Aftermath

I always came back home for Christmas, no matter how hard it was to look my loved ones in the eye.

I was in the passenger seat of my brother's Mazda, restless. The aircon was turned up almost as loud as the music he was playing. I was grateful for the way it eliminated any chance of silence between us.

Once, we would've been talking and laughing together - sharing the kind of banter and teasing only siblings can. Not now. Now, there was only ever an agonising quiet between us, accompanied by an impossibly heart wrenching sadness. And, of course, guilt. It lay heavy on my shoulders, like layers of winter clothing. Except it wasn't winter, and the weight stayed settled there.

I shaded my eyes from the relentless midday sun, wishing my brother would put the sun visor down on his side. Pastures filled with browning grass blurred past on either side of the car.

My brother's eyes were fixed firmly on the road, mouth set in a line of serious concentration as I studied him. He was only in his early twenties but he looked much older. He hadn't aged well since it happened. My parents hadn't either. I avoided looking in mirrors too.

The guilt grew more considerable when we arrived at the family home. Or rather, the family house.

The security gate slid open to allow us inside the tall walls surrounding it, closing as soon as we'd driven through. A strange familiar feeling of claustrophobia clawed at my throat as I remembered how many times that had felt like being locked in - being trapped inside a tomb.

We drove around the fountain and my eyes traced each window of the four stories as my brother turned off the ignition and let out a long sigh.

"It's okay," I murmured hopelessly. He didn't respond. I waited outside the car for him but he didn't move until the front door opened and he schooled his face into a mask of bliss and made his way over to our parents. I trailed along behind him.

Greetings and hugs were exchanged in the large arch doorway and I tried not to notice how everyone's face was a fragile mask of bravery. I tried not to notice the sorrow behind the glistening eyes.

Sunny, my parents' groodle - golden retriever crossed poodle - wove between everyone's legs, whining happily before rolling onto her back on the floor. My brother reached down to scratch her belly, cooing softly to her. I watched with a sad smile on my face.

My parents suggested we all go to the living room but I waited for my brother. Sunny scrambled to her feet, looking out the door as he pulled it shut. She whined, scratched at the door and looked at him with a question in her eyes. I was standing beside him as he said to her, "She's not coming Sunny."

But Sunny sat impatiently at the door, refusing to leave even when my brother called her. He'd already walked away when a tear slid down my cheek.

I followed him down the hall, listened to his leather boots echoing off the perfectly polished tile floor, watched the sunlight fall through the tall windows lining the corridor, wondered how the place still seemed dark.

For me, this place had always had loneliness lingering around each corner. My brother and I had tried to outrun it, playing tag multiple times a day when we were children, then hide-and-seek when we thought that was a better way to avoid it. But with my parents being away so often, it was impossible not to inevitably let the solitude settle against our skin like spiderwebs. I'd never spoken to my brother about it but I was sure he'd felt the same way.

Yet now, the house seemed even more empty. Suffocatingly, contagiously empty, as if loss was hung on every wall like a painting, lining the floors like another expensive rug, laid out across the table like a centrepiece. The house was hauntingly empty now, and I worried it always would be.

❀❀❀❀❀

My best friend had dyed her hair. Her once blonde hair was now dark in a way that didn't suit her, in a way that said she didn't care if it suited her. It had grown past her shoulders now but was dull where it had once glimmered like jewellery. She wore an oversized hoodie even though it was summer, folded in on herself like a withering plant.

She'd once been the kind of pretty that was softened by how unaware she was of it. Now, it was obvious that pretty was the last thing on her mind. Now, she was pretty like the moon, wearing melancholy in place of mascara.

We were walking together wordlessly through the shopping centre. There was tinsel hanging from the ceiling, a tall tree in the centre, rising above the railings of the level above us, baubles twinkling from the branches like stars in the night sky. My friend didn't seem to notice any of it. If happiness was a gun then she was bulletproof.

That's when I saw him.

The boy I had spent years of high school loving, had his arm casually draped over a young woman's shoulder, pulling her against him.

His light brown hair still fell across his forehead in the same way that had once made me yearn to run my fingers through it. But when the girl with him smiled up at him, it wasn't jealousy that curled in my gut. It was hope.

I knew he still thought of me. Knew he still missed me. Knew he still cried for me. But I hoped this girl could be the salve that healed the wound that I'd unintentionally left.

I glanced at my friend only to find her staring at him too. I shouldn't have been surprised to see tears shimmering in her eyes. I knew what he made her think of. Knew who he made her think of.

She silently made her way to the lift, pressed the button for the roof, walked out under the cloudy sky. The place was familiar to me - too familiar to me. My chest tightened and I wondered if it did the same for her.

She walked right to the edge, stepped up onto the ledge. My heart jumped into my throat. I lurched forward as if I might be able to stop her.

But she only sat down up there, legs swinging over the edge.

Letting out a sigh of relief, I sat beside her, watched her pull a cigarette out of her pocket, light it, begin blowing smoke into the humid air.

I wondered when she'd taken up smoking. I wondered if she would've, had things happened differently. I wondered just how many things would be different now, if that one thing hadn't happened. It seemed unfair that one singular moment could so drastically and tragically change so many ones after.

She didn't shed a tear, my best friend. Not in that moment anyway. There was a heartbreaking numbness etched into the blue of her eyes, giving me the eery impression that she had already cried all her pain out. Now all that was left was this - a cigarette and a symbolic view from the top of a building.

But her voice broke when she said one singular word. "Why." I didn't want to know how many times that one word had infected her mind, slid under her skin, stuck in her throat. I didn't want to know what ideas she'd come up with to answer her own question. I didn't want to know how much that word had killed her. But I knew it was my fault it had.

I sat next to my best friend, on the ledge that had ruined everything and, as dusk spread across the cloudy sky, I cried. I cried for all the people I loved and all the people I'd broken because I hadn't understood that they loved me back just as much.

❀❀❀❀❀

Sunny was still by the door when I returned to the house. She didn't move when I stepped over her, didn't see me as I walked down the hallway. I paused in front of the large mirror on the stair's landing. Stared at the emptiness of it, at the absence of me. Where once I'd seen a sad reflection of me, I now saw nothing.

I found my brother sifting through photos, tears in his eyes. I sat beside him, looked at the family pictures. I looked at myself, at the smile spread across my face like a mask. But then I noticed what I hadn't before. The way my brother was grinning down at me in one. How my mother's arms wrapped around me in another as if she was holding a lifeline. I noticed my father's adoring gaze and the way my dog was sitting on my feet, tongue hanging out of her mouth in the kind of smile I barely saw on her anymore.

I laid a hand on my brother's shoulder, but he didn't respond. Didn't feel it.

I wished I could walk through the front door to Sunny jumping up and down again. I wished I could smile at the guy I loved again. I wished I could wrap my best friend in a hug, wished I could eat dinner with my parents at the dining room table, wished I could play tag with my brother again. But I couldn't. Because one moment and one jump and one decision had changed everything. Because I should have waited. Because I should have stayed. Because I regretted it the second I was airborne.

Because it was too late and there was no undoing it.

❀❀❀❀❀

Please also read the story leading up to this one: