In the early hours of Saturday morning, Jody nearly wore the carpet of her bedroom out as she repeatedly paced the length of the room, the words 'Luke's birthday' flashing out at her from the calendar displayed on her mobile phone screen. She threw the phone on her bed and clutched her head, trying to decide what to do.
Kingsley's birthday was easy; ever since he'd nearly killed her, she didn't respond to any of his correspondence which went straight into the bin after a quick read and didn't bother sending him birthday cards, even on the years he managed to remember hers. However, this was Luke's first birthday since their estrangement and while giving him the Kingsley treatment seemed overly harsh, she didn't feel that he deserved to receive well-wishes from her either. For his sake, she hoped Kingsley sent him a card, no matter how much the pair had always disliked one another, because she couldn't send him one even if she wanted to; she didn't know where he lived.
A text, though? She could do that, easily, but whether it was a good idea or not was entirely a different matter. After all, she was still uninterested in seeing him and no matter how much he deserved it, she didn't want to give him false hopes. She had to decide carefully. This decision of hers would set in motion the procedure for every single year for if she ignored this birthday, she'd have to ignore all the subsequent ones as well; if she ignored him this year but didn't the next, he'd take her birthday text as a sign of forgiveness. She was never going to forgive him. Forgiving Denise had been hard enough and had only been possible because she was dead but forgiving either of the very much still alive Jackson men was an impossible task. Her heart just wouldn't allow it.
With a mind still rife with turmoil, Jody trudged out of her room and went downstairs, the house so quiet that she could hear the floorboards creaking under her feet. Clearly, everyone else was either still asleep or lounging around in bed, trying to get back to sleep. She knocked on the office door even though the blinds weren't open and she could see that Mike wasn't busy. He looked up from his desk, smiling warmly at her and getting up to open the door.
"Good morning," he greeted cheerily, beckoning her in. She yawned and muttered a response, inching into the room. "I'm surprised to see you up this early. Didn't expect to see any of you—besides Charlie—until at least ten."
"It's Luke's birthday tomorrow," she stated, getting straight to the point.
"Oh, that's nice," he commented, sounding genuine. "How old is he going to be?"
"Twenty-one," she answered, wrinkling her nose. He was so old. Older still, ancient even, was Kingsley who was going to be twenty-five this year. "I don't know if I should send him a birthday text or not."
"Do you want to?" he asked pointedly.
Did she? Her troubled mind yielded no answers. "I don't know," she admitted with a sigh, picking at her dressing gown. "I just don't know."
"You know what?" She peered up at him with bleary eyes, silently asking him 'what?' "This reminds me of the time you were trying to decide whether to send your mum a birthday card."
"But that was different," she said, frowning.
Mike raised an eyebrow. "How?"
"I actually wanted to send her the card; I was just scared she wouldn't reply... which she didn't." Denise hadn't bothered to contact her until after Simon delivered the news that she'd nearly died at Kingsley's hands. It still hurt when she thought about it. "I don't care if Luke doesn't reply; I just don't want him to think that I've forgotten what he put me through. Because I haven't. I already made that mistake with one brother."
"What are you afraid of, Jody?" She instantly looked down at her feet, the words sticking in her throat. She was afraid of a lot of things, many of them things she didn't want to admit. Saying them out loud would make them real, and fear was never meant to be real, it was just meant to be something that was in one's head. "Would it help if you went to see your mother?"
She looked up at him in confusion. "My mother?" She nearly laughed. "She wasn't much help when she was alive so..."
"It was just a thought," he said, holding his hands up. "I go to my mother's grave at least once every month. It brings me peace."
Opening her mouth, she was about to say that there was a world of difference between his mum and hers but stopped in her tracks when she realised she hadn't visited her mother's grave once. Sure, it'd only been two months since the funeral but she couldn't help but feel like she'd done something wrong.
Instead, she said, "But it's so far away... and you can't drop me off because May-Li isn't here yet."
Mike quickly glanced at his watch. "Oh, she should be here in a few minutes. Why don't you grab some breakfast and get changed? I should be free to take you there in about"—he checked his watch again—"half an hour."
"Okay..." she replied uncertainly, slowly leaving the office. She wasn't quite sure how much help, if any, her dead mother would be in making a decision regarding Luke but what did she have to lose?
.:. QK .:.
Exactly half an hour later, Jody climbed into the passenger seat of Mike's car. As she waited for him to join her, she leant back in her seat, wondering what Luke was going to do for his birthday. Would his fancy mates throw him a lavish party? Would his oh-so-precious girlfriend, if he hadn't yet been dumped, be by his side through it all? Would he finally tell them that she existed or would she remain a dirty, shameful secret?
The door on the driver side opened, jolting her out of her thoughts. She smiled at Mike as he started the engine but frowned when she felt and heard the back door open.
"Sorry, I just had to grab my bag," Charlie apologised, jumping into the seat behind Jody's. Jody turned to look at Mike, raising a questioning eyebrow. She hadn't been alone with Charlie since she'd found out who'd actually taken that pregnancy test and now things were just awkward between them.
"Charlie's grandma's buried in the same cemetery your mother is," Mike explained, pulling out of the driveway. "She asked me to drop her off a little while before I suggested it to you." Ah. So she was tagging along on a trip meant for Charlie and not the other way around. Great. Now she couldn't be justifiably angry about her presence.
The drive to the cemetery seemed to drag on as Jody stared out of the window, watching the roads of Pottiswood stretch by. Just when she thought it couldn't get any worse, Mike asked if they wanted to stop at the florist's and Charlie said yes before she could even open her mouth to say no. Begrudgingly, she told Mike to get her some white flowers while the older girl opted for gladioli before he left the two of them alone together.
It didn't take long for the atmosphere in the car to become fraught with tension. Jody shifted uncomfortably, her jaw ticking.
"Jody?" Charlie called tentatively.
"What?" said girl asked flatly, her gaze remaining fixed on a random postbox in the distance.
"How are you?" She didn't respond. She wasn't about to pour her heart out to someone who'd betrayed her. "We haven't spoken—not properly, anyway—in a while..."
She scoffed. "And whose fault is that?"
There was a short pause before Charlie answered. "I guess I owe you an explanation."
"You think?" Jody sneered. "Took you long enough. It's only been, like, a whole month."
"Look, I'm sorry, Jody," Charlie said, and Jody could hear shuffling behind her. She momentarily looked up into the mirror to see that the other girl was now in the middle seat. "I never meant for anyone to find out about the test."
"Well, then, why did you chuck the packaging in the bathroom?" she interrogated, crossing her arms. "Everyone goes there!"
"I didn't!" Charlie exclaimed. "I threw it in the outside recycling bin straight after taking the test. I don't know how it ended up in the bathroom!"
Jody immediately turned around, facing Charlie. This sounded too ridiculous to be true. Packaging couldn't just go walkies from one bin to another. "Seriously? You expect me to believe that?"
"It's true!" Charlie replied, her eyes and voice void of any hint of deception which unsettled Jody. She hated being wrong but being half wrong was worse because it meant one was only half right. "I was going to admit it to May-Li straight away but when she mentioned the bathroom, I stopped. I knew I hadn't left my packaging there. And then you mentioned the bathroom bin and Ella pointed out that no one had mentioned it, and it got me thinking. I thought that maybe someone else took a test as well and that that packaging was theirs."
The thought was laugh-worthy. "Really? Two girls, who live in the same house, taking pregnancy tests on the same day? The same morning?"
"What else was I supposed to think? I knew and still know that I left the bathroom with the packaging!"
How could that be? Something seemed horribly off. Jody had known Charlie long enough to know that she didn't and wouldn't lie about something like this. After all, she'd already admitted to taking the test so it didn't make sense to lie about the packaging. But if she hadn't chucked the packaging in the bathroom bin, who had?
Before she could ask anything else, the door on the driver side opened and in popped Mike. She exchanged a look with Charlie, silently agreeing that they'd continue their conversation later. Even though May-Li would've told Mike that Charlie took the test, it probably wasn't something said girl wanted to discuss in front of him.
"Jody, I got you carnations, I hope you're okay with those. And Charlie, here are your gladioli."
Both girls thanked Mike as he handed them their respective flowers. Jody stared at the carnations, wondering how much they had cost.
"How much do I have to pay you back, Mike?" she asked, wincing as she recalled spending a fortune the previous week. Luckily, they were all due to receive pocket money today.
"Don't be ridiculous, there's no need for that," he assured, smiling at her. She smiled back, placing the carnations on her lap. She didn't like others paying for things on her behalf, true, but Mike and May-Li were like her parents, and she liked to think that even grown-ups could accept monetary help from their parents every once in a while.
.:. QK .:.
Once they reached the cemetery, Jody realised it hadn't actually taken that long at all to get there. In fact, there had been no need for Mike to give her a lift; it seemed to be only about a thirty-minute walk. She preferred riding her bike to walking but next time—if there ever was a next time—she'd be better off not bothering Mike or May-Li to drive her here.
As Mike remained in the car and Charlie went off to (presumably) find her grandma's grave, Jody hesitantly approached the grave she knew to be her mother's, still remembering the exact location of the burial plot from the funeral. She felt butterflies wreaking havoc on her stomach as the headstone she'd never yet seen—it had been installed after she had left the funeral—came into view.
Denise Jackson, it simply read, looking odd but perhaps fitting in the absence of a loving or even generic inscription underneath her name. It seemed that even Luke had held some sort of grudge against their dead mother at the time of the funeral, if not now. 7th December 1972–3rd February 2018. Huh, she'd never known the year of her mother's birth—no-one had bothered to tell her—only the day and month. So she'd had Kingsley at only twenty years old... Why wasn't that a surprise?
Her eyes travelled lower and she saw what looked like lilies in the floral tin next to the headstone. She raised an eyebrow, kneeling in front of the grave and putting her own flowers inside the tin. The notice outside said that dying flowers were regularly removed from the floral tins so as not to ruin the appearance of the graves. There was only one other person who'd bother to visit this grave but why would he come all the way to Pottiswood for no good reason, especially so soon before his birthday?
"What do you think, Mum?" she asked quietly, feeling like a weirdo for talking to the dead. However, when she looked up and saw Charlie a few rows ahead, talking animatedly to her grandmother's grave, she felt like the normal one. "Should I send your son a text?" She laughed mirthlessly then, recalling exactly what sort Denise had been. "Who am I kidding? You hated him until the day you died. If you want me to forgive anyone, it's probably your jailbird fave." She sounded absurd to her own ears; Denise had put Kingsley in prison herself.
Her heart suddenly felt unbearably heavy, and she had to exhale very hard just to resume a normal pace of breathing. She hung her head low, the grief washing over her as if her mother had died only yesterday, vaguely registering footfalls approaching from the left.
"I'm alright, Mike," she said hoarsely, wiping at her stinging eyes. "I'm just—"
"Oh, no need to explain, my dear," responded someone who most definitely was not Mike. She threw her head back to see the old pastor from her mother's funeral standing next to her. "Jody, is it?"
"Yes," she replied, surprised that he remembered her name. He had to have conducted loads of funerals since the last time she'd seen him. "How do you remember me?"
"It'd be quite hard to forget someone who gives a eulogy like the one you did," he answered, appearing to be somewhat amused. She didn't understand what was so funny. Her grief? "Your brother was here very recently, asking if you'd visited yet."
"Luke? I mean, the light-haired one?" she questioned unnecessarily. Of course, it'd been Luke. Who else? The pastor merely nodded gracefully. "How long ago was he here?"
"I'd say about a week ago."
She looked down at the lilies, confused. "So he didn't leave these lilies here?"
"I don't think so; any flowers your brother left would've been removed by the groundskeeper by now."
"Hmm..." she let out, wondering if her mother had close friends she didn't know about. Relatives were out of the question—both of her mother's parents were dead and she'd been an only child.
"I'd best be going; I have a funeral to prepare for," the pastor informed, gesturing towards two men who were digging a fresh grave not too far from her mother's. "Take care, Jody."
"Yeah, you too," she muttered awkwardly, refocusing on her mother's grave. Had it really been two months already? Somehow, between her relationship with Tyler, the drama with Ella, and the stressful pregnancy test situation, time had passed her by at breakneck speed.
"So, what should I do, Mum?" she inquired, sighing. "Would I be a bitch if I didn't send him a text? He's been trying really hard to patch things up... but I don't want him to." She realised just then that Luke would find out what her number was if she texted him. And then there was the chance that the jealous girlfriend would see the text. What if the girlfriend lashed out at him because of her and he started to hate her for it? "He has a girlfriend, Mum. Did he ever tell you about her? Is she the reason he stopped talking to you as well?"
She shook her head. Why was she being one of those women who blamed other women for their misfortunes regarding men? Luke was the one who'd allowed his girlfriend to keep him from contacting her. It was his fault more than his girlfriend's, really. She sighed again. She'd come here hoping for answers but she had the suspect feeling that she was going to be leaving the cemetery with more questions than answers in her mind.
A/N: The next chapter will be a sort of continuation from this one. I didn't want to end up writing like 6k+ words in one chapter.
Thanks, CharlieSMarts12 and yourfire for the reviews. yourfire—right, now I get what you mean. Agh! You've come very close to predicting something I was considering putting in this story. Lol, I might have to tweak it now. Just curious, though, what gave you the idea that Ryan was maybe blackmailing Charlie? Is it anything I've written (seems unlikely) or is it just a guess based on what we all know of Ryan's character?