Dark Secrets (Dark Secrets #1)(77)
Author: A.M. Hudson

The repressed grief burst out of me like an uncontrolled gust of rain-laced wind; I folded over a little more, shaking, and thunder cracked overhead, a flash of lightning giving the coffin a white glow—the last light it would ever see. Looking up through swelling tears, I focused on the tall, familiar man standing near the priest with his hands clasped in front of him.

“Mike?” I said, taking a step toward him; he didn’t hear me. I followed his gaze, and my heart shot into my throat, falling straight back down into my gut when I saw two coffins, side by side; one white, small, the other long. I wanted to fall to my knees between the open graves, to touch them one last time—have longer to say goodbye, but Dad stepped up and whispered in my ear as they lowered them into the ground, “They’re together up there, Ara.”

I jumped back and looked across at Dad, still standing beside Mrs Rossi.

“It’s just us now,” his voice played in my ear.

I looked back at the boxes containing my entire family as the priest spoke over the smallest one. “Can I please go with them, Dad?”

He didn’t respond. Because he couldn’t. He wasn’t even really standing beside me.

“As we lay this child to rest,” the priest said, “may the angels greet him in Heaven. Father, for you are the all forgiving.”

But what if there was no Heaven? What if Harry was lost out there somewhere—alone, crying for me, and I never came to him?

He was too small to be all alone—too small to be gone. He shouldn’t have been there. He should’ve been safe in his bed.

I wiped my face, smudging the rain into the tears while I watched Mike sprinkle a handful of soil over the coffins. Then, he looked at me, and my heart stopped beating as our eyes met.

“Mike?” I called out to him, but he just shook his head, unable to speak through his tears.

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” The words of the priest filled my ears; they sounded too real, like I was still there.

“Ara?”

My mind snapped back to reality. People sobbed hysterically around me, and Mrs Rossi fell into my dad’s chest, hiding her face.

Lost in the unbelievable realism of my memory, I hadn’t felt David place his arm around me. His voice, saying my name, echoed in the distance of my memory. I looked up at him for long enough to see extreme concern behind his eyes.

“I’m okay,” I said, letting my gaze drift back to Nathan’s box.

As it slowly lowered closer and closer to the ground, I thought about the empty space—the horrible moment which brings everything into reality the minute you leave the funeral and walk into that vacant house. Before they’re gone, before you bury them in the cold, hard ground, everything seems surreal, like they’re just on a shopping trip or somewhere in the house where you can’t hear them. But when their flesh touches the earth and settles in its final destination for all eternity, it takes with it the cloud, the safety of the cage that hides you from believing they’re never coming back.

When Nathan’s mom got home, she’d fall apart. She’d cry until there were no tears left and it would still do her no good. Nathan would never come back—Harry was never coming back.

My shaking hands turned to ice. David’s grip tightened around me.

All the things they’d miss out on; it was too much to bear. Nathan would never finish high school, Mum would never see me get married, hold her first grandbaby and—I swallowed hard, pressing my shaking knees together—Harry would never go to school, never paint his first picture, never learn to walk. He never even got to have a birthday party.

The oxygen around me felt over-used. My head rocked back and forth inside, and as the shivers ran from my hands, up my arms and into my chest, I heard a quiet gasp—and everything went black…

…Grains of sand fell through a narrow passage in a glass jar and hit the base with a soft pattering. The ground swayed gently beneath me, and the frosty rushing of my whole world felt calm now, closed in by the warmth of the summer sun. It was just David and I, watching the rain fall onto the leaves above us—staying perfectly dry in the hidden clearing where I had my first kiss.

But as I felt the rain on my skin suddenly, I looked up to an open grey sky and the nostril hairs of a man, his breath brushing my fringe. “Dad?”

“Shh,” he whispered into my head. “It’s okay, honey. I’m taking you home.”

“What happened?”

“You fainted.”

“I what?” I rolled my head to the side and looked around the church parking lot. “I fainted?”

“I should have known better. It was just too soon,” Dad said, more to himself.

“You’re going to be okay, Ara,” Vicki said from beside Dad, holding an umbrella over me while she dripped with rain.

I touched my hand to the back of my neck and pulled out a piece of grass. “Did I hit my head?”

Dad nodded. “David caught you, but he was a fraction of a second too late.”

“He only stepped away from you for two seconds to place a rose into the, er…and you fell,” Vicki added.

“I must admit, though—” Dad half laughed, “—he made it to your side quicker than I’ve ever seen anyone move. I almost didn’t see it myself.”

“So, he didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye to Nathan?”

Dad whispered something softly to Vicki—something ending in the word David. My ears pricked up.

“Is he—” I hesitated, “—is David mad with me?”

Dad’s head moved slowly to look at Vicki again.

“Ara, why would he be mad with you? You didn’t mean to pass out,” Vicki said.

They wouldn’t understand, so I said nothing else. Dad placed me in the backseat of the car and the door swung open on the other side. “I’m fine, Vicki, you can sit in the front with Dad,” I started, but my eyes fell on something magnificent. “David?” And that was it. That was the final straw. I buried my crumpling face in my hands. I wanted to tell him to go away, but his arms, as they fell around me, pulling me into his cool, firm chest, held me so tight my body couldn’t shake. Even the soaking rain, making his suit icy cold against my face, didn’t bother me. I just needed him so badly.

“Shh, sweetheart.” He stroked my hair, whispering into the top of my head. “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”

“No, it’s not.” I sobbed uncontrollably. “Nothing ever is.”