Page 2 of The Sweetest Cruelty: Hudson (A Sawyer Brothers Story #1)

MOLLY

The Present

Grief was a word I had heard throughout my early teens, but understanding the weight of its meaning came later. On the same day as my birthday. The second of August, and the day I turned sixteen—a day that was anything but sweet. On the evening of that day, my mother died.

The forty-something takeaway owner had been five times over the legal limit.

Had Robinson not ploughed his car into my mother’s Prius, he would have faced a fine and the possibility of six months in prison.

Now, he would rot behind bars for well over a decade.

Taking a life whilst inebriated behind the wheel was manslaughter, a sentence which would force him to serve fourteen years in prison.

Fourteen years in prison for taking my mother from me? I still couldn’t process such a meagre punishment. It wasn’t enough; the man had taken that one person who meant the world to me.

And now I felt like the orphan I wasn’t. I had a father who lived overseas, but my parents were separated, so we didn’t see each other much; hence that terrifying feeling of being parentless.

When the news of her death struck, I was shocked to my core.

Initially, I had been told my mother died in a car accident .

The police couldn’t give out the details until the investigation had been carried out, and it had taken over a week for them to conclude.

That had been the longest week of my life; the not knowing had eaten me up, and I hadn’t slept for days.

Once it became clear that the incident was due to a case of drink-driving, I felt waves of nausea, followed by an immense blood-churning anger.

A drunk driver had smashed his car into my mother's, killing her almost instantly .

Another human being was responsible for my mother's death. I had also felt a strange, perverse satisfaction of having someone to blame. And as it turned out, it was a person known to my family; the owner of our local chip shop. Somewhere I would go often with my friends on our way home from school.

During the weeks that followed Mum’s death, I struggled to walk past that shop. It remained closed now that its owner was in prison, and the boarding had malicious graffiti written all over it.

Murdering scum! Alco bastard! Rot in hell!

I would be lying if I said I hadn’t added to that.

Did I want Jack Robinson to serve more time, suffer , and maybe face the death sentence like hardened killers did on the Row in parts of America? No. I just wanted my mum back.

Drawing my thoughts away from Robinson, I shuffled back into my seat. The noise of the plane’s jet engines was strangely hypnotic.

I wasn’t involved in identifying my mother’s body.

I wanted my memory of her to stay the same, with her beautiful face and sweet, warm smile.

Not laid there pale and cold, looking bruised and battered.

My mother’s best friend, Patricia, had taken on that responsibility.

Patricia, aka Pat, was like the aunt I never had, and I was thankful for her support.

Did I regret that now? Not seeing Mum’s body?

Sometimes . It almost felt like I hadn’t said goodbye.

After the initial shock of her death had set in, I’d felt various emotions, all crashing together in one chaotic mess, intense sadness at the top of that pile.

It was closely followed by a yearning to have my mother hold me, as fear of a future without her had kicked in. And then the feelings of guilt started.

I remember trying to recall the last thing I said to her that morning before school. Had we parted on good terms? Was I a brat? My mother and I occasionally bickered when I was getting ready for school. She would usually nag me about why I hadn’t packed my bag the night before.

Thankfully, that morning before her untimely death, we had parted with a hug and a discussion about a shopping trip to buy stuff for our holiday.

Life as I had known it was over.

Grief. There it was, that word again. I’d googled it, reading how it was a profound, multifaceted experience .

In layman’s terms, it was shit. There had been no pattern to the emotions I’d experienced.

You can’t explain it, not to someone who hasn’t been through it.

In a nutshell, it was the most painful thing I had ever had to deal with, and I still wasn’t out of the woods.

But life goes on. Doesn’t it?

America, what was it that Alicia Keys sang about?

That concrete jungle where dreams are made of ?

I took a deep breath and glanced around the plane’s cabin.

That was where I was heading: to America, to the big old U S of A, and to live with my only other living relative, Richard Miller, that estranged father I mentioned.

Aunt Pat called him the Sperm Donor, which wasn’t totally fair. It’s not like he had run off after knocking my mother up. At least he’d put a ring on it, and for a few years, things had been fine. Their relationship had worked.

As the plane hit an air pocket and the old lady beside me apologised again for grabbing my leg, I thought about my parents.

Rachel and Richard met in England during their teacher training at Middlesex University. My father was from Rhode Island in the US and had decided to train abroad in London.

From what my mother said, it had been a whirlwind relationship; two students throwing caution to the wind and having a great time together until Mum got pregnant, which, as unplanned pregnancies do, complicated things.

And then, using my mother’s words, they made an even bigger mistake by getting married.

From what I had been told, things had worked out fine until my father’s mother (who had still lived in the States at the time) got diagnosed with Alzheimer's. It forced Richard to travel abroad several times during the year. As you can expect, this added pressure to their finances and relationship.

Eventually, my father got an amazing opportunity to step up as the Head of a school in his hometown. It would allow him to climb the career ladder and look after his mother. So, he took the job and left his wife and child in the UK.

Brutal right?

To cut a long story short, what Rachel and Richard Miller wanted out of life changed.

They had always been pulled in opposite directions, and I had been the only glue that had held them together.

Hence, their eventual split. Yep—Daddy accepted that huge promotion and moved back to Rhode Island, and Mum and I stayed put .

Richard aka Dick Miller left us when I was eight years old. Our relationship since then has been on and off, mainly due to the thousands of miles separating us. And now, those miles were being swallowed up as I sat there, heading to my new home, miles above the sea.

I was being ripped away from everything I knew—my friends and school. I was travelling to a foreign place where I had no one—well, no one apart from my father.

I wouldn’t have said I was overly close with Richard, but I did care about him. He was my dad; that’s the way it usually worked.

Yes, he wasn’t there to look for monsters under my bed or clean my cuts and scrapes from eight onwards, but he was always at the other end of the phone or on-screen when I needed him.

During my younger years, he’d called me every weekend. I would tell him all about school and what I had been doing with my friends.

When I got older, he bought me an iPhone. I remember unwrapping it and seeing his number programmed in. I was so excited and felt so grown up, sending him pictures and text messages frequently. Having a phone helped us to stay in touch more regularly.

Unfortunately, over the last couple of years, we’d drifted apart.

I blamed the recent distance between us on myself. I had become lazy and didn’t respond as much; life as a teenager and dealing with exams took over. As a result, my father’s text messages and calls became less frequent.

My mother had explained that he’d become a principal at a new school that needed improving . She told me that taking on something that challenging could be time-consuming.

But that one time, when I needed him the most, he was there. The night Mum died.

I remember the police cars outside my house when I returned from a day out with my friends. I had been shopping and went to McDonald's to celebrate my birthday. I was so happy and psyched up for the holidays.

As I had walked into our house, Aunt Patricia was with a police officer, and they told me the news. Devastated doesn’t even touch the sides.

As soon as the details of Rachel’s death reached Richard, Dad called me immediately.

Rhode Island was around five hours behind the UK, but he had arranged to fly over that evening, putting his entire life on hold.

It had taken him well over a day to get to me.

I remember how tired he looked, and how very sorry he was.

My sweet mother was dead, and we would never see her again.

When my father arrived in the UK, I appreciated his support.

He had pulled me against his strong chest, his spicy aftershave enveloping me.

At the crematorium, he had been in the row behind as I stood with Patricia and Mark, Pat’s husband.

I remember his hand on my shoulder as I stood stiffly, listening to the speeches but taking nothing in.

Dad had also given me space. After the guests had left, I was given time alone beside Mum’s coffin, and I spoke to her, with that hard piece of wood separating us. I told her everything I planned to do with my life and how I would make her proud one day.

I hadn’t cried that day. Odd, I know; I’d just felt numb and tired and then, at the wake, overwhelmed .