Jim did not remember when he had sat down next to his ex-wife, he did not recall where the anger had gone, and he did not recollect when he had taken his Simone’s hand in his own.
There were tears in her eyes now. “And then she turned and looked at me. She said ‘Mommy?’ with this look of surprise on her face. I just stared and stared at her. I thought I was dreaming. Then overhead, this jet came screaming in low, almost at treetop level and it disappeared behind me. I couldn’t follow it, my eyes were fixed on Lark but I saw the other kids turn their heads, and I heard the explosion but I couldn’t do anything but stare at my daughter because I knew that this had to be a dream. I’d fallen asleep at the wheel on the way to the airport and this was just a dream. So it wasn’t a real plane that had just crashed behind us and if I took my eyes off her for even a second, I just knew I would wake up and she would be gone.
“Then this stuff started falling from the sky, bits of metal and burning things. It started like a rainstorm, little pieces first, just pattering on the pavement, it made everybody look up. Then it was raining chunks of metal and the other kids started screaming and shouting. The parents just grabbed their own and started running. It was pandemonium.”
Jim handed Simone a paper handkerchief from his pocket. She took it gratefully and patted away the dampness from her cheeks.
“Lark started crying and I just reacted, I jumped out of the car and grabbed her. Threw her in the back seat and drove.” Simone took a long swig from her own glass of water. “It was like a meteor storm, bits of debris smashing into the ground all around us, bouncing off the roof of the car. There were houses on either side that were already burning and I was trying to drive and calm Lark because she kept repeating over-and-over ‘Where’s Benjamin? Where’s Benjamin?’ and I took my eyes off the road for one second to look back at her… just one second.”
“When I turned back there was an old man standing in the middle of the road. His mouth was wide open and he was staring into the sky, back toward where we had just come from. I tried to swerve past him, I really did—Christ, he was standing in the middle of the road and I had my dead daughter in the back and I…” The words were tumbling from her now, cascading out of her mouth. “… and I hit him. I killed him.”
“You don’t know that for certain,” said Jim quietly.
“I killed him,” she repeated with certainty. “And God forgive me, I didn’t stop.”
“Well there you go; you didn’t stop, so you don’t know for certain that—”
She looked across at him and stared directly into his eyes. “I was doing close to sixty and I hit him straight on. It took me an hour to wash the blood and… stuff off the car. I killed him.” Simone stared at her feet, her elbows resting on her knees and her head bowed deeply.
“Who’s Benjamin?” asked Jim, attempting to change the subject away from the morbid tale.
“Who? Oh! I don’t know, maybe one of her softies?” A softie was the name Lark had given to her stuffed toys. She had names for all her toys, so Benjamin was probably one of them, Jim reasoned.
“So where did you go? Why didn’t you come to your parents? I was waiting there for you.”
“I started to head to the house, but there was so much confusion and the smoke and the fire from the crash. It was right there where our old house used to be in West Hills. I knew it wouldn’t be any good trying to get home. Besides, I had a little girl in the back of my car that I thought was my dead daughter.”
“What do you mean you thought it was your daughter, of course it was our daughter.”
“For all I knew, I was suffering some kind of psychotic episode and I’d just kidnapped this child off the side of a street in Baltimore because she looked like Lark.”
“But she called you Mommy.”
“I know. I know; but I was confused and, even after all these years, I missed her so very much. I thought I was over her death, but all I had done was hidden it away in my mind somewhere where I wouldn’t stumble over it very often.”
“We were all confused. I think most of us still are,” said Jim the ghost of his first few hours back in this time still haunted him.
“I drove and I drove and I made it out of the city. The freeways were all on fire and blocked so I took the side streets. I can’t even remember most of it, but I think I got out of LA on pure instinct.”
“You could have come to me at any time, Simone.”
“I wanted to, I really did. You were the first person I thought to get to. But then I thought that maybe you were like you used to be. And it scared me. You… changed, Jim. You became so morose, so very angry and… you left me—”
Jim started to interrupt, to say that he hadn’t left her, how could she say such a thing.
“Don’t say you didn’t. You know goddamn well you did. You were barely home when Lark was alive and then, when she died, you might as well have been living on Mars. You never spoke to me. You… withered away, and you took any chance for us with you.”
He knew she was telling the truth, and he let her continue with the tirade because he also recognized he deserved it.
“I loved you so much,” she said, her finger punctuating the air as hot tears streamed down her face, emotional nitroglycerin born of an explosive mixture of fury and sadness. “All I wanted was to be with you, to share your pain, carry some of it for you. We still had a chance back then but you wouldn’t let me in.” Her voice dipped and rose as she fired the words at him, a lifetime of bottled resentment finally let loose. “Sometimes, I wish it had been me who killed her, Jim, because then you would have had an excuse to hate me, and it all would have made sense.”
“I don’t hate you. I never did,” Jim said softly.
“Then why did you leave me all alone?” she sobbed.
“I had no choice, Simone.” His own voice crackled with the emotion of the moment. “I killed our child. All because of a stupid argument—because I felt misunderstood and underappreciated. That was something I had to deal with and it took me years. Years!”
Simone used the arm of her dressing gown to wipe the tears from her face, the sodden tissue too wet to be of any further use. “What’s important now is that she is alive, and I intend to give her the best life she can get. She has a second chance Jim… we all do.”
“And you think she will get that from a mother who’s a part of the Second Redemption?”
A subtle blur of emotion moved over Simone’s face It was there for only a second, barely discernable, but still Jim was surprised that even after all the time that had passed between them, he was still able to pick up the delicate emotional changes in this woman.
“I’m not a part of the Church,” she insisted. “I just work for them, that’s all.”
“Then why did you run to them instead of your family? We were all waiting for you. My God, your parents were worried stiff about you.”
She let out a slow sigh of exasperation. “How many ways can I tell you, Jim? I was confused. I’d just found myself standing next to a daughter who’d been dead for over eighteen years. I’d witnessed a plane crash and killed a man with my car. I doubted my own sanity, for God’s sake.”
“You could have contacted us, let us know.”
She paused, assessing whether she was ready to tell him the next part. “I did.”
Jim’s look of confusion was saddening to see. “Well I never got the—”