The Falling of Shadows

Saturday morning was fresh with the damp lawn still unmarked by footprints. The garden, recklessly overgrown with weeds, called to me. Clouds moved across the sky like alien craft looking for a place to land. It looked like it was going to be a lovely day.
I was standing at the kitchen window dressed in my gardening jeans, so worn you could see the shape of my old-maid’s knickers underneath, when I looked up and saw him.
Oh, God.
I knew him. In a surge of memory that came from the gut, I knew the boy. I hadn’t seen him since he was six years old but the shape of his head, his eyes.
'There was no mistake.
It was Bailey Chance.
It was then I saw it. Close to him, a second self, a dark shape wavering like kelp in a rough sea. I couldn’t make out any more than that, just a shadowy pulsating outline.
But I knew it. I knew it as I know my own fingernails. They were back. Together with the memories of that awful past came the Shadows of my youth.
Oh, God. I thought I was free.
Seeing Bailey brought back memories I wasn’t sure I could handle. His presence conjured up all the baggage I hoped I’d left behind as I’d moved from my teen years to a precarious adulthood. You think you can leave the past behind. But you can’t. It’s always there like a dark shape attached to your heels ready to trip you up.'
Tessa Godwin is forced to revisit dark events fron her past, but the process shines a light
that helps others who were caught up in those long-ago tragedies.