Song recommendation: Marjorie by Taylor Swift.
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I've been grieving for a family I barely knew.
Eighteen years spent wishing to relive a mere eight.
Grief comes in five stages.
Denial.
Both Gran and I strongly believed that my parents and Adam were secretly alive, just missing somewhere. We would rather have believed that they abandoned us, than believe that they had really died. Turns out, they'd done both. They'd left me as a child, then died before I had the chance to say goodbye.
Anger.
I moved to New York, expecting a new beginning, like the settlers from Europe. The whole purpose of the state of New York was to have the freedom to follow your dreams and be who you are. Pretty patriotic if I do say so myself. But when things weren't as glamorous as the brochures had promised, it sparked anger within me. I'm almost certain that if my family and Gran had been around, I would've been the people pleasing, quiet, loser that I'd been all my life before. Instead, I took that flaming hot fury, and torched poor Detective Horan. Mixed feelings of jealousy, intimidation, and loss, drove me to become cruel.
Bargaining.
Montauk. I begged Styles to give me the case as soon as I had an inkling that it could be attached to my family. I convinced him that I could finish it off, when in reality I was just looking for a lead, and needed to handle it myself. Christmas Eve. I asked Niall to be my partner. I promised him glory, as long as he helped me work the case. I deceived him by making him think I was an honourable, brave, selfless detective. All I wanted was to find them.
Depression.
Working undercover dug me into a hole. I haven't enjoyed myself in months. Every day blended into each other. Nothing felt worth it anymore. I was depressed, but I was also at work. There was nothing I could do about it. I was starting to lose hope that I would find them. There's no glamorous way to put it. There's no romantic prose here. This felt worse than death. A constant cycle, following the sun, grieving, dreading, hoping, crushing, falling.
Acceptance.
We were almost there.
Now, we start the cycle again.
The painful eighteen years would now turn into the rest of my life.
All hope was killed.
No family Christmas dinners. No father to walk me down the aisle on my wedding day. No family pictures where Adam pulls a funny face as soon as the camera flashes. No driving through the suburbs, listening to Billy Joel.
That was done.
It was all gone, for real this time.
I kept my composure around Felicity and Brielle, not wanting to blow my cover. That was the one thing I was sure of. Don't let them see who you are.
When they were ready, we walked back to the McBride mansion. My family's mansion. I didn't want to go inside. I didn't want to picture my parents laughing with my brother over dinner with the McBride's. I didn't want to picture Adam and Felicity's wedding that I'd missed. I didn't want to feel their spirit through the house. I certainly didn't want to sleep in my mother's bed. I didn't want to believe that all the bad things that have happened to me in that house were affiliated with my Mom, my Dad, and my Brother.
I made a stupid excuse, like I had to run some errands or something. I didn't know what kind of aristocrats needed to run errands, but apparently I did. Felicity thought nothing more of it as she disappeared into the house with her little girl.
I took Niall's car and I drove. I drove straight back to the graveyard. I didn't think about anything. I just drove. The late afternoon greeted me with cooling air. I parked the car a few blocks back, making sure nobody would recognize the car in front of the church. I slammed the door with more force than I'd intended, needing to take my emotions out on something that I couldn't hurt. It was probably a good thing that I was alone.
I trudged through the graveyard, dragging my feet as if the ground were magnetized. The brittle, yellow, grass broke underneath my feet with sad crunches. The last leaves fell from the trees, breaking off as their life came to a close.
Death must be a busy guy. Collecting souls all over the world. All the violence, all the war, every murder case I'd worked, involved that hooded spirit of passage. It made me wonder why he couldn't have just spared my family? It would cut down his workload, I wouldn't be stuck in a graveyard, and I'd be able to hug my family one more time.
That's all I really wanted.
A hug.
I walked to Adam's grave, looked down at it with glassy eyes. This was the first time I'd ever had to look down on my big brother. He'd always been so much taller than me. He used to tell me that one day I might outgrow him. I didn't think it would be true. I guess I shouldn't jump to conclusions so easily. Anything can happen.
My eyes shifted to the grave beside Adam's. There was a wide, marble headstone. Beautiful, pearly white, split by veins of grey. It was elegant, just as I'd expect from my parents. Etched in the stone were the words I never thought I'd see again.
Elizabeth and Benjamin Carter.
1968-2018
Lovers for eternity.
I'd seen this before. A strange sense of deja vu swept my mind. The last time I'd seen this, was as an eight year old girl, wearing a frilly black funeral dress, standing beside her grandmother, grieving her dear parents.
Now, there was a twenty five year old girl, wearing lululemons and a cardigan, standing alone, grieving her dear parents, for real this time.
I took a shuddered breath, then sat.
I sat between the two graves, placing my hands on the ground where their bodies sat beneath, no doubtedly decomposed and crumbled. The dead grass poked through my leggings onto my skin, but the slight irritation was no match for the emptiness I felt inside.
"There's so many things I wish I could tell you guys." I spoke quietly, despite knowing there was nobody there to hear me. If I spoke quietly, my family were the closest corpses, so only they would hear me.
I obviously knew I wouldn't get a response.
"I talk to Gran all the time." I admitted. "I'm sorry I never talked to you. I kinda figured- I mean, I never did because I..." my voice became thick with sadness. "I thought I'd be able to say it to your faces."
The first tear fell from my eye. The first of many.
"I'm a detective now." I told them quietly, trying to ignore my urge to sob. "That's probably not what you wanted me to be, considering our... extended family. But I love it. Well, I used to anyway." I sighed. "Right now it kind of feels like I'm being tortured."
Silence.
"But hey I guess I have it better than you guys right?" I let out a laugh. I'm such an idiot, complaining to dead people. I could have it so much worse.
"I feel bad." I started again. "I thought I'd been talking to your graves for years. Everything I've told you. All the math tests I've bragged about acing, all the stress I've cried to you about, all of my secrets I've told, you never really heard. I've been living a lie."
Living a lie.
I paused for a moment, trying to collect my feelings.
Then I spoke.
"Why didn't you take me with you?"
The tears flowed down my face steadily. My chest was in so much pain. My heart physically felt like it was breaking.
"However this turned out-" I sobbed. "I knew I would be angry. If you actually died in the car crash, then you'd be gone forever. If I found you alive, that meant you'd abandoned me." I shook my head. "As it turns out, you had the audacity to do both."
My parents had lied to me, and never thought to reach out to me once I was an adult.
Before my mother killed herself, she didn't even think to maybe call me, or send a letter. She left without saying goodbye.
Same with Dad. He didn't think it was a good idea to go back home? I was still with Gran, I was in University. We could've had so much.
But they didn't. They left me to fend for myself for the rest of my life.
"And why would you name me after Gran?" I found another resentment hiding deep within my bones. "My name is Ophelia Carter. Gran's name was Ophelia Carter. I don't even have my own name." I hit my fist on the ground. "Do you even realize how hard it was for me to grow up thinking I had to be her?!" I cried, my body shaking with anger and distress. "I didn't even get to have my own life!"
It was true. I loved Gran, but it was unfair.
"I worked so hard! So fucking hard! I worked to the point of self destruction. I barely slept. I barely ate. I barely left my room. All so that I could be successful in her name." My jaw clenched. "Why was this pressure out on me to finish what she started?! She was the greatest female detective in the NYPD for fucks sake! How am I supposed to top that?!"
I hung my head low, letting the tears fall to the cold ground. I had never in my life felt so terrible.
"Who could I have been if I weren't just an extension of her?" I asked to nobody in particular. "Would I have ended up as a detective if I hadn't grown up in a precinct? What if I wanted to be a historian? Or an English teacher? What if I wanted to work at museums or libraries? Why did you set me up for failure?"
God it was so hard to sit in front of these stones, pouring my heart out, never to receive an answer.
"I was so sad." I shook my head as the tears dropped down to my sweater. "I was so unbelievably sad, and lonely. I had nobody until I had Niall."
Niall.
My family would've loved Niall. Especially my Dad. He was always up to talk about music, or random facts. The same as Niall was. They had so much in common. I was so upset that my two favourite men would never be able to meet.
"I don't know what to do about Niall." I rested my head in my hands, shaking uncontrollably from the sadness of the whole situation. "What am I supposed to do? I know that what I said was terrible. I can own up to that, but what if he doesn't forgive me? What if he leaves me too? No offense."
Actually, full offense. If they were alive, I'd be screaming at them.
"I was always so scared of doing something wrong when I was growing up. But since you've left, I've done some absolutely horrific things." I sighed, feeling my chest grow tighter. "You would be so disappointed in me."
I needed to talk to someone who would talk back. I just needed to hear a comforting voice.
I could only think of one person.
I pulled out my phone, and called Niall.
I didn't care if he was mad at me. I just needed to talk to him, even if it was an argument.
The phone sang its muffled, buzzing, song.
Bzzzzt
Bzzzzt
Bzzzzt
Bzzzzt
"Hi! You've reached Nathan Kennedy. I'm probably away from my phone at the moment, so leave a message!"
Of course.
He was either sleeping, or ignoring me. Both were very possible options.
No matter the circumstances, I left a message anyway.
"Hey bud." I let out a breath of anticipation. "I was kind of expecting you to pick up your phone. I'm not sure if Ha- Alex- told you anything, but I'm safe. Kind of. I guess a better phrase would be: 'I'm not dead'. Obviously. Obviously I'm not dead. God I didn't plan this out very well." I rambled. "A lot of stuff has happened to me in the past few hours. I would prefer to tell you this in person, but I don't really want to come home right now."
I was so scared to tell him.
What will he think of me?
Will he see me any differently? He's loved me throughout my flaws in the past, but what if this was the breaking point? What if he didn't want to be associated with a criminal family?
God this was horrifying.
"Sorry, I'm still here. I'm just thinking." I decided I couldn't lie to him anymore. "I found my family. They weren't very far away, but they're..." My voice cracked, becoming swollen with sobs. "Oh Niall." I shook my head, trying to hold in my cries. "They're dead." It hurt so much to say out loud. "All three of them. They're all dead."
That wasn't even the worst.
"And my Mother- my Mom-" I took a shaky breath in, feeling the pain in my chest grow larger. "She was a McBride. She's the dead sister. We've been sleeping in her bed."
I had to tell him.
"I'm-" God Philly. Spit it out. "I'm a McBride. Pureblood. Carter through marriage."
It was out. Finally.
"And..." My voice wavered, the sadness shining through like a window on a sunny day. "And I'm sorry for what I said. It was so wrong, so horrible of me. You took care of me when I was dying. Yet, I just left you with Harry, as if you could fend for yourself. I'm so sorry." I tried to put as much of my heart into my words as I could. It broke as I laced the pieces of it into my apology, giving it to Niall as a gift wrapped in grief. "If I could never touch you again, I would still love you as much as ever. Because I fell in love with your laugh, with your mannerisms, with your courage. I fell in love with your humour, and your mind, and your voice. If I could never touch you again, I would ask you to sing instead for me. I would ask you to make me a shitty cold brew. I would ask you to take me on a long drive because I know that's what you love to do." A fresh, warm, tear fell from my eyes. "Because I didn't fall in love with you when we had sex. I fell in love with you when you showed me kindness, despite my actions. You were there for me. I should've been there for you. I'm so, so sorry."
A shaky exhale slipped between my lips.
"If you don't want me around anymore, I understand. I can call Malik. He can take you home. I'll make up a cover story, it's not a big deal. And I'm sorry that I messed this up. This wasn't supposed to happen. But it's just my luck, hey?"
God what was I doing? This was ridiculous.
"I'm sorry. I love you. Call me back if you can." I paused. "I'm at the graveyard down the street. That's where they're buried. For real this time. I don't know if I can leave them just yet. Anyway, I'm sorry again. Bye."
I hung up the phone, then stared up at the sky.
As if on cue, it began to rain.
The bulbs of water plummeted down to the earth. Were they really falling though? I mean, truthfully, nothing fell to the earth. It was only ever pulled in. Gravity won't make you fall, it simply draws you back to the ground.
Right now, gravity was pulling me in three directions.
It's keeping me to the ground, even though I wanted to just float away into the atmosphere.
It's pulling me to Niall. I wanted so badly to go back to the McBride house and apologize to him in person, and explain myself, even if it meant having him leave me.
The only thing keeping me away was the force that made me cling to the stones in front of me. I'd spent eighteen years searching for this very moment— not necessarily in this connotation. I would've preferred them to be living and breathing, but I guess we can't get everything we want in life.
I just needed to stay with them. Even if they were dead, they were still there. And that's all I've wanted for so many years. Just to have them there.
I couldn't leave my family,
Even though they'd left me.
This gravity was tearing me apart, pushing me down, suffocating me. I didn't know what I wanted. I didn't know who to fix first: Niall, the case, or myself.
It was a decision between my past, and my future.
I've always liked to push the past away from me, I liked to live as the new woman I've grown to become, but for today, I figured it was okay to dwell on the past.
I knew I'd never get the closure I deserved, but that's just something I'd have to live with. If I could fix just a small part of my broken heart by staying with them, I would.
I moved from my spot between the graves, and leaned up against my Mother and Father's tombstone. I was a little wary about putting my full weight on the stone, scared that I'd knock it over. Then I remembered that it hadn't really been eighteen years. It's been three. The headstone was new, it wouldn't break like that.
I pressed against it, letting the cold rain hit my face relentlessly.
I hated the rain.
It fell mercilessly. It didn't care that I was grieving. It had one job, and that was to fall.
I let my head fall back, closing my eyes, pretending that I was somewhere nicer, where it was sunny, and warm.
But I couldn't.
It was cold, it was dark, it was dead.
They were dead.
"I missed you." I whispered to the graves as if I wouldn't continue to miss them for the many painful years I had left to live.
If I closed my eyes hard enough, they were sitting beside me, comforting my shaking body.
But there was nobody.
I was alone.
-
Oh boy was that sad.
I hope you guys liked it though, even if it's slightly depressing.
Thanks for reading,
All my endless love,
-Kallie <3