Jim’s features softened again, and I wasn’t sure how it was even possible because he already had one of the kindest looking faces I’d seen.
“She might not be here in the way you once knew her,” his experienced voice spoke as he patted a long fingered hand against my spine. “But she’ll know you’re here. It means a lot to the deceased that they aren’t forgotten.” He held his arm out toward the casket in a gesture that invited us to go closer, like he thought we needed a moment with her before starting. I shook my head politely and ignored Breeze’s glare burning into the side of my skull.
Jim made his way behind the pulpit.
“Welcome, everyone, to the memorial of Olivia Pratt,” he said, as though speaking to a full room. I glanced around the empty pews. “Let us open with a prayer.”
As he continued, my eyes stayed on the plain casket. Even though I knew an adult lay inside, I couldn’t help but picture her as I remembered her—a child. The sound of her cries echoed through my mind, along with the image of her scratched, bleeding arms. Emotion rose in my throat, and I tried to swallow it back.
We’d both been in that awful place. I just had the lucky ticket out. Guilt coiled through me, and I felt more grateful for my dad than I had been at any other time. It was difficult not to rage at the injustice of living that seemed to guarantee one life for some people and an inferno for others. For no particular reason.
As Jim began reading a section of the Bible, I let my gaze wander out beyond one of the side windows to the field below. A red tractor pulled something along the grass behind it, and ablack dog ran back and forth barking as if it were a game. A plane jetted through the sky so far away that it looked like one of those drawings of seagulls that children do. Life was still going on out there. Nothing had stopped. Just Olivia’s heart. It seemed that didn’t matter to anyone but me, and even my reasons for caring had been selfish at first.
Sniffling to my left pulled my attention back. Breeze was wiping her eyes.
“Are you okay?” I whispered, careful not to interrupt Jim’s graceful speech. The way he continued to address the room as if it were full made me wonder whether he would have done the same if no one had shown up. It seemed likely.
Breeze pulled a tissue from a neatly folded packet and passed one to me. The lump in my throat tightened as I realised I didn’t need it.
“Takes me back to my parents’ funeral,” she sniffed, leaning towards my ear. “They say that about weddings too. Going to someone else’s always makes you think of your own.”
“I wouldn’t know,” I joked, my grey eyes raking over the side of her head trying to figure out how much she was holding in.
“You will one day,” she said and gave me a sly sideways look. I let my face scrunch as if it were a disgusting prospect. Truthfully, I wanted the wedding and the house and the… the…
I didn’t know the feeling I was trying to capture, but I felt it in my chest and stomach like a calming pool of water. Safety?
I don’t remember ever feeling that. Not really. I tried in vain to ignore the voice in my head that told me people like me didn’t get married. Didn’t get normal.
Olivia hadn’t got sunshine in her life either.
“Seriously though, are you okay?” I asked, concern softening my tone as I stroked her clenched hand in mine. An unusually affectionate move for me.
Her eyes crinkled at the corners, and she nodded. “It’s kind of nice to be sad about them sometimes, you know? To let myself feel it.”
I nodded, even though I didn’t know. Sadness had never been welcome in my home growing up, and it wasn’t an emotion that I considered to be even a little nice.
“We now open the floor for friends and loved ones to remember Olivia in their own way,” Jim said as he stepped around the pulpit. “If anyone would like to make a speech or share something, now is their time.”
He took a seat on the far side of the front pew, his cane resting across his knees. If there had been more people in the room, the gesture would’ve felt natural. As it stood, it felt awkward. Just Breeze and me, exchanging tight smiles.
Time did that strange thing where it clicked to slow-mo.
The round plastic clock on the left-hand wall seemed to get closer to the microphone, its ticking echoing off every surface. My heartbeat took a similar action. How long were we going to sit here? I let my eyes roll towards Jim, and his features were arranged into a relaxed and gentle smile as he looked toward Olivia in her casket.
A shaky sigh escaped my lips, and I found myself obliging, walking towards her before my brain could catch up. My palm rested on the smooth wood of the box with my back toward the pews. I tried to grow up the image of the child’s body in my mind and stand next to her in this moment as an equal. I didn't want to imagine her child self in there.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered as my hand shifted from side to side across the casket. “For what we went through.” Emotion overcame me quickly, and tears rolled down my cheeks—for both of us. “I’m sorry I couldn’t save you. I’m sorry I didn’t know how to make it stop.” I sniffed as more tears followed. My limbs heavy with the weight of it all. “I’m sorry I was a child too.”
And with that realisation, the tightness in my throat softened.
I had been achildtoo.
I saw Olivia’s face in my mind in that room of my nightmares. But she wasn’t screaming anymore. She was smiling. Someone had come to get her. She stood hand in hand with the woman I’d imagined when I tried to picture Olivia grown. Her hair still sandy blonde, her chestnut eyes calm as they looked into mine. They both smiled at me, and I smiled back as they stepped around my frame and through the open door behind.
The woman took the younger version of herself past the nurses’ station and the doctors’ room with the door swinging open, where staff stood frozen like someone had pressed pause on a film. Down the stairs, out the open front door, through the gate and into the darkness of the night.
In the distance, I saw the woman lift her, holding her like a mother would a child. Little Olivia wrapped her arms and legs around her and she cradled her tired face into the curve of the woman’s neck. I'd always had a creative brain, and this was my imagination again, I was sure of it. But it felt good to see her free. To know that someone had come in with love and rescued her, even if it was herself.
