Chapter 22 - Dave
When Izzy leaves to go home I realise how big this house really is. It’s so empty when I’m here on my own. Everyone is gone or in bed and the silence is almost oppressive. I head outside to get some air and try to make sense of the day.
I’m married. I’m married to Izzy Daniels. Not only that, I’m married to Izzy Daniels and we had sex today! It’s wrong on so many levels I don’t even know where to start.
It may be wrong but it was the best sex I’ve ever had, no question about it. I’ve never been with a woman who felt so alive, who knew exactly where to touch me and what to say and what to do to send me straight to orgasm. She’s irresistible.
We have a connection on a primal level that’s undeniable. But she’s Izzy Daniels. I’ve dedicated most of my adult life to cursing her existence. I’ve blamed her for the events that led to the death of my entire family.
My grandfather’s words ring in my ears: I shouldn’t be so hard on her. I should talk to her, listen to what she has to say. How can I do that? How can I sit down across for her and talk to her about the event that changed the course of my entire life?
For an arrangement that was supposed to be all business, this has decidedly become messier than I expected. I thought my attraction to her was carnal. I thought my attraction was simply because she’s attractive. But as I sit in the cool night air and replay the events from this afternoon I feel something in the depth of my chest. I know it was more than attraction. It was a connection.
Crickets’ songs are ringing through the air. Dusk is my favourite time of the day, and these days as summer turns to fall the air has a bite to it. The cold makes me feel alive and I breathe deeply. I’m starting to think I’ve made a mistake. My head is screaming that I shouldn’t have done this, that it’ll end in disaster, but there’s another force pulling me towards her. I need to find out what happened to my family.
My sister Hannah and Izzy were inseparable. Hannah was always the ringleader, she had a stronger personality. She’d drag Izzy along on all her half-baked adventures, always convincing her to do things as Izzy protested. I smile as I think of Hannah. The firecracker of the family. One time, she must have been about ten or eleven years old, she convinced Izzy to try and prank me. They rigged a big bucket of water on top of the door to her room, just like in cartoons. I remember hearing them giggling behind her door as I walked by.
“Davey! Come in here!” I heard Hannah say to me. I remember turning towards the door, and seeing it ajar. They had an old towel laid down on the ground, and I remember thinking it was strange. I could hear Hannah giggling as she called me in again.
I remember seeing Izzy through the open door. Her eyes were wide as she looked at me. She looked almost scared. Hannah was still laughing. I put my hand on the door and pushed it open slowly, poking my head through the doorway and slipping through as soon as the opening was big enough. I glanced at the towel and then at Hannah and saw her face fall in disappointment. Izzy looked relieved and started laughing.
She had pointed to the bucked, balancing precariously on the top of the door. They hadn’t tilted it against the frame and I’d opened the door gently enough to leave it balancing on top.
I was mad when I saw the bucket, but now I laugh. I laugh by myself in the back garden, my shoulders shaking up and down. I laugh until tears start streaming down my face.
Hannah was the prankster and Izzy was her conscience. At the time I didn’t understand their friendship. Hannah was so full of life and Izzy was so quiet. They were opposites, I didn’t understand how they got along so well. A part of me always thought Hannah just treated Izzy as her little plaything.
When I think of it now, I realise that Izzy was the calming presence, the one who brought Hannah’s feet back to the ground. I watch Izzy with Pop and I see that same quality in her now as an adult. She’s level-headed and kind. Her strength is understated yet undeniable.
Hannah didn’t steamroll Izzy, she didn’t use her. Hannah needed Izzy. The realisation is like a wave crashing through me. Suddenly the memories start flooding back. Hannah’s temper tantrums and the way Izzy would calm her down. My sister was wild, and when Izzy was around everything got easier.
Suddenly I know why my parents treated Izzy like their own daughter, why Hannah loved her. Everything that I couldn’t see when I was a child is making sense. Izzy wasn’t a clinger, she wasn’t weak or being used or hanging on to Hannah for whatever selfish reason.
I take a deep breath and rub my head. I can’t believe I never realised this before. All this time, I thought Izzy was using our family, or using Hannah, trying to climb some sort of prepubescent social ladder.
She wasn’t. She loved Hannah, and Hannah loved her.
Hannah needed her. Their friendship was deeper than I could have realised back then. The day of the accident, Hannah and both my parents went to get Izzy. They said that they were going to pick her up and she’d stay with us for a little while. I remember being annoyed and jealous that this girl who wasn’t even part of our family was taking time and attention away from me.
God, I must have been a brat.
That’s when they got in an accident. Izzy’s mom crashed into them head-on and it was an instant, painless death, or at least that’s what the doctors kept telling me. And in a cruel twist of fate, Izzy was the only one to survive, so I could be reminded that her family was whole and mine was gone.
It never made sense to me, why Izzy’s mom was going that direction, how they could have crashed the way they did. I struggle to think about it now, to remember the details. I spent so much time trying to forget that it feels strange to think about it now.
What did Pop mean, that there was more to it than I knew? I shiver as the night’s chill starts to get to me. I guess I’m going to need to ask Izzy about this myself.