It wouldn’t have been a good idea, anyway. She’d been afraid that once the floodgates were open, she’d lose control completely. She didn’t want to do that in front of him.
But Brody… Brody had already experienced all of that from her. And more. He could take it. And she had no doubt that there wasn’t anything she could say or do that would mess things up between them.
She’d ended up leaning over and kissing Jeremy on the cheek, whispering a soft ‘sorry’ before she’d climbed from the car, and now she was sitting in bed, her thumb hovering over her phone screen.
Just as she was about to dial Brody’s number, her mobile rang, startling her so much she dropped it onto the duvet and had to scrabble around to pick it up again before her voicemail kicked in. This mind-reading was happening more and more when she and Brody spoke; either she’d just be about to call him and her phone would ring, or she’d dial his number and he’d say he’d been about to do the same.
‘Hi,’ she said on an exhale of air that betrayed her relief at hearing his voice.
‘Hi,’ he said back.
Anna hugged the duvet harder. ‘Do you ever think…’ She paused, willing herself to go on. After what had been said tonight, she really needed to know the answer to this question. ‘Do you ever think it should have been you, not them? That you should have been the one who died instead?’
Brody took a few seconds before he answered, and when he did his voice was hoarse. ‘Yeah… A lot.’
Anna nodded to herself. She’d known he’d get it. ‘I used to think that wayallthe time. Until tonight, I didn’t realize that I hadn’t so much recently.’
There was silence again, but this time it was thick. Tense. ‘What happened at the party this evening, Anna? I haven’t heard you talk like this for months.’He sounded concerned, maybe even a little scared.
Anna let her phone drop to the duvet and buried her head in her hands. ‘Shesaid it to me – Gayle. Those exact words: that it should have been me.’ Anna went on to tell him the whole story, finishing with, ‘And the look in her eyes… I know she meant it, Brody, I really do.’
Brody swore softly.
‘And the weirdest thing is that I’m not even sure I can hate her for it. Because she only said what I’ve thought a million times myself. For ages, maybe even years, I wished ithadbeen me. I longed for it, bargained with God for it, but He didn’t take the deal. Is that terrible?’ she asked a little desperately. ‘That I wanted to die? It seems so selfish, so ungrateful…’
Brody’s voice was thick. ‘I think, given the circumstances, feeling like that is entirely understandable. In fact, I’d say far more people feel that way than ever let on. I certainly did. If I could have made that trade, I would have done it in a heartbeat.’
Anna sobbed with relief, and Brody gave her time, listening patiently as she rode the storm, only speaking again when all that was left was a few waves rustling against the shore.
‘You said “wished”, Anna. Past tense. Not “wish”. That’s good… It means you don’t feel that way anymore.’
Anna lifted her head from her hands. Had she said “wished”? She hadn’t even paid attention. She sniffed. ‘You’re right. Most days I don’t. Do… do you?’
Brody pondered that for a moment. ‘Not most days,’ he said, with just a sliver of surprise in his tone. ‘Not anymore.’
They fell silent, but it wasn’t like the silence at the end of the line when Anna had first phoned Spencer’s number after he died,vacant and cold. It was warm and comforting. It breathed.
‘Thank you, Brody.’ Anna lay back on the pillow, suddenly exhausted. ‘Can we do that thing again, where we don’t hang up straight away? While I don’t like saying “goodbye”, I like saying “goodnight”. It’s nice to think of you here beside me.’
There was a strange tone in Brody’s voice when he replied. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I’d like that too.’
Chapter Thirty-Seven
BRODY WOKE UP feeling unusually energized. For the first time in ages, he’d slept through the night without tossing and turning or spending at least a couple of hours staring at the ceiling in the wee hours of the morning. Maybe it had something to do with the phone on the bedside table next to him. He’d drifted off listening to Anna’s soft breathing as she slept.
He practically sprang out of bed, startling Lewis, with the idea of going on an extra-long run, but as he began to get dressed, he realized it wasn’t a run he needed; it was something else.
This strange buzzing feeling needed to be let out, but he knew instinctively that a run wouldn’t help. It would still be there when he returned, muscles aching, damp with sweat. And he definitely needed to do something to expel this feeling. Not because it was bad, but because that’s what you were supposed to do with it.
So that was why, after a strong coffee and a steaming bowl of porridge, he found himself at his desk. His heart was pounding as it always did when he sat there these days, but something was different about that too. It wasn’t fear alone that was making his pulse race; there was something else in the mix.
Instead of reaching for pen and paper, he opened a drawer and pulled out his laptop. Initially, he’d abandoned this method of capturing words because it had been too hard, returning to pen and paper, which somehow helped his imagination flow better, but after a while, even that had become stagnant. Holding his breath slightly, he clicked on an icon and opened up his preferred writing software.
New project. New document. New everything. He stared at the blank rectangle on the screen in front of him, waiting for letters and words, sentences and paragraphs. But that white space was no longer an impenetrable fog, because as he waited, it began to clear. He could make out a figure, a child, standing with her hands on her hips and her chin lifted in defiance.
He closed his eyes to shut out the picture, shifted in his seat, readying himself to stand, but as he opened his eyes and planted his feet on the floor, twisting to do just that, something in the corner of his eye caught his attention. The elf. Or the ‘not elf’, as he’d begun to think of her. She wasn’t looking his way, just staring past him into the distance, but it was as if she’d whispered something to him. Brody sat back down, placed his hands on the keyboard, and his fingers began to move.
Thirty minutes later he was halfway through what might turn into a short story, maybe even a novella. It was rough. No planning had gone into it – he’d just written what he’d seen inside his head, whatever had come out of the fog. It started with the Not Elf sitting in a woodland glade, the sunlight warm about her shoulders, the grass cool and full of daisies. He’d described her in detail, then how she’d woken up from a deep and dreamless sleep. Without a kiss. Without a prince or anyone else to save her, just because she was ready.
