Chapter One Hundred and Forty-Three

Rideten, Four and a Half Years Before

At least, Aislen thought as she dressed, she did not need to ask herself what she would wear to the funeral, most of her clothing was in the right colour. She dressed slowly staring in the mirror at the darker patch on the floor behind her.

Bianca, Helena, and Christine had all pitched in to clean up from the miscarriage, scrubbing the blood from the wood and remaking the bed in clean linens, so that, by the time she returned from her overnight stay in hospital, the stain was the only evidence of what had happened. She had been acclimating to the patch on the floorboards in the weeks since, gradually hardening her heart until she could look at it without crying.

The little cardboard box of ashes sat on the bedside table, the only other remnant of the little life that she had never wanted to grow, that she had intended to give to someone else… You would think that she would feel relieved not to have to continue with the pregnancy, she thought, as she pinned her hair back. That she would not be experiencing the grief that seemed to hold her heart in a vice grip so tightly that the pain had become familiar.

She hadn’t wanted it to end that way. She hadn’t been ready to be a mother, but at the same time, she had never wished ill on the life that she had been growing. She had tried to do her best by it, as it had possibly been her last connection to the Triquetra…

She sat on the bed with her phone in her hands, turning it over. Stop calling the Edisons, Heath had told her, and she had obeyed, although she had looked up their phone number again and saved it to her new phone.

She dialled it and listened to it ring.

“Hello?” Mrs. Edison sounded cheerful.

“Mrs. Edison,” Aislen said, her voice hoarse.

“Oh,” the happiness vanished. “You again.”

“Please don’t hang up,” Aislen said quickly. “I just wanted to ask… I just wanted to know… How is Cameron?” She fought back her tears. “How are they? The Triquetra, I mean. Please… Please…” She pressed her hand to her mouth but couldn’t fight back the wet sob that shook her lips. “Please.”

There was a long silence at the other end of the phone, and then a small sigh. “Heath and Cameron are doing well at university. Both are playing football there, and Heath is top of his classes. He has a very promising career ahead of him, according to the Dean. Cameron is goofing off, of course,” she laughed slightly. “He has never been one for studies, though Heath keeps him under some control. Cameron really only went because Heath did, and those two have always been peas in a pod. Rhett has an apprenticeship with a tattoo parlour in Redbank and he is happy there. Is that enough?” She added with sudden briskness as if regretting her moment of pity. “Is that enough for you to stop this now and let them go?”

It was the day for letting people that she loved go, Aislen thought. She swallowed thickly. “Thank you, ma’am. I won’t call you again.”

“I am sorry,” Mrs. Edison said, just as Aislen prepared to hang up. “I am sorry, Aislen, but it is the best thing for them, and for you, if you just let this go now. Just let them go and get on with your own life.”

Aislen hung up the phone and sat, letting the tears run down her cheeks.

Bianca entered the bedroom, pausing in the doorway. “Are you ready?” She asked gently, her eyes going to the cardboard box on the bedside table. She had been finding it hard to be in the bedroom at all, and the presence of that little box added a new level of horror for her, as much as she fought to suppress it to be a supportive and good friend to Aislen.

“Not really,” Aislen said through her tears. “But I don’t think I ever will be. None of this was supposed to happen. I’m not entirely sure where everything went so wrong, or how I can keep going from here. I don’t know how or what I am supposed to do from here.”

Bianca sat on the bed next to her and took Aislen’s hand. She made no attempt to wipe up the tears and snot that ran down Aislen’s face as she suspected it would be of no use. (They were too young for this… Helena still could not sleep through the night after seeing the baby lying on the floor amidst all that blood. Christine was drinking too much…)

“Get through today,” Bianca said, with more confidence than she felt. “And then focus on school. That is what you need to do, Aislen. That is what you should do. Put it all into your art and make something of it.”

Aislen nodded and stood. She used half a tissue packet to clean up her face before picking up her purse and the little box. “Alright. I need a cigarette,” she added. “I want a cigarette. A hundred of them. And a drink.”

“You can have both, as much of both as you want,” Bianca told her, eager to offer anything to take the edge off Aislen’s grief.

“Thank you,” Aislen nodded and drew in a deep breath before lifting her chin. “Let’s get this done, then.” She headed out of the room and down the stairs. Helena and Christine were in the snug, waiting, and stood up as she entered.

“She wants a cigarette,” Bianca said from behind her.

“Sure,” Helena produced one immediately and Bianca took Aislen’s purse so that she could take it.

Aislen drew in the smoke, thinking of the taste of Rhett’s tongue, and the way that he blew out the smoke, as if making a statement in doing so. Let him go? Let them go? How could she when she had so little to hold on to? No, like the daughter that had never drawn breath, the Triquetra would always hold a painful place in her heart, even if she had no doubt that she had made no impact to their lives, and they had carried on as if she had never spent four weeks as the Triquetra’s whore.

Bianca drove them to Stella’s house. The street was lined with cars, the circle having gathered in support of Aislen’s loss. However, they had left the driveway free of cars out of consideration for the bereaved, and Bianca parked there.

The circle was gathered and waiting in the back garden around the bonfire, the flagstones already covered in baskets of flowers, fruit, and wine, and the way parted before Aislen, the women moving aside to allow her through their rings to where the coven formed the inner circle and Stella stood in the Priestess’ place of honour.

“Sister,” Stella said softly. “We are so terribly sorry for your loss.”

Aislen’s eyes filled again, and she nodded, swallowing, trying to hold back her sob. She stepped forward and opened the cardboard box to remove the simple, silver tin within. Stella raised her hands, signaling the coven and circle to begin their chants.

With the wailing melody lifting the hair along her arms, and the smoke from the fire blowing over her, Aislen uncapped the container. “Samantha,” she whispered as she poured the ashes onto the fire. “After my grandmother, so that she can find you in death, and neither of you will be alone.”

Unlike herself, she finished as the last of the ashes disappeared into the flicker of flames, her grandmother and her daughter would not be alone.