by Nicole Trope
Dave came back over and pulled a chair up next to hers.
‘They’ve got two helicopters in the air now and we’ve managed to track down the shopping centre he went to today. It was the big one near here so he was probably close by all day.’
Liz put her hand to her mouth. They had been nearby all along. She should have left the house when he was five minutes late and started searching.
She closed her eyes and saw herself in the shopping centre—the same shopping centre where she and her mother had coffee this morning. She saw herself running through the centre and up the escalator and into the arcade by the movie theatre. She saw Luke standing by the Whack-a-Mole game that he loved and she reached out to him. She reached out to him and she grabbed him up and then she was running again, but this time she had Luke.
This time she had Luke.
She opened her eyes that were dripping again even though she felt dry inside. ‘I should have gone to look for him. I should have known where Alex would take him.’
‘He lives twenty minutes from here, Liz. You couldn’t have known where he would go. We sent some constables over to Alex’s house. It all looks pretty ordinary. It’s neat and tidy and the cupboards are still full of clothes. I think he intends to go home. We just don’t know when. We’ll find him. We usually do.’
‘What happens if you can’t find him? What happens then?’
‘We’ll keep looking.’
‘And if you never find them? What happens then?’
Dave looked down at his feet and Liz felt a little of his sorrow touch her. He didn’t have an answer for her. There were probably women with vacant eyes and broken hearts who would know the answer. Liz didn’t want to think about them.
15
Alex looked over at Luke. He was curled up on the front passenger seat with his thumb in his mouth. His blankie was covering his face. Alex didn’t know how he could breathe.
Luke shouldn’t have had a blankie anymore. Alex couldn’t remember having a blankie when he was a kid. Liz was trying to keep Luke a baby when she should just have been having another baby instead.
She probably would have another baby one day, but maybe it would be with another man. A man who would move into Liz’s life and start calling Luke ‘son’.
Alex couldn’t bear the thought of another man’s hands on Liz’s body. He couldn’t bear it.
It was too late for Luke to still be sleeping but that didn’t matter now. Nothing mattered now. ‘Just bring him home, Alex. Nothing else matters now,’ Liz had said.
He was just another thing that didn’t matter to her. She made him feel like nothing, like dirt.
After he had spoken to his father he had switched the phone off for the last time. He had taken the battery out as well and dropped the whole thing on the floor and thought, ‘Try tracking me now, you bastards.’
They did that now apparently. You saw it on all the cop shows.
She had called the police on him. Like he was some sort of criminal. If he took Luke back now he could see how it would all go down. They wouldn’t be able to charge him with much because they didn’t know about the gun, but Liz would get the courts involved and there would be a schedule and restrictions and every time he took the boy to the park he would be watched.
He and Liz would communicate through emails and lawyers and there would never be another dinner or another night when they could just be together and talk. Last night he had been overwhelmed with happiness. Her skin tasted like strawberries and her kisses tasted like wine. He didn’t mind the extra weight on her butt even though he had called her fat when they were together. Last night he had loved every inch of her and he had been certain that it was only a matter of hours, maybe days, until he had his family back.
But she had asked him if he was crazy. She had told him they would never be together again. When she packed a suitcase and moved in with her mother she had abandoned him and now he knew she was never coming back.
He could move on and marry again but there would always be this fractured failure in his past and there would always be his son to remind him of his failure.
He looked over at his beautiful sleeping boy and smiled. They were so alike, the two of them. They both loved with all they had. They both loved Liz more than anything in the world, but he was broken because of that love. It was dangerous to love Liz too much.
He had to protect Luke from that. It was his job as a father. He had to protect Luke from having his heart broken like this. He didn’t want his boy to ever have to feel this much pain.
Liz had taken his heart and stepped on it, grinding his feelings into dust. He knew that he would never be able to recover from this, never be able to move on with his life like she told him to. The pain was unbearable and he wanted it to end.
He got out of the car quietly so he wouldn’t wake Luke and took the hose from the boot. It had been easy enough to research what to do on the internet. One night he had Googled the word just . . . just because. He’d had too much to drink and he was all alone in the house with his memories of the times when he had been able to make his wife and son happy.
There were so many sites on the internet, so many people in pain and so many ways to end that pain. There were chat rooms where people told each other to ‘buck up’ and that ‘it was always darkest before the dawn’ and other clichéd bullshit like that. Alex had had a bit of a laugh over that. He knew that none of the people on the internet felt the same way he did. None of them could have been in this much pain.
He had found out how to do it and he had put the hose in the boot. He liked having it there. It was a simple way to die really.
It would take a while because the car was a newer model but he had all the time in the world. It stretched before him now without the constraint of the passing hours. If Luke woke up he had a backup plan, but he didn’t want to think about that yet.
He didn’t know when the plan had begun to form.
Probably the day he came home and found the house empty.
Or the first time he had to drop Luke off after an afternoon in the park.
Or the day he had to tell people at work because they would call Liz’s mobile when they couldn’t get hold of him.
It could have been any one of those times really. And each time he was reminded of what had happened to his life he felt the wrongness of it. It just didn’t seem possible.
On nights when he thought he was dying because his heart wouldn’t stop racing and he couldn’t get enough air into his lungs he would think about what he was going to do and it would calm him. He could relax and get to sleep then. He knew that eventually there would be an end to the pain and that gave him some peace.
Once, when he was thirteen, he had thought about doing it. Some bitch teacher had threatened to contact his father and tell him that Alex was skipping class and lying about it. He had felt so completely helpless to stop her, so out of control that he had not wanted to live anymore. He had taken his father’s whisky and a box of Panadol into his room, intent on ending his life. He had mixed the whisky with some coke and started drinking and then he had begun to feel a little better and after he had gone through a quarter of the bottle he had passed out without even taking the pills. His father had been wildly pissed at him about the whisky and the lying bitch teacher had never even contacted him.
Now you could buy Panadol at any supermarket but he knew they wouldn’t do the job. He had thought about using pills this time—proper sleeping pills—but he had understood that he could take the pills and drink until he passed out and it was possible that he would lie dead in the house for days before anyone tried to find him. He was more alone now than he had ever been. He didn’t want to be a rotting corpse when they found him.
Liz would call only when she got pissed off that he hadn’t come to pick up Luke and his father would call when he hadn’t heard from him for a week or so but it would take awhile before people came to look for him instead of writing him off as being rude or busy
.
He wanted them to find him. He wanted them to be sorry. He wanted Liz to be sorry. He would close his eyes and see Liz dressed in widow black with tears tracing their way down her face.
Last night he had gone home to bed and vowed to put the thought out of his mind. He hadn’t washed the smell of her body away and he had slept so deeply, wrapped in the knowledge that they would be together again. But then she had ruined it all. She had lied again and she had used him and he was glad he had never taken the hose out of the boot and glad that he always carried his gun.
He knew that if she shed any tears it would not be for him. She would probably dance on his grave if she was given the chance, so he had to make sure that she was sad, sure that she shed tears. He had to make sure that she was devastated. It was what she deserved.
It was time now. He could feel it. He felt his mind grow still as he worked quietly to get the car ready. Originally he had only meant this for himself but he had always known that he could take his son with him. And now—after everything she had done—he knew that Luke had to come with him. He needed his son and his son needed him. It wasn’t right that a father and son be separated.
Once the hose was connected to the exhaust pipe he wedged it into a window and made sure the rest of the car was sealed.
The thought crossed his mind that he should just push Luke out of the car. He could put him next to the road covered in his blankie and hope that someone else would find him, but he didn’t like to think of what would happen if no one found him.
He started the car and relaxed in his seat.
The trouble was that Luke looked just like him. Same eyes, same nose, same chin. He was a little carbon copy of his father.
He was three now and just a cute kid but he would grow up and one day Liz would look at her son and see his father’s face. Alex could see that happening and he could also see her turning against the boy. When Luke was a man his mother would hate him and Alex didn’t want his boy to know that pain.
The car purred and he thought he felt a little sleepy but then he moved and he was wide awake again. How long was this supposed to take? He should have looked it up, but it wasn’t like anyone who had succeeded had returned to report on the time it took to die.
He thought about Liz standing in front of two coffins. He felt the rightness of her suffering warm his heart. She had hurt him and in the future she would hurt her son the same way. She deserved to lose them both. She deserved to know the pain that he had felt. He wished that he could be around to see her suffer over losing her child but he was so sad and so tired he didn’t want to have to deal with all of that.
Luke began to stir, to wake up, and Alex knew he couldn’t let that happen.
The police were looking for them. He could hear helicopters in the distance, but that couldn’t be for them, could it? They were well hidden anyway. Back here in the bush they were protected from prying eyes.
How long would this take?
‘Dad,’ said Luke and Alex looked over at his beautiful boy. He felt a moment of panic. Luke didn’t like to sit still for too long. He would grow impatient in the car. He would get bored and cranky.
Alex closed his eyes and pretended to go to sleep. Maybe Luke would lie back down again. When he was still only a baby Alex had brought him to their bed before the sun was up. He didn’t mind taking care of him in the mornings. Sometimes Luke would climb over him and stick his fingers in his ears and his nose, exploring everything, but sometimes he would lie down next to his father and drift off to sleep again.
‘Daaad,’ said Luke again, and Alex could hear his irritation.
It was no use, they didn’t have the time. He needed Luke to be quiet, to sleep. It was a pity he wouldn’t stay asleep. If he was awake he might try to get out of the car. He might throw a tantrum and get really difficult and then Alex would have to hit him and he really didn’t want to have to hit him. Not now. Luke could be difficult sometimes but Alex had never laid a hand on him. He had never hurt his boy or made him feel afraid. Alex was proud of that. He was a good father. He knew he was a good father.
He would have to use the gun.
He opened the glove box and grabbed it, enjoying the heavy feel of it.
It had been surprisingly easy to get. He had a friend who knew someone who knew someone. It was the way these things worked.
‘I’m moving to a crappy part of town so that I can keep the ex in jewellery,’ he had told his friend. ‘Bit worried about visitors in the night.’ They had laughed together over what bitches women were and he had given his friend a couple of hundred dollars. The gun had come with six bullets and he had never bothered to try to get any more. He would only ever need one or two. He had known that.
Now he held it in his hands and released the safety catch while Luke looked on.
‘Is that a gun, Dad?’
‘Yes, my boy, it is.’
‘Is it for real?’
‘Yeah, it’s for real.’
‘Can I touch it?’
Alex looked at his son and his eyes filled with tears. It wasn’t supposed to end like this. They were supposed to have been a family. In his future he had seen beach holidays and more children and a wife who loved him and never left. He was supposed to live a life different to the one his father had lived.
His father would be upset when he heard the news but Alex thought that it was possible he might understand as well. He knew the pain of losing the woman you loved. He knew what it was like to feel that no one cared about you. He knew what it meant to have your dreams shattered. He would understand.
‘Dad,’ said Luke again and Alex could hear the fear in the boy’s voice. He knew something was wrong. He had seen a little too much in his life. Alex tried to keep himself from losing his temper while Luke was awake but of course there were times when Liz didn’t care what her son saw.
Alex always made her explain to Luke the next day that it had just been a Mummy/Daddy fight and that she was fine and it meant nothing and Alex was a good dad and a good man. Luke needed to be able to trust his father.
‘Listen to me, Luke. Listen carefully. I want you to do exactly what I tell you. You need to lie down and cover your head with your blankie.’
‘But I’m not sleepy, Dad. I want to get up. I want to go home now. Mum said I can have pizza for dinner.’
‘I know, Luke, I know you’re not sleepy, but it’s very important that you listen to me, okay? Can you do that for your dad, Luke? Can you do what I say just one last time?’
Alex knew that Luke was scared.
He was trying to keep his voice strong for his boy but he couldn’t help the sadness that came bubbling out. Luke joined Alex in his tears and for a moment Alex thought that maybe he should just give all this up.
Luke wasn’t crying the way he usually did. Usually he cried with the knowledge that any moment now his mother or father would make it all better but now the tears just slipped silently down his face.
Alex knew he could stop this right now. He could just throw the gun into the bushes. He could turn off the car and take the boy home. But it felt like it had gone too far.
He could feel his head beginning to spin a little.
How long was this supposed to take?
‘Lie down now, Luke. Lie down and cover your head with your blankie.’
Luke gave him one last look, the appraising stare of a child, and Alex believed that he knew what was about to happen. He could have kicked and screamed or even tried to get out of the car but instead he just lay down on the seat and Alex could see his little body trembling. He put his thumb in his mouth and covered his head with his blankie and closed his eyes.
Alex sniffed, grateful for his acquiescence. Luke knew what was going to happen but he saw that it needed to be done. He saw the possibility of his future and he knew what it would be like so he lay down and closed his eyes and waited.
Alex lifted the gun and placed his finger on the trigger and he had a flash of a memory of the da
y Luke was born.
Liz had been in labour for fourteen hours and after Luke was born and everyone had left them alone she had made him promise to hold Luke while she slept and then she had just conked out. Her mother was on her way and so was Alex’s father but at that moment it had just been him and his son, his firstborn child. The room was silent except for Liz’s breathing. Luke’s eyes were grey and even though he had screamed for his life the moment he was born now he was wrapped up tight and quiet.
Alex held him, still covered in some blood and that white stuff, and looked into his serious eyes and told him, ‘I will never let anyone hurt you—never.’
It felt like yesterday that he had been that father at the very beginning of a perfect life. He looked over at the beautiful boy he had promised to take care of for the rest of his life. He touched his silky hair and felt the small body tremble.
He lifted the cold heavy gun and pointed it. It would be quick and painless and then there would be no more pain for either of them. He reached back and picked up the small pillow he had brought from the house.
It was one of those silly little pillows embroidered with the words Home Sweet Home.
He didn’t want to hear the sound.
He didn’t want to see what the gun would do.
‘Dad,’ said Luke quietly, and Alex could hear the fear in his little boy’s voice.
He didn’t reply. There was nothing left to say.
Three hours and ten minutes late
‘Oh Jesus,’ said Julie. ‘Oh God, Aiden, we’re too late. Oh God, the poor kid.’
‘Check for signs of life, Julie,’ said Aiden. His voice was loud and firm.
Julie’s hands were shaking. She checked once and then twice and then she shook her head and brushed away the tears.
Aiden checked the body on his side of the car.
Both bodies were still warm in the crisp late afternoon air.
‘I just can’t believe it,’ said Julie to Aiden over and over again.
Aiden put his hand up so she would keep quiet and he called it in.