When Happily Ever After Ends

by Lurlene McDaniel

  Shannon wasn’t satisfied, but she went to bed. The next morning she woke to the smell of cinnamon-spiked coffee and frying bacon. Her father fixed breakfast, talked cheerfully, and seemed in fantastically good spirits, though he still refused to go with them. As they loaded riding habits, gear, and two coolers into the station wagon, the morning was dark and starless with only a slight trace of gray in the eastern sky.

  Shannon made sure Black had feed in the trailer before leading him up the ramp and securing him. He nuzzled her pocket and she offered him a piece of carrot. The horse seemed eager, as if he knew it was a show day. She stroked his neck and kissed his velvety muzzle. “Let’s win big, okay?” she whispered. Maybe then her dad would be sorry he hadn’t been with them to see it.

  “Are we ready?” her mother asked her husband.

  “Yes. We’re ready. Perfectly ready,” he answered cryptically. His smile was wistful as he toyed with Shannon’s silky hair. “You’re going to do just fine, honey. Both of you are.” He glanced toward his wife.

  “You act like we’re going away for a week,” Shannon said, stifling a yawn. “We’ll be back tonight, Daddy.”

  “Shannon’s right, Paul,” her mother said. “I expect to be home around midnight, so don’t wait up if you’re tired.”

  He hugged them both. His arms tightened around Shannon and he whispered, “Bye, baby.”

  She felt her irritation over his not coming evaporate and assured him, “I’ll win big for you.”

  Shannon and her mother climbed into the wagon, and her mother carefully inched the car and horse trailer up the drive. Shannon looked in the side mirror and saw her father standing in the kitchen doorway. She saw him raise his hand and wave as they drove off. She watched until his body became a speck against the morning light.

  “Wow! Is this show neat or what?” Heather craned her neck to see each of the five rings from atop her horse as she spoke.

  “Much bigger than last year,” Shannon said, twisting slightly in her saddle to observe all the rings. Advanced jumping was being held in one ring, in another were beginners with three-foot fences, in a third equitation for intermediates, and in a fourth the youngest riders were putting their ponies through walk-trot equitation judging.

  “Look at that little guy,” Heather said, pointing to a boy who was maybe five, sitting rigidly on a dappled gray pony.

  Shannon giggled and teased, “Cute kid. I saw him watching you and Fantasia earlier.”

  Heather rolled her eyes. “Do you suppose he has a big brother around here?”

  “You have a one-track mind!”

  “That’s easy for you to say. You’re the one who’s got Zack’s undivided attention.”

  “We went riding together, once. Anyway, Daddy’s kept him so busy lately I’ve hardly seen him.”

  “Still, he barely notices anyone except you.”

  “I think he does notice, but he’s really shy.”

  Just then Shannon’s mother approached. “Shannon, I’ve got to coach Tammy through her walk-trot event and Melanie is supposed to show in the pony ring. Since I can’t be in two places at once, I need your help. Can you supervise Melanie for me?”

  “Sure, Mom.” Shannon clucked to Black and directed him over to the children’s grass ring where eleven-year-old Melanie was biting her fingernails. “Are you ready?” Shannon asked brightly, remembering when she’d been a beginner. Melanie’s parents paid for lessons and for all entry fees but rarely attended the Pony Club events. Shannon felt sorry for her and thought about how lucky she’d been that her father had always been standing by, cheering for her.

  “I—I guess so,” Melanie said. “What if Mesquite won’t obey me?”

  Shannon dismounted and patted Melanie’s pony, checking the cinch on the saddle. The image of her father’s hands sprang into her mind’s eye. He had big hands, square shaped, with strong, blunt fingers. They were powerful, able to control a wild, unbroken horse. They were gentle, able to calm and soothe a crying child. She remembered the time she’d taken a spill during a meet. A tender warmth swept through her as she recalled the way he’d comforted her, stroking and reassuring her with his large, strong hands.

  She shook her head to clear away the poignant memory and told Melanie, “You know what to do. Let him know who’s the boss. Be firm when you give a direction with your heels or the reins. Don’t be indecisive. A horse can feel it if a rider’s uncertain.” She smiled to herself because she sounded so much like her father.

  “My stomach’s full of butterflies,” Melanie moaned.

  “Go ahead, they’re calling your class,” Shannon said giving Mesquite a firm pat on his rump. “You’ll be great. I’ll stand here by the fence so you can see me as you complete each circuit.” She kept her promise, and when Melanie and Mesquite performed well, she felt proud. She knew her father would have been proud of her and her role as teacher. She found herself wishing again that he’d come with them.

  Even though Melanie and her horse bobbled some moves, after it was over, Melanie came away with a white ribbon for fifth place. Her eyes danced as she fluttered the ribbon in Shannon’s face. “I won! I won!”

  Shannon laughed and shook Melanie’s hand, recalling the first ribbon she’d won. Her father had taken plenty of photos and acted as if she’d won a million dollar lottery. Of course, that was when she’d been a skinny little kid whose headgear flopped down over her eyes. She pictured him sitting home alone and hoped that he hadn’t fallen into another blue mood.

  By the time the sun was setting, the Scotland Yard Pony Club had collected a boxful of colored ribbons, the majority of them blue. On the way home, Shannon and her mother discussed the events. “Black did well, especially since it was his first big show,” her mother said.

  “He’d have done better if Daddy had been with us. Next time, I want to enter him in the advanced jumper events.”

  “We’ll set up a more rigorous training schedule tomorrow. Now that your dad’s feeling better, you can work more consistently. The Knoxville show’s next month.”

  “Maybe we should call Dad and tell him how we did.”

  Shannon’s mother glanced at the clock in the car’s dashboard. “It’s almost eleven, Chattanooga time. He might be in bed.” She patted Shannon’s hand. “We’ll give him a blow-by-blow description tomorrow.”

  Exhausted, Shannon yawned and snuggled into the car’s upholstery. The next thing she knew her mother was shaking her awake. “Your coach has arrived, Cinderella,” her mother joked. “I’ll unhitch the trailer and you can get Black settled for the night while I drive up to the house and start unloading the car.”

  Shannon rubbed her sleepy eyes. “Can’t we let Daddy do the car in the morning?”

  “I’ll just take the ice chests inside.” Her mother studied the darkened house. “That’s odd, your dad didn’t leave the porch light on for us. He must have forgotten.”

  “Maybe it’s burned out.”

  “No matter. Hurry along, I’ll see you at the house.”

  Shannon stifled a yawn and watched the tail-lights recede up the drive. She took Black’s halter rope. “Okay, big guy, time for nighty-night.” When she entered the stable and flipped on the light, Pippin neighed from her stall. “It’s only us,” Shannon announced, leading Black into his enclosure.

  She gave him grain and checked his water while Pippin whinnied and pawed the floor. “What is your problem?” Shannon asked, letting herself into the stall. Pippin nudged her and Shannon saw that the horse had no feed. “You’re hungry!” Shannon declared with a frown. “Why didn’t Zack feed you?”

  She quickly filled the trough with grain, deciding not to tell her mom, but to ask Zack about it in the morning. She’d hate to have her father fire him. Shannon was locking Pippin’s stall door when she heard her mother scream.

  She felt the hair stand up on her neck and arms and her heartbeat accelerate, but for an instant, her muscles wouldn’t respond. Then, as if catapulted from a slingshot, Sh
annon raced up the darkened driveway to the house. Flinging open the back door, she shouted, “Mom! What’s wrong? Where are you?”

  She saw a light coming from her father’s study, and she heard her mother sobbing and crying. Shannon ran down the hallway, knocking over a small table. In the doorway to the study, she saw her mother braced, hands covering her mouth, her body heaving and shaking. “Mom! Mom!”

  Her mother grabbed Shannon’s shoulders and thrust her away. “No! Don’t go in there!”

  Hurled backward, Shannon strained to see around her mother. What horror had happened? Where was her father? Instantly, her gaze found him at his desk. His body slumped forward and blood puddled on the gleaming wood surface. Shannon gagged and tried to force her way past her mother, who struggled to push her out of the room.

  Shannon heard someone screaming and screaming, and until her mother stopped shaking her, she didn’t realize it was her.

  Chapter Nine

  Flashing blue lights on police cars spun in perfect mechanical synchronization. Mesmerized, Shannon hugged her arms to herself and studied them from the kitchen window. Policemen milled through her house. Her mother sat at the table answering questions while a man jotted notes on a spiral pad. Shannon felt so cold that her teeth chattered. Beside her stood another policeman, and he was sweating.

  She’d vomited and her stomach was still heaving. The taste in her mouth was awful, but she wouldn’t drink anything. She couldn’t leave the window, even though the policeman kept urging her to sit down. She wanted to watch the blue lights, had to watch them, because they were constant and hypnotic, like beacons that held her sanity in place.

  A siren wailed, and red lights joined the blue ones as an ambulance pulled into the backyard. Shannon watched the vehicle roll over the neat row of stones that her father had placed around a flowerbed only last week. She almost told the driver to move it before her daddy saw what he’d done.…

  Uniformed attendants came in and shuttled through the kitchen, dragging a stretcher bed on clacking wheels into the living room. Shannon knew they were going to the study. Soon the attendants came back through the kitchen, rolling the stretcher that held a black bag. Shannon started wailing and she swung at the people, clawing the air. Voices kept telling her to “stay calm.”

  She thought she heard her mother, but couldn’t be sure. Pressure built inside her chest until she couldn’t breathe. The room began to spin and suddenly, she was falling, falling and the blue lights dimmed, the voices dulled, and everything went to black.

  Shannon felt like she was treading water in a large, dark, peaceful lake. How warm the water was! Warm and silky against her skin. Someone kept shining a light in her eyes and she tried to duck below the surface where it was calm and soft. The light kept coming, growing brighter, and with it noise, someone calling her name.

  Her eyelids fluttered open, stabbing light painfully into her pupils. She moaned and tried to turn away from the sunlight flooding through an unfamiliar window. Her lips felt thick and slightly numb.

  Her mother was stroking her brow. “Shannon, honey, I’m right here.”

  “Mom?” Her voice sounded raspy. “Where am I?”

  “In the hospital.”

  Shannon moaned as memories of the night before came flooding back. She placed her hand over her eyes.

  “They gave you a tranquilizer,” her mother said. “Do you remember riding in the ambulance or going into the emergency room last night?”

  Shannon pushed harsh reality away. “A little. I remember sirens. Bright lights. A doctor stuck me with a needle.” She rubbed a sore spot on her arm.

  “They gave you a sedative to make you sleep.”

  “I freaked out?”

  Her mother stroked her cheek. “You lost it for a while.”

  “Where’d you stay?”

  “I slept over there.” She motioned toward a large sleeper chair.

  “I want to go home, Mom.”

  “So do I. The doctor will be by to check on you later. If he thinks you’re stable, he’ll send us home. Until then, I’ll be right here with you.”

  Before Shannon could say anything else, the door to her room swung open and her grandmother entered. Her hair wasn’t combed and she wasn’t wearing makeup. Her face looked tear-stained, lined, and wrinkled. She seemed very old. “Grandma?”

  “Shannon, dear.” Tears filled Grandmother’s eyes. Shannon hugged her, holding her tightly, feeling a fragility in her body she’d never sensed before. “How are you feeling?” Her grandmother’s voice wavered.

  “A little bit”—Shannon raked her teeth over her bottom lip—“fuzzy. Light-headed. Am I slurring my words? It feels like I am.”

  “Not too badly,” her mother said. “It’s just the sedative, but it’ll wear off.”

  Her grandmother inched closer. “I’ve been helping at this hospital for years, but I never dreamed we’d be here like this.”

  “Please tell me what happened,” Shannon asked quietly, half hoping her mother wouldn’t hear her, because she wasn’t sure she could bear the information.

  Her mother took her hand. “You need to be strong.”

  Outside, in the hospital corridor, Shannon heard people moving and talking, and carts wheeled by. Outside her room, the world was in motion, but here, inside, time was standing still. She felt tension building in her chest and fought to keep her body from trembling. “What happened to Daddy? Something bad has happened to my daddy. I saw the blood.”

  “Yes.”

  Fresh tears pooled in Shannon’s eyes and she squeezed them shut. She longed to return to the dark peaceful lake of her dreams. “Is he … is he …” She couldn’t get the word out.

  Grandmother’s long, thin fingers laced through Shannon’s. Shannon stared at the blue veins standing out on the back of the older woman’s hand, unable to look her in the eye, because she knew that the word would be written there and so long as no one said it, there was a chance it might not be true.

  “He’s dead,” her mother whispered, chin trembling and her voice quivering.

  “No.” Shannon’s denial escaped in a long, low wail. “No. I don’t believe you.” She jerked her hands free from theirs and covered her head. “You’re lying to me!”

  “We’re not lying,” Grandmother told her. “He’s my son. How could I lie about such a thing?”

  In a flood of sharp, lurid images Shannon saw the men in the ambulance and the zipped black bag lying on the stretcher. Living people were tucked neatly beneath white sheets, pulled primly to their chins. Her stomach heaved, despite the residue of tranquilizers floating in her bloodstream. “It isn’t true. It can’t be true. Who would hurt my daddy? Why?”

  “We don’t know why,” her mother offered.

  Shannon dropped her hands from her face and looked directly at her mother. “But you know who, don’t you?” She felt her heartbeat accelerate. “The police told you who killed him, didn’t they?”

  Her mother exchanged glances with her grandmother, and hesitated before she spoke. “Yes. But the truth is hard to hear.”

  “Please tell me what happened. No matter how bad it is.”

  For a moment, her mother simply stared at the floor. Shannon saw her close her eyes, as if gathering strength. When she opened them, she said, “Nobody murdered your father. His wound was self-inflicted.”

  “Self-inflicted?” The drugs had dulled her thought process so that the word sounded like a foreign phrase, and for a moment Shannon couldn’t quite make sense of it.

  “Suicide,” her mother said. “He killed himself.”

  Chapter Ten

  “I don’t believe it,” she whispered. “How do you know? Did he leave a note?”

  Her mother’s complexion was the color of paste. “No. But the police told me that the ‘physical evidence’ is undeniable.” She used the phrase like it was distasteful.

  “They made a mistake,” Shannon said. “Daddy would never do such a thing. He loved us. He would never,
never do something like that.”

  Her mother took her shoulders and forced Shannon to look at her face. “He was holding the gun.”

  “What gun? Daddy didn’t own a gun.”

  “That’s what I told the police. But he did have one—an army gun. An old one I didn’t know about.”

  Her father bent and lifted the pistol. “It belonged to a friend of mine in Nam. He left it to me. This is the clip that holds the ammunition.”

  “Should you load it?”

  “The clip’s empty. No shells.”

  “So it’s just a souvenir?”

  “Yes. It’s a souvenir.”

  “It was in the trunk he kept in the tack room,” Shannon said dully. “Zack and I saw it a few weeks ago.” She closed her eyes. “You said you don’t know why he did it.”

  “He left no note.”

  “But why didn’t he leave a note? Why didn’t he tell us why?”

  “We all know he was”—she cast about for a word—“well, acting strange—”

  “But he was my daddy.” Shannon began to gag and her mother pulled her against her breast and stroked her hair.

  “I need you to be strong, Shannon, especially over these next few days. The funeral is the day after tomorrow and all we have is each other. Together, we can make it through.”

  The funeral. Shannon couldn’t control the tears now. In two days, they’d bury her father. How could she endure the pain of putting her father into the ground? “I can’t go. I can’t.”

  “Yes, you can. We can do whatever we have to do. I know it’s hard to believe now, but if you don’t go, you’ll never forgive yourself. Funerals help us say goodbye.”

  She didn’t want to say good-bye. Girls her age shouldn’t have to bury their fathers. Her mother continued to hold her and her grandmother held her hand. “We have each other,” her mother said. “We’ll make it,” her mother said.

  The tranquilizer they’d given Shannon the night before had worn off. Her tears had stopped. She felt empty inside, as empty and dull as one of her trophies that was left to gather dust and tarnish on a shelf. Her daddy had killed himself. He had left her and her mother alone without even telling them why.