She looked at Scott and said, “Let’s do this,” and approached the house. Scott following closely behind.
She paused a few feet from the front porch, puzzled by the large green check mark spray painted on the broken front door.
“What’s that for?” she said.
“It means that the house was checked for survivors and that all the dead were removed and disposed of. It was a means of ensuring that search and disposal teams didn’t waste time by searching the same homes over and over again.
“It was a way of telling subsequent search teams ‘Move along. There’s nothing to see here.’”
“Were you the one who found them?”
“Honey, I sure wish I knew. The sad fact is, my partner and I collected so many bodies that I can’t remember which streets we covered. If I was the one who cleared this block, and I knew that your parents were the ones who lived here, I’d have broken department policy and done something special for them.”
“What do you mean?”
“Out of respect for you, and for your parents, I wouldn’t have collected their remains and burned them on a common burn pile. I’d have transferred them to one of the cemeteries in the area and given them a proper burial.”
“Thank you, Scott. That’s so sweet.”
The pair walked carefully through the broken front door and into the living room.
Sara looked solemnly at the two large stains in the living room.
“The one on the recliner belonged to Glen,” she explained. It was his recliner, and no one else was ever allowed to sit on it. It was like he was a king and that was his throne.
“Mom sometimes sat at the foot of his chair, when he called her out of the kitchen and wanted her to rub his feet. That stain at the foot of the recliner will belong to her.”
Young Sara had assessed the clues given her and made her assumptions based on past habits of her parents.
But her assessment couldn’t have been farther from the truth.
-22-
She stared at the stains for what seemed to Scott like hours, lost in her own thoughts. Scott looked at her youthful face, tight with tension. He wondered what he would have felt under similar circumstances.
A single tear rolled slowly down her left cheek. She neither explained it nor tried to stop it, leaving Scott to wonder whether it was an expression of sorrow or anger.
Finally, she turned and walked toward the kitchen. Halfway there she wavered, reaching out to a wall to support herself as her knees started to buckle.
Scott was at her side in a flash.
“I’m okay. It’s just that… I seem to be able to feel their presence. But it’s not quite what I expected. It’s almost as though…”
“What, sweetheart?”
“I don’t know, exactly. I get the sense that their spirits aren’t here. That…”
She couldn’t finish.
“I think it’s safe to say that he, at least, is now residing in hell.”
He was afraid to say the same about Sara’s mother, sensing that somehow she would have found it in her heart to spare her mother the same fate.
And something about the look on her youthful face puzzled him.
On the kitchen wall, next to a framed photograph of Sara and Jordan at the junior prom, she took down a hand-painted plaque.
“Father of the Year,” it proclaimed.
In carefully printed lettering, it stated that the award was presented to Glen McAllister, father of the year, for being the “Best daddy and all-around great guy in the world.”
In the upper right corner of the plaque was a postage-stamp sized photograph of the man she once trusted to protect her, but who had instead turned into a monster.
As she ran her fingers over the plaque, she started to cry.
Scott wanted to rush over to her, to hold her, to comfort her. But he held back. He sensed it was better to let her deal with her demons alone, but to be ready for her if she needed him.
After a couple of minutes she found her voice again.
“Mom saw this in a hobby store. It was right after they got married. She wanted me to stop calling him Glen, and to call him Daddy instead. It was hard for me, because of what he was doing to me. I told her I was sorry, I wasn’t comfortable calling him that. She bought this and made me paint it for him. I guess it was the next best thing in her mind.
“The night we gave this to him he went out with his buddies. By the time he came home he was filthy drunk. Mom had gone to bed, either because she didn’t want to deal with his drunkenness or because she knew what was coming. I was in bed too, but I couldn’t sleep because I was afraid.
“When he walked into my room that night, I pretended to be asleep, praying he would spare me, just once. Hoping that maybe the plaque made him think, that maybe a real father wouldn’t do what he’d been doing to me. That maybe he’d grown a conscience in the few short hours since I’d seen him last. But he was even more brutal that night than he’d ever been since. He said I made the plaque to mock him. But that I’d pay a heavy price for it. He said he’d hang the plaque in the kitchen, where I’d see it every day. And every time I saw it I’d be reminded that he owned me. And that I would live or die based solely on his discretion. And then he brutalized me. Harder than ever before.
“I remember he left a bruise on my cheek. The next day was a Friday. My mom kept me home from school that day so no one would ask about the bruise. I went to stay with a friend all weekend, and when I came home that Sunday night this was hanging on the kitchen wall. Glen had an evil smirk on his face.
“The bruise was faded enough to cover with makeup on Monday morning, and life got back to normal. But every time company came over after that, Glen made a point to show off his plaque, and to brag to everyone what a great father he was. I wanted to puke. His friends would pat him on the back and say what a good job he was doing, and not one of them had a clue.”
She paused for a few seconds, and Scott took the opportunity to examine the house on the other side of the kitchen wall. Then he returned to Sara and held her. She sobbed unashamedly in his arms.
“I have an idea,” he said as he eased the plaque from her fingers. He placed it back on the wall, on the same nail she’d removed it from.
Then he took his sidearm from his holster.
“Jordan tells me you’ve become pretty good at using one of these things since you went up to the compound.”
She managed a grin.
“No duh. He’ll never admit it, but I’m a better shot than he is.”
“Good. You’ll be firing at a slight upward angle. This wall won’t catch the bullet, but it’ll go into the attic and the rafters will. Do to Glen what you wanted to do in real life and never had the chance.”
Sara took the weapon and handled it like an expert observing range safety rules. The slight tremble in her hands vanished as if by magic and she adopted a two-handed shooter’s stance that would have made any policeman or shooting instructor proud.
At twelve feet from target, she replaced Glen’s scowling face with a perfectly round nine millimeter hole.
“Nicely done,” Scott observed.
“Thank you. That was… kinda cool.”
As Scott replaced the weapon in his service holster, he said, “There’s one more thing I want you to do. See if you can find a sharpie or a black marker. We need to clear up any misconceptions that your friends and neighbors may have had about this guy.”
Sara was a bit puzzled but didn’t question Scott’s instructions, and looked through the kitchen drawers until she found a black marker.
Scott used the marker to scratch out the word “Father.” Then he handed it to Sara and said, “Why don’t you see if you can come up with a more suitable word to replace that with?”
She smiled a slightly wicked grin.
“Anything I want?”
“You’ve earned the right to label him.”
“Even if I choose a word that might embarrass you?”
“I don’t embarrass easily, sweetie.”
Five minutes later, the pair stood outside in the front yard, Sara watching as Scott hammered the newly modified plaque to the front of the house.
“Now the friends and neighbors who have survived will know him for what he really was,” Scott said.
He stood back and held the young girl in his arms as they admired their handiwork.
Asshole of the Year, it now proclaimed. As an afterthought, Sara had scrawled across the bottom, May you rot in hell for all eternity, you bastard.
“Do you think that last part was a bit too much?”
Scott pondered the question but for a brief second before answering, “No, ma’am. I think it was a nice touch. Are we finished inside?”
“Not quite yet. I want to collect some things to take back with us, if you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind at all.”
The pair entered Sara’s old bedroom. Sara immediately noticed the small white envelope on her bed pillow and picked it up. A strange look came across her face as she recognized her mother’s handwriting.
Scott said nothing as she sat on the edge of the bed to read the note, instead busying himself by digging through the closet. As Sara read her mother’s words, Scott piled boxes onto the foot of the bed for Sara to go through when she finished.
-23-
It was a sound, so low it was almost imperceptible, that caught Scott’s attention and called him back to Sara’s side. Little more than a sigh, yet enough to alert him that something was wrong; that Sara was somehow in distress.
And his instinct was right on the mark. Even before he got to her, she’d raised her face toward him, tears suddenly welling in her eyes.
He wrapped his arms around her.
“Honey, what is it?”
For several moments she trembled in his arms, unable to find the words. Then she merely sobbed.
He didn’t press her.
“How about you just sit here and I’ll pull stuff out of your closet. You just shake your head yes or no. The stuff you shake your head ‘yes’ to I’ll pile on the bed and we’ll take it back with us. Fair enough?”
She managed a feeble nod.
It didn’t take long. There wasn’t much left. Glen, enraged that Sara had found the nerve to leave them, had thrown most of her belongings away a year before. The few items he left behind, the only things still standing testament to the fact she’d once lived there, were mostly things she didn’t want anyway.
Only when she was in the patrol car and driving south on Moon Valley Drive did she finally divulge the secrets of the letter she still clutched firmly in her hand.
“Mom is still alive,” she stated matter-of-factly.
Scott was startled.
His jaw dropped and he turned to face her.
“What?”
She caught her breath, uncrumpled the letter and read it aloud.
Scott had the sense that she wanted, or needed, his full attention. He pulled into the parking lot of an abandoned HEB supermarket and turned off the car’s ignition.
Tears streamed down young Sara’s face as she read each word.
My Dearest Sara,
Today I’ve finally had enough. I’ve finally decided to do two things I should have done a long time ago. One might make you proud. The other might make you hate me. And the odd thing is, I have no right to do either of them. One is a sin in the eyes of God, and of society. The other has the potential to cause you even more pain than you’ve already suffered at my hands. And I’m sorry for that: for both the pain I’ve already given you, and the pain my actions today will almost certainly cause you in the future.
Because despite what you may have come to believe in recent years, I do love you. You are my heart, and always have been. I know I don’t have the right to say that, and you probably don’t believe it. But it happens to be true.
This morning I killed Glen. I shot him as he sat in a field, a half mile from the house. He sat looking at me and begging me for mercy. But I had none for him. I shot him like a dog, and I felt no remorse. In fact, God help me, I laughed over his body.
The other thing I’ve decided to do, and I know I have no right to do it, is to resolve to find you. I know that when you left you thought you were finished with me. And you had that right. But I need to see you. I need to beg for your forgiveness. I was too weak to protect you. Too afraid of being homeless and destitute once again. Too afraid of what would happen to me if I tried to keep him away from you.
In other words, for years I put my own self-interests above yours. I was the most despicable kind of mother a mother could be.
I have no right to beg for your forgiveness. I know that. But I’m going to anyway. I don’t know why that’s important to me. It just is.
So I plan to find you, or die trying. And when I find you I plan to tell you that I really did love you. I still love you.
And I’m dreadfully sorry for all the terrible things I let happen to you.
If you ever come back and find this, know that I am out there looking for you. And I’ll look until my dying breath, or until I find you.
I’ve given permission to Justin and Sami Tomkins to stay here until I return. Their own house burned down and they had no place to stay. I told them which areas of the city I plan to search first. If you have any desire to meet with me, they can put you on the right track.
I know you left with Jordan. One of the neighbors saw the two of you leaving, and she described Jordan perfectly. I only wish I was more involved in your personal life so that I knew Jordan’s last name or where he lived. But I was stupid and a negligent and abusive mother.
And so I start my search blind.
As God is my witness, I will find you. Or I will die trying.
I love you, sweet Sara. I know you probably don’t believe that. But it’s the honest to God truth.
Mom
For several seconds, neither said a word. Then Scott, the master of the obvious, stated, “Well, now. That changes things a little.”
Sara said, “I need some fresh air. Do you think Rhett and Scarlett would be upset if we took a short walk while I try to wrap my head around this?”
“If they are, they can start without us. They wouldn’t want us to get there with your head unwrapped. It sounds quite messy.”
She didn’t smile.
For forty minutes the pair strolled, hand in hand, in circles around the desolate ruins of the once-bustling supermarket. Neither said more than a handful of words, yet both of their minds were racing.
Scott, for his part, was ever the protector. He winced at the thought of the emotional carnage this new development must be wreaking on his already-fragile daughter in law.
She, infinitely stronger than Scott would ever know, was already pondering her options. And wondering at the same time if she was destined to try to find and save the mother who once failed in her own responsibilities to protect Sara. Would Sara be able to find it within herself to be the better person? To be the stronger soul? And should she?
As they completed their third circuit around the HEB, a large brown rat burst free from the bowels of the building and bolted through the parking lot just yards in front of them. The sudden movement startled Scott, but Sara was so numb she barely noticed.
They stopped to watch, though, as the wild tabby cat in hot pursuit of the rat closed the gap between them and finally pounced on his prey, making quick work of him.
Neither said the words, but both were glad to see that some housecats managed to survive the blackout and all the turmoil that followed. And both hoped that there were enough around to enable them to repopulate and perhaps allow themselves to be domesticated once again.
They might have continued their walk for hours, were it not for an audible rumbling in the pit of Scott’s stomach.
Sara looked at him and asked the most obvious of questions.
“Hungry?”
Scott sheepishly replied, “Yeah
, kinda.”
“Me too. Let’s go eat.”
Back in the car, the pair shared small talk on their way to Baker Street.
The topic of Sara’s mom, though, went undiscussed, as though by mutual, unspoken agreement.
-24-
At the end of Baker Street, a street party of sorts was in full swing as Scott pulled the police cruiser to a stop. Although Rhett, Tony and David had tried several times to make a decent micro-brewery beer, they’d failed miserably. They finally decided that the hops they’d boosted from the local Budweiser plant had just gotten too old since the plant ceased operations two years before.
However, the liquor and wine they’d hidden away just after the blackout still held up remarkably well, and served to make an occasional special event all the more so.
Everyone had, though, gotten quite tired of Tony’s play on words every time someone asked him where on earth they’d gotten the stuff.
Everyone, that is, except Tony. He still considered himself quite a comedian each time he got to answer the same tired question with a gleam in his eye and the words, “Oh, we managed to spirit some of it away before the looters got it all.”
He’d always finish with a wink and an uproarious laugh, for those who might not catch his incredibly clever pun.
“Get it? We managed to spirit it away? As in spirits?”
While Tony went on and on chuckling at his mastery of all things humorous, his poor victims typically responded with a groan or a shake of the head.
Most of them knew by this time to avoid him altogether at such events. Especially when he began to get a bit tipsy.
Tony responded by seeking out those new to the group, as well as guests and special invitees.
He therefore wasted no time in greeting Scott and Sara as soon as they stepped out of the car.
“Good afternoon, lovely Sara. It is quite a pleasure to meet you. I’ve heard nothing but good things about you.”
The Homecoming: Countdown to Armageddon: Book 5 Page 9