so many that the pathway was almost obstructed for pedestrians who were passing by. My heart hurt when I realised that someone had died there. I wondered what had happened, and before I knew it I was in front of the flower pile, to read one of the cards attached to the mountain of bouquets of flowers. Many of the flowers were bloomed pink lilies that were at different stages of dying.
I leaned forward and read the first one I spotted.
Rest easy, angel.
xoxo
Quick, simple and very sweet. I moved my eyes over more cards, but many of them were without the usual plastic sheets to protect them from being exposed to the weather and had been damaged. My eyes found a huge arrangement of pink lilies in the shape of a butterfly in flight – it was beautiful. I carefully lifted it up with one hand, squinted and began reading.
Sleep tight our darling Bailey girl.
Watch over us, and wait for us, beauty.
Love you always,
Da, Ma & Elliot xx
I stared at the card, reading it three times before I slowly lowered the flowers back down to the ground. Bailey girl. Da, Ma and Elliot. I blinked at the coincidence of the girl who had clearly died being called Bailey and having someone close to her – maybe a brother – with the name Elliot. I looked to my right when an older gentleman paused, like me, to peer at the flowers and read a couple of cards. He glanced at me, noticed I was looking at him, and smiled in greeting.
“Very sad.” He nodded to the flower pile. “The poor kid was only starting her life.”
“A child?” I asked, horrified. “The girl who died was only a child?”
I would have been sad for a person’s passing at any age, but there was something about a child losing their life before they had a chance to live it that struck me as truly tragic.
“To me, yes.” He nodded. “To you, not so much.”
I frowned. “She was an adult then?”
“Twenty-one or twenty-two, I think. I speak with her father every so often, he’s an Irishman. He owns McKenna’s pub.”
I stared at the man as a cold, painful sensation of dread churned in my stomach. His words were almost impossible for me to comprehend.
“Bailey?” I almost whispered. “Bailey McKenna? She . . . she died?”
“Yes.” The man nodded. “Poor kid. She’s buried over in West Norwood Cemetery; her brother was on duty when the accident happened, I heard. He’s a firefighter, he got a woman out of the car but the car was engulfed in flames before anyone could get to the girl. It’s horrible.”
I felt like I couldn’t breathe.
The man said something else to me, but I could no longer hear a word that came out of his mouth as his earlier words repeated over and over in my mind. An ache formed at my temples, and I lifted my hand to my forehead and closed my eyes. I focused on breathing in and out. It helped. When I opened my eyes, the man was staring at me, concern plastered all over his face.
“Mister, listen to me,” I said, an edge to my voice. “Are you sure it was Bailey McKenna? Maybe another Irish family owns a pub in town?”
“I’m sure they do.” His brown was furrowed. “But McKenna’s has been owned by the same man going on eleven years now. Seamus McKenna.”
Elliot’s father. I bent over as pain erupted in my stomach. My heart beat wildly within my chest and my head started to kill me. I felt a pulsing in my left temple, but I didn’t have a second to focus on it because through the haze of physical pain and fear I felt, I heard my name being called.
“Noah?”
I turned as Elliot’s parents, Mr and Mrs McKenna, got out of a car. Both were staring at me with wide eyes. It felt as if everything had slowed down. I stared at them and shook my head.
“It’s not true,” I said, raising my voice. “Tell me it’s not true.”
Mrs McKenna promptly burst into tears, and my chest tightened to the point where I rubbed it hopefully to relieve the ache. It didn’t help.
“No!” I shouted. “Where is she? Where is Bailey?”
Mr McKenna approached me slowly.
“Noah, darlin’, look at me.”
I groaned as my head exploded with pain. My mind was racing a mile a minute as I tried to make sense of what was happening.