31: The Ire of Mr. Flannery

He flicked the stub of his cigarette to the street and reached in­side his jack­et for the crum­pled pack he kept in the breast pock­et. His green eyes were trained on the build­ing across the street. He had seen them en­ter it ear­li­er. He wasn’t con­cerned about their re-​emer­gence from it, how­ev­er. Con­sid­er­ing the fact that they hadn’t come out yet, Sea­mus was sure be­yond doubt that this was their res­idence. He felt his stom­ach be­gin­ning to churn with the thought of Brig­it Mal­one play­ing house with her Mag­gie. Their lives were an abom­ina­tion. They should have been straight­ened out a long time ago…but I have a big­ger bone to pick with her, Sea­mus mused as he struck a match from the worn book of them he kept in his pock­et and touched the flame to the tip of the cigarette be­tween his lips.

He had been less than amused when told that Brig­it Mal­one would be re­turn­ing to the firm. He had over­es­ti­mat­ed John’s sense of fair­ness in the mat­ter. Ob­vi­ous­ly, the head Reaper had more of a soft spot for the wom­an than Sea­mus had re­al­ized. It irked him that she would be al­lowed back to her post af­ter such neg­li­gence. Oh well, Sea­mus thought, all is fair in war…

And it was war, he de­ter­mined as he stared hard at the build­ing. Brig­it Mal­one had be­trayed him. The ic­ing on the cake had come when John Black­wick had en­tered his of­fice and de­mand­ed the to­kens of his con­quests. She had tat­tled on him like a school­girl in pig­tails. He had won those sou­venirs fair­ly. To have them tak­en from him was just one more thing to stoke the fires of his ire. She had caused some­thing to be tak­en from him. He would sim­ply have to find some­thing to take from her…

In­hal­ing deep on the new cigarette, Sea­mus turned and be­gan to walk away. There were plans to be made, a scheme to be hatched. He need­ed to be­gin as­sem­bling the cast for their parts in his play. Brig­it Mal­one would learn her les­son. Sea­mus was set hard on that.

32: The Heaviness of it All

She awoke slow­ly. As she rolled her head to the side, Mag­gie no­ticed the heav­iness of it. It was a side af­fect of the sleep­ing pills she had tak­en, she knew. She re­mem­bered Brig­it’s com­plaint of the same sen­sa­tion the next morn­ing af­ter tak­ing them. Now, as she fo­cused her gaze on the clock qui­et­ly tick­ing on the bed­side ta­ble, Mag­gie won­dered if she should have tak­en them at all.

She had need­ed the sleep, though. It had been a rough week and the state of sleep had kept its bor­ders closed to her.

Slow­ly, Mag­gie pushed her­self up in­to a sit­ting po­si­tion and sighed. It was more than her head that felt heavy. Her whole body felt heavy. She came to the con­clu­sion that it was no won­der that Brig­it had stopped tak­ing the pills af­ter on­ly a few nights…

An­oth­er deep sigh es­caped Mag­gie. Af­ter so many months, her thoughts still seemed to re­volve around Brig­it. Her dreams con­tained im­ages of mem­ories, imag­ina­tions that Brig­it was still present even though Mag­gie was well aware that she would nev­er see Brig­it walk­ing though the door and an­nounc­ing that she was fi­nal­ly home. That par­tic­ular weight bore down on her brain the heav­iest of all. Brig­it had promised for­ev­er and that promise had been bro­ken.

Or had it?

Mag­gie’s at­ten­tion drift­ed to the framed pic­ture of Brig­it that sat be­side the qui­et­ly tick­ing clock. She had tried to re­move the vi­su­al re­minders, yet, she had come home that day and found this one par­tic­ular re­minder re­turned to its place. Then, there had been the aw­ful fight with Lore­na Rubens where Mag­gie had been sure she had heard Brig­it’s voice telling Lore­na to leave. That had been fol­lowed by the scuf­fle with an un­seen force that had end­ed with Lore­na’s ejec­tion from the apart­ment. Mag­gie had thought she had imag­ined it all. She had been sure Lore­na had just been over­ly hys­ter­ical in her de­par­ture. At least, that was what Mag­gie had tried to con­vince her­self of in the fol­low­ing days. It was far eas­ier to be­lieve that sce­nario than the idea of Brig­it’s ghost hang­ing around.

Yet, as she thought of it now, she re­mem­bered hear­ing Brig­it’s voice again. It had been just a few mo­ments be­fore she crossed the lines in­to deep sleep. Brig­it’s voice had been so clear… What had she said? Mag­gie be­gan to fight hard against the fog left by the sleep­ing pills for the short ex­change she could now re­mem­ber hav­ing with her lover dur­ing those mo­ments be­tween lu­cid­ity and sleep.

It was an ac­ci­dent…

I’m still with you…

I haven’t bro­ken my promise…

I love you too…

The next sound to es­cape Mag­gie was not a sigh, but rather, a sob – a deep and painful sob that rode on the clar­ity of the words she had heard be­fore falling in­to the deep­est sleep she had ex­pe­ri­enced since be­fore the night Brig­it had been killed. The sob re­leased her. It freed her from the weight she had been car­ry­ing qui­et­ly. Her tears flowed in a tor­rent over her cheeks as she gave way to the free­dom from the heav­iness that had been sit­ting on her heart all these months.

Brig­it had nev­er and would nev­er lie to her. In the end, Mag­gie now had the feel­ing, Brig­it was keep­ing her promise.