Chapter Thirty

Havermouth, Present Time

Tiffany Carter and her partner, Vincent Lowe, arrived an hour before the funeral, Vincent’s Mercedes parking behind Aislen’s car in the driveway of her father's house.

Aislen watched her mother mince across the gravel in her stiletto heels, exclaiming at the garden in horror. Tiffany’s hair was platinum blonde and had been pin-curled to create a retro bombshell style. Teamed with a skin-tight black dress and full face of makeup, she looked as if she were going out for an evening on the town rather than to her ex-husband’s funeral.

“Did it just to spite me!” Tiffany exclaimed as she reached the porch. “All those plants!”

“Hi, mum,” Aislen opened the front door.

“Oh, god, no, Aislen,” Tiffany complained upon seeing Aislen. “You look like you should be the one being buried today. Do you ever step out into daylight? It’s called a healthy glow, darling.”

“Hi, Vince,” Aislen ignored her mother.

“Hi,” he was tall, broad shouldered, and captain-of-the-football-team-handsome, very clean cut and wholesome in his carefully pressed shirt and perfectly respectable dark grey suit. “How are you?”

“Good, thank you,” Aislen stepped back as her mother pushed past, still complaining.

“Oh, gawd,” Tiffany bemoaned the house. “I forgot how pokey it was.”

“A hard day,” Vince said uncomfortably to Aislen, still standing on the porch. “I am very sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you,” Aislen looked over her shoulder. Tiffany was making her way back down the hall from the kitchen. “Are you done?” She asked her mother.

“It’s still a shit-box in a nasty, clichéd little town,” Tiffany declared loudly, as she joined Vincent on the porch. “Full of people who think they’re too good for the likes of us. Let’s go then, darling,” she said to Vince.

“Hmm,” Aislen closed the door behind her. Her mother had never been impressed that the town matriarchs hadn’t immediately welcomed her with open arms into their cliques – Tiffany, of course, had no idea that the reason for that was because all of the notable families in the area were werewolves.

“I still can’t believe that he cut me out of his will,” Tiffany complained. “We were married for twenty years! We had a child together!”

“And you got divorced, mum,” Aislen sighed, wearily. “Most people don’t leave their possessions to the wife that left them.”

“Well, it would have been nice,” Tiffany was disgruntled. “I am here, after all, at his funeral. We’ll probably be the only ones there. Some gratitude would have been nice. I hate this town,” she added. “When we moved here, things looked so promising, and then…” Her eyes fell to Aislen.

“And then I became a whore,” Aislen finished for her. “I know.”

“Should we go?” Vincent was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the conversation. “Will you come with us, Aislen?” He offered.

“Thanks, but no thanks,” Aislen replied shaking her head. “Or I’ll be burying two parents today.”

“Aislen, there’s no need to be so… snippy,” Tiffany snapped.

“Come on, Tiff,” Vincent opened the passenger side door encouragingly. “It’s a hard day for you both.”

“If only she appreciated…” What Aislen failed to appreciate was cut off when Vincent closed the car door. He met Aislen’s eyes and made a little apologetic grimace as he rounded the car to the driver’s side.

“I give it another twelve months,” Aislen predicted as she slid into the car. She could not understand what had attracted Vincent to her mother, and what kept him there for the past two years, but he seemed determined to stick around.

She followed the Mercedes through town to the funeral parlour. Patrick had opted to be cremated, and so there would be a simple ceremony in one of the smaller rooms, followed by tea and biscuits in the lounge. It seemed like an insignificant way to say goodbye to someone, Aislen thought, but she wasn’t sure what she would find more appropriate.

The car park was filled to overflowing, and they ended up having to park on the street. Aislen could hear Tiffany complaining as they joined her on the sidewalk.

“There must be another funeral underway,” Aislen speculated.

“You would think that they would only schedule one at a time,” Tiffany was unhappy with having to walk too far in her shoes.

“Maybe it ran over. These things do, you know,” Vincent replied soothingly.

At the front entrance to the funeral parlour a solemn-faced man stood to greet arrivals.

“We’re here for Patrick Carter’s funeral,” Aislen told him.

“Of course,” he gestured for them to enter.

They paused in the entrance hall beside a glossy round table with an elaborate arrangement of flowers. The double doors before them were open, and the cacophony of voices spilling out reminded Aislen of being in a school assembly. People milled around chatting in the aisle between the seats. She reinforced the bubbles protecting her from being overwhelmed by their thoughts, breathing deeply, and trying to maintain inner calm as she had been taught to do.

“Where do we go?” Tiffany wondered.

“In there, I guess?” Vincent pointed to the double doors. “The sign before the door says Patrick Carter."

"Surely a mistake has happened," Tiffany was astonished. "Excuse me! Excuse me!" She stopped a woman in a black suit who was passing through with a handful of brochures. “We’re here for Patrick Carter,” Tiffany told her. “Where do we go?”

“Oh,” the woman looked confused, looking between Tiffany and the door. “The main hall is hosting the funeral of Patrick Carter, as per the sign,” she pointed to it.

“No, I don’t think you understand,” Tiffany shook her head. “Patrick Carter is having a small funeral.”

“Yes, we had to upgrade the room to the main hall when the number of arrivals made it evident that the original room booked would be insufficient,” she replied. “Are you… the family?”

“Yes,” Aislen swallowed thickly, her throat tight. “We’d best go in.”

As they entered, the conversations hushed and several people approached her, clasping her hand in theirs and murmuring their condolences. Aislen was grateful that she had learned to control and maintain the bubbles in crowds with proficiency, but the touches that they insisted on delivering flooded her mind with images — disconnected, rapid bombardments of memory or thought. By the time she sat in the front pew reserved for family, she felt shellshocked and on the verge of tears.

Most of the gathering were work mates of her father, but some were parents of girls who had come to know him through his investigations.

The funeral director stepped to the lectern and began the ceremony. As per Patrick’s original plans, it was short, simple, and understated. “Would anyone care to say something?” The director invited the gathering. There was a long, expectant silence.

“I will,” a man said from the back, moving forward to stand behind the lectern. He looked at Aislen. “I am Chris Arren. I worked with Patrick,” he told her. “And we caught up regularly around our shifts. Patrick was… He was a man of few words, but those he did say, they had meaning behind them. He was not a man quick to fight, but once he decided there was a cause to, he was determined not to lose. You should be proud of your father, Aislen. He was a good man, and a friend to many. I am very sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you, Chris,” the funeral director said warmly. “Well, there will be coffee and tea served in the lounge for those who wish to deliver their condolences to the family in person. Thank you for attending the funeral of Patrick Carter, a good friend, a father, and a member of our community.”

Aislen followed Tiffany and Vincent out of the funeral at the tail of the departing guests, but when they turned left towards the lounge, she continued through and out into the bright sunshine. She hurried down the street, past her parked car, to the nearby park, and stood in the shade of a tree to light a cigarette with shaking hands.

“Let me get that for you, Aislen,” Chris Arren said, taking the lighter and holding the flame for her before returning it to her hand. “I hope you don’t mind that I followed you. I wanted to talk to you, about your father, and… things.”

Aislen blew out smoke, her eyes scanning the park, wary about being alone with a stranger. “What things?”

“I know you were estranged from your father, and I know that he… Well, he blamed himself for that,” he said, sliding his hands into his pockets. “I know what happened to you, at High School. My daughter was a few years ahead of you, but because of what happened to her, and the Triquetra being, well, high profile, when they and you started… you know. It went very quickly around town.”

“I know,” she replied grimly. “Everyone in town knew that I was the Triquetra’s whore.”

Chris nodded slowly. “That was what was being said, yes,” he said softly. “But we know… Those of us who have been there with our daughters, different boys, but the same tricks of pressuring girls into doing things that they don’t want to, using their popularity as a weapon, and some flat-out raping when their other tricks didn’t work… We know the truth.”

“The truth,” she repeated. “I don’t even know the truth.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “My daughter was the same. She was certain that she had consented, that she had somehow agreed, that she was responsible for what happened, but she wasn’t. I don’t know if you have heard the term gaslighting, Aislen. It’s a phrase that originates from a movie, where a husband convinced his wife that she was going insane, that only she could see the lights of their home flicker…”

“I’m familiar with it.”

“Good. That is what these boys do, you see. They are… well, they are predators. Maybe, under it all, they’re actually good people, I don’t know. Many of them seem to straighten themselves out eventually. Maybe it’s society and teen pressure, testosterone and hormones… but there seems to be a few years where boys stop seeing girls as people, and instead as a means to their sexual gratification.

“And that is what happens with alarming frequency in this town,” he sighed heavily. “With alarming frequency. A frequency that would be helped if the police would actually do their jobs and prosecute these sexual offenders, rather than cover it up and laugh it off as boys just being boys…”

“I know,” she said quietly. “But it’s not that simple, either.”

“No, it’s not,” he nodded. “My daughter attempted suicide after what happened to her. She suffered irrevocable brain damage as a result of her attempt and will live the rest of her life in a nursing home under care because she can’t take care of herself.

“There are consequences,” his voice hardened. “Consequences for their victims. There should be consequences for the crime. Your father agreed, and we and a group of parents of girls who had experienced the same harassment, assault, and then minimalization of their suffering, as my daughter did, we were working towards gathering evidence and building a legal case against the police in this town.

“Your father had that evidence,” he looked at her pleadingly. “We need to find it.”

“I don’t…” She gestured helplessly with the cigarette. “I’ve been through that house, cleaning it out, and…” She didn’t feel right lying to him when his eyes held so much pain. “I’ll look again,” she said lamely.

“Thank you. I would appreciate that. I’ll leave you in peace now. But if you want to talk, Aislen, about what happened to you, about your father… Here is my card. Our group meets every week.” He handed her a small business card. “We would welcome you.”

As he walked away, Aislen’s phone rang, and she sighed as she answered it.

“Where are you?” Tiffany demanded. “You can’t just…”

“I have a migraine,” Aislen said shortly. “I needed some fresh air. I’m going to drive back to the house now and lay down.”

“I’m not going back there,” Tiffany told her sharply. “Too many unpleasant memories.”

“Okay then,” Aislen was relieved about that. “I’ll speak to you soon, on the phone.”

She went to the bottle shop and bought a bottle of wine, and then risked getting in trouble with the police by drinking from it as she walked the streets, thinking of that summer when everything had changed. It was late afternoon when she returned to the house. Her last night with Talen, she thought, as she changed into jeans and boiled the kettle, planning to sober up with the terrible instant coffee her father had stocked.

The kettle had just boiled when she heard a sound behind her and turned to see the Triquetra stepping into the kitchen. “Look, guys,” she protested their arrival. “I have someone coming over in just a few hours, and then I have to pack…”

“We know,” Heath replied. “That’s why we’re here.”

“To say goodbye?” She wondered, her heart aching as she looked from one to another. She blamed the wine for the slow realization that their expressions were hard and uncompromising, not softened by sadness or lit with passion. “What…?” She started to say.

“Quick,” Cameron said as Heath caught her against him, and a cloth with an acrid, chemical smell was clamped over her nose and mouth muffling her scream. She struggled against Heath, flashes of thoughts and images shooting through her mind in rapid fire too fast for her to absorb, and she heard him grunt as she delivered an elbow to his stomach.

Her vision blacked, and she fell into darkness.