Give Me Grace

  Grace gripped my forearm and squeezed. “You’re scaring me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t.” Her eyes searched my face. “How bad?”

  “You want another shitty story? Because I’ve got a few of those.”

  “Just one. Give me one, Casey. I need to know how bad.”

  I shrugged as if it were okay, but speaking this shit out loud was hard. “There was one afternoon when I got caught up late after school. I told Kelly to go on ahead because I didn’t think dad would be home. It was a Friday. He liked to celebrate the start of the weekend at the pub,” I explained. “But it turns out he didn’t go that day. And what I came home to scared the shit out of me.”

  I tilted my head back against the lip of the bath and closed my eyes, seeing it all in my head as though it happened yesterday. “I came home through the side door from force of habit. It was easier to fly under Dad’s radar by sneaking inside that way rather than walking in through the front door. It opened to the kitchen and Kelly was standing there in the centre of it. Blood poured down the side of his face from a split brow, and … Jesus,” I muttered, swallowing hard, “he had a knife. My sweet little brother who was only twelve had a knife pulled on our dad.” I opened my eyes, looking at Grace. “He’d just had enough, you know? I grabbed for it, worried he was going to hurt himself. That was a mistake. He hadn’t realised I was there and the move freaked him out. He cut my arm, slicing it wide open from here…” I twisted my right forearm and pointed to the scar that began at my inner elbow “…to here,” I said, trailing my finger down the long, thin line where it finished near my wrist.

  Grace paled. “Kelly did that?”

  “He didn’t mean it,” I told her, defending my brother. “He wasn’t thinking straight. It wasn’t until after the knife sliced through that he realised who it was, but by then it was too late.”

  “What do you mean it was too late?” Even though it happened over fourteen years ago and I was right here and okay, Grace’s eyes were round with fear. “Casey?”

  “Dad grabbed the knife during the commotion and he came at Kelly. He came at his own son with a knife,” I bit out.

  “What did you do?”

  “I stood in front of my little brother,” I said simply, “and I took the hit. Just like I always did.”

  Grace stared at me, her jaw quivering and tears filling her eyes. Suddenly she stood up, water sloshing everywhere. “I have to get out. I don’t feel well.” She tripped getting out and I grabbed for her. “Oh God, I can’t breathe,” she choked out, sobbing.

  I stepped out of the bath and took her shoulders in my hands. “Look at me, Grace.”

  “Show me.” She pulled from my grip, trying to push me away. “Show me what he did!” she shouted, her breathing heavy and erratic.

  “Grace! Stop. Just breathe.”

  “I can’t.” Her legs gave out and I sank to the mat right along with her, holding her shaking body in my arms. I rocked her slowly, hating that my past was hurting her now too. It was hurting both of us, and that was the one thing I didn’t want to do but I didn’t know how else to let her in.

  “Show me,” she whispered, her voice hoarse. She turned her head into my neck, pressing a kiss right where I could feel my pulse thumping.

  “I can’t show you, Grace. I covered the scar with a tattoo because I couldn’t stand looking at it anymore.”

  “This one?” Grace pulled back slightly and pointed to the tattoo of an ancient sword that covered the left side of my torso. A dragon curled around the blade, his head resting above the handle.

  “That one,” I confirmed.

  She covered it with her hand, letting her fingers trail over it, feeling the long, raised scar hidden beneath. Peering closer, Grace read the script I had inked into the sword’s handle. “Glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” She looked up at me, horror clear in her eyes. “This almost killed you, didn’t it? He almost killed you.”

  I nodded.

  “Can you …” She paused, her breath shaky as I wiped tears from her face. “Can you kiss me, Casey? I know it sounds stupid because you’re right here, but I need to feel that you’re okay.”

  “I can do that.”

  I took her face in my hands and kissed her. She opened her mouth and I took everything she was willing to give. Using it. Letting it soothe the ache in my heart.

  When I pulled back, I kept her face cupped in my hands. She watched me carefully, hesitating before she asked the question. “How did they die?”

  I shook my head, letting my hands fall away. Getting to my feet, I reached for a thick, fluffy towel and helped her stand. “Not today.” I wrapped it around her first before meeting her eyes. “Just … not today, okay?”

  When she was dry, I put her back in bed. My stomach growled, letting me know it was nearing lunchtime, but I couldn’t think about food. Instead, I lay beside her, spooning her. She put a hand over the arm I tucked around her, but even then I couldn’t find sleep.

  The rest of the week followed much the same. We slept, watched movies, walked along the beach, and traded more stories. We laughed and teased each other, and we fucked—sometimes slow and sometimes hard, and sometimes it was explosive and other times calm, but every single time, it was fucking perfect. We got time just to be together.

  We went to the local GP for our post hospital check-up, and once while Grace was sleeping and I was horny, I got to jack off to her photo and it was awesome. I wasn’t looking forward to having that deleted from my phone.

  Between all that, I messaged Nate daily and I also rang Henry, fishing for information, but he had nothing. Whatever Grace was hiding, she wasn’t just keeping it from me, she was keeping it from all of us, and that worried me.

  On our last night at the cottage, I carried a snoring Grace from the couch to the bed after she fell asleep watching a movie. When she was settled, I removed the yellow envelope from the bedside table where I’d placed it after we’d arrived.

  Moving to the kitchen, I grabbed a glass, a bottle of scotch, and along with the envelope, carried it out to the small table on the front porch. The sound of waves crashing on the shore was loud and the air cool on my bare chest as I poured a glass. I took a sip, contemplating the envelope.

  If there were no answers inside it, then I knew I had to let go. This was it for me. I had to move on from my past, and I wanted to move on with Grace.

  I set my glass on the table and pulled the sheets from the envelope. I skimmed them quickly at first.

  “Male skull showing bullet exit wound on parietal bone …” and on my mother’s report, “Despite extensive injuries, cause of death was a single gunshot wound to the chest.”

  Then I sat back and read the entire report in full. The coroner had declared the death of my parents a murder-suicide. There was nothing to indicate otherwise. Turning the page, I flinched, not expecting to see crime scene photos.

  Jesus.

  My eyes stung and my stomach rolled. I shook my head, trying to clear the images before they stuck.

  “Casey?”

  “Go back to bed, Grace,” I told her without turning.

  She came up behind me. I tried to hide the photos but she saw them anyway because I felt her flinch too.

  She didn’t say anything. She simply took them from my hands, set them on the table, and crawled into my lap. Then she wrapped both arms around me and held on.

  I buried my head in her neck, swallowing a sob. My family was gone, and nothing could’ve prepared me for seeing it right there in a bunch of old, gritty photos. “Grace,” I whispered, my voice hoarse as I clutched her to me. “It’s my fault.”

  “No.”

  “It is. I left them. I left Mum and Kelly there alone.”

  “You couldn’t be there all the time, Casey.”

  I drew back, angry because she didn’t get it. “I left them!” I shouted right in her face and she just sat there calmly and let me.

 
“Okay. So you left. I get that. That’s what your mum would’ve wanted you to do, right? Where did you go?”

  “My whole life I wanted to be a policeman so I could arrest assholes like my dad. I moved to Goulburn to study at CSU. That’s where I met Travis. He was studying the same policing major. I bunked with him. It was supposed to be temporary because I promised Mum and Kelly I’d come back for them. It was only supposed to be six months. The plan was to get settled, find them accommodation, a job for Mum and schooling for Kelly, and I’d fucking come back for them. But jobs and places to live were limited and six months dragged to seven, and then eight…” I hung my head, feeling sick “…and then I got called into my Associate Professors office, and that’s when I found out I was too late. Mum and Dad were both dead and Kelly missing. They never recovered his body. My whole family was gone, Grace, just like that. My life ended right there, in her office.”

  “It didn’t end there because you’re here.” Grace cupped my face in her hands, her eyes fierce. “You’re right here and you’re still fighting for them. And you’re not giving up. We’re going to find Kelly. And I’m going to help you.”

  I gave a humourless laugh. “No offence, Grace, but I’ve been looking for ten years. You think you can help…” I waved my hand at all the papers “…then go right ahead, but Kelly’s gone, baby. He’s gone. There’s no way he wouldn’t find his way to me if he were still alive. Not after ten years. No way.”

  Grace started reading the autopsy report as I spoke, going straight to cause of death. “Murder-suicide?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t believe it. I can’t. Someone else did it and then they took my baby brother somewhere and killed him too.” My eyes burned. “Someone killed my family, my brother. He was out there scared and alone, and I let it happen. I promised I’d come back, and I didn’t.”

  Grace grabbed my shoulders, the pages in her hand crumpling because she hadn’t let them go. “Look at me, Casey.”

  I met her eyes, broken and defeated.

  “This tattoo here…” she placed a hand over the sword without taking her eyes from mine “…tell me what it’s about.”

  “It’s about rising stronger from falling.”

  “Fuck that,” she growled. “Tell me what it means to you.”

  I rubbed at my face. “Grace, I—”

  “Okay. I’ll tell you what it means then, shall I? It means that life cut you down, but you didn’t fail, because you didn’t just lie there and give up. You got to your feet, stronger and fiercer than before, and you did Not. Give. Up.” Her fingernails dug into my shoulders as she glared at me. “So don’t do it now.”

  I thought back to when it happened. I had given up. I was ready to walk into that ocean and end it all. But Travis hadn’t let me. I hadn’t risen when I fell, he’d fucking picked me up, just like Grace was trying to do now.

  And I loved her for it.

  I fucking loved her.

  My heart hammered at the realisation.

  “Okay then,” I said with a calm I didn’t feel. I reached behind Grace, plucked the papers off the table, and handed her half. She looked at me warily as she took them from my hands. “Help me find my little brother.”

  Grace shifted off my lap and disappeared inside the cottage. She returned with her reading glasses and sat on the seat beside me. After smoothing out the pages, she stole my scotch, tipped her head back as she took a hefty gulp, poured another, and then focused on the partial report in front of her.

  After five minutes of me studying the autopsy report again, Grace interrupted with, “This is the case report?”

  I glanced at the pages she had spread out in front of her. “Uh huh.”

  Her brow furrowed. “I think I’m missing the second page.”

  I rifled through what I had, found the page and handed it over. After another five minutes, she waved the page underneath my face. “Casey, what’s this?”

  I looked at it.

  “It’s the on scene report,” I replied. It was the only report I’d managed to recover at the time of the shooting.

  “And this.” She pointed to the bottom of the page. “This is a list of attending officers, right?”

  “Right,” I confirmed.

  “Look here.” Her finger moved to the very bottom of the page. I leaned in, focusing on the section of names. “It looks like a name has been cut off the bottom. You never noticed that before?”

  I looked closer. Grace was right. Just the tiniest smidge of ink on the bottom of the page made it look like a name had been cut from the bottom of the list. “No I didn’t. But this is just another copy of the case report that Morgan had in the envelope. I have the same one in a file at the office, but I never saw this on mine.”

  My pulse started racing and my hands shook. “Wait here,” I ordered and went back inside. Grabbing my phone I came back out and sat down. I called up my own case report I’d stored in the files on my phone and zoomed in on the bottom of the page. Nothing.

  Grace shrugged. “Maybe it was just the photocopier leaving marks or something.”

  I held up a finger, indicating for her to shut up so I could focus.

  She shut up.

  I closed the report on my phone, called up my contacts and dialled Travis. It was well after midnight but this couldn’t wait.

  “Yeah,” he answered after two rings, his voice sleepy.

  “I don’t have the background report on Morgan here. I need you to check on something.”

  “Give me a sec,” he replied without hesitation or question. He murmured something quietly and Quinn’s sleepy voice responded before I heard the sound of a door closing. “What do you need?” he asked.

  “I need you to tell me how old Morgan is.”

  “Okay.” I heard the sound of a computer coming to life and the whine of a dog. “Go back to bed, Rufus,” Travis muttered. The whine came again.

  “Fuck. Hang on,” he said in the phone. “Damn dog’s gotta take a piss.”

  Grace sat quietly while I waited for Travis. Curled in the chair beside me, she sipped at the glass of scotch and watched the ocean. I stole the drink from her hand. After tipping a decent mouthful down my throat, I handed it back.

  The muffled noise of Travis picking the phone back up came through and after a pause, he said, “Morgan’s thirty-three.”

  “So that would’ve made her twenty-three at the time my family was shot.”

  “You think she did it?” Travis sounded doubtful.

  “No, but I think she was one of the attending officers and for some reason, she didn’t want a record of that fact.”

  “But her name wasn’t listed on the report. Are you sure about this because it sounds like a fuck of a long stretch?”

  “It is a stretch but a name has been cut off the bottom of the report and my gut is telling me it’s hers. It explains why she got her hands on all this information so quickly and easily. I don’t care how good she is with computers. No one’s that good.”

  “It turns out the coroner on the case is an old friend of my uncle’s.”

  I grabbed for the autopsy report and checked the name of the coroner listed. “Graham Bennett. He’s the listed coroner. Get Seth to run a check on him in the morning and then we’ll go pay him a visit.”

  “Done.”

  “Oh and Travis?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks.”

  He hung up.

  I put the phone down on the table and looked at Grace.

  “We’re going home tomorrow?”

  I nodded.

  “There’s only one problem with that.”

  “Oh?”

  Her lips curved slowly. “You promised me sex on the beach. So far we’ve had sex in the bath, in bed, in the kitchen, and on this very chair.” Was I developing a fetish for sex in public? Grace had unzipped my jeans last night and straddled me, lowering herself on my cock right here on the front porch. We were still fully clothed but anyone could’ve walked past.
“But not on the beach.”

  I stood up and held out my hand. Grace looked at it. “Well? What are you waiting for?” I jerked my chin at the beach across the road. “Let’s go.”

  She shifted her gaze from me, to the beach, and back again, her eyes excited. “Should we get a towel?” she asked, taking my hand as she stood.

  “No towel.” I led her across the road. My cock should’ve been worn out but it rallied determinedly, punching against my jeans as we walked down the small, sandy incline. “It’s not a proper experience if you don’t get sand in all the wrong places.”

  It wasn’t until an hour later that everything went to shit. I’d ducked quickly into the surf to rinse off the sand. Grace waited by the shore, not wanting to get her cast wet. I was just getting out when sirens sounded in the distance. My eyes cut quickly to Grace, relieved she was still in sight, when suddenly she wasn’t.

  She was running.

  “Grace!” I shouted.

  She disappeared over the incline, not looking back.

  “Grace!” I screamed.

  Shoving on my jeans, I took off after her. Running hard, my legs powered through the soft sand. The sound of sirens got louder and louder. And my chest pounded harder and harder.

  I hit the top of the incline and my heart stopped.

  Smoke poured from the back bedroom of the cottage and fire trucks flew down the street, red lights flashing and sirens screaming.

  But Grace didn’t stop running and I couldn’t breathe, fear strangling me as she flew straight towards the front porch.

  “Grace! No!” I yelled hoarsely, still running.

  “Mitsy’s in there!” she screamed and disappeared through the front door. I tore after her, never running so hard in my life, my heart lodged in my throat for entire seconds that felt like long, agonising minutes.

  “Not again,” I begged, not knowing how I’d survive losing one more person I loved. “Please not again.”

  A fire truck halted in front of me and I weaved around it when suddenly I was grabbed from behind. Two firemen held me back. One of them shouted, “You can’t go in there!”

  “Let me go!” I yelled, my voice cracking as I fought to get free. “Grace is in there!”