Jack walked the familiar path through the cemetery, his hands deep in the pockets of his black coat, the collar of it up to protect his face from the biting wind; the one that made tears spring to his eyes. The one that he could no longer feel on his skin.
There was no headstone marking who lay beneath the soil, the earth hadn't settled yet. The headstone would come in time. Another seven months.
[i]Will those seven go like the last one? Waking up each morning thinking that nothing has changed and then remembering what we saw wasn't a dream? And then you're running to the bathroom to be sick?
Will every day of those seven months start like that?
Jack closed his eyes, his body shivering with emotion, as the memories flooded his mind. He tried to shut them out, to push them away to the edges, but they were relentless in their pursuit to make him crumble.
"He's dead," Jack whispered, staring at his blood stained hands. They trembled. He looked up from them, meeting Ronnie's eyes across the Square. "Bradley's dead." The words sounded strange, as though they should never be uttered beside each other.
People were moving around him, cordoning off the area.
Where had Max gone? And Stacey? Where did they go? He couldn't see them.
Jack whipped around, his eyes darting from face to face looking for the people that loved his nephew.
'Where are they? Where did they go?'
"Jack?"
He felt a hand rest on his arm, but he instantly shrugged it off, not even looking to see who it belonged to. "I need to find Max, and Stacey," he stated, his voice laced with panic. "I need to find them!"
"Okay, okay," Ronnie told him. "I'll help you, we'll go look here, okay?" She said, placing a hand on his and gently leading him towards the Vic.[/i]
Jack squeezed his eyes shut, forcing the memory out of his mind. Earlier that evening, he had lied to her. He had told her that she had never been there for him. But she had, of course she had. She had been there when Selena took Penny away, when everything had fallen apart with Tanya, when Bradley had . . .
She had been there.
Jack turned at the sound of metal scraping against stone, he frowned in confusion.
"Roxy?"