The Day You Went Away

by Jennifer Hebbard

  The answering machine snapped me out of my memories. I didn’t bother to wipe the tears from my face. It seemed I had an endless supply of them. I listened to the message. “Eden this is Caleb at the hospital.” I froze. Oh God, not again. “Kane is having…a rough time today so I’m sending her home early.” I released the breath I was unaware I had been holding. Sending her home early. Kane was alive. The message continued. “Eden, I’m worried about her. I’ve never seen her like this before. Anyway, call me if you need anything or if there is anything I can do.” The message ended with a shrill beep. “No, there isn’t anything you can do, oh Kane.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  KANE

  I glared at Caleb as I grabbed my things. He was technically my supervisor as well as my partner but he didn’t need to send me home. I was fine! “Caleb, I could just work on reports or something. You don’t have to…” “Go home Kane. It’s fine. Spend some time with Eden. Get some rest. We got this.” I nodded curtly knowing there was nothing I could say or do to change his mind. Besides, I didn’t think I could stand that look of pity on his face for one more moment. I headed out to my car. I had no clue where I was going to go for the rest of the day but, I knew I wasn’t going home. Eden didn’t need to be worried about me on top of everything else. I drove for a little while, no real destination in mind. I stopped and pulled into a parking lot and was genuinely surprised when I looked up and saw the baseball diamond. This is the field where Blake’s little league games would have been. It was empty now but soon the bleachers would be full of cheering, excited parents. The little boys and girls would proudly be wearing their bright uniforms holding their brand-new gloves. I had put Blake’s glove with him when we buried him. It had seemed the right thing to do at the time. Blake had loved that glove. He had died for it after all. When we had left the sporting goods store that day, Blake had begged me to let him have his glove. He said he wanted to “get the feel of it.” I laughed. Little league wasn’t for another few months and although Blake was a pretty coordinated kid, I had promised I would practice with him beforehand to hone his skills. I took the brand-new rawling fielder glove out of the plastic bag the sales clerk had place it in and handed it to Blake who immediately started tossing it up in the air. I was just about to tell him to stop throwing it around when a gust of wind took the receipt I was holding right out of my hand. “Damnit” I swore. I was going to let it go and then thought better of it. If Blake doesn’t like the glove or there was something wrong with it, we may need to take it back. I turned, took two steps in the direction that the receipt had blown in and that’s when I heard it. The screeching of the brakes. The sounds of twisted metal. Somewhere, someone screamed. Maybe it was me. A witness had told the police who had later relayed the information to Eden and I that she had seen Blake tossing the glove and he had missed it. It had landed just off the curb and in the street. Right at that exact moment, a teenager who was texting his girlfriend took the corner too close and too fast. He never saw Blake until it was too late. Blake had bent down to retrieve his glove. I guess he never saw the car either. A crowd of people had gathered around the site of the accident and had helped me push the car back into its upright position. I saw my boy, lying there broken and could not accept that he was gone. I gathered him in my arms and kissed his head over and over again. “Blake? Wake up now. Come on. Oh God, please wake up.” Several people had called 911 and it didn’t take long for the ambulance to arrive. The EMT’s immediately came to where I held my son on the dirty street. I didn’t want to let him go. A female paramedic with a nametag that read “Stacy” laid her hand on my back. “Let us take care of him now.” I nodded and stood as they placed leads and wires on Blake’s chest and injected him with syringes full of life saving medications. They placed his small body on the gurney hurriedly. I noticed the young man who had been driving the car standing nearby looking dazed and talking to a police officer. He hadn’t been hurt at all, not a scratch, on the outside. One child gone; another child’s life changed forever in an instant. He was a child too. Barely sixteen and had only had his license for just a few short months. He and his parents came to Blake’s funeral. They were all devastated by what had happened. Eden and I never blamed him. What good would it do? Blake would still be gone; our family would still be ripped apart at the seams. Besides, he had his own demons to battle. We got a letter from him about a month ago. He apologized to us again and again, over and over. He said he wished it was him that had died that day instead of Blake. He told us he hadn’t been behind the wheel of a car since that day and that he doubted he ever would be again. He was a stranger and yet, our lives had been intertwined forever on that day. I looked at the empty field and tried to imagine what kind of player Blake would have been. “Blake, I’m so sorry. I hope you know how proud I am of you and how very much I love you.” The wind blew through my open window just then and I swear I heard the words “I know” carried on it as it ruffled my hair and cooled my skin. I smiled and for the first time since that day I felt I was with my son again. My cell phone vibrated. I had forgotten to turn the ringer back on after I had left the hospital. I looked at the display. I had a voicemail, from Eden. I punched in my code and put the phone on speaker as my wife’s voice filled the car. “Kane? Please come home. I love you and I need you.” “I need you too” I said aloud as I played the message again. It’s time that we started grieving, and healing together.

  CHAPTER SIX KANE & EDEN

  Kane arrived home a couple of hours after she had left the hospital. When she walked into their living room, Eden was nowhere in sight and the house was quiet. Kane closed her eyes briefly, exhausted from the emotional turmoil of the day. “I was worried about you.” Eden’s voice startled Kane and she dropped her keys on the floor. She bent to retrieve them and when she straightened back up, she looked at Eden for the first time. She was dressed in her old paint stained jeans and T-shirt. Fresh paint was spattered across the tops of her hands. “Eden. You’re painting?” Kane was in shock. Eden hadn’t so much as painted a straight line since Blake’s death. “I am” Eden replied simply. The corners of her mouth rose slightly in an almost smile reminding Kane of the old Eden. The Eden she had been before her heart had been shattered. The happy, confident Eden of before the accident. Kane hadn’t seen that Eden in months and she had missed her so much. Kane was both surprised and embarrassed to find tears filling her eyes. “Come here baby, let me hold you.” Eden opened her arms and Kane did not hesitate for a moment going to her. She felt it had been a lifetime since her wife and held her like this. She instantly melted into Eden’s body and held onto her as if she knew if she let go, all of the pieces of herself that she had barely been holding together would shatter all around her. “Shh, I’ve got you” Eden whispered, stroking her hair. For Eden’s part, she felt as if a part of her that had gone missing had finally come home. She felt that she could breathe again, deeply and freely. So that is what she did. She held fast to her broken wife and felt the cracked parts of herself mending back together and she just, breathed. The two women stayed like that, entwined in each other’s pain, grief and love for quite some time. It could have been a moment or an eternity, there was no way to tell and neither of them were inclined to know. Time had no meaning here. Eden felt like she had been drowning for months. Kane had always been her life preserver and she had spent so much time waiting to be saved that she hadn’t realized that Kane had been drowning too. Both of them adrift in this vast ocean of grief. “I’m sorry Kane. I’m so sorry baby.” Kane’s eyes flew open. She stepped out of Eden’s arms but kept touching her. She didn’t think she could survive if she wasn’t touching her right now. “You’re sorry? Eden, if anyone should be sorry it's me. It’s my fault. It’s my fault our son is dead.” Eden grabbed Kane’s face. “NO! No that’s not true. I don’t ever want to hear you say that again.” Kane looked down dejected. “It is true though. I should have been watching him better. I should have been holding his hand, anything. Eden, our son is
dead because of me.” Kane was broken. Eden wondered how she hadn’t seen it before now. Eden led Kane over to the couch. Kane resisted at first. She felt she didn’t deserve to be comforted. Eden tugged her hand more forcibly and Kane reluctantly joined her. “Kane.” Eden began gently. “I don’t believe for a moment that you could have prevented Blake’s accident.” Kane began to protest and Eden silenced her by placing two fingers on her lips. “Let me finish.” Kane silently nodded her assent. “I think. I believe that things happen for a reason. Good and bad things alike. I don’t know if it’s God or some other higher power who is in charge of things but I do believe that there is a plan in place for us all. We may not understand that plan or the reasoning behind it or even agree with it right away, or maybe never. Maybe we aren’t meant to understand or maybe we aren’t even capable of it, I don’t know. What I do know though is that our beautiful boy gave us nine wonderful loving years before he left us. Maybe what we should be doing is honoring his memory. Continue to love him unconditionally, because he never really left us Kane. We will always hold a piece of him in our hearts, our souls. I think we have mourned his death so deeply that we have forgotten his life.” Kane continued to shake her head. Drowning. She was still flailing for breath in the waters of her grief and Eden didn’t know how to convey to her that all she had to do to stop drowning, was stand up. “Eden?” Kane asked in a whisper. Eden thought it sounded as if she was pleading. “What is it Kane?” Kane couldn’t look Eden in the eye and so she focused her gaze at the carpet. “Will you…can you, forgive me?” Eden couldn’t help the tears that flooded her eyes then. “Oh Kane. Baby? There’s nothing to forgive. Look at me now.” She grabbed Kane’s face with both of her hands, forcing her to look up. “It’s not your fault.” Kane tried to shake free but Eden held fast. “It’s not your fault.” Kane’s entire body was vibrating. “Eden I,” “It’s not your fault Kane. It was never your fault. It. Was. Never. Your. Fault.” Eden thought she felt the last of Kane’s walls physically collapse in her hands as she held her shaking wife tight to her own body. Trying desperately to absorb some of her pain. To take it from her. She couldn’t though of course and she knew it. Eden was getting angry now and that was new for her. Sadness yes, anxiety, fear all of it she had felt over the past year, but very rarely had she allowed herself to feel the anger always lying beneath her surface. “It’s not fair.” Kane mumbled and something exploded inside of Eden. It was as if a bomb with a long burned out fuse, reignited and blew apart inside of her. No Kane, it’s not fair. None of this is fair.” Eden stood leaving Kane looking rather stunned on the couch. “None of this is fair. None of this is right! We didn’t do anything to deserve this but it happened. I know it has happened to thousands of other people over time but this time it happened to us. I want to blame someone for this pain. I want to blame God or Jesus and yes Kane, I even wanted to blame you. In the end though, none of that matters. In the end, Blake is still dead and we aren’t. We’re alive Kane and even if sometimes, sometimes the pain is so overwhelming that we don’t want to be here anymore but here we are. Blake is still in the ground and here we are.” Kane stared at her wife in shock. She had never seen Eden like this before. So much anger, so overdue. Kane knew this was a long time coming and that now she would weather the storm. “I’m so tired of hearing the words right and fair.” Eden continued. Is anything ever really right and fair in this life or are phrases like that reserved just for those of us that have seen their children lowered into the ground? Because when that happens, when you have to see that, to watch that, you know in an absolute instant that nothing will ever feel right or fair again. So yes, I’m angry. I’m angry and lost and so fucking sad all the time.” Kane blinked. Eden rarely cursed and the word sounded odd heard in her voice. She stayed silent. She wanted to go to her wife but now was not a time for comfort. Now was a time for truth. Eden shook her head as if that motion alone would make things clearer for her. “I’m all of these things at once Kane.” She continued looking at Kane softly. “But none of them are directed at you. I will admit, in some of my darkest moments when I desperately tried to grasp anything just to stay above water, I did…” Eden hesitated knowing her next words were likely going to hurt. “I tried to blame you. I tried to blame anyone and anything I could think of. That was never about you Kane. Not really. It was more about trying to find something, anything to ease this awful pain in my chest even if just for a moment.” Kane nodded in complete understanding. She knew that ache well. She had lived with it every second since Blake’s accident. She both hated it and clung to it. She hated the feeling of emptiness and raw pain, and yet, she held onto to it tightly believing that to let it go would be to let go of the last little piece of Blake that she had left. That wasn’t all she had of him though. She had the memories of his birth, his first smile, his first tooth. The first time he said MAMA as he was looking right at her. All of those wonderful things had been pushed aside and buried by this incredible all-consuming pain and guilt. She couldn’t lose those good memories she thought. Then there really would be nothing left. She looked at Eden who stood statue still in the middle of their living room. They had both been battling the same demons for so long now but instead of doing it together they fought on their own. That would never work and Kane refused to lose Eden too. She wouldn’t make it if that happened. She rose from her place on the sofa and walked to Eden. Eden startled, looking at Kane as if she had forgotten she was still in the room. Kane took her wife’s hands and kissed her gently on the forehead. “We will make it baby. We’ll get through this together, but we need help.”