Jim warily edged towards the lip of the hole in an attempt to peer down into the garage but the fractured floorboards squeaked in protest, sagging as he applied weight to them. Wary of his earlier experience on the street he hastily backed away.
That left just one final room.
He did not want to have to look in that last room. The thought of viewing his child’s bedroom was the first thing he could honestly say frightened him on this strangest of days. But he had to check, had to make sure that Simone was not in there. Mentally bracing himself as best he could, Jim opened the door to his dead child’s bedroom.
Fourteen
They were arguing again. Simone had started as soon as he told her that he had to go to the lab.
“But, it’s Saturday for God’s sake. Can’t it wait until Monday?” Her voice sounded whiny to him but he knew that it was really pleading.
“We hardly see you as it is. Please… Just for today; can’t we be a family?” she continued, as tears began to run down her cheeks.
Jim had almost agreed.
Almost.
How different his life would have turned out if he had just shrugged, taken off his jacket, and said “Sure, love. You’re right” and parked his ass on the sofa for the rest of the weekend.
But of course, he hadn’t. Day late and a dollar short.
Instead, he mumbled an excuse about the lab needing him and headed towards the door. Towards his mistress — his profession.
And that’s when she got up in his face. Screaming at him that he was tearing their family apart, that he cared more about the lab than he did his own wife and child. What about Lark? She was growing up without a Father. Didn’t he realize what he was doing to them both?
He had protested… weakly, his excuses melting under the intensity of her words. Finally, he yelled some dumb response back at her and stormed off into the garage.
His Ford Phoenix was sitting patiently in the garage and he angrily got behind the wheel.
What the Hell gave her the right to get on him like that? Who did she think she was? Didn’t she realize he had responsibilities for Christ’s sake?
He started the car, pressed the garage door opener button and waited until he heard the metallic thunk of the roller door locking into place overhead. He slammed the car into reverse, so angry he didn’t even bother to check his rear view mirror.
There was a dull soft THUD! and rattle of metal. The car bucked as the rear left tire rolled over something substantial.
“Jesus Christ,” he shouted angrily, banging his clenched fists against the steering wheel.
Now he was pissed. Lark had left her bike in the drive again, how many times did he have to tell the kid not to leave the Goddamn bike in the Goddamn drive?
The door from the garage into the laundry room flew open. Simone stood in the doorway, her face a mask of anger — she always had liked to get in the last word — bracing himself for the torrent of abuse at this, his latest screw-up, he saw instead her eyes move from him to the car and finally, down to the ground, the stream of vitriol left unspoken.
Her face had paled in an instant. One second flushed and ruddy with anger the next she was white as a winter morning. Her facial muscles lost all elasticity as her jaw fell open leaving her mouth sagging in a frozen ‘O’.
Her scream was silent but it was there.
“Lark,” she had finally choked, her hands flying to cover her mouth, as if she could pluck her child’s name from the air and cancel what she saw.
Jim looked slowly towards the driver’s side-mirror. He could see the handlebars of Lark’s bike protruding from under the tire, twisted and bent, the pink tassels he had fixed to each end still swinging gently back and forth.
A little arm protruded from the mangled remains of his daughter’s bike, pale and twisted at an awful angle. A large pool of blood spread slowly across the gray, leaf strewn, concrete floor.
He looked away then, tore his eyes from his child to stare instead at his wife. Her eyes were blank but a quizzical expression moved over her face like molten wax.
“What did you do to my baby?” she asked, her voice hushed to a whisper.
The question had haunted him for the rest of his life.
What did you do, James? What did you do?
There was an inquest of course. Both parents exonerated of any blame.
However, Jim knew the truth. He saw compassion in everybody’s eyes but when he looked into his own all he saw was guilt.
Before the accident, he and Simone had been teetering on a slippery slope that would surely sweep them into the abyss of inevitable separation and eventual divorce, but for a while, strangely, the death of Lark brought them closer. But when the tears finally dried up and he still could not assuage the burning sense of guilt that throbbed in his heart, he started to drink. He found that the bottle gave him some solace, and as each day passed, he realized that he no longer needed his wife; his newfound friend would do him just fine.
Yup! With the help of his namesake Dr. James Beam, he could anaesthetize himself against the pain, and finally, against all of life itself.
Six months after the accident he didn’t go home. Instead, he moved into their cabin at Shadow Mountain Lake and hired an attorney to file for divorce.
At the hearing, Simone had pleaded with him not to go through with it. She told him she knew it was an accident; as much her fault as his and that she knew how much stress he was under. If it wasn’t for her insisting on him staying, the accident would never have happened; did he see what that meant? That it was as much her fault as it was his. He ignored her plea to give it one last try and, just like that, they were divorced.
Fifteen
Jim stood outside the door to his daughter’s room; his hand was shaking visibly as he reached for the knob. The guilt of almost twenty years came rushing back to him. As he eased the door open, he half expected to see his daughter sitting on her bed, dead eyes peering out from behind a matted curtain of blood encrusted blond hair, to hear her say through a mouth clogged and matted with gore, “Daddy, why did you kill me?”
But Lark’s room was empty.
After the accident, they had cleared the room out. Donated most of her toys and clothes to a charity, the rest had gone to family and friends as mementos. Simone had objected at first but eventually she had submitted to him and they had removed all that had made the room Lark’s. He scrubbed it clean of any memory of her in a vain hope that removing the constant reminders of his little girl might in turn, help him overcome his grief and self-loathing.
Standing here now, her room restored and the accident still so far away yet so keenly remembered, brought back the ache of absence for his daughter. Her bed neatly made, a cuddle of soft-toys collected on the pillows. Her books and DVD’s resting in racks against one wall. A boom box sat high on a shelf; below it, her TV.