In the Distance There Is Light

In the Distance There Is Light Read Free Page A

Book: In the Distance There Is Light Read Free
Author: Harper Bliss
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wanted to do for Dolores. We’re in this together, after all. Just me and her. “Okay.” Ian always refused to have a television in our bedroom, claiming it interfered with the quality of sleep. Now he’s no longer here, I’m not so bothered with the quality as much as with the quantity of my sleep. “I’ll let Jeremy know that I’m here.”

Chapter Four

    I wake up with the television still blaring. I switch it off, afraid that I’ve kept Dolores awake in the room next door. Am I really in her bed? What was I thinking taking her up on her offer? Chasing her out of her own bed? The thought is so jarring that any remaining inclination toward sleep flees me. When I swallow, I have a bad taste in my mouth. From the back of my head, a painful pulse makes its way forward. Great, a brandy hangover in the middle of the night. I sit up, knowing I won’t be able to sleep any time soon. As always when I wake after drinking too much, my heart hammers frantically, reminding me that, unlike Ian, I’m still alive.
    I switch on the bedside lamp and cast my glance over Dolores’ room. On the wall opposite the bed there’s a picture of her and Angela in front of the Eiffel Tower. It was always just a fact of life that I would never meet Ian’s biological mother, but now, for the first time, it hurts that I never shook Angela’s hand and examined her face for similarities with her son. In the picture, Dolores has her arm wrapped around Angela’s shoulder, clasping tightly, towering over her.
    I met Ian’s father for the first time the day before the funeral. A man with a voice so booming I searched for the amplifier he carried around with him. Robert, who insisted I call him Bob and certainly not Sir, is the only one left of the family he started with Angela thirty-five years ago. When he walked up to me, I believed I’d made a trip into the future and was clasping eyes on an older, surviving version of Ian—I believed that all the Ambien and Xanax I’d been taking was playing a trick on me. Bob was all Ian with his gangly limbs, easy smile and dark, full eyebrows. Seeing him, and the resemblance with Ian, only intensified my loss.
    When he left Chicago a day after the funeral, I was relieved to see him go, but also sad. There goes the very last of Ian , I thought when I hugged him good-bye. This is the last time I’ll see those eyes and that hint of a smile that always played on his lips, even when he had no intention of smiling at all.
    I crash back into the pillows with a loud sigh. Dolores may have rules about sleeping pills, but I can’t afford that luxury. Without a couple of hours of being out of it every night, I’d be even less of a person during the day. I’m of half a mind to just get up, get dressed and go back to Jeremy’s. To swallow a pill and wait for it to deliver relief. But despite my mind being wide awake, my body doesn’t have the energy.
    I think of Dolores sleeping in the guest room, where Ian and I always stayed on the rare occasions that we spent the night. Perhaps that’s why she offered her bed, a space not tainted with Ian’s memory. Then my mind drifts to his former bedroom and I’m overcome with an urge to explore.
    I tip-toe on the wooden floorboards, but can’t avoid them creaking underneath my step as I head to Ian’s room. When I turn the door handle, my pulse picks up speed, as though I’m expecting to find him there, as intact as his teenage belongings.
    Of course, the room is empty.
    I switch on the lamp on his desk, hoping it still works. It does, casting the room into an eerie sort of light. Before all of this happened, I would never have pegged myself for someone who speaks to deceased loved ones, but here, in Ian’s room, I suddenly feel compelled to say something to him. To invoke his spirit. To, just one last time, feel the way I did when I was with him. Secure; more myself than I ever was before I met him; like I could do anything. I try to speak, but no words come

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