The Whiskey Farewell

“Grief doesn’t ask for permission—it slips into glasses, flickers in candlelight, and binds strangers into family whether you want it or not.”

The front door's familiar squeak sliced through the fragile cocoon of camaraderie Cody and I had spun between ourselves. Two voices followed, rising in unison, warm yet tinged with accusation: "Hey, Luke!" Gladys and Beatrix.

The suddenness of their arrival startled me, and in my clumsy attempt to appear composed, the empty shot glass slipped from my fingers. It clattered loudly against the stone bench, the sharp sound echoing through the kitchen like a reproach.

"You two couldn't even wait for us!" Gladys's voice rang out, mock outrage threaded with a strand of genuine hurt. Her handbag—that enormous thing that seemed to contain half of her life—hung from her shoulder like a declaration of intent.

"How rude," Beatrix added, her tone playful but underscored by the same rebuke.

"I was just cheering Luke up," Cody interjected smoothly, his voice a careful blend of jest and sincerity. He had slipped into his role effortlessly, framing himself as the peacemaker, the one who bridged the gap between my solitude and the collective force of us all.

It was a convenient fiction. Cody hadn't been cheering me up so much as unsettling me with cryptic warnings about what lay ahead. But I let the lie stand. Some truths weren't worth unpacking in front of an audience.

"I'm sure," Gladys shot back, the sarcasm in her tone sharp.

I bent to retrieve the fallen glass, aligning it with the others on the bench, a quiet act of tidiness that helped me avoid their gazes for a moment longer.

It was Cody, ever quick to reclaim momentum, who seized the bottle and poured again. The whiskey shimmered golden in the light, a quiet reflection of everything tangled between us—our grief, our burdens, our reluctant solidarity. Each refill was more than a drink; it was a reminder that we carried the same weight, even if we bore it in different ways.

"So, how..." Beatrix began, her voice tentative, the unfinished question dangling between us like bait.

"I really don't want to talk about it," I cut in quickly, my tone firm but frayed at the edges. "I'm really tired."

"Or drunk," Gladys countered, her voice sharpened with that familiar bite of sarcasm.

"Not yet," I shot back, my lips quirking into a wry smile despite the heaviness in my chest.

The whiskey was starting to soften the edges of my thoughts, but I wasn't drunk. Not yet. Give it time.

My hand drifted to my brow, fingers pressing against the skin as though I could massage clarity into my muddled thoughts. Was I rubbing away fatigue, or was it the burn of whiskey settling behind my eyes? I couldn't tell. The line between tiredness and intoxication blurred into something indistinct, leaving me stranded in a haze.

"We've brought the candles," Beatrix announced, her voice carrying a solemnity that instantly shifted the room's energy. From Gladys's overstuffed handbag came an assortment of candles—thick and thin, tall and stubby, some in muted ivory, others in deep shades of burgundy and green. They clattered gently as she placed them on the bench, yet each seemed to command its own space, as if bearing more than wax and wick—each one a fragile vessel of memory and meaning.

I'd never thought much about candles before. They were decorative objects, things you lit during power outages or romantic dinners. But watching Beatrix arrange them across my kitchen bench, I understood that tonight they would be something else entirely. Markers. Witnesses. Flames to guide a soul we were trying to honour.

I moved almost automatically, pulling open the kitchen drawers. The clatter of utensils rang out against the otherwise hushed anticipation until my hand found the gas lighter. I handed it across to Beatrix, her eyes briefly meeting mine with a small, wordless acknowledgement before she began to touch flame to wick.

One by one, the candles awoke, their flames springing to life with hungry eagerness. The faint scent of warmed wax mingled with the trace of gas, and slowly the room began to glow, each flicker adding to the soft tide of light that pushed back the night.

"Are you sure you have enough candles?" Cody chuckled, his attempt at levity breaking the moment's gravity.

Beatrix turned a glare on him, sharp and unambiguous, the kind of look that silences without needing words. "Turn the lights off," she instructed.

Even Cody, with his irreverence, understood. He moved quickly, flicking switches until each click diminished the harsh glow of electricity.

When the last bulb extinguished, the room was claimed by shadows, broken only by the gentle, flickering warmth of candlelight. It transformed everything—the kitchen no longer looked like my kitchen, but something older, more primal. Shadows leapt across the walls, bending and stretching, as though the space itself recognised the sanctity of the moment.

The refrigerator still hummed, a reminder of the mundane world that existed alongside this ritual. But somehow even that felt muted, absorbed into the candlelit hush.

In that glow, Cody's irreverence evaporated. He picked up the waiting glasses, distributing them carefully, his hands steady now, his movements deliberate. The whiskey glistened amber in the shifting light, refracting tiny glimmers onto the bench's polished surface.

The four of us stood gathered, no longer individuals with our own burdens, but a small circle bound by flame and ritual. The glasses in our hands were not just filled with liquor but with weight—memory, grief, solidarity, and a quiet defiance against the uncertainty ahead. In that candlelit hush, we found something close to sacred.

"Do you have a picture of him?" Beatrix's inquiry cut softly through the dim air, her voice threaded with both curiosity and tenderness.

"No," I replied, the word landing heavier than it should have. My head moved in a small, almost reluctant shake. "We only learned about him a few months ago."

Saying it aloud hollowed me out anew. Regret pooled in my chest, thick and immovable, the sorrow of doors opened too late, of connections discovered only when time had already run out. Joel had been Jamie's son—a son Jamie hadn't known existed until recently, a son who had been murdered before Jamie could ever truly know him.

And now we were mourning him. Raising glasses to a boy who had been robbed of the chance to meet his father properly. The unfairness of it burned worse than any whiskey.

Gladys's eyes softened, her face rearranging itself into a portrait of compassion. In the wavering light, she looked older, as though grief itself had added years. "Does Jamie know that he is dead yet?" she asked, her voice so delicate it felt as though the question itself might fracture if spoken any louder.

"No," I said again, firmer this time, though my throat tightened around the word. My head shook more decisively, sealing the matter in the dim glow. "And he won't ever find out. Cody took care of it," I added, my eyes lifting to Cody's, letting them rest there a moment.

Gratitude passed between us in silence, not the kind that came with smiles or words, but the heavy kind that lived in the marrow—acknowledgement of burdens carried so others wouldn't have to. Cody had disposed of the body somehow, had made Joel's murder something that couldn't be traced back to us. It was grim work, ugly work, the kind of thing that stained the soul even when it was necessary.

"Yeah," Cody confirmed, his voice low, almost flat, but carrying weight. His eyes flicked up to mine before dropping to the neat row of glasses lined across the bench. "I took care of it." Simple words, but I felt the edges of everything they didn't say—the things done quietly, hidden in shadows, so that the rest of us could breathe a little easier.

"It's so sad," Beatrix murmured, her voice cracking at the edges. Her gaze sank into the dancing light as though it might reveal answers. "He looked so young."

"He was," I said, and the truth of it cut deep. "He was only nineteen." Nineteen—still more boy than man. A life with everything ahead of it, snuffed out before it had begun.

I thought about what nineteen had meant for me. The slow, tentative process of figuring out who I was and what I wanted from life. Joel would never have any of that. His story had ended before it truly started, and no amount of candlelight or whiskey could change that fundamental, brutal truth.

"Tragic," Gladys whispered, her voice catching. She dabbed delicately at her eye, one careful finger carrying away a tear as though acknowledging it would give it too much power. Even she, with all her strength and practicality, couldn't help but soften under the weight of that word.

In the hush that followed, the candles seemed to burn brighter, as though bearing witness with us.

Compelled by a pull stronger than hesitation, I reached for my shot glass. Its weight felt disproportionate to its size, as though the sorrow and reverence it represented had seeped into the glass itself. Raising it, I held it aloft, the flickering light catching on the rim so that it glimmered like a fragile beacon amidst the shifting shadows. The others mirrored me, their glasses rising in unison, four hands lifted toward something greater than ourselves—a fragile chorus of solidarity.

A lump caught hard in my throat, unbidden and insistent, pressing against words I couldn't find. I hadn't expected this—this swell of emotion for someone I had never met, yet whose absence pressed on me like a presence. It was proof of how grief worked: weaving its threads into hearts that should have been strangers, binding us with invisible strands of empathy and loss.

Joel was Jamie's son. And Jamie was mine. That connection, however indirect, was enough to make this death personal in ways I couldn't fully articulate.

"What do we say?" Gladys's voice pierced the stillness, tentative yet raw. Her eyes flicked from face to face, as though searching for a script, some instruction to follow. "We never really knew him."

"You say whatever is in your heart to say," Cody answered, his voice steady, carrying a quiet authority that settled the unease. His words weren't a command but an opening, a lantern cast into the dark.

In that fragile pause that followed, the room seemed to hold its breath. The candles sputtered and swayed, shadows dancing across the walls in solemn rhythm, as though they too leaned in to listen. We stood suspended in the glow, glasses raised, each of us alone in our reflections yet bound by the same act. We were readying ourselves to give voice to the unsaid, to shape grief and regret into something that could be offered to the silence—a tribute to a life barely known, yet deeply mourned.

"I'll go first," Beatrix declared, her tone caught between bravery and fragility. Her fingers curled around her shot glass, knuckles whitening just slightly, as though drawing strength from the cool firmness of the glass itself. Her lips parted, breath forming the shape of words, but for a heartbeat they refused to come, lingering like shadows pressed against the edges of silence. It was as if she stood on the brink of a precipice, gathering herself before stepping into the void of honesty.

I felt an instinctive urge to fill the gap, to offer her something—reassurance, perhaps, or a word to soften the strain of expectation that hung in the air. But before I could give shape to the impulse, she leaned forward, her voice lowered into an intimate whisper. "What's his name?"

"Joel," I replied, my own voice hushed, as though even saying the name required reverence.

"Joel," Beatrix repeated, her voice steady now, almost solemn. "We never had the chance to know you. But we love Jamie. And you are his blood." Her words, simple yet unflinching, stitched a fragile thread between us and the boy we had never met. In invoking Jamie, she bound us closer still, weaving love and loss into one inextricable strand. Her voice quivered at the edges, betraying the ache that sat beneath her words, but it held.

I closed my eyes, the flickering light painting shadows behind my lids, and in that darkness, Jamie's face rose before me—not as a memory, but as though he were there in front of me, breathing, hurting, yet still undeniably mine. The ache was sharp, both a reminder of love and the fissure his betrayal had torn into me.

He had slept with Ben. He had lied to me. He had broken something between us that I wasn't sure could ever be fully repaired. And yet standing here, mourning his son, I couldn't separate my anger from my love. They coexisted, tangled together, two snakes wrapped around the same branch.

"And so, we love you too," Beatrix finished, her tribute pushing past the limits of blood and circumstance, reaching outward into a space beyond absence, where Joel might yet hear.

A tear broke free before I could stop it, cooling as it trailed down my cheek. And in its wake came the thought, fragile and merciless: Does Jamie still love me at all? The question hovered, unanswered, piercing through the candlelit quiet like a blade hidden within velvet.

I had pushed him in anger. I had let my hurt become violence, and that violence had contributed to the infection now threatening his life. Whatever he had done to me, I had done something to him in return. Were we even? Or had we simply wounded each other beyond the point of recovery?

"To Jamie's son," Beatrix's voice rose, gentler this time but firm, a call to bind the moment with action.

"To Jamie's son," I echoed, my voice low but resolute, as though speaking it aloud gave form to the grief swirling in my chest.

Four glasses lifted, four voices joined in agreement. The whiskey scorched its way down my throat, its fire colliding with the salt of tears on my lips, grounding me in the unbearable reality of love and loss entwined. The clink of glass upon bench that followed was soft, almost reverent, yet final—a punctuation mark in the fragile hymn of remembrance we had composed together.

Gladys, steady in a way only she could be, lifted her glass just as Cody's careful pour came to rest. Her movements carried a kind of quiet authority, born not of dominance but of a long familiarity with moments like this—moments where words and gestures stitched meaning into grief.

"Joel," she began, her voice clear, measured, and yet undeniably tender, "May your soul one day know your father, and know the good man that he is."

The words landed with a resonance that made the candle flames seem to pause in their flicker. It was a benediction, but also a plea—a hope cast beyond the living, beyond even reason. Her statement struck with more force than she perhaps intended, as though she had spoken not just for Joel, but directly into the wounded heart of Jamie himself.

The good man that he is.

The lump in my throat was immediate, an ache swelling upward until my breath caught. Her words pressed against me like a hand to my chest, stirring a storm I couldn't suppress. My vision blurred, hot tears threatening to spill and betray the depth of the ache clawing at me.

The good man that he is. The phrase curled around my ribs like a vice. Did Jamie even see me that way anymore? Or had my failings already stripped me of that truth in his eyes? And more to the point—was Jamie still a good man to me, after everything?

The answer was complicated. The answer was yes and no and maybe and I don't know. The answer was that love and goodness weren't always the same thing, and neither were betrayal and badness.

"To Joel," Gladys said again, her glass raised with a solemn grace that transformed the small gesture into something larger, something eternal.

"To Joel," we echoed, the chorus of our voices low but firm, braided together in the hush of the candlelit kitchen. The name carried differently this time—no longer just a marker of who was lost, but a vessel for Gladys's prayer, for her wish that Joel would one day find in Jamie the father he deserved to know.

I raised my glass and drank, though the whiskey felt strange in my throat, sharper than before. The glass itself felt fragile between my fingers, almost absurd in its thinness compared to the weight of what it symbolised. We were all fragile like that—vessels straining under the enormity of love, loss, guilt, and hope.

The burn of the alcohol coursed through me, and with it came a flood of thought, images cascading too fast to hold. Joel's unseen face. Jamie's anguished one. Glenda's tired eyes. Cody's enigmatic smile. Paul's burned foot. Duke's protective growl. The web of us, bound together by threads of choice and accident, pain and devotion, weaving something impossibly complex and impossibly human.

This wasn't just a toast. It was a ritual. A way of making the unbearable bearable, even if just for a breath.

In the stillness that followed Gladys's toast, every eye turned to Cody. He didn't reach for the whiskey bottle, nor did he fumble with the rituals of pouring. Instead, he raised his empty glass, arm steady, the gesture deliberate and commanding. It silenced us instantly.

The flames painted his features in shifting light and shadow, a chiaroscuro of grief and resolve that seemed almost theatrical in its intensity. For once, the playful bravado was stripped away. The man who had deflected my questions with dimples and evasion was gone, replaced by something rawer, something closer to the bone.

His eyes, glinting with candlelight, held a brightness I recognised too well—the dangerous shimmer of emotions dammed too long. They looked wet, the gloss of unshed tears betraying the storm roiling beneath his armour.

"Joel," he began, his voice measured, almost calm, and yet beneath it I heard the quiver of something more fragile. "You met unfortunate circumstances, but..." He faltered. The word caught, snagging in his throat. "But..." The repetition fractured the moment, his struggle naked before us.

When his gaze snapped to mine, I felt the air shift, cold crawling down my spine. It wasn't just eye contact. It was intrusion. A demand. As though he were speaking through me, and I was meant to carry whatever he could not say alone.

"Death is but a mere process," Cody continued, the stammer gone now, replaced by a rising conviction that seemed to feed on its own momentum. "And when we learn to master that process, we will master death itself."

His voice swelled, cutting against the quiet reverence of the room. The words weren't just a toast. They were a doctrine, a belief polished sharp by some private creed. His eyes never broke from mine, and for a moment it felt less like he was honouring Joel and more like he was binding me into something larger—an oath, or perhaps a warning, hidden inside the gravity of his vow.

Master death itself.

What did that even mean? Was he speaking metaphorically—about legacy, about memory, about the ways we keep the dead alive in our hearts? Or was he speaking literally, about something that Clivilius made possible, something that defied the natural order of things?

I swallowed hard, my throat dry from more than the whiskey. The others shifted uncomfortably, but I couldn't look away. Cody's proclamation hung in the candlelit silence, its weight pressing down on all of us, leaving me with the unsettling sense that this memorial had transformed into something else entirely.

"To Joel," Cody said at last, raising his empty glass with solemnity.

"To Joel," we echoed, our voices uniting into something both fragile and fierce. The glasses trembled faintly in our hands, not from the liquor but from the weight of what we were binding ourselves to. No whiskey passed our lips this time; instead, it was Cody's words we drank, and they lingered longer than any burn of alcohol could.

I felt them coil inside me, refusing to dissipate. His talk of death as process, of mastery, was as reckless as it was enthralling. The rational part of me scoffed—how could one master the most inevitable truth of existence? Death came for everyone. Death was the great equaliser, the one certainty in a universe full of uncertainties.

Yet another part, quieter and far more dangerous, dared to wonder. Could it be done? Could Clivilius itself be the crucible for such a pursuit?

The questions pressed against me. Was this to be our true purpose here—beyond survival, beyond secrecy? Not merely to live, but to challenge the very boundaries of existence itself?

I didn't have the answers. None of us did. But as I looked around the circle—Gladys's sharp eyes soft with unspoken worry, Beatrix's candlelit face framed by quiet tears, Cody's unwavering stare—I knew this night had altered us. Something had shifted, and there would be no going back.

The flame of hope Cody had spoken of now burned inside me, dangerous and bright. Whether it would guide us... or consume us... I had no bloody idea.