You Missed My Heart (Reprise)

[Dr Adjective]

[Evie McKown sits out in the cold again.]

She wasn’t sure how long she lingered there, staring at the piece of plastic in her gloved hands. What was she so afraid of? The confirmation that someone she’d never been that close to thought ill of her? Despite everything, instinct told Evie to chase approval. To be liked by everyone, even if that meant being loved by no-one.

“Hey. Claire, you there? It’s Evie.”

Who the hell else would it be? Seal Team 6 randomly hailing public frequencies before their daring rescue? Of course it was Evie.

“Say what you want to say to me. I’m listening. Over.”

She released the call button. And she waited. By now the sun was below the horizon, an aftermath of deep orange lingering on the undulating arctic waters. Even from her position hunkered low, keeping her head down lest she meet Kelsey’s fate, Evie could appreciate some of the vista. Despite it all, nature carried on unabated. Animals on other islands fought for their survival, no different than on hers.

Abruptly, the response came through. A simple question. A word. But those three letters came laden with meaning enough, concise and direct.

Why?

The more Evie mulled on her answer, the more her mood darkened. Melancholy over Kelsey, quiet appreciation of the uncaring majesty of a brutal, natural world gave way to anger. Not just at Claire, but at the situation she found herself in, only it was just Claire who stood ready to endure that anger.

“Why?”

She had the gall to ask Evie why? She knew damned fucking well why.

“You wanna ask a cat why it hunts a mouse, Claire? Why? Because I want to live. I wanna survive. I wanna go home. I wanna go to college and have a life, and a wife and two point fucking four kids if I’m lucky. I want to live.”

Who was Claire to demand that the law of the jungle be kind, or fair? From Evie, no less, who’d spent so long trying to be those things when circumstances allowed. Who’d made meaningful sacrifices for those ideas, when it didn’t mean her death on the line. Why didn’t she demand answers from Kitty? From Salem?

“What about you, huh? Just because we were too late, don’t you fucking pretend you weren’t ready and willing to kill Alex. What was that? Survival? Don’t pretend it was to protect anyone else. It was petty revenge, is what it was, or would’ve been. Is that really better than simple animal survival?”

Evie gripped the handset tighter, never releasing the button. It was her turn to talk, and she would say her piece, say it with neither restraint nor mercy. Without skipping a beat she continued.

“Don’t act like you’re fucking better than me, Claire. Just because you’re too much of a coward to fight for your own life, don’t act like that makes you better than me. I’m fucking better than you. Five human lives on my conscience is unforgivable, how many have died for your comfort every day you’ve lived, huh? Over a decade of my heart fucking bleeding for every animal that died in terror every day for hypocrites like you, do all those choices get undone because of what happens when I don’t have a choice? Fuck you. Fuck. You. Take your judgement someplace else, and don’t come back to the church again. I owe you for saving my life, so for both our sakes… I hope I never see you again.”

Fuck. That was a lot. Several years of pent up, generalised resentment. Evie took several, audible deep breaths.

“Evie out.”

Uninterested in hearing a rebuttal, she turned the walkie-talkie off. She stood, a long, gaunt silhouette in the evening twilight. For a moment, all Evie wanted was to hurl the radio out into the snowy darkness.

But at length, she calmed herself. There was a chance it would still come in handy for her and Juanita, before they too had to turn on one another. So back into her pocket it went.

She wasn’t sure how long she lingered there, gazing out into the dying light. But eventually, Evie McKown climbed down into the warmth of the church hall. Tomorrow she would lay Kelsey’s remains to rest, and she would know who to make suffer for having killed her.

[Evie McKown still has blood to shed.]