The Mirrors of Fate (30 page)

He took out a small picture of himself and Emma in a playground. In it, he swung a happy Emma high into the air on a swing, pigtails swishing haphazardly. He held out the old picture for Maria to take. She looked at the photo as if frightened of it, but finally accepted it.

“
You’re saying she was alone? Until me?” She scoffed aloud, but the exaggerated gesture didn’t force away the feeling of guilt like she had hoped it would. “Don’t be silly. You make me sound like I was her savior, or something.”

“
No you weren’t her savior,” David said with a cutting look that sliced right through her when she had raised her gaze momentarily to look at him. “Don’t flatter yourself. You were her friend. Her only one. The year my sister died, I spoke to a nurse who works there. The only one there who really remembered much about her. Emma didn’t get many visitors. But the woman remembered you. ‘Oh, the girl who always came and made Emma’s face light up?’ That was you, and that was how I came to know about you. I’m sure you knew and know now that she clung to you like a life support system. You were the only thing in her life that brought her any joy.”

Her heart started to weigh down in her chest. “Okay and so what?” She couldn’t hold the picture anymore and let it fall to the table. “So then I did a good thing back then. I and the school helped White Crest City Hospital by helping the patients. How can any of this be my fault?”

“
Because you stopped being there.”

Maria fell silent. He grinned, but not out of amusement. Out of satisfaction.

“
Imagine being a child and having to deal with painful therapy every waking hour just so you can probably, hopefully,
maybe
walk again,” David began, his dark eyes piercing her. “Imagine being a child and having no friends because nurses tell the other kids you’re crazy. Imagine being a child having to live in a hospital full of people who couldn’t care less if you lived or not. Your visits to see her were what kept her happy. You were the force that drove her to continue fighting. She only held on for barely two months after you deserted her. She must have been waiting for you to come back. Hoping. So long as she resisted, so long as she kept sending it away, she would have never been killed. That was her own way of defeating it.”

Her fingernails gripped the couch tightly. “‘It’? What are you talking about? And what do you mean by killed? She died of natural circumstances. People die every day. There may not always be an explanation but that’s the way it goes. You can’t really believe those hallucinations she had were—”

“
You’re an idiot to think a frozen heart is natural.” A muscle in his neck tightened threateningly. “
Frozen
, Maria. Think about it. And that’s not the only article on the case. The other ones that described her weren’t nearly as mercifully vague as the one I just made you read. Or would you like to read those other ones for yourself?”

She shut her hands over her ears and closed her eyes. “No! I don’t want to hear this. None of that is possible. Emma was just a little girl with a big imagination, who read too much, who dreamt too much, who daydreamed too much—just stop it!”

David’s hands clenched in the air, choking it instead of her neck. His face twisted with his hate. “You really better start realizing the impossible is possible. Lest you forget, I just turned your family into statues. Emma’s death was far from natural.”

“
Get out of my house!”

David’s voice rolled out of control. “No, no damn it! You wanted everything, and you’re going to
get
everything! My family was never on the good side of fate. Fate killed my family in that car crash.
Fate
was what killed Emma in the hospital!”

Fate? Why did he make fate sound like a person?

“
Emma had no hallucinations. She was the only one who could see what was after her. In her weak and vulnerable state she needed someone to be there with her to help her through her struggles. I don’t know why the hell she clung to you but I can’t deny and won’t deny that it was you Maria,
you
that she looked to for strength. But once you left, what more reason was there to go on?”

Her lip quivered and she screamed out, “You can’t blame this all on me!”

“
Why does someone get out of bed in the morning when they wake up, Maria?” he continued relentlessly. “Because they have a purpose, something, no matter how small to look forward to. In her case, it became absolutely nothing. That’s why it got her. You have no excuse. Absolutely no excuse. You were sixteen, not twelve, not ten. You knew what was
right
. Because of your actions it got her.”

She gripped the ends of her bloodstained dress. “What the hell do you mean ‘
it’
? What do you mean?”

“
Everything is because my family has been cursed.”

Cursed? How much further did she have to fall headfirst into this nightmare? Did he really expect her to believe all of this was about a curse? But oh God, looking at him now he really did expect her to believe it. His expression, stern and rigid, demonstrated his all too frightening seriousness.

“
What killed my parents and tried to kill me as well had a specific, relentless ambition to get her as well. And unfortunately...” His hands became fists in front of him and revealed a tremor. “She’s gone now. But I’ve sworn things to myself. Even though my relatives aren’t the targets, I swear I’ll save them any more pain. I swear I’ll avenge my family’s death,
and
save myself before this is all over.”

Out of the blue another mental surge coursed through Maria to make her tremble.

Whatever got them won’t trouble me. I
know
if I stay happy, nothing will get me—and I’m happy with you Maria.

Maria shot up from the couch. “No!” she screamed. “I didn’t know...I didn’t know I was important enough to...”

“
Yes you did.”

She couldn’t take it any longer. She couldn’t take the accusations and turned on him. “So what about
you
? Huh?” Maria’s finger pointed toward his face in dangerous, bold accusation. “Where did
you
go? You didn’t die in the accident! You escaped the crash. Why didn’t
you
help her?”

“
My calling was somewhere else.” His response was calm and collected despite her blow up. “She didn’t die then, and to make sure she didn’t die by what killed my family I had to leave White Crest and take care of things elsewhere. It wasn’t my choice to leave. I was saved by someone and upon his own accord he didn’t take Emma along with me. But I do not question his actions. I never will.”

But he wouldn’t help me. He wouldn’t save me...He told me I had no chance! I am important just like he is!

No more memories! She couldn’t take any more memories!

Maria fell back into the couch, suffocated with disbelief. Emma had been right all along. She’d been right. Maria’s lips quivered. Anguish overcame her. “But why me?” she said to herself.

He slammed his hands down hard on the table. “Stop saying that because you damn well know why
you
! Otherwise why would you have apologized back there? You said you were sorry about Emma. You know what you were sorry for.”

Maria was still shaking, losing control of herself. Without her realizing it, he had come around the table and dragged her to her feet. “Wipe that look of shock off your face. If you didn’t plan on being there for her you shouldn’t have put yourself in her life in the first place.”

A quavering breath followed his harsh, accusing words. A breath, then a tear. Soon her eyes became soaked. Maria looked into the new face before her, at the hatred and the malice in his eyes directed at her with full force.

She winced when he gripped her shoulders even tighter.

“
I might not have known you years ago,” he said, “but knowing you for the short time I’ve studied you, I can already read you like a book. I can see you for what you are now and for what you were like then. Most people when they are young never think twice of others. They help people only because they are forced in some way or because they can attain their own personal self-interest. As soon as your
obligated
community service no longer was important, you stopped visiting her. You thought it would be okay to just stop like everyone else. Never once did you think about her. You just came into her life and left. You could have visited, if even once a month out of your busy schedule, but no, people like you groan at the thought of being inconvenienced by helping someone. You’re too busy with your own life to worry about the needs of others, even a little girl who couldn’t take care of herself. For you it was just a charity case, like giving money to a beggar on the road. You do something as long as it’s required of you, then you go on with your own life and forget the beggar still begging on the road even existed! Even if you pass him by every single day. You selfish little bitch.”

The tears flooded down her cheeks. God, she knew he was right! She never thought twice about things like that. Her own naïveté told her it would be okay to just go on with her own life.

She promised she would see Emma again. But Maria kept putting it off so much that one day, finally, she knew she could not go back. And so she had to make herself forget. When too much time passed, too much guilt developed. Weeks passed, months, then years. Maria believed if she forgot about Emma, then the guilt would no longer plague her mind. Why did she have to be the one experiencing such feelings? The other students left their attachments without so much as a second thought. Why did she have to be the only one who felt such intense guilt and pressure? Why did she have to be the one to feel duty-bound?

No! It wasn’t her fault! He couldn’t blame her for the past.

“
I had my own life and my own problems, David! Every day, every
single
day it was ‘Maria, keep working hard,’ ‘Maria, remember what we expect from you.’ And then in the eighth grade, when I should have been thinking about anything and everything else, my parents finally got the guts to tell me my future was going to be decided by a man my father chose. I know it’s no excuse, but...but...How was I supposed to know that such a pebble in my life would have—”

A pebble? Oh God, the words hadn’t come out the way she wanted them to, but these were her true feelings and thoughts at the time years ago coming out now, bare and naked.

David became infuriated. “That’s the problem! That’s the problem right there. She was just a
pebble
in your life. No Maria. Every single thing you do, every single person you meet in life comes there for a reason. I don’t care if you were young. What you did then still has an effect on the future. There’s no excuse! A mistake can’t be erased with time. You may have forgotten but
I’m
not going to let you forget. For as long as you live you’re going to remember. She’s dead because you did nothing. All you had to do was take five minutes out of your busy life to just see her, talk to her, kiss her and hold her.”

She pulled away from him and darted across the room, but within a second he cornered her and boxed her against the wall with his strong long arms on either side of her head.

“
You can’t run anymore, Maria!” The force of his shout was so intense his breath blew loose several locks of hair about her face. “You couldn’t handle your guilt then and you can’t handle it now.”

She wanted to escape. Desperately. But she knew he wouldn’t let her leave. Not until he was finished making her suffer.

“
Okay then!” she yelled with tears falling down into her mouth. “Fine then. I killed your sister. Then kill me! Why don’t you just do it and get it over with.”

His expression changed and he became morbid. Dangerously morbid. His voice became so deep it reverberated in her eardrums. “A part of me really would like to kill you. Every time I think about Emma, I think you deserve the same end she got. But I’ve realized that murderer is not and never will be part of my repertoire.” He leaned in close to her face. She could feel his breath on her skin. “I’d rather you suffer, to be quite honest. Suffer like she did. For you, death would actually be a blessing when you think about it. You’re going to live every day with the guilt that you could have stopped a little girl’s death...and didn’t.”

His words were like poison to her heart, infecting her in all the right places of susceptibility. Soon Maria’s knees crumbled underneath her and she fell to the floor. He stood for a moment as convulsive sobs of guilt shook her chest and shoulders. Anguish overcame her to the point where she could scarcely breathe. She wanted to disappear into the earth—melt into the ground—evaporate into the sky like a single drop of moisture—anything to escape this brutal assault. And even though she wailed shamefully like a newborn baby...

He showed no pity in his heart for her.

As quick as thought, she reacted with a fury all her own. She snapped her head up and darted him a glare behind soaked eyes so severe he took a step back. “So, let me ask you something now. What’s
your
goddamn punishment?” She burned a look of accusation into him. “You weren’t there for her either. You said you left White Crest to help her, but you were her brother! The place she needed you was here, not somewhere else. If there’s anyone who deserted her it was you.”