Past Prologue: Where are our Children (A Serial Novel) Episode 4 of 9

by Gary Sapp

frightening is that she was wearing that same hard look that he couldn’t name before. What was even more worrisome is that the look has become more pronounced and has now covered her entire face. Seth tried to touch her cheek again but she backed away from his touch. A fresh round of tears ran down her face instead. He obeyed her request and mutely spun the rental around out of the parking lot not looking at the hotel room where Denise had come back from.

  He does notice a Latino woman with dark eyes sitting in a wreck of a car that never took her eyes off of him as he drove away.

  Two hours later Denise slammed her bathroom door in Seth’s face. He called her name once…twice…and yet even after the fifth time she refused to answer him. He walked back to her front door and carefully closes it after she nearly tore it from its frame. When he finally arrived back at the locked bathroom door he can still hear her sobbing from the other side.

  “It’s over, Denise said. “It’s over. It’s all really over. I have nothing left.”

  “Denise, sometimes we have to let go of our fear…all of it. We have to stick it in our rearview mirror and treat it like any other shadow that cast itself in our path at midnight.” Seth sat on the floor and caressed the door as if it were a lover’s face. He could hear Denise wailing now, letting all of her emotion pour out of her. “The dawn is approaching, Denise. Soon, so very soon, all that you will see is that shadow of doubt fading. All of your fear will have dissipated.” Denise’s crying slowed some, but he could still hear her heavy breathing. The emotion had come to her in a tsunami wave…but the tide was lowering. These are all good signs. “Just remember when the dawn breaks you have to be prepared…to take your leap of faith. The fears of the night never go away, not completely. But each day you have to wash all the horrors of our mind away. You must have faith.” Seth said. “I have had my dark nights as well, Denise. Let me tell you a story.”

  And he voiced to her of his four friends from school and how he had helped cause the death of Antoinette Burner who drowned when she went overboard off of the boat.

  And then he told her that the survivors of that storm had not fared well since that fateful night either.

  Clinton Sessions, the young man who first spotted Antoinette after she went overboard died when American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center on 911. And Seth often wondered did his dear friend see that plane just before it finished its climatic approach.

  Sam Casey did not die so heroically. His partying and drinking ways only increased after Antoinette’s death. He was one of around 50 people dancing on a deck who died at an apartment complex outside of Chicago…when the deck collapsed with the partyers falling to their fate below.

  Pam Toliver, the woman who saw Antoinette fall overboard, the woman who Seth Dupree called but did not speak to the other day may have suffered worse than any of the others. At least they died in one tragic moment. I’ll bet a piece of you dies every day, my dearest Pam.

  Seth knew from his wife’s work that many uniformed people call the victims of domestic abuse impotent and weak. Many of those same people would say that all these so called victims have to do is get up and leave their abuser. And that the bumps on Pam’s chin and the purple bruises underneath her eyes… and the cuts on her breast and the burns that reach from the inside her thighs to her womanhood are her own fault. They would say that no man…not a husband, boyfriend, father, uncle, distant cousin, best friend could continually inflict these types of wounds on a woman who fought back.

  But Pam did fight back once didn’t she?

  And the Gray Man knew that the fight caused her then 16 year old son to rupture her spleen when he nearly killed her.

  “Are you ready, Denise,” He asked her at last from the floor outside her bathroom door. “Are you ready to take your final leap of faith?”

  Denise said this instead: “Seth tell me if you have you ever heard what the worst part of going to Hell is?”

  Her question stunned him. He’d never given the manner much thought. “If the scriptures could be believed what could possibly be worse than the eternal burning, Denise?”

  “I once read somewhere that while we suffer that eternal burning of our souls that our minds are still active, Seth,” Denise said with a quivering voice. “And that our minds still desire all of the sin that caused us to go to Hell in the first place. So I now know that I’m going to spend an eternity angry…hateful…but mostly I’m going to spend that eternity desiring Chris Prince.”

  After another round of tears she said in a far steadier voice: “I’m coming out, Seth. I’m ready to take my leap.”

  Seth heard the lock unlatch.

  The door opened.

  And a nude Denise Prince ran past him leaving an unsuspecting Seth Dupree grasping at the air around her ankles as she angled to jump out of the living room window.

  He got to his feet…and gave chase…the entire scene playing out so very fast…yet, so very deliberately…almost motionless.

  When the glass shattered when her body thumped it…he knew that he was already too late, but he completed his dash to the window sill anyway.

  Denise had taken her leap of faith…

  …and landed nearly head first into the pavement ten stories below. Her nude body lay broken and bloody on the sidewalk as bystanders began to scream in acknowledgement of what he had already had knowledge of.

  Dr. Seth Dupree collapsed himself. He found himself seated on the carpet just underneath the window sill this time. He cried out loud. He cried where only he could hear it. He cried.

  For all of his life, Dr. Seth Dupree felt he was holding his breath…waiting; he hoped to still mend his broken heart.

  And although he could only watch as poor Denise had chosen to take her ominous leap of faith to her death.

  He hoped to still breathe again.

  He hoped.

  Chris

  Denise’s people started arriving in mass soon after 10:00 am.

  Special Agent Christopher Prince’s house had started smelling of fried chicken, collard greens, macaroni and cheese, black eyed peas and sweet potato pies hours since the crack of dawn. There were four of Denise’s female family members cooking in his kitchen, the food to be served in traditional family after her homecoming service scheduled for 1:00 pm. Yet, it didn’t take a half an hour of her people’s arrival at his home before things went to hell from there. Denise’s fraternal grandfather, who looked as if his suit had been tailored for someone else, knocked a decently expensive vase to the tile floor ten minutes ago. Two of her cousins learned upon their arrival here that they were sharing the same boyfriend. His ex-wife’s beached whale of a nephew abruptly left the premises, with a chicken leg in his hand, after he learned it was his other Aunt Denise that died.

  A half of dozen of her former co-workers spoke to him with tears in their eyes. Her oldest living uncle blew his nose into a handkerchief, patted Chris twice on the gut, commented on what a fine young lady his niece was and asked Chris if he had any liquor in the house. Her toothpick of a brother, who had just been paroled for whatever his latest arrest was, hugged Chris around his neck and apologized to him for all the drama his older sister put him through. And then he asked him if he thought she or Erica would have any money left off of the insurance policies after the funeral expenses to pay his bail bondsman. Finally, her cleavage revealing cousin Bonnie whispered in his ear that she fucking knew in her spirit that he had thrown Denise out of that window. She was still praying about it. And if the spirit would allow her to prove such a thing she’d fucking spit on him right now. But she knew he was in bed with them Roosters and they would protect his ass.

  Hope and memory wasn’t on his side. He knew he was a dolphin swimming in an ocean full of sharks.

  Maybe now he understood why he never got a long with these people.

  A trusted high school buddy of his, who still wore his hair in a ponytail like a girl, was greeting his guest as they walked through the door. Chris
saw him point in his general direction in the living room when Tabitha Blue, his partner showed up.

  “Hey partner,” Blue said, not quite knowing to do with her hands. She was dressed in a black blouse and matching trousers. She had her hair untied and it hung down to her shoulders. She wore a touch of blush on her cheeks and less lipstick than that on her mouth. This was her equivalent of being dressed up. Chris couldn’t ever remember seeing her so…pretty before.

  “Tabitha,” he kissed some of the blush on her cheek. “Hey, thanks for coming.”

  Chris noticed how uncomfortable his partner looked. She shifted in her stance and buried her hands deeper in her pants pockets. Social calls weren’t his partner’s calling. And although Chris knew there wasn’t a racist bone in her body, he was sure that Blue had never been around these many Black folks without having her gun drawn.

  “Uh…” She started to say something. “Agent Sheridan’s been trying to reach you.”

  Chris nodded and checked his private cell phone for messages. “Sheridan should have known to call me on my business cell.” He spoke up to be heard over a room full of Denise’s friends and family. He also saw that he missed yet another call from his doctor. The man must think that I am purposely ducking him. “I’ve been trying to tie up a million loose ends over here. You know, statements to the police, dealing with the insurance