I’m sorry.
“Oh God,” I said, hand going to my mouth in horror. Footsteps sounded as Vee entered the room, probably wondering why I’d cried out.
“She’s dead,” I whispered, distraught. After Noah’s funeral, I was far from equipped to deal with any more death. Would the grim reaper ever be done with this house? I needed to get away. The instinct to flee grew stronger by the second.
I turned to look at Vee. She stared at the note, then at Sylvia, but she wasn’t shocked or distraught like I was. Instead, there was a discomfiting satisfaction in her eyes. It made my stomach twist with unease.
“Vee?” I said, my voice questioning.
Her flat stare was trained on Sylvia. Now she glanced at me. “What?”
“Did you—”
“I’ll call an ambulance,” she said, cutting me off and turning from the room. I stared after her, feeling ill at her lack of response. I went to look at the empty pill bottle, relieved when I saw they were ones Sylvia normally took. She’d simply ingested far too many of them. For a second, I felt like Vee had what? Given Sylvia pills to overdose on?
I shuddered. Despite Sylvia’s misdeeds, the idea of Vee killing her mother and making it look like suicide was too unsettling to think about.
I left Sylvia’s bedroom and closed the door, unable to tell if the lack of strong emotion in me was simply due to my numbness and grief for Noah, or if I truly didn’t feel sorry that Sylvia was dead. Maybe I didn’t. After what she did, death was far too much of a reprieve.
Several days went by. The hospital called to inform us that, as suspected, Sylvia overdosed on her medication. It had to have been intentional. Everything she tried her entire life to keep secret had been exposed. She couldn’t live with the shame of it.
One evening, I heard Vee shuffling around in her bedroom and peeked through the door to see her packing her clothes into a large suitcase.
“You’re leaving?” I asked, stunned. I’d encouraged her to leave this town, but I hadn’t been very hopeful she’d actually do it.
“Yes,” she answered quietly. “Now that Sylvia’s gone, I feel oddly … free.” There was a lightness about her now. Don’t get me wrong, her eyes were still haunted, but she didn’t seem quite so burdened anymore.
“Good. You deserve freedom,” I said, as a moment of understanding passed between us. I didn’t hold her cruelty towards me against her. Not anymore. How could I when I knew the horrors she’d endured?
I decided to pack, too. I had nowhere to go, but I couldn’t stay here. Even with Sylvia gone, Ard na Mara grew more toxic by the day. I sensed its malevolent energy, like her ghost had now joined Victor’s, and together they’d haunt this place for all eternity.
I had no intention of letting this house give me any more bad dreams, though I did pity its next occupants. Maybe we should board the place up, make it inhospitable so no one else ever had the misfortune to live here.
Maybe the convent would take me in early. Sister Dorothy said she didn’t think it was the right choice for me, but she didn’t know about the curse. She didn’t know all the pain and loss inside me now. I wasn’t sure it would ever fade.
I needed to be somewhere I could bury myself in prayer and somehow crawl free of the grief surrounding me.
I spent the rest of the evening going through my things. Aoife had given me the portrait she drew of Noah, and I spent way too long staring at it, pain gripping my heart. I didn’t have any photos of him. Only this. I tried to find the old portrait Aoife drew of me, but strangely, it was missing. I must’ve misplaced it somewhere. I tried not to be too sad. I could always get her to draw me another one.
When I was done packing, I went to Noah’s bedroom. I lay down on his bed and buried my face in his pillow, breathing in and searching for his scent. It was almost gone completely, and tears began streaming down my face. I cried silently into the pillow, so hard my ribs ached.
A low rumble startled me from my sobbing. I furrowed my eyebrows. I didn’t immediately know where it was coming from until realisation hit. Just like that, I jumped out of bed, hope blooming within me because the noise was the roar of Noah’s motorbike.
I raced downstairs, threw open the front door, and there he sat.
He was an apparition, a salve to my grieving heart. I blinked to make sure this wasn’t a dream. But, no, he was still there, alive as anything, and my entire being bubbled over with joy.
Then I ran to him and pushed him right off his bike.