by Lily White
“We were way too young for the strength of the love we had for each other. In truth, we’d known of each other since we were small kids, but we’d never really known each other. Not until we were a little older and we finally recognized we were two halves of the same whole.
“Losing her, losing Michael, it was like losing the largest part of myself. The best part of myself. And all that was left behind were slivers of memory that burned my skin when I reached for them because they were wrapped in a blanket of bitter cold.”
I couldn’t bring myself to look at Maggie, but I knew she was staring at me.
“Is that how I’m going to feel when my father dies?”
My fingers gripped the wheel in response to her softly spoken question.
Fuck if I knew how losing her father would feel for her, but that wasn’t the answer I would give. She was suffering just knowing what was about to happen. I had to wonder if knowing your world was about to change wasn’t worse than having it happen when you didn’t see it coming.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I’ve never lost a parent.”
“You don’t think it’s the same?”
Now that question I could answer.
“No. I don’t think it’s the same. Not entirely at least.”
“How so?”
I glanced over at her before reaching out to take her hand. She was hesitant at first, but then finally entwined her fingers with mine. Two people on the road to an unknown future.
“There’s a natural order to life,” I finally explained. “We’re born into a family and through the years we come to recognize that our parents will grow old and eventually leave us behind. If life is fair and good to you, you’ll grow up and start a family of your own. You’ll have people there to support you when you lose those that supported you from the day you took your first breath. And all the while, your kids will look up at you and know that the cycle continues – over and over again – because that’s the natural order of life.”
A breath shuddered from my chest, memories creeping in that I’d rather remain buried.
“It’s not natural for your child to leave this world before you do. It makes you feel like you failed to protect them, and that failure stalks you through the rest of yours days. It’s relentless in the way it never lets you go. I don’t think losing a parent leaves you with that same sense of failure. It was never your job to protect them in the first place.”
More silence fell between us, but we were still connected together through the warmth of our hands.
“I hope I don’t become someone different when my father dies,” Maggie whispered.
“You will,” I admitted. “Losing anybody makes you a different person.”
“Will you still want me when I change?”
She’d spoken so softly, I wasn’t sure I’d heard the question. We turned to look at each other in that moment, and the question remained there blazing behind her tear filled eyes.
There was no possible way I could know the answer to that question. But after giving it some thought, I wasn’t sure she’d asked it the right way.
“I don’t think it’s whether I’ll want you that should be the question.”
Her eyes met mine again and it hurt more than I’d ever believed it would to tell her exactly what I wanted to say.
“In all honesty, Maggie, I have to wonder if you’ll still want me after you change.”
“Fuck.”
The truck lurched to a stop, dust kicking up into a cloud from beneath the tires, the world outside the windows becoming hazy and obscured.
“FUCK!”
Elliot’s hand slammed against the steering wheel of the truck, both of our eyes locked to the scene staged before us. Whereas it had been a surprise to the man now screaming out obscene words, it hadn’t been much of a surprise for me.
We’d driven for another two hours after discussing what happens when a person dies. And in those two hours we’d barely spoken to one another. The miles traveled over the road felt like we were crawling towards a moment of reckoning, and only I knew the truth of what we were likely to find.
I felt guilty as sin when I looked out at the empty plastic chairs and a bonfire that was now just smoke and ash. A foul scent lingered in the air, something unrecognizable that turned my stomach, but left me with no doubts that death had occurred here.
The guilt kept me from looking over where Elliot sat, to see the angry lines that I knew marred his beautiful face. He stared out the window deathly still and I knew he was making decisions with absolute precision, that he was plotting what actions he’d take next. I wasn’t sure how long we sat there just staring out at the wisps of smoke that danced up from the ash and coals of a once burning inferno, but in that time I became filled with a powerful dread, with the weight of my responsibilities for the heartache we’d find.
“I need to go look around, Maggie. But I don’t trust that your family is gone, so I want you to stay in the truck –“
“They’re gone,” I said, interrupting the instructions he was barking at me. Weakness kept a stranglehold on my voice, my tongue tied up with all the lies that bounced around in my head. However, what I’d just told him hadn’t been a lie. I knew my family well enough to know they wouldn’t linger at the scene of a crime.
“Yeah?” he asked, “And how do you know that?”
Releasing a breath that was filled with the putrid scent that surrounded us, I nodded my head towards the far right of the house. “The truck is gone. My family is smarter than to stay here after you saw what they were doing. My bet is that they cleaned up as well as they could before hitting the road.”
His hands slammed down on the steering wheel again, his face a mask of indecision and rage. “The woman?”
My shoulders withered. “I’m sure she’s dead, Elliot. They wouldn’t leave any witnesses behind.”
“How the fuck did they get free?”
His head turned in my direction, his eyes full of accusations.
Shame sat on top of me like a heavy blanket.
In all the time that Elliot and I had known each other, we’d built a relationship on lies. Lies protected us from knowing about one another. Lies held up the walls we’d relied on to pretend like being together was all right. And it had been lies that damn near destroyed us until the truth came in and taught us what it was to accept the circumstances that brought us into each other’s lives in the first place.
I couldn’t lie anymore, not if meant returning back to that place where the walls kept us apart.
“After I knocked you out with whatever that drug was my family always kept on hand, I knocked my father out with it as well. Once I knew he wouldn’t be waking up for a few hours, I cut his binds.”
Elliot’s silence following my confession held me by the throat and kept me from breathing. I was trapped beneath it, desperate to fight my way free, but too scared to make a move or a sound until I knew how he would react to an act of utter betrayal.
If the woman was dead, I understood that her blood was on my hands. Glancing down, I saw the dark, crimson stain that marred my skin and made me no better than my family.
It’s funny how even a small passage of time can clear your thoughts and help you see clearly. My father was a monster. He didn’t deserve to live. But the Maggie that existed only eight hours before hadn’t understood that simple fact. I wished I could go back in time and tell myself the truth – to warn myself that it wasn’t just my father I needed to save.
If the woman was dead, I was to blame. And I knew that hard fact was screaming in Elliot’s thoughts.
“Why?” he asked before shaking his head, the indecision splitting him in two. “You know what? I don’t care why. I don’t fucking care. I just need to know where they would have gone. I can’t –“
He paused mid-sentence, aggravation a deep, splotchy red that colored his skin. After taking a few deep breaths, his fingers relaxed over the wheel, his hand reaching out to touch my face.
“I’m not going to hold this against you. I’m not, Maggie. I refuse. But you have to help me make this right. You have to tell me where they would have gone.”
There were only two places I knew of where my family would have run. One was an abandoned pig farm – a place I’d hoped to never see again. The other was a few days drive away, so far and so deep inside a forest that only a few people knew it existed. Tucked safely beneath trees on federal land, my father had maintained the place every time we were traveling, but we never stayed there often. Only during the times when we needed to hide.
“I need to get out of the truck,” Elliot growled. “I need to make sure they’re not here.”
Taking his words as a challenge to my honesty, I clenched my eyes shut to keep from crying. “I’m not lying to you, Elliot. I’m not. They wouldn’t have stayed behind. I know them well enough to know that.”
His door opened and he was halfway out of the truck before he paused, his eyes cast down at his feet and his jaw ticking with whatever it was he was feeling. “I’m not doubting you. I just need to see for myself what happened. I need to know.”
Nodding my head, I sniffled, the damn tears leaking out despite how tight I’d closed my eyes. “Then I’m getting out, too.”
I didn’t give him a second to argue before I threw my door open and jumped down to the ground. We both rounded the front to meet in the middle and, in silence, we walked toward the bonfire to find out if we could see the ghosts of the past.
“I hope she was dead,” he muttered, his hand reaching up to rub at the back of his neck before he jerked it back down and turned to peer out across the fields. Muttering more curse words beneath his breath, his body was as stiff and immoveable as I’d ever seen it.
While he looked out across the expanse of tall grasses and weeds, I stared at the vacant eyes of the woman I’d helped my family kill. Not eyes, really. Just two large holes in a charred skull where those eyes should have been.
Beside her bones lay the pieces of a second charred skull, and I had no doubts whose head that once had been.
“They killed Jack, too. It doesn’t look like he had a peaceful ending.”
Spinning on his heel, Elliot turned back to me and opened his mouth to say something, but his words failed him when the whisper of sound came creeping its way from the house. Every hair on my body stood on end.
“I thought you said they weren’t home…”
His words sliced deep as his body took large, powerful strides in the direction of the run down structure. He’d almost made it to the stairs before he spun back around and stormed in the direction of his truck.
Wanting to ask him where he was going, I snapped my mouth shut instead. He was a volcano on the verge of erupting, a firestorm that was being fueled by the purest oxygen known to man. I knew better than to get in the way of a man on a mission.
Shifting my weight between my feet, I battled my own indecision. My head turned between the house and Elliot’s truck. Before I understood that I’d made up my mind, I found myself walking in the opposite direction of Elliot and climbing the stairs to the house
“Maggie!” he screamed out, his voice echoing across the expanse causing a flock of birds to abandon the trees where they’d sat perched in silent observation.
My eyes darted to where he stood staring, and I ducked my head as I ignored the irritation in his expression to walk my trembling body inside.
Something crashed inside the house as soon as I entered, but I didn’t allow the sound to scare me away. I needed to know who lingered in this place – who had been too stupid to run when the chance had been theirs to take.
Rounding the corner of the living room, I heard the kitchen door slam open, the sound of heavy steps closing the distance behind me until a warm body stood at my back.
Panic froze me in place at that moment, a meeting that I would have sworn would have been as violent and lethal as my imagination had promised me it would be.
I was taken by surprise by the silence and by the way time stopped moving for a brief moment.
“Maggie Pie,” my father croaked, his large body seated on the middle of our threadbare couch, a wrinkled blanket pulled over his lap and belly as if he’d been woken from an afternoon nap.
Elliot stilled where he stood behind me, rage like electric waves flowing off his body until it became uncomfortable to have him so near. Wanting to move forward, I found that my legs were too heavy to take that first step, so I simply stared straight ahead expecting to see anger and betrayal in my father’s eyes.
He held my stare for several seconds, his expression tight, but not as furious as I’d expected. Finally breaking the wordless connection we had, my father looked up into the face of the man whose life he’d shattered.
Clearing his throat, my father spoke slowly, his voice weak and his skin a pale white. “I know what you came here to do, son. I may be old, but I’m not stupid.”
Elliot’s hand fell over my shoulder. “Maggie, I need you to leave –“
“That won’t be necessary,” my father interrupted. “I don’t plan to fight you. Not that I have much fight left in me either way.”
He didn’t sound right. His voice was too calm. His body was too still. I wasn’t sure what changed between the time I drugged him and drove Elliot away, but this wasn’t the man who’d raised me.
“Maggie,” Elliot warned.
“No,” I managed to answer despite the festering lump of uncertainty that clogged my parched throat. Keeping my voice as calm as possible, I spoke gently because I stood at the meeting point of two impossibly violent storms.
“You made me a promise, Elliot,” I reminded him, my eyes never leaving my father.
Daddy didn’t shift position, didn’t move a damn muscle. Not even his eyes twitched as he sat in repose watching us from across the room.
“Maggie.” Elliot’s voice had softened. There was understanding in the way he’d said my name. Lowering his voice even further until it was barely a whisper, he asked, “Are you sure you want to do this?”
I wasn’t sure of anything at that exact moment, but I put on a brave face. “I’m sure,” I answered.
The cold hard steel of a gun was pressed into my hand before Elliot took a step away.
“Son,” my father called out, his eyes glued to Elliot where he stood behind me. I felt Elliot stop in his tracks, knew he was turning to look back at one of the men who’d stolen his family. It surprised me that he didn’t move quickly to break the promise he’d made to me in that dark field, that he didn’t shove me aside to charge towards my father.
Clearing his throat again, my father’s shoulders shook with a weak cough. His eyelids drooped like he was tired and his ashen skin appeared sullen and lifeless.
“I just wanted to let you know I finished what you couldn’t.”
Elliot’s body stilled and I felt like I was standing next to a coiled serpent.
“What did you finish?”
There was thin ice beneath all our feet. One wrong move and we’d all plunge into icy water only to get sucked in by the current of misunderstandings and become trapped beneath the frigid surface that reflected our crimes back at us.
“I killed the bastard that carved his name into my daughter. Broke his head into so many pieces that he’d never touch another woman again.”
Closing my eyes, I attempted to wipe the imagery of Jack’s death from my mind, but I’d seen that level of rage before from my father. I knew it hadn’t been a clean kill.
“Why are you telling me this?”
His cough was a phlegmy, sickening sound – the sound of death creeping up like a whispered promise. “Just thought you should know. Just wanted you to understand that you’re not the only father willing to protect what’s his.”
“I wasn’t responsible for what happened to Maggie,” Elliot argued, the disgust in his tone obvious.
Giving Elliot one nod of his head, my father’s eyes darted to my face. “I know. But I’m
responsible for what happened to your child.”
To hear it spoken aloud made tears well in my eyes. I’d known the truth all along, but until then, I’d been able to hide behind illusions.
“I don’t have much longer to live. But I’m asking you to give me the one thing I wasn’t kind enough to give you. I need one more moment with my daughter.”
Elliot didn’t answer, didn’t dare give the slightest hint that he was granting my father his request. He tapped the gun in my hand before whispering in my ear. “I’ll give you this moment, Maggie. But I’m not giving that man a damn thing.”
I listened to his boots storm a path outside of the house, knowing full well that if I didn’t make this quick, he’d be back to check on me.
Although my legs were still heavy with the weight of the world, I managed to cross the living room to stand in front of my dad. Tears streamed down my cheeks in hot paths of regret, pain and acceptance. I knew he needed to die, and I knew I had to be the person to finally remove him from this world.
I just hoped I would have the strength to do it.
“Hi, Daddy.”
His bloodshot eyes peered up at me and he patted the couch at his side. “Take a seat baby. It’s time we said goodbye.”
My entire body trembled, but I managed to sit beside him, my hand landing in something cold and wet on the seat. Picking it up, I stared at my palm to see blood smeared across it. My eyes shot open at the crimson stain, and I looked past my fingers to see resignation in my father’s stare.
“Your brothers decided I wasn’t worth taking along, I guess.” Flipping the blanket aside, he showed me the stab wound in his belly. His shirt was soaked through with blood, the tops of his trousers stained black with the evidence of his impending death. When I didn’t immediately speak, he let out a soft laugh. “Don’t worry about it, Magpie. It doesn’t hurt much anymore. I drank enough to be numb from the top of my head down to the tips of my toes. Didn’t help stop the bleeding much, but there’s nothing that can be done about that.”
I shook my head, unable to understand the strange reality that now held me in its alien grasp. Elliot hadn’t been lying about how it changed you when a person died. Although, my father was still breathing, just the thought of him leaving was changing me in impossible ways.