The line went silent for a moment, Aberlour kept his eyes trained on the dart in the bull's-eye, wondering if it would fall or magically move away. Anything to defy the last thing he believed to be true in this world with any degree of certainty.
"He wanted me to thank you." Abby’s voice was now shaking badly as she fought for control.
Aberlour shook his head and swallowed against the lump in his throat.
"I didn't—"
She didn't let him finish.
"He told me to thank you. Told me to say he wouldn't have made it without you, so that's what I'm doing." The anger and bite to her tone far more familiar and comforting somehow than if she’d shared any of her grief.
"Yes, ma’am," he answered curtly.
The line was silent again for a moment, neither of them knowing what to say to the other now that he wasn't there to bridge the gap between them.
"Good night, Abby," Aberlour finally said, needing this goddamned conversation to be over so he could let himself sink into the depths of self-pity that he hoped would swallow him up for good.
"Night, Gavin," the shaky voice replied before the line went dead. For good this time.
He laid the phone back on the table, effectively nailing the last nail in the proverbial coffin of his past as he did so.
He picked up the last dart and rolled it around his palm.
His last real friend was dead. All his friends were dead now. The words left a bitter taste in his mouth, even if they never left his tongue.
He looked up, staring at himself in the seedy bar mirror, struggling to take stock of himself and his life.
Here he was, nothing but a mere shadow of what he'd once been. He'd fought for this stupid country. He'd killed and been shot at, and he'd done it by holding onto the conviction that he'd been doing the right thing. Yet now, as he sat there feeling old and alone with nowhere to call home and no one left to call, everything he thought he'd known felt like a blatant, sardonic lie.
How many years of his life had he wasted? How many pointless, lost hours had he spent agonizing over things that didn’t matter anymore?
He raised the last dart towards the board. He didn’t whisper to it. No need to, since he’d stopped feeling human a long time ago. He threw it at the board while continuing to study his reflection in the ceiling mirror.
He didn't need to see the dart land because he knew, deep in his bones, like some felt the rain in their knees, that it would land, just as it always did, in the bull's-eye. The irony of it all. His perfect aim was the foundation of everything he'd ever put faith in. To have it be the last truth standing atop a pile of lies was too beautiful an ending to everything that God had allowed.
He refused to look back even as he got up and left, leaving nothing behind but two twenties on the table.
Chapter 43
Two weeks later
May 2020
“You look sad—” Bart said sympathetically.
Aberlour had attended the funeral the day before. A slow, painful affair, that had sent him spiralling into five-year-old memories. He hadn’t slept a wink. Instead, he’d chosen to chain-smoke the night away.
He wasn’t sure why he’d bothered showing up to work the booth. It had felt like the right thing to do—or no—like the only thing lefttodo. He couldn’t stay home all day. He was driving himself mad with grief again, and there would be no one to bail him out of jail this time. Work had been the next best option.
Aberlour had intended to avoid Bart because he was in no mood to fake mental stability, nor listen to random snippets of gossip. But Bart had found him anyway. He’d caught Aberlour off guard, and as a result, his filter wasn’t working very well.
“You can’t see a fucking thing,” Aberlour snarled. He didn’t deserve his anger, but Abe couldn’t have muffled it any more than he could quench his grief.
Bart merely snorted.
“You’ll have to allow that the expression—'I canhearyour seething from all the way over there’ just doesn’t have the same impact,” Bart replied with a light laugh.
Aberlour didn’t comment, since there was nothing to be said.
