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  "They were pronounced dead at the scene."

  The gray turned to complete blackness.

  Chapter 9

  Three days later the sun had put on one of its best smiles and the birds were singing everybody’s favorite songs. The heat had even managed to keep itself at a tolerable level that late into the summer. The day was completely perfect. Except for the fact that I was burying my wife and her nephew. Yes, Dillon was her nephew now, Amy’s only. With one swift car accident all my ties to the Ridenour family had been severed, along with Amy’s spinal cord.

  The funeral was held in Amy’s hometown and I made the drive up to Maryland alone. Torturing myself with my thoughts past every mile marker. Amy’s parents had of course invited me to stay at their home, but I insisted that I was going to stay at a hotel. I wanted to be alone. They didn’t push back, I imagine they thought I was as in as bad a state as they were. Little did they know that I was much, much worse. All they had--listen to me, sounding like the loss of a daughter is insignificant--was the pain and mourning of a lost love one to deal with. Those feelings, in time, would indeed pass and eventually time would heal their wounds. I had all that plus something that would go with me to my grave. Guilt. Guilt and my own dirty little secret.

  Amy’s parents--and nobody else that I’ve ever encountered--never found out that my cheating on Amy is what drove her to her death--quite literally. Up until the writing of this, that’s the way it’s been all these years. The only two people on the planet who knew the truth were Jenna and I. First we committed the deed, and then we hid it from the world. I finally called Jenna back the day after the accident, returning her voice message she had left me the morning I had left New York. I told her the way things had happened, straight up. It didn’t take any convincing, hell, I didn’t even have to ask. Knowingly just as guilty for the death of my wife she swore to me she’d never tell a soul. There was no sense on pouring fuel on any fires. Secrets, I’ve found, in only certain situations, can save a lot of people a lot of pain. And so, up until certain eyes read this, to the Ridenour family I’ve always been the caring son-in-law who suffered the same great loss they did of a wonderful woman. That all changes now, and it should.

  The funeral service was held at Brightstone Funeral Parlor, an upscale establishment filled with shiny wood surfaces, smelling only the way funeral homes smell and where the ratio of people to flower bouquets was roughly five-to-one. Amy’s parents spoke, standing together at the pulpit, embracing each other and shedding tears at every syllable. Trying their best to bring up the bright moments of Amy’s life--there had been so many--and doing their best to sell that age old feel-better mantra of "she’s in a better place." After they finished, Amy’s mother kissing the top of the closed casket on her way back to her seat, Anna got up to deliver a two for one speech. She touched briefly on Amy, and then as if somebody had destroyed a dam, she exploded into a hysterical fit of tears at the very first sentence about Dillon. Ben had to rush up to the front and rescue her, leaving out the side door of the room. I sat in the front row through all of this, right next to Amy’s father, wishing all along that there had been a third casket with my name on it.

  Much to the dismay and slight confusion of Amy’s parents, once I had helped load Amy’s casket into the back of one of the two hearses lined up outside the Funeral Home, I grabbed them just before they got into their car to ride to the cemetery and told them that I wouldn’t be attending the burial. I watched as they searched for words, probably of the "why" and "she was your wife" persuasion, but then quickly headed towards my car. I doubt they were impressed with my actions, but nothing could bother me worse than I was already bothering myself. Besides, I never saw them again. I just couldn’t bring myself to watch somebody lower Amy and little Dillon into the deep, dark ground, knowing that I put them there.

  I got in my Jeep, went the opposite direction of the funeral procession, and drove back to Virginia.

  Amy had been hit on the driver’s side by Kemper Alexander, a construction worker who had been driving his Ford F-350 pickup truck close to sixty miles an hour down Route 411 on the way to the job site. Amy had been driving up Makenzie St. and headed towards the Hillston YMCA when she ran the very stale red light at the intersection with Route 411 and crossed directly into Kemper’s path. It was entirely her fault--technically.

  The police seemed to want to ingrain this fact into my head, I guess fearing that I would go and try to take revenge on poor ole’ Kemper, because as soon as the two officers drove me away from the crash site, they drove me to the police station, where a copy of the footage taped by one of the cameras mounted atop the stoplights on route 411 showed me the entire thing. So I sat there, in a hot and crowded police station that smelled of smoke and old coffee, along with my two police escorts, as my wife and nephew’s deaths were displayed before me on an old nineteen-inch TV. The video was dull and grainy, but at the same time all too clear.

  The footage showed nothing for the first ten seconds, just the peaceful intersection of Makenzie and 411, two lines of blacktop forming a cross. Then, in a flashing instant, everything went to shit. Amy’s Focus ran under the stop light and into 411, and at that same moment Kemper and his truck appeared. The crash was like nothing I’d ever seen. The Focus, small and compact, seemed to literally explode on impact. Even on the washed out, low-res video I could see the glass and plastic bursting out in all directions, leaving debris all over. The hood popped up and then flew through the air and landed in the grass. Kemper, who had apparently slammed on his breaks in an instinctive reaction managed to get the F-350 stopped. Its front end was crumpled a bit and one of the wheels was dangling in an unnatural position. His airbag had deployed and aside from scratches on his face and a couple of bruises, he made out ok.

  Things got much worse for the Focus.

  The force of the impact sent the car in a sideways summersault down Route 411. It flipped and flipped and flipped. Each flip sent more parts and pieces sprawling down the street. I saw the windshield shatter and the passenger side door fall open and for a tiny second I saw Dillon’s little body inside. I was grateful that was the only glimpse of the bodies I saw. The car finally came to a stop on its roof and the black cop got up and went to the screen. I thought he was going to turn it off. He rewound it and we watched it again. Point taken--she ran the red light.

  To this day I have nightmares about being inside that car--a fly on the headrest. Amy, cursing me and crying, mashing her foot on the gas pedal, pushing the little car’s engine for all its worth, not paying any attention to the road ahead. Dillon, scared and confused in the passenger seat crying too, if for no other reason than seeing the state his aunt was in. I can see the light at the intersection and of course it’s red. Its bright red, seeming to get brighter and brighter as we get close. I want to scream out, tell her to stop, tell her to slow down even, maybe if she just went a little slower she could still run the light but miss Kemper and his truck. But of course she can’t hear me, and we go on through the light. I look to my left and just before the eruption of glass breaking and screeching metal, all I see is a big shiny chrome grill and the word FORD coming right at us.

  That’s when I wake up, forced to continue to live while my beautiful Amy’s face was rotting and nibbled on by worms.

  Chapter 10

  To say that my lifestyle turned to horse turds when I got back to Hillston would have won me the Understatement of the Year Award. Once I went through all the obligatory motions one has to go through after the death of one’s spouse, and after all the neighbors and friends finally stopped bringing me dinners and lunches and stopped calling me constantly on the phone making sure I was doing ok and wondering if there was anything they could bring me, I fell off the wagon of taking care of myself and started rolling in the dirt of despair.

  The calendar--months and days of the week--meant nothing. The clock meant even less. I slept when only absolutely necessary--for fear of the nightmares--and I ate whatever I co
uld find, only because I knew I had to, never because I was hungry. My appetite had apparently died along with Amy. The stress and nerves of dealing with what was in my head, keeping what I knew and what I was responsible for bottled up was becoming more than I could bare.

  The house, always clean, tidy, and in order, had become unrecognizable. The kitchen counters and table were covered with empty boxes, opened jars and scraps of this and that. The dishes in the sink dated back to I didn’t remember when.

  The living room wasn’t much better, and was where I spent most of my time, stretched out on the couch, wearing the same pajama bottoms and t-shirt I had been wearing for days, staring blankly at whatever was on the tube. I walked back and forth between the living room, kitchen, and bathroom like somebody who had had their soul sucked out. Like there was only just the shell of me, and whatever had once lived inside had shed me off like excess skin and moved away to better things. I wouldn’t blame them. My life was shit.

  The bedroom, however, was almost as spotlessly perfect as it had been the day Amy had taken Dillon and driven away. In the master bathroom the makeup brush she had been using when I started to talk to her was still laying where she had put it down, near the top of the sink next to the cold water knob. The pajamas she had worn the night before were still piled up at the foot of the made bed, and the bracelet she always wore--always wore--had been forgotten and left behind on her nightstand forever.

  I didn’t go in the bedroom often, didn’t want to. Only to get a change of clothes, and the one trip I had made to get my toiletries out and carry them to the guest bathroom did I go in. The bedroom had been ours. More so than any other room of the house the bedroom was a special place for a man and his wife. The place where they woke up each and every morning and the first thing they saw was the other laying next to them. It was the place where when the door was closed, decisions were discussed, arguments were argued, and the love was made. It was perhaps the most personal place a couple could share together. The bedroom had been mine to start with, but then it had become ours. I couldn’t bear to make it only mine again.

  I slept on the couch and kept the bedroom door closed.

  The phone calls started up again after a few weeks, once people realized that nobody had heard from me or seen me. I answered them at first, for some reason trying hard to convince people that I was ok when clearly I wasn’t, but then became increasingly annoyed by them. It got tired of saying the same things to the same people. I got tired of trying to hold back my tears and my anger from them, and not scream at them all to leave me the fuck alone! I didn’t want their sympathy, I didn’t want their offers of help and politeness and common courtesy. I didn’t want any of it! I didn’t deserve it!

  I didn’t know what I wanted, not then, at least. I figured it out a few weeks later.

  I kept up my routine of sloppiness and laziness for another couple of weeks. When I had completely ran out of food, and was tired of having to call various delivery restaurants, I decided it was time to take one small step towards trying to live again and get into my jeep and drive to the grocery store.

  The trip was horrible. Everything that I passed, every car, every person, every building, reminded me in some way of Amy. If not Amy specifically, it reminded me of the life that I used to live, the happiness and joy that I used to take for granted every waking moment.

  People waved at me and smiled from behind the windshields of passing cars. People on sidewalks taking their dogs for a stroll flashed big grins and wiggled their fingers at me, all as if to say "welcome back to society, Dan, we’d knew you’d be back."

  The hell I was. By the time I pulled into the parking lot of Kroger I could barely pull into the parking space straight I was crying so hard. It was the first good, hard cry I’d had since the first moment I heard Amy had been killed. Ever since then I had been numb. But that drive to the grocery store, that simple trip down a few side streets in a town that I had built my entire memory bank around proved too much. And it made one thing very, very clear. If I ever wanted to get on with my life, as hard and as unpleasant as it might be, I had to get as far away from Hillston as possible.

  And that’s exactly what I did.

  New Acquaintances

  Chapter 11

  When I got home from that enlightening trip to the grocery store, I immediately called Jill Cullen, one of the more successful Real Estate Agents in Hillston. With a town as small as Hillston was, competition must have been fierce among different Agencies, and I saw a good number of signs sitting in people’s yards with Jill’s name on them and the word SOLD in big red letters fixed to the top. The woman must have been doing something right.

  Not that I cared much about the house, or any money I might get out of it, really. I quite honestly almost just left it, sitting there uninhabited and deserted while I rode off into the sunset leaving nothing but a trail of bad memories behind.

  But in a moment of rational thinking--which were starting to become few and far between at the time--I remembered my parents, living out their days in their retirement community in Florida, and how they had passed the house on to me and how I had promised I’d take care of it. Best to keep promises you make to parents, no matter what's transpired.

  I thought about calling Dad the day I put the house on the market, to see if maybe he and mom wanted to come back to live in it, or if… I don’t know, maybe he’d have some sort of advice for me before I left. I scratched that thought quickly though. I was on my own on this matter, and that’s the way I needed to be. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be right again, but I knew that nobody could help me face my demons but me.

  I gave Jill some pretty simple instructions, I was going to take only what I needed for my trip--my clothes, my computer, and just a few necessities--I’d clean out the attic and closets of any junk I had stored up, and the rest was all the responsibility of the new owners. I gave her a ridiculously low asking price for their troubles, and made it clear that all the money was to go to my parents in Florida. She told me it was weird, and wasn’t sure she wanted to go along with it. I told her about the extra commission I was planning on giving her and she said she’d do her best.

  I gave her my cell number, my Dads contact information, and a week and half later I packed my few things into my Jeep, backed down the driveway, and drove out of Hillston for the very last time.

  I had no idea where I was going and didn’t much care. All I knew was that I was getting away. I was stupid enough to think that I could drive away from my past and hope to come out on the other side smelling of roses and rainbows. Even at the time it seemed unlikely, but what were my other choices, hmm? You tell me.

  I didn’t use a map, GPS, or even stop and ask for directions at the 7-Eleven. I was going nowhere in particular and making good time. I drove west, knowing that if I drove East long enough I was going to hit an ocean and last time I checked those things were difficult to drive across, even in good weather and a four-wheel drive vehicle.

  I drove straight into Tennessee the first day on the road and stopped in Bristol to spend the night. I stayed at a surprisingly luxurious Super 8, with cable TV and a complimentary breakfast consisting of not-too-stale bagels, mini-boxes of cereal and a variety of milk, juices and coffee. I had been driving all day and slept well. I got up the next morning, grabbed two bagels and a cup of coffee for the road and headed off again.

  I drove till 11:30 that night, stopping only to piss three times and grab some lunch at McDonalds. When I could barely keep my eyes open, I stopped in a town that I’m afraid I don’t remember the name of, or quite possibly I never knew it. It was only a pit stop, after all. I stayed at a Best Western this time, and while the bed was softer than the Super 8’s had been, the only room they had available was a smoking room and the lingering smell of cigarettes gave me a headache that lasted all night. I drifted in and out of a worthless sleep until the sun came up and peered at me through the blinds. Then I was back in the Jeep, heading out of Best Western’s P
arking lot, sleep deprived and feeling like I needed a piece of Nicorette.

  It was the evening of the day I left the Best Western that I drove into the thunderstorm. I had crossed into Oklahoma and had been an inhabitant of the state for about an hour when I noticed the thunder. I had my radio turned way up, pounding my eardrums with a local rock station I had found courtesy of the Scan feature. Since for the most part I was pretty much ignorant to my surroundings, or really the weather, for that fact, I never noticed the monstrous black cloud that suddenly was positioned overhead, blotting out the setting sun, like one lens out of God’s sunglasses. I don’t know how long it was there, but I do know that during a drum solo being played by a band member of some group named The Devil’s Fingerprints, there was an especially loud hit on the bass--aka thunder. The single blast was deafening, even over my high-volume music, and it rattled my Jeep. There was an instant that my body went into confused mode, scared and concerned as to what had happened, checking the rearview for evidence of an explosion. Then reason took over and I noticed the sunglass lens in the sky and put it all together. Glad that there hadn’t been a bomb detonated anywhere in my vicinity, I continued jamming to The Devil’s Fingerprints.

  They hadn’t even finished the song before the next clap of thunder hit, again rattling the jeep and this time sending a dribble of rain onto my windshield. Tired and feeling a bit silly from the exhaustion I said to myself in my best imitation pirate voice I could produce--sounding a bit like Blackbeard and James Earl Jones--"Ay Captn’, I do believe we in for a bit of a squall!"

  I was rubbing my eyes and still laughing at some of the first bit of humor I’d allowed myself to enjoy in months when the last trickle of sunlight ceased and I was encased in darkness. I switched on the headlights and the windshield wipers at the same time. The rain had started to pick up.