Crazy but Sweet, Sweet but Crazy

Epilogue 3 (END)

"The last time I visited Mrs.-" Elliot cleared his throat. "Isabella. In the most lucid state I've ever seen her in, she apologized to me. She said she didn't mean to- kill Sophia."

Leaning his upper body against the railing of the rooftop, Landon simply took another inhale from his cigarette.  "Mm."

"I couldn't visit her after she said that. It's been some time. Is she doing okay?"

"Very. I told her that dad died because of a heart attack. She was laughing and crying. Man, why is it so hard to see a properly sane person in our house?" musing dryly, Landon closed his eyes to the gush of breeze against his face.

"She's doing fine so stop feeling obliged to do anything for her. It was an accident, but she did cause your mum's death."

The sky was a vivid orange along the horizon. A heart attack.

What an anticlimax manner of death that ill-suited the man who once seemed above man. "What do you think dad was feeling? Dying."

"He was probably thinking 'Fuck all my assets are going to the two sons of bitches'. Feeling? Not so sure. You met him once after he went to prison, but he never once let me visit him.

"But somehow I can very well picture him sitting in cell. Even now. It's like he's still sitting there in orange- not really feeling anything.

"Maybe thinking. About how to get back to those who put him there."

Elliot lightly elbowed Landon. "How did it feel? Sitting there in orange."

Landon glanced at Elliot askance, and muttered, "The food was shit."

"I told you not to say it in court," Elliot chuckled lightly. "You didn't have to-"

"I told you, it wasn't for your benefit, to add credence to dad's crimes, whatever sort of stupid thing." Landon's voice was harsher, gruffer.

"It was for my own selfish benefit, so that I can get over the shitty feeling of having beaten up the wrong guy for a few years."

"So did you get over it? You can get over it now."

"You don't get over these kind of things, you prick." Letting out a shaky ring of smoke from his lips, Landon added after some hesitation, "You don't know because you haven't almost screwed up someone big time like me."

"You didn't almost screw me up big time, Landon."

Pulling his jacket tightly around himself, Landon was quiet for a while before he spoke.

"You and I are just lucky. Lucky that you didn't end up dead at the end of a staircase like your mum did."

At the sound of laughter downstairs, Landon glanced at the stairs leading up to the rooftop. "Who's here?"

"Clare. Bianca. Noah. Ester and her boyfriend- Benjamin. Ian. Sonia."

"...What about the...two of them?"

"Do you mean Jessica and Michael? They're traveling. And I don't think Ian is ready to meet Michael yet."

"Right. Ian Neil must've felt like shit. That's what you get for worshipping someone and realizing he's a mere mortal," remarked Landon caustically, shrugging.

Just like how Landon realized Richard was a mere mortal.

Zipping up his jacket, Elliot smiled. "By the way, I forgot to mention a name just now. Kayla Nilsson's here too."

Leaning over the railing, he pointed to a green mini cooper that had pulled over in front of his house. "There she is."

Seeing Kayla Nilsson's red hair bob out of the open door, Landon's mouth hung open.