The Curved Opinion Short Stories: A Familiar Face Part 2

 To read Part One

The walk to my train that night felt like the longest of my life.  

I reached the station but instead of boarding my usual train, I caught another, to a station a few stops away.  To the place that had been calling me since I saw his face yesterday.  

The alley.

It had been twenty years, but I knew exactly where it was.

The snow was gone now, obviously.  The blood stains on the floor had long since been washed away.  There was no little girl there, screaming until her throat hurt.  My father was not there, dying on the ground.  

It was just an alley.  A dirty, ordinary alley.

I stood there for a long time.  I did not know why I had come, but every muscle in my body had drawn me back there.  

Then, I heard footsteps behind me.  I didn't turn around.  I didn't need to.

"Funny place to come for a walk."

Tom.

My hands curled into fists.  My body moved into a fighting stance that my Krav Maga instructor had taught me.  

"You followed me."

"I wanted to talk."

"I don't want to talk to you."

"I think you do."

I turned around.

He was standing there with his hands in the pockets of his trench coat.  The same weasel-like face that haunted my dreams.  

Only now I could see what time had done to him.  The wrinkles around his eyes. The grey peppered through his hair.  A slight stoop in his posture.   The smile that still did not reach his eyes. 

The man I had dreamed about for so long had become the size of a monster.  Evil incarnate.  But now, standing there, he just looked like an ordinary middle-aged man.

Somehow, that made it worse.  I needed him to look like the monster of my dreams.

"Why?" I asked.

He looked at me.

"Why what?"

"Why did you kill him?"

For the first time since I had met him, the smile disappeared.

"So you do remember."

It wasn't a question.

"Every.  Single.  Second."

He looked down at the ground.  "I wondered if you would. When I saw you in the bank yesterday I knew immediately who you were."

"You recognised me."

"Of course I did."

"You could have just left me alone. Why come after me, why follow me here?"

He was silent for so long that I thought he wasn't going to answer.

Then he said something I had never expected.

"Because your father had a debt to pay and that day was the day he paid for it."

I actually laughed.  It was a horrible sound.

"A debt?  So you killed a man over money?"

"The debt was not about money.  The debt was a life.  My daughter's life.  He ran her over and left her to die."

"I don't believe you.  My father would never kill anyone."

"Well he did.  My daughter was six years old when she died.  My Charlotte.  He ran her over.  Left her for dead."

"How do you know it was him? "

"Because I knew him.  Knew his face.  I saw his face as he carried on driving.  Leaving my daughter, dying in the road.  He moved away shortly after.  I had been looking for him for ten years and that day was the day that he paid."

He seemed serious.  He seemed sincere.  Yet, this could all be an elaborate story.  Because he did not want me to go to the police.

"Why in the world would I believe you?  You are just trying to save yourself."

"Save myself from what?  You have no proof, just as I had no proof to have your father arrested.  But I do have this".  

He handed me an old newspaper clipping.  There was a picture of a pretty young girl.  The headline "Child Slain in Hit and Run".  And the name.  Charlotte Allen.   Further down the article, another picture. A woman, looking broken, with her husband.  It was Tom.

I looked back at him.  "So what now?  You kill me too to keep the secret?"

"No.  I don't want to hurt you.  But you deserve the truth.  I knew my comment about alleyways would bring you here if you remembered what had happened."

"What if I go to the police?"

"Then go.  Tell them.  You deserve justice, just as I did for my Charlotte.  I will deny it, of course, but you needed to know the truth. "

I looked at the man standing in front of me.

For twenty years I had trained my body to kill him.

Karate.

Krav Maga.

Hours and hours spent learning how to hurt someone before they could hurt me.

I had built my entire personality around him, around this moment.

I turned away.

"Lucy."

I stopped.

"I'm sorry."

I closed my eyes.  For years I had imagined hearing those words.

I had imagined satisfaction.  Relief.  Justice.

Instead, I felt nothing.

And that was when I finally understood.

The little girl standing in that alley had died that day.  But the woman who had survived her had spent twenty years waiting for permission to live.

I turned back to him.

"You took my father away from me.  My childhood.  You ruined my life"

"I know."

"I don't forgive you."

He nodded.

"And I don't know if I even believe what you have told me.  But I am walking away.  Don't come back to work.  Leave.  I don't want to see you ever again"

"I understand."

I walked away.

This time I didn't look back.

I didn't know whether Tom Allen was telling the truth.

I didn't know whether the police would ever be able to uncover what really happened twenty years ago.  Prove that he had killed my father.  Find out whether my father really had killed his daughter.

But for the first time since I was five years old, I understood that my life belonged to me and I needed to start living it.