Death & Other Lies

by Carol L. Ochadleus

  Matt hesitated and looked to Kate, who only nodded gently for him to go on. “I didn’t cause the accident, a guy in a pickup ran a red light and hit us broadside, but a more experienced driver might have watched for it, seen the truck coming. I only thought about how cool I was. She was killed instantly. I had a serious head injury ... what the doctors labeled severe brain trauma. I was in a coma for nearly a month. When I woke up, I learned about my mom’s death. It was more than I could handle, and I was pretty messed up for months. She was gone ... and in spite of what people said ... I knew it was all my fault. I didn’t care if I lived or died. Which didn’t help my recovery. The docs at St. Anne’s Hospital worked hard to heal my brain, which was the easy part. Healing my mind was another. I went through personality changes, headaches, and blackouts. For months I was on some different meds which turned me into a walking zombie.” Matt flinched at the memory, but Kate merely took a firmer grip on his hand and nodded again for him to go on.

  “My mom was all I had in my life. She never married my dad, and I never met the man. My entire family consisted of Mom, a distant aunt and uncle, and my elderly grandparents.

  “My mom’s name was Sara, and she was only twenty-two when I was born. My dad was in the army stationed at Fort Stewart, not too far from her home in Richmond Hill, a little town on the Atlantic coast, south of Savannah. The summer they met was a scorching one. She told me how they would sneak away in the evening to catch the cool breezes coming in over the marshes. There was a wooden boardwalk jutting out over the swampy mire, with a thatched hut at the end. The hut had a wooden floor with a bench that hugged the circular walls. Mom would tell me that they’d bring a radio and dance or watch the white egrets go by. She loved to see them float silently, their feathers barely skimming the water as they scooped up a fish mid-flight. When the cooler air blew in from the sea, the fronds of the hut’s roof would sway in ‘golden unison.’ Those were the exact words my mom used, ‘golden unison.’”

  “From the time I was little, Mom would tell me the stories of their one summer together. I think she wanted me to at least know something of Gil. It was all she had to give me about him. Out on the beach, sitting in the sand with the waves tugging at their feet they talked of the future and Gil proposed. When Mom told him she was pregnant with me, he took it hard, but she thought he eventually made peace with the idea of becoming a father. Early in the fall, Gil said he was to be transferred to Fort Bliss, Texas with his unit and was scheduled to leave two months before I was due.

  “My grandparents thought they should have a quick wedding, and Mom didn’t hesitate to make plans. All seemed to be going well until a month before the wedding. She said he changed. He became distant. She was scared, but she finally asked him what was going on. I guess he was pretty embarrassed because she said he was red-faced and couldn’t look her in the eye, but he told her, “I just don’t love you enough.” Mom canceled the wedding and Gil left a few weeks later for Texas without her. As far as I know, she never heard from him again. I was born on a cold, drizzly morning in early January, the third ... right after New Years. We didn’t have much, but we had each other.”

  Matt’s eyes clouded at the memory of his early life, alone with his mom in the small apartment they shared. Wiping away the moisture that threatened, he went on with his story. “Money was pretty tight, but she was a good mom and did whatever she could to make up for me not having a father. I was about six when she married Mickey, a hardworking man several years older than her. He was a foreman on the shipping docks in Savannah. Mickey didn’t have much formal education, but he had a passion for learning, and the three of us spent evenings together pouring over library books on subjects from amoebas to dinosaurs. It was his love of nature and science which set me on a lifelong career in science, something I’ve never stopped being grateful for.

  “Life was good for all of us, but then our little family fell apart once more. Mickey was only forty-three when a winch broke on the dock. He was killed instantly as a pallet crashed down on him. Mom was inconsolable and never recovered from fate’s second blow. Although she was a loving mother, her youth melted away before its time. I knew it was because of me that she lost Gil. And indirectly even Mickey. He worked a lot of overtime to give us a better life. I grew up feeling it was my responsibility to keep her happy.”

  Kate wiped away a tear and squeezed his hand again. “I made up stories on my way home from school to cheer her up at the end of her workday. Stories about dragons and kings, damsels in distress and their knights in shining armor. Anything that might make her smile and be happy again. By the time I was in high school, Mom had left the boat company where she had worked and went to work for a law group in town. Financially, we were doing better, and we even talked about taking a vacation in the summer and going west. Then Mom died ... and I spent nearly two years wishing I had. It seemed like all of my life ... I just caused her pain.”

  The story left him spent and unsure what Kate would think now that she knew his background. Knew how damaged he was. In her usual tender way, she took his face between her hands and kissed him softly. Matt finally knew he would be able to heal.

  Growing up, it always seemed to him love was a train wreck waiting to happen, and getting on board was not the wisest thing you could do. Then he met Kate, and the magical healing she offered changed all that he had ever known. After she disappeared, Matt couldn’t help wondering if sharing his past with Kate had been the wrong thing to do. I probably told her too much.

  Of the little Kate shared of her life, she told him she was from Chicago where she owned a small condo near the shores of Lake Michigan. They talked about taking a weekend trip there in the coming summer to retrieve some of her things and maybe put the place up for sale. When Matt questioned her about her mail or when she would change her address, she gave him one of her dazzling smiles and said she would take care of it. After she moved in, she seemed happy, and he didn’t push her to talk about her past. He was certain when she was more comfortable, she would tell him all he needed to know. He could wait.

  After she left, although it was useless, he couldn’t stop calling her phone, hoping just once she would answer. But the phone only rang and rang. Days passed, then weeks, and Matt went through a dozen levels of hell. He was worried, scared, and then bounced back and forth between anger and frustration. He had no idea how he could prove she had ever been there. His neighbors, who should have seen Kate, had no recollection. Of course, she came and went at odd times. It was possible, he assured himself over and over, they had missed each other as a matter of timing, besides no one in his apartment complex paid much attention to anyone else. To Matt, they seemed pretty cold and detached. But in all fairness, it was hard to criticize them; he didn’t pay much attention to them either.

  The details of their brief time together tormented him over and over, as he tried to remember the life they shared. They shopped at a local mall and ate out a few times, but upon questioning people in some of the more familiar spots, he could find no one with any memory of her. He was especially disappointed by the local pizzeria. But the changing string of kids who worked there could barely remember him, let alone Kate, and he was a frequent customer for years. No matter where or how hard he looked, he could find no trace of Kate or anyone else who remembered her.

  Lonely, weeks passed, and Matt was forced to accept she was truly gone and wasn’t coming back. Long before, and as gentle as they could be, the police informed him there was no further search for Kate. They concluded amongst themselves she did not exist. At Matt’s pleading, Detective Orliss finally sent a technician to test Matt’s apartment for fingerprints, only to have the same negative results. Except for Matt’s and the super’s, there were no others to be found.

  In the weeks around her strange disappearance, there were other unexplained events. Dangerous things which made him question his sanity again. Pages of his lab notes disappeared and reappeared days later, exactly where they should be. There were c
hanges he didn't remember making, in handwriting that didn't look like his. He would turn his machines off at the end of the day only to find his computers and equipment humming again when he returned in the morning. A thought that terrified Matt for some reason was the possibility that he was losing touch with reality. Neither Marsh nor Dr. Nowak would be too pleased to learn Matt was having mental difficulties. They couldn’t have a crazy scientist on their staff.

  Considering the stress with Kate’s disappearance and the pressures of his job, he quietly checked in with his doctor and submitted himself to a whole series of tests. Matt’s physician concluded he was suffering residual damage from his past closed head trauma and the emotional problems which plagued him after his mother’s death. Symptoms which could show up after all these years. He issued new medications, and after a few days, the effects were startling. In spite of the overwhelming memories he hated to part with, the drugs worked their magic. Even Matt began to question Kate’s existence.

  In retrospect, it was a good decision Matt had made, not to talk to his friends or colleagues about Kate. They were a bunch of nosy gossips, and his life with Kate was personal and private. Perhaps it was some inner fear early in their relationship that if it didn’t work out, he would be talked about or worse, pitied. Matt found it easier to let them all think he remained alone by choice, married to his work. After Kate left, he knew it had been the right decision. How would he ever explain her disappearance to them now? He couldn’t even explain it to himself.

  Eventually, Matt accepted what the police believed all along. It was an emotional breakdown due to the stress of the job and past head injury. He must have invented Kate and their life together. As unbelievable as it was, he could find no proof she was ever a part of his life. He was a scientist, after all. His life was rooted in facts which he trusted, and the facts could not prove anyone wrong but him.

  Chapter Six

  Saucy Abernathy opened his shop door and peered out down the street. “Goddamn what a beautiful day,” he said out loud, to no one in particular. “Finally, we got some sunshine.” His bones were becoming more brittle each year, and all his joints ached in the autumn dampness. “I need to move farther south, that’s for sure. I’ve stayed too long in this place.” But he always got stuck on the same problem. Saucy didn’t have any money to move unless he sold the store and with all the stupid building codes, he knew it would cost too much money to fix things up before he could sell the damn place. “Damn government, always sticking their noses into simple folk’s business,” he often fumed. Shaking his gray head, the owner and manager of House of Antiques and Oddities, walked back inside, flipping the sign on the door from Closed to Open.

  Walter Abernathy, or Saucy as he’d been called since childhood, had taken over the place from his father, who got it from his father. Built in the mid-eighteen hundreds, the little shop morphed from one business into another. The story went it was originally a brothel, which would explain the dozen or so small rooms upstairs he used for storage.

  His grandpa got the place by winning it at cards, hell, according to some people, his grandpa won his grandma at cards too, but no one ever proved that. His grandma just laughed when she heard it told. Grandpa turned it into a pawnshop, made himself a nice living until World War II broke out.

  In 1959, Saucy’s grandpa died, and the place fell to Saucy’s dad who changed the name to Abernathy’s Emporium and had a thriving business selling a mishmash of items from hammers to curtains, plumbing supplies to toothpaste. By the time Saucy took it over, antiques were the name of the game. Folks came from cities all around to shop in his cramped, dingy little building, and they came in a steady stream. Saucy didn’t have to get on the confusing Internet people were always talking about to sell his goods. Nope, didn’t have to. His store was always busy, mostly tourists bringing their money from upstate.

  Yeah, he knew the place was run down and needed a lot of work, but that meant putting money into it. Besides, he thought age and decay added to the charm of the place. Nope, he was stuck there, he thought again, as he closed the door, shaking the wall of the old store and making the little bell tinkle over his head.

  He turned as he did each morning glancing at the shelf running across the front window. That’s where he had placed a row of tiny, brightly colored glass vases. He enjoyed the dancing lights they made on the ceiling on the few days the sun came through. “Pretty little things,” he mumbled. “Even the cracked one.” He was glad the little blond brought them in. It was funny; she didn’t want money for them. Just handed him a plain card with a phone number before she walked back out. Abernathy was glad he could keep them if he wanted to, even though they would have fetched a nice profit if he chose to sell them. They brightened up the front of the store with their rainbow of fractured lights. Just like the little lady said they would.

  February 10th

  MATT WAS FEELING BETTER. He’d been a little crazy, but he was much better. His head didn’t hurt as much anymore, and he could conduct his work without the aching sense of loss that had invaded his life for months. The holidays had come and gone, and the few decorations he still had from his mom remained at the bottom of the closet. It didn’t matter to him if they ever saw the light of day again. What was the point after all?

  The new reality, the one where Kate didn’t exist, was getting stronger each day and he almost looked forward to the new position he had been offered in Washington. If Matt accepted it, the job would be a huge leap for his career, and he’d be the envy of his friends and colleagues. However, it was a position that would take him far away from the small apartment where he still felt the remnants of a life complete with love and the treasured but dimming memories. As unreal as it was, Kate in whatever form she had been, left an indelible mark on his soul and he didn’t want to surrender to the bleakness of life devoid of love, even though he knew deep in his bones he must move on.

  Whatever the answer to the mystery was, whether she was real and left of her own accord, was spirited away by some inexplicable force or was only a figment of his imagination and vanished with a giant poof, the end was the same, she was gone. Just like after the death of his mother and his struggles to survive, he needed to close the door again, put his shattered past behind him and move forward.

  However, that firm resolution made it more difficult to ponder the thing he found in his apartment one evening. The thing which sent him back to square one. Something he had overlooked, something unexplainable, which would once again prove him wrong.

  Stuck in a dog-eared paperback, Matt found an unmailed postcard from a beautiful old hotel in London. He knew it wasn’t his book. Not wanting to jump to any conclusions, and perhaps with some concern, his medications were failing him, he fingered the edges of the stiff paper and gingerly danced around the idea the book and the postcard could have something to do with Kate, and if not, then how were they there? Although there was no address on the card, no date, nor signature, it was addressed, “To my darling daughter.” The short message read:

  Hope all is well with you. Your aunt and I have had a wonderful trip. I should be coming home on schedule. Will tell you all about it when I see you. Love M.

  That was it. Nothing more. Even though it created more mystery, Matt burned the picture of the hotel into his mind. In spite of all that he had endured and begun to accept as truth, he wanted to believe it was a postcard to Kate. Does the ‘M’ stand for Mom?

  Matt had no idea who it belonged to or why it was there. He didn’t remember ever seeing the strange book before. Indeed, it was not something he would have picked out—a lengthy work called, InSight. He lived in that apartment for several years with few visitors. If Kate doesn’t exist, then where did these items come from? Who is the card from, and who is it to? And why does my gut tell me it belongs to Kate? Once again, hope roared through his veins. An invitation, flimsy though it was, for a chance to resurrect his other self, the happy one, waggled a finger in his direction. If his suspicions w
ere right, she lived and so again could he.

  For most of his life, Matt was a logical man. He lived in reality. Facts anchored him. Bending reality as best he could to accommodate what could be his salvation, he concluded he must have picked it up unknowingly from her things and stuck it on the shelf. Maybe if he could talk to someone in the hotel of the postcard, he may be able to ask about Kate or a relative, assuming they stayed there. But of course, they did, he reasoned, why else would they choose that particular card to send? The more he thought about the possibilities, the more his hope roared up and through the roof.

  Perhaps he could get a forwarding address or something else that would turn the world upside down. Just finding Kate’s mother would prove Kate was real, and not as the police tried to make him believe, a figment of a lonely mind. But running off to London would take time, and time was something he didn’t have.

  The new position in Washington loomed on the horizon, and Matt knew his boss already noted the bags under Matt’s eyes, even teasing him about his disheveled appearance of late and quite openly questioned Matt’s hesitancy about accepting the new position. To refuse the promotion and stay in Philadelphia to search for Kate would probably be a big mistake in his career, but to go to Washington would take him away from the only place he shared with her and leave him forever wondering about his mind and his sanity. So many questions from such a small card.

  What if this was indeed addressed to Kate and what if he was able to track the sender, presumably her mother, from the hotel, could she or better yet, would she, tell him where Kate was? And of course, there was always the bigger question that had toyed with his heart for months. Should he even try to find her? That was a moot point at the moment which he quickly pushed aside. Just proving she existed would be enough he argued. If he found her, the decision to make contact could be decided then.