Free The Reckoning on Cane Hill: A Novel by Steve Mosby Page A

was as though a switch had been flicked and an unspoken truce called, neither of them seeing the point any more in fighting over patches of ground they both knew didn’t matter.
    It had also held them in place. For a long time, Jamie had been the only thing keeping them together. Before he went missing, they’d been like planets separately circling the bright sun of his life. When that sun had winked out, it had left a centre of gravity still strong enough to hold them in its orbit. And so round and round they went, even now, unable to escape the power of the loss, the absence, the emptiness that had once held the bright light of their little boy. And despite the acrimony and bitterness that had once existed between them, there was nobody else Groves would have wanted to spend his son’s birthday with. Apart from Jamie, of course.
    As the evening progressed, the two of them made small talk, or sat in comfortable stretches of silence, watching the sun as it moved lower. Both of them, Groves was sure, were thinking of Jamie, who was somehow there with them, yet not.
    Jamie had never lived in this cottage, of course, but in Groves’ mind’s eye, he could easily imagine him here. Running around the garden in front of them, perhaps kicking a ball and swiping the midges away. There was a problem with that image, though, because Groves pictured his son as the same little boy he remembered: innocent and excited and delightedby everything. He could even still hear his laugh in his head: a high-pitched, unguarded squeal of joy that had always made everything better. And yet if Jamie had still been alive now, he would be very different. Older and changed. He would like different things. He would look different. He would laugh differently.
    That knowledge brought a familiar flavour of sadness with it. Four years on, and Jamie was already being left behind. A small figure stopped in place, destined now to recede forever into the distance. The nearly-three-year-old boy he imagined running around the garden was frozen in time, as old as he would ever be. When Groves was old and grey, Jamie would still be small. He would never grow any bigger than their memories of him.
    He had to believe that one day he would see him again, but it bothered him: when he finally died too, and father and son were reunited in Heaven, would Jamie have aged in the intervening time? If so, he would have grown into a man Groves wouldn’t know or recognise, and who in turn would not know him. But the alternative was that he would have remained the same, held in a nascent form, and would find himself running to hug a father who had long become reconciled to his loss. Both options seemed intolerable. Maybe that was why the bereaved often committed suicide soon after their loss, Groves thought. It wasn’t just the grief and the heartbreak, but a kind of existential chasing.
    He drained his glass of wine, then poured them both a fresh one. Caroline smiled her thanks, but her expression looked far away, and he suspected she was thinking similar things.
    As the evening wore on, Jamie began to flit around their snatches of conversation. At first it was difficult to acknowledge him directly, and it wasn’t until halfway down the second bottle of wine that Caroline said:
    ‘Have you been to the grave?’
    Groves shook his head. ‘Maybe tomorrow.’
    ‘I left flowers. And a toy. In case he wants something to play with.’
    ‘That’s nice.’
    Caroline’s behaviour made no sense to him, but he could hardly begrudge her it. Every year she left flowers and a toy. The flowers usually remained, but eventually someone would always take the toy. They were always toys for a younger child, because Jamie would always be the same age. Every year his ex-wife bought a birthday present for that same frozen memory of their boy.
    ‘You’ll go tomorrow?’ she said.
    ‘Hopefully.’ He stood up, collecting his glass and the second empty bottle. ‘It’s getting cold. We