting the order back.

Was that a look? Fuck. That had been a look, a ‘oh, so he’s getting friendly with someone who isn’t the wife then.

”Sorry,” Sadie mumbled the moment the woman was out of sight. ”That was on me. I guess I should take it as a compliment … most of my mom’s coworkers seem to spend their shifts asking her why her daughter’s not given her grandkids yet … kinda does take a husband for that. Or, you know … the ability to keep my mouth shut.” A tight hum rolled out of Sadie as she planted her elbows on the edge of the table to drag her hair back from cheeks that were even hotter now. Darcey had been married, had maybe been looking down the barrel of all of that, before he’d ended up a widower. Now kids, nieces, nephews, just the concept of them, were caught up in this bubble that was probably stretching thinner and thinner in his head, just waiting for the wrong bit of news to pop. And she was jamming her foot right in there. Sadie pressed her lips together, trying to keep her mouth shut over the next emotional mine she laid with her – what did they call it? Big gob?

Tagged: DARCEY REID * Word Count: 1294

Other kids learned to swim in nice, heated indoor pools. Places with floaties and a tile bottom you could walk across without going under, even if you were still like three foot five and three quarters (that three quarters made a shit ton of difference when you were 8, and OK, sometimes it did when you were 28 too). Places were you could see through the water and avoid the nasties without your goggles. Not her.

Her dad’s team had called it being prepared, Sadie called it bullshit. What it had been was a massive splash as they’d coaxed her off of the flat rock they’d dived from and the world immediately stopped, freezing with an icy punch that knocked every ounce of air from her lungs. It had hurt, the pain and the murky dark the only things she could sense. It wasn’t anything compared to this though.

Darcey and Jenk couldn’t have been further apart physically – one a reed (kinda poetic really), like the ones that stung her hands as she grabbed them to try and scramble back on the bank, the other practically a Polar bear as he scooped her up out of the water, not even shivering. Somehow, despite his own dip in the pond, Jenk had been hot to the touch as he bundled her up in a towel and told her he was proud of her for not panicking. All she got from Darcey now was cold, slapping icily at her as he tore himself away, like he was terrified of losig one of those skinny fingers that had at least been warm against hers a moment ago to frost bite.

It was a miracle there was enough heat left in her to rise in her cheeks, but it did, an almost apologetic look aimed at the waitress. Like it was her fault that the gesture had been misconstrued. A wedding ring, joined hands, warm voices when she’d strolled out – just like her dragging her swimming costume and towel down that July, right before she’d turned 9 – an announcement of sorts. Darcey hadn’t denied it, slipping into some sort of silence, like a turtle retreating into its shell as that murky water was disturbed, leaving it up to her to try and explain it while she was being frozen out. Yeah, she was the one who was gonna end up with frostbite here, lips and finger tips turning blue until she had hot soup poured out of a flask for her, or that coffee in her hands.

Her fingers felt brittle as twigs as they swept into her hair – bare twigs, a point she practically made in trying to explain that the woman had meant nothing by it. Pale eyes swept over Darcey’s stony profile as he propped his elbows on the table, his chin resting on them, staring down at the table like that was somehow less problematic than meeting her eye. Maybe it was. ”I’m still sorry,” she told him as he blew her apology off. For a moment Sadie pressed her lips together, her fingers lacing so tight she could feel the cold practically bone deep as she babbled (what else was she meant to do in all that silence, in that freezing dark sphere where she could see the air bubbles she should’ve followed rippling away and disappearing above her head while she kicked to try and follow them.

Dark brows furrowed when the marble bust finally cracked. More ice, all kinds of bitterness coating Darcey’s muttered words. Sadie swallowed hard against it, not giving in to the impulse to apologise again. She crossed her arms over her chest, tucking her bare hands out of sight. ”Hey! You think my mom would believe a word of that shit even if she did … which she won’t. It was a compliment that she thought I was married to a decent guy, one my mom knows about, thanks.” Screw her for trying to do the best thing by a friend struggling against the seriously shit things happening in his life, screw her for trying to help. Screw her for seeing something in him worth being proud of attached to – not that she was and she’d never let herself believe for a minute– alright, maybe there were times when she’d wondered about someday, but more fool her for it, obviously.

Guilt slapped in on that cold wind and the reminders that her mouth hadn’t been kept shut and her hands hadn’t been kept to herself. Sadie twitched in her seat as he stood and tugged his jacket on, like the slap hadn’t come with his words, but with him snatching himself away the whole way, not just those few inches that had already felt like an abyss. ”I meant when I said I’d help you look. You don’t want to eat, you don’t wanna stay here, fine, but at least let me help some way…” Standing up, Sadie turned to glance through the window. She saw the other waitress tucked in close to her mom at the counter, probably whispering in her ear just the way Darcey had thought she would. Sadie blinked hard against the burn that started at the back of her eyes – that little voice in the back of her head cackling, telling her there was a reason why you didn’t jump in that water a second time – and shook her head at her mom. She gestured, back in the direction they’d come, a silent ’don’t worry about the order, we’re done’. In more ways than one.

Tagged: DARCEY REID * Word Count: 928