by Marci Bolden
“That is important. I shouldn’t have implied otherwise. I’m glad you found your way, Caroline. I really am.” He grew quiet for a minute before saying, “I don’t think either one of us realized how much you covered for me. No one else had a clue how much I was drinking. Mom and Dad came over about a week after you’d left. Mom cried as she picked up dozens of beer cans and empty pizza boxes. I blamed it on you. On losing Katie. I swore I didn’t drink that much until you’d left me. Mom bought it, but I think Dad knew. I think Dad realized how much you’d covered for me all those years. I think he knew the day he brought you and Katie home from the hospital because I was too drunk. Mom was in denial even after I started getting treatment.”
“I enabled you,” Carol admitted. “I don’t know if it was easier for me or if I was ashamed of your addiction, like it somehow reflected on me, but I think I was in denial, too. Until I had to face how bad it had gotten. You were a functioning alcoholic, and I made excuses for you.” She sighed loudly. “I should have made you get help. I didn’t want the fight, you know. Everything was a fight with us and that was one I didn’t have the strength for.”
“You shouldn’t have had to fight me for sobriety.”
“No, I shouldn’t have. Alcoholism is a disease, John. Ignoring it only made it worse.” She choked on the sudden rise of a sob that she hadn’t felt coming. Blinking rapidly, she managed to stop her tears from falling, but she couldn’t hide the emotion that rolled through her. “We’re both to blame,” she whispered. “For everything.”
Stepping in front of her, he put his hands on her shoulders and stared into her eyes. “Katie’s death is my burden to carry. Leaving me was the right thing to do. You are right to blame me. I was the one responsible for her that day. I was the one who chose to drink too much. Not you. Me. Don’t blame yourself. You don’t want to live with that kind of guilt. Trust me.” He dropped his hands from her shoulders. “I live with it every day.”
“What, um…what made you stop drinking?”
He looked everywhere but at her. “One night, about five years after you’d left, I got called to a domestic. This drunk was going on and on about how that bitch had packed his bags and told him he had to leave. I’m not leaving. This is my house, damn it,” he said, mocking the slur of the man. “Another unit got him cuffed and hauled off, and I went to take the woman’s statement. I walked into the living room, and when she looked up, I saw you. I swear to God I almost said your name before I realized I was seeing things. She had tears running down her face. Her little girl was clinging to her, crying so hard she could barely talk. I flashed back to you standing in the living room, telling me I had to leave. I saw myself, drunk as always, telling you that was my house, and you weren’t kicking me out. I saw Katie coming in. Crying, begging you not to make me leave.” He raked his hand through his hair. “I hadn’t thought about that night in years, but seeing that woman going through what you did hit me hard. I went home that night and swore that I’d get sober. I went to my first AA meeting the next day. Better late than never, right?” he asked with a lopsided grin. “I’d do okay for a while, but then something would happen. Some excuse I could use to start drinking again. It took a few times before it stuck, though.”
“Sometimes it does. I’m glad you got sober, John.”
“I wish…” He sniffed before meeting her gaze. “I wish I’d left that night. Left you and Katie alone until I could get my shit together. Maybe you’re right. Maybe she’d still be here if I’d taken my bags and gone to Bert’s.”
“We can’t change what happened,” she whispered. “We can’t bring her back.”
“I know.” He roughly wiped his face. “But we never should have lost her.”
“Maybe you’re right. Maybe we were always meant to. What kind of life were we giving her, John? All we did was fight and then make-believe things were okay, so we’d feel a little less guilty about upsetting her. That was no way to raise a child.”
“We could have been better parents.”
“Yeah. We should have been better parents. She deserved better.”
“So did you, Caroline.” John had enveloped her in his arms before she realized he was closing in on her. She stiffened, but when he hugged her tight and sobbed, she put her arms around his waist. “I’m sorry,” he choked out. “I’m sorry.”
She ground her teeth hard, determined not to completely fall apart in the middle of the road of an RV park. Focusing on supporting John, she waited a few moments before pulling back. “There’s a restaurant up there. I’m going to die if I don’t eat soon.”
“You don’t get to die before me. This one time I get to do something better than you.”
She glanced up before chuckling. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have put it quite like that.”
A little boy rode by on his bike, seeming to pedal as fast as his legs and the gravel would allow. She wanted to call out, tell him to be careful, but he wasn’t her child and parents these days didn’t much care for others protecting their children. She had never minded when the neighbors corrected Katie. In fact, she had appreciated the help. John had been as carefree as a father as he’d been as a boyfriend and then as a husband.
The boy swerved, then corrected the bike before toppling over, and Carol exhaled with relief.
“Sometimes I think it was a blessing Tobias and I never had kids,” she said without any prompting from John. “I probably never would have let them out of my sight. I’d have had a breakdown before they could grow up.”
He didn’t respond, and she found herself rambling to fill the silence.
“I found out I was pregnant right after Tobias and I celebrated our second anniversary. It wasn’t planned. We hadn’t even talked about having kids. I was terrified to be a mother again. I felt guilty, like I was somehow replacing Katie or betraying her memory. I had a million emotions, but none of them were happiness or excitement. Then I miscarried. I think I mourned as much for that baby as I did when we lost Katie. I felt as empty as I had after losing Katie, but somehow that made me realize it was okay to be a mother again. The next pregnancy was planned. Meticulously. You know how I am.” She gnawed at her lip. “I miscarried again and…I fell apart. I completely fell apart. I was so depressed, Tobias was afraid to leave me alone. He flew his mother in to care for me while he was at work. She stayed for three months. When I got myself together and suggested we try again, Tobias said no. He said he wouldn’t put me through that again. He said we could adopt or foster, but he wasn’t willing to risk another miscarriage. We’d never fought until that night—we’d argued, of course, but we’d never really fought. God, I wanted to beat the hell out of him.”
“Did you? Adopt or foster?”
She shook her head. “We buried ourselves in work and hobbies. Then we started traveling and time slipped away. Life always goes by too quickly, doesn’t it? We would have been married twenty years next month. That sounds like a long time, but looking back, it was a flash. A moment that I should have cherished more.”
“I’m sorry you’ve had so much loss in your life. It’s not right for one person to lose that many people.” As they stopped outside the restaurant, he tucked his hands in his pockets. “Maybe it’s best if you go home, Caroline. Go back to your life and let me…let me finish mine.”
“Why?”
“Because we both know how this ends for me. It isn’t right for me to put you through that. I’ve put you through enough hell for one lifetime.”
A lump caught in her throat. “Yeah, well, I’m not here for you. I’m here for Katie.” She moved around him and opened the door to the restaurant, welcoming the scent of steaks cooking inside.
Six
Carol jerked her eyes open and listened intently. Staring into the dimly lit bunk area, she waited until she recognized the sound that had awoken her. Tossing her covers off, she eased down the ladder from the overhead sleeping area and moved through the RV to the bathroom. “John?”
His only answer was re
tching.
“I’m coming in,” she warned before opening the door.
“Get out.” His demand, though muffled by the trashcan he had his head stuck in, echoed through the small room.
Pressing her finger under her nose when the smells of vomit and diarrhea hit her, she took a few deep breaths through her mouth and steadied her stomach. Stepping into the room, she put her hand to his head, checking for a fever. He was sweaty, but not warm.
“I think I shit my pants,” he said between hoarse wheezes.
“It happens. Did this just start?”
“I started feeling off after dinner.”
“You didn’t say anything.”
His entire body tensed as he lurched again. She wet a washrag and, when he relaxed, held it out to him. He leaned back enough that she could scan the contents of the trashcan to verify there were no signs of blood in his vomit before leaving him alone. She flipped on the overhead light and did a quick check of the full-size bed she usually shared with Tobias. Having John climb the ladder to the overhead bed was a ridiculous notion, but she had toyed with it briefly. She didn’t like the idea of another man sleeping in the bed she’d shared with her husband, but logic had won out. She couldn’t possibly expect John to maneuver a ladder in his condition.
The sheets were still clean, and she said a silent thanks to the camping gods. The last thing she wanted to do in the middle of the night was strip the bed.
Carrying a cup of water to the bathroom, she held it to John’s lips. “Just swish and spit.”
He did.
“Are you in pain?” she asked.
“No. Just feeling sick.”
“Still?”
He nodded as much as he could. “Can I drink? My throat is burning.”
“Just a little. See how your stomach takes it.” She helped him take a drink, then waited for his reaction. The water stayed in his stomach, and they both relaxed a bit. “Think you can get into the shower?”
“You don’t want to use the shower, remember?”
“I’ll make an exception.”
He grinned but didn’t open his eyes. “So there are perks to spontaneous bowel evacuations.”
She rolled her tired, dry eyes. “Just one.”
His lighthearted moment faded. Leaning back, looking pale and pathetic, he said, “I’m sorry, Caroline. I made a mess.”
“It’ll wash.”
“No. I mean… When I told the doctor you could nurse me, I didn’t think it’d be this. I thought it’d be doling out pills. Not…me shitting myself at two in the morning.”
No. He wouldn’t have known that. He’d been too determined to get his way to listen to what Dr. Collins had been saying. To take two seconds to hear what Carol had been saying. But she had listened. She had known. She’d done it anyway. “It’s probably the new meds,” she said instead of pointing out that she’d told him so. “Can you get up by yourself or do you need help?”
He looked at the shower next to him. “I got this.”
“Just put your dirty clothes in the trashcan. I’ll take care of it.”
“You shouldn’t have—”
“John, your meds have side effects. This is one of them. I knew this was a possibility when I agreed to this. Put the dirty clothes in the trash, get in the shower, and I’ll take care of the rest. If you need help, yell.”
Sitting there with slumped shoulders, a trashcan on his thighs, and soiled pants around his ankles, he appeared completely defeated. Her instinct was to comfort him in some way, but what could she do? In that moment, he needed to reclaim his dignity. Hugging him while he had dirty pants and a can of vomit wasn’t going to do that. She left him to clean himself up and busied herself with turning on the vent over the small stovetop and opening windows to get some fresh air into the confined space.
Finally she sat and started reading up on his meds, trying to stop her mind from wandering.
Caroline didn’t really remember the conversation about having Katie cremated. John had talked to her about it—at her, really. She couldn’t seem to connect with the world. People were talking, crying, whispering, but she couldn’t seem to break through the fog and connect with them. She was detached. That was okay. That was better.
Being in a state of numbness was better than the alternative…feeling.
Occasionally tears would fill her eyes and fall, but she hadn’t broken down since the hospital. John, on the other hand… He seemed to do okay during the day, but at night when the house got quiet…
His crying had woken her the first night, and she’d lain in bed listening. Every wail coming from the bathroom twisted the knife of hatred in her heart. How dare he cry? How dare he mourn Katie when he was the reason she was gone? After what seemed like forever, she threw the blankets off and stormed toward the sound.
She threw the door open, determined to tear him apart, to scream until he shut the hell up. When she saw him, she stopped. The man who had always loomed larger than life was curled in a ball, sobbing loudly enough that he hadn’t even heard her dramatic entrance.
She stood in the doorway watching for several seconds before stepping back and easing the door closed behind her. She hated him. God, how she hated him. Even so, she couldn’t take seeing him broken. Instead of going back to bed where she could hear him cry, she went to the kitchen and sat at the table.
Katie’s placemat was dirty. A shriveled flake of cereal clung to Barney’s purple head. Caroline scratched at it with her fingernail. It stuck. She scratched harder. And harder. The dried flake broke free, lodging under her nail. She hissed in pain and suckled at the wound. Sweetness found her tongue, causing her to pause with a realization. That was it. That was the last bit of the last thing Katie had ever eaten. The mess hadn’t been there when Caroline had left for work the night before, but it was there now. The day Katie had died. The only way it could have gotten there was falling off Katie’s spoon or slipping from her mouth as she ate.
Caroline could almost picture Katie there. Sitting by herself eating as she kicked her red rain boots against the table as John slept off his six-pack. She suddenly realized that was probably the norm for her daughter. She was probably used to getting up and fixing her own breakfast. She probably ate cereal alone every morning that Caroline was at work.
Rage, the only thing that had managed to cut the fog of the pills Dr. Goodman had prescribed, filled her. She jumped to her feet, nearly knocking her chair over with the sudden movement. This time when she entered the bathroom, he knew she was there. He lifted his face. His cheeks were wet with tears, snot ran unchecked from his nose, and his eyes were bloodshot. She glared at him, hate engulfing her entire being.
“You killed her,” she seethed.
“Caroline, I—”
“You fucking drunk. You killed her.”
The horror on his face was clear to see. He seemed shocked that she was blaming him. He lifted his hand as she closed in on him. Caroline was not a violent person, she never had been, but then again she’d never felt such unchecked rage coursing through her veins. She wanted to hurt him like she’d never wanted to hurt anyone before in her life. She wanted to dig her hand into his chest and rip his heart out. She wanted to inflict as much pain on him as she could manage. Balling her fists, she stood over him and swung, yelling obscenities as she did.
Her punches hurt her far more than she suspected they hurt him. She only landed three before he caught her wrists and wrestled her down to him. Pinning her arms to her side, he hugged her tight. She screamed, fury tearing from her chest, calling him horrible names, blaming him for Katie’s death, telling him how much she hated him.
He said he chalked it up to grief. He even reassured her that she didn’t need to apologize. Apologize? She had nothing to apologize for. He, on the other hand, could never apologize enough for what he’d done.
Because Katie was being cremated, Caroline and John opted to have a small service. Family and a few close friends gathered at the funeral home. Ca
roline didn’t hear most of what was said. She didn’t speak. She simply sat in the front pew staring at the oversized photo of Katie’s smiling face and the teddy bear sitting there as a representation of her daughter.
The urn filled with ashes would be ready the following week, but John didn’t want to wait to have the service. He didn’t see any point in waiting. He’d already decided they would take the summer trip they’d planned. They would stop at all the places Katie had written on her list. They’d scatter her ashes, and she could be in all the places she’d dreamed of visiting.
Caroline agreed because she couldn’t think of any reason to argue. What did it matter what happened to Katie now? Whether she was in the ground, in an urn, or scattered to the wind, the result was the same—she was gone. Katie was gone.
The funeral was nothing more than going through the motions, giving people a chance to say their goodbyes, giving the family closure. If only it were that simple. Maybe for some of them it had been. Not for Caroline. The seed of anger and resentment John had planted years ago broke the surface the day Katie had died. It’d grown so quickly, it had consumed Caroline in an instant.
As she sat there, listening to him sniffle while the priest talked about the loss of a child, she knew she was going to leave. She didn’t know when or how, but she couldn’t stay. She’d stayed too long.
And it had cost Katie her life.
Carol looked up when the bathroom door opened. John shuffled out, wrapped in a towel. She focused on her laptop screen again, giving him what little privacy was allotted to them in the small motorhome. A few minutes later, she assumed he’d had enough time to dress and pushed herself up to clean the bathroom, but he was sprawled stomach down and naked on the bed. “Oh, John. At least cover up,” she muttered to his bare ass as she opened the bathroom door.