Chapter Ninety-Seven

Havermouth, Five Years Past

The Triquetra truly was astonishingly beautiful as a threesome, she thought, as she followed them to Heath’s car. All three had dressed up for the occasion, each in their own way - Heath wore a pressed shirt, a light knit, and slacks, while Cameron wore a checked shirt, jacket, and jeans, and Rhett wore a black shirt with dark jeans, and had tied his hair back out of his face.

They all smelled fantastic too, their soap and shampoo mixed with an aftershave. As Cameron held the door open for her, she paused to breathe him in. “You smell nice,” she told him, and the colour rose in his cheeks.

“Well, you know,” he shrugged a little. “It’s a thing. Sad for the parents.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. She had wandered the overgrown garden around the river house and found the remnants of garden beds in which the original plantings had overgrown. She’d put together a little collection of wild roses, hollyhock, gerbera, rosemary, and daisies and tied them together with a string from the kitchen.

The drive to town was quiet, none of them talking, the mood solemn.

Cameron reached out and took Aislen’s hand, his thumb stroking a gentle path whilst his thoughts tossed restlessly over what he would say to the parents. He sighed heavily as the traffic ahead thickened and stopped. “I don’t want to go,” he admitted. “I don’t know what to say to the parents.”

“Just say that you’re terribly sorry for their loss,” Heath recommended. “It’s best to just keep it simple. That’s what my mum says when someone at church dies.”

Cameron nodded. “Okay.”

“This traffic is shit,” Rhett complained. “The whole town must have turned out for this. We’re going to struggle to get a park anywhere near.”

“We’ll park at the church,” Heath decided. “In my father’s spot. He’ll have come early as the church was organizing the candles.”

“Maybe with so many people here, no one will notice us,” Cameron said, under his breath.

Aislen slid him a dubious look. “You three sort of stand out,” she told him. “People notice you.”

“We do?” He was surprised by that.

“Yeah, you really do.”

“Why?” He asked. “Why do we stand out?”

She was saved from answering by Heath parking in the pastor’s reserved parking bay at the church.

Cameron kept a hold of her hand as they joined the foot traffic winding its way through the side streets. (Fuck this, I just want to go home, drink myself stupid, and fuck.) “I’m not even sure exactly where…” He said, craning his head. (Aislen’s right, everyone is looking at us, and pretending not to. I never realized…) “Oh, over there.”

There were people moving through the crowd with bags of candles, collecting coin donations as they handed them out, and Cameron released her hand to take one. The jostling crowd and overwhelming number of people pressed in on Aislen, and she could feel her control slipping, their thoughts beginning to spill out of the bubbles as they popped…

“Careful,” Heath pulled her against his side. “There’s a lot of people around,” he smiled and nodded to someone. “Easy to get separated in this crowd. Stay close, Aislen.”

His touch focused her on his thoughts (Mr. and Mrs. Craigmore, Nancy Cartwright, what a bitch, Anne Mason always has toffee in her handbag for the kids…), and the pressure eased. She relied on him to steer her and concentrated on reinforcing the bubbles, gradually regaining some control.

Outside of a doctor’s surgery, people were setting teddy bears and flowers. Aislen saw inside the window there was a collage of photos of a little girl with her parents. ‘RIP Darling Penny’ was written below it.

“Her parents are doctors?” Aislen asked Heath.

“Yeah, her mother is a doctor, not sure what the father does,” he replied, smiling politely and greeting Mr. and Mrs. Craigmore with a nod of acknowledgement.

Aislen placed her little bunch of flowers amongst the others already there and looked at the photos for a moment, trying to reconcile the smiling little girl with the plastic wrapped bundle they had found.

“Here,” Heath passed her a handkerchief, and she wiped the tears off her cheek as Cameron put his arm around her shoulders.

“Heath! Cameron!” Pastor Gale, tall, blonde, and handsome in his suit, led a couple through the crowd. The woman and man clung to each other, and their eyes had the set-in redness of people who had spent a great deal of time crying. “This is Mr. Lachlan James and Dr. Caitlyn James. Lachie and Cait, this is Cameron Edison, the boy who found Penny.”

“Yes, I recognize you,” Caitlyn said, moving forwards and clasping Cameron’s hand between hers. “I am so sorry that you had to go through that, Cameron,” she said softly. “It must not have been easy.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Cameron replied, his skin colouring and his eyes filling.

She embraced him. “Thank you.”

“This is Aislen Carter,” Heath said to Lachlan James. “She was with Cameron at the time.”

“Aislen,” Lachlan shook her hand. (Poor kids. This tragedy doesn’t end… One simple, little mistake, so that we could have…) In his mind he saw his wife’s distraught face as she discovered Penny dead in bed, and the process of washing and wrapping the little body… (Never touched a dead body before… Our poor little Penny…)

Aislen stared at him, rendered mute in horrified shock.

“Aislen,” Caitlyn embraced Aislen.

Aislen numbly returned the embrace. “I know,” she breathed into the other woman’s ear. “I know what you did. It was an accident, a mistake, but then you hid it, you hid what you had done. You need to tell the police, or I will.”

Caitlyn pulled back sharply, her eyes meeting Aislen. “What did you say?” She gasped, taken aback.

Aislen was aware that everyone around them had turned at the sound of Caitlyn’s exclamation, the alarm in her voice cutting through the murmuring chatter. “I said,” she felt her heart racing within her, heard it in her ears. “I’m very sorry for your loss.”

“Oh,” Caitlyn swallowed hard, her eyes searching Aislen’s. “Thank you. Excuse us,” she added, taking Lachlan’s hand. “I need a moment with my husband.”

“Heath,” Pastor Gale said to his son. “Will we be seeing you at church tomorrow?”

“We agreed, dad,” Heath replied dryly. “That whether I continued to attend church, or found my own beliefs, that was up to me.”

“Mmm,” Pastor Gale was not pleased, but not about to argue with Heath in front of the town. “You will be missed by your mother.”

“I will see her at Sunday dinner,” Heath replied. “Come on,” he said to Rhett. “Let’s take these two home.”

“I wish you wouldn’t call the river house that,” Pastor Gale was disgruntled.

Heath shrugged. “It is, or will be as soon as we have it fixed up enough… Have a good night, dad. I’ll see you tomorrow evening.”

As they continued through the crowd, Aislen saw many faces that she recognized: Mr. Owens, Ms. Grace, Lillian Ridgeway, Rohan… Rhett saved her from stumbling over the curb. “Are you okay?” He asked her, concerned by how bewildered she seemed.

“So many people,” she told him. “And I have a headache.”

“What did you say to Dr. James?” He asked her under his breath, leaning close to her, as the pedestrian traffic separated them from Heath and Cameron. “I didn’t hear it clearly, but it wasn’t what you said…”

“They killed her,” she whispered back. “They wanted a date night, and their babysitter cancelled. Dr. James gave Penny something to make her sleep so that she and her husband could eat and have sex without interruption, but Penny suffocated in her bed…”

He came to a standstill, looking down at her, his expression strained. He gripped her shoulders. “Stop it,” he said, his voice hard. “Stop it. Don’t say another word. I don’t care how you know or what you know. You shouldn’t have said anything to her about it. You have to stop… stop saying these things. Just stop it.”

She swallowed hard, on the verge of crying. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright,” he put his arm around her shoulder and continued to walk, closing the distance between them and Heath and Cameron. “Just don’t say any more. Don’t talk about it ever again.”