Jules turned around and laughed with Katie. “Daddy has silly ideas, doesn’t he?”
I looked back in the rearview mirror and saw my daughter laughing. “Why can’t it have a pickle nose? Maybe it might get hungry?”
I loved seeing her smile. It was my reason for life. From the moment that child took her first breath I knew I would never love anything more. She made any bad day forgettable and my heart was always the fullest when she was in my arms. Every time Katie and Jules laughed at my jokes, I felt overwhelmed with self-worth. We’d had tough times through the years, sometimes even fighting to stay together. At the end of the day, I knew that I could never want to be anywhere else.
“Snowmen don’t eat pickles, Daddy. They eat snow.” Katie laughed even more.
“So they eat their own hands? That’s gross!” I teased.
“Daddy!” She continued to giggle.
I looked back at my daughter and then over to Jules. One of my hands still sat over hers. “I love our life, babe. We’re going to be so happy here. I promi…”
“DADDY WATCH OUT!”
It was too late.
I turned to look at the dark road and saw the tractor trailer on its side, sliding right toward us. Out of instinct I slammed on my brakes, causing us to go into an uncontrolled spin. I heard my girls screaming and I started screaming too. The roads were too slick to be able to retain control. I knew it was just a matter of seconds, but for me, it seemed like it played out in slow motion. I tried to turn and look at Jules. Her eyes were huge with fear.
The impact was sudden and I hardly remembered what it felt like that exact moment. The sound of the metal making contact was piercing. I was suddenly cold and looking around to see glass everywhere. My shoulder was stuck to my seat by a large piece of shrapnel that had come off of the truck. I tried to jerk myself free except the pain was excruciating.
Realizing that I wouldn’t be able to free myself without help, I turned to ask Jules, but there was another large piece of metal in between us. The first thing I noticed was that I didn’t hear either of my girls. I called out into the cold air, seeing the truck driver running in the direction of my car.
“Jules? Jules are you okay, babe? Katie? Katie answer Daddy. Just tell me what hurts, sweetheart.”
Nothing.
I screamed their names, even when the driver came and opened my door. “Get them! Just help them!”
The old man, who looked to be in his sixties, peeked inside of my wrecked car. He pulled off his hat and shook his head, but looked right at my face. “Oh, God, I am so so sorry. Help is on the way, sir. I’ve already called.”
“Just get them out! Why can’t I hear them? Are they conscious?” I had to know. I had to know they were okay. I had to hear my little Katie’s voice. She had to be okay. We were two minutes from home.
The old man just stood there shaking his head and trying his best not to look toward the opposite side of my car.
While he just stood there, I called out for them, over and over again, with not a single sound in return.
I don’t know how long it was before help arrived. The emergency workers started on my side and I couldn’t understand why. I yelled for them over and over again to help the girls. Hell, I knew half of the guys there. Maybe they had gotten out of the car already and they were just on the side of the road getting looked at?
It wasn’t until they brought out the Jaws of Life and started cutting me out of my car that I realized the extent of the accident. As my body was pulled away from the wreckage I looked back and saw why nobody would give me an answer. The entire passenger side of my car was crushed against the steel walls of the truck. As they strapped me down to the gurney, I screamed out for my girls, over and over. This couldn’t be happening. It had to be a dream. It had to be…
“Sheriff, can you hear me? Sheriff Towers?”
I looked up from my desk and realized that I’d been daydreaming again. It happened every single day since the accident last year. When I lost my girls, I lost all of my reasons for living. I didn’t want to survive that accident. I shouldn’t have.
This was my punishment.
I closed myself off from the rest of our family, unable to live with the burden of being the driver that night. I’d killed my girls and I would never be able to forgive myself.
After it all happened, I gave up on working, paying bills, and having a life at all. The bank took the house and with little left in my savings, I moved to West Virginia to a little town where I wouldn’t have to talk about what had happened to me. I was sick of the whispers and condolences. Didn’t they know that the mere mention of their names brought back every single beautiful moment of our life together? Couldn’t they fathom that I didn’t want to have to imagine living out a full life and never being able to hear them tell me that they loved me? Did they know what it was like to sleep in my daughters room and cry like a small child? Had they not considered that every single thing in my life reminded me of my girls? It had become too much to handle.
Making the move was the easiest of decisions. An old friend got me the job and had put in a good word for me. The town was small with only two thousand people. I found a cabin about five miles down a mountainous country road, off the beaten path.
I just wanted to be alone; to be able to live out my life in seclusion. I wasn’t an idiot. With the internet out there, it was obvious that some people would know the truth. Still, not one of them had the balls to mention my past to me. I’d rather them fear me, then ask the questions that I would never have been able to answer.
“Sheriff, are you alright?” My deputy, Shelton Morris, asked again.
I shook off the flashback and put on a fake smile. “Yeah, sorry. I was just thinking about something.”
“You want to talk about it?” Shelton was a nice kid. He was in his early twenties and his Grand pappy had been the last sheriff for the past forty years. He died of a massive heart attack six months ago.
“Nah, it’s all good. What were you saying?” I had to keep up the charade that I was just one man. They wouldn’t be able to understand what it was like to lose everything. Not one day went by where I hadn’t asked myself why I had lived and they had…died.
My girls were in my heart and the flashbacks were enough of a reminder that I had taken their lives. I just wanted to do my job and go home without the stares or the burning questions.
“Listen, I know you’re new here, but it ain’t good to hold things in. If you ever need to talk, just let me know. You seem like maybe you need a friend. You been here for nearly six months and nobody knows a dang thing about you, cept for what they read about. I’m just sayin’, if you need a buddy, we can have beer sometime.”
I put on a fake smile and stood up from my desk. “I appreciate that. I’m good. Just not real used to the quiet out here. I’m finding it hard to sleep at night.” The sleeping part was true, but it wasn’t because of the quiet. It was because I was alone. I was a broken man and I couldn’t be fixed, not by a therapist, or even a buddy. There was no hope for me.
Shelton shook his head and smiled back. “Alright, man. Well, I need to run out and check on Mrs. Parks. She claims that someone keeps vandalizin’ her mailbox.”
“That’s real crime there.” This was what we dealt with in this town. We didn’t have gangbangers or drive-bys.
“Yeah, well, it’s a job!” Shelton laughed as he walked out the door. I waited for him to leave before standing up and getting another cup of coffee. The flashbacks were worse when I didn’t sleep the night before. I usually had bourbon to help with that, but the more I used that as a solution, the less it worked.
This was my life. It was never going to be any better.
Chapter 2
Vessa Jean
Mornings were so hard for me, considering that I was usually up until two, closing out the bar that I bartended at. My life didn’t just revolve around my job though; I had two kids that needed to be taken care of. Sure, their dad was around, but betwe
en his job doing tattoos at the shop and his outside customers, he wasn’t home that much to be able to manage the kids schedules. Not that I expected it out of him either way. He was pretty much worthless when it came to being responsible.
I loved my children. They were my whole world. Asha was ten and Logan was almost six and with their opposite personalities, they were sometimes hard to handle. They fought a lot, making my life even harder at times. Gavin, my husband, was never there to see any of that though.
His parents were still pretty young and had two kids that were in school themselves. My husband happened to be their accidental teenage pregnancy that had led to their twenty five year marriage. Unfortunately, as much as they loved their grandkids, they were much too busy working and raising their two youngest, Gabe and Gwen. Yeah, they went with all the same letters.
My mother died when I was sixteen of an aneurism, due to complications from a rare form of brain cancer. She was fine when I went to school and by the time I came home she was gone. My father did a pretty good job raising me, but he’d drank himself to death and died of liver failure three years ago. Ever since then, I’d had to depend on myself for everything.
I’d been with Gavin since we were fifteen years old. Our on again off again relationship through high school was like gasoline to the fire. At times it was downright violent and, for some reason, we both kept coming back for more. When I got pregnant at seventeen, it was pretty much a given that we were going to get married. His parents wanted us to be just like them and, much to our surprise, we had made a pretty good life for ourselves. Granted, we worked our butts off and rarely had time for each other, but what married couple with young children did?
Gavin started doing tattoos when he was twenty one. He’d always been great at art anyway, so it just made sense. He started working for the current shop he was at about four years ago. An old friend of his started it and added Gavin to the list of artists there. The job was great and the pay was pretty good too, but what happened at the shop was not alright with me.
They had these little groupie chicks in there all the time. They’d just hang out and drink with the older guys that worked there, including my husband. Of course, he liked the attention, and last year, I found out that he’d hooked up with one of them after hours.
It broke my heart.
Every single day I was busy busting my ass trying to help pay the bills and make sure our children were taken care of, while he was out sticking his dick in some little wall banger. It made me sick.
I wanted to leave him, but without my parents and no real friends, I looked at my children and knew that they needed stability. It was bad enough that all of the other kid’s parents talked behind our backs because we looked different than them. Gavin had used my arm and other parts of my body as a human canvas. At first, all of my tattoos were easily covered, but after he finished with my sleeve was when I really started to hear the whispers and see the dirty looks. It didn’t matter that they were beautiful flowers or my children’s names. I looked different and they hated me for it.
I was never asked to go on field trips or to join the PTA. Even when I volunteered for class parties, I was never picked. I knew the reason, but it not only hurt my children, it hurt me too. I was a damn good mother; better than half of the mother’s in my children’s classes. Still, they saw what they wanted in me and never gave me a chance otherwise. My husband and I had tattoos. I had my nose pierced.
So what?
I had the same problem with finding a job. Even after taking a bunch of college courses online after my first child was born, people just wouldn’t hire me for anything that had to deal directly with the public. I ended up borrowing money from my father to complete a bartending course. It worked out to benefit me more in the long run. I had a great clientele and made pretty good money doing it. Plus, half of our town ended up at the bar at night.
In the past six months, I hadn’t been seeing eye to eye with my husband. For some reason, he wanted me home all of the time. I was registered on two pool leagues that I shot on during the time I was working. If the league fell on my day off, I would still show up to be able to socialize and not have it be part of my job. I didn’t have real friends, none that I would call trustworthy, that is.
The problem was that I’d met them all from working in the bar. Getting to know someone at that kind of place isn’t exactly a good thing. Most people that come into a bar alone are there because they have problems that they want to drink away. I’d heard every kind of story and at the end of the day my team consisted of two town drunks, a seventy year old farmer that lost his wife to cancer, and three brothers that were more focused on who could get laid the fastest each week.
My husband, who I had been in love with since puberty, didn’t understand why I needed a social life outside of work. He felt that my line of work was the only socializing I would ever need. In fact, he said my real job was maintaining the town gossip and learning everyone’s dirty secrets.
I don’t know why he complained. I contributed to our family and managed to make things work. At the end of the day, I loved them and would do anything to make sure they never had to need for anything.
It wasn’t until this past winter when things started to really fall apart. I’d noticed Gavin was being distant. He would come home all giddy and want to spend time with the kids, more than usual. I thought maybe he just wanted to be a better father at first. I didn’t mind that he was ignoring me for the kids. They were the most important anyway.
As the winter months passed, we communicated less. One night, I sat him down and told him how I felt. He blamed it all on me and my guilty conscious, claiming that I wasn’t going to let his one indiscretion go.
I wanted to forget, but I also wanted to believe that I was still a desirable woman. I had needs and he just wasn’t fulfilling them. One day I went and talked to his mother for a few hours. She suggesting that I give him his space and maybe he was just going through a ‘man stage’.
I got back into the rhythm of my daily routine and tried to brush off my suspicions.
One morning, after getting the kids up and ready for school, I started to feel lousy. As the day progressed, so did my health. I called work and let them know that I wouldn’t be able to come in. Since I rarely ever took a day off, they were great about it and wished me well. I took some cold medicine and went straight to bed.
When I woke up, got the kids off the bus and finally got started on dinner, Gavin was walking in the door. Right away he noticed that I wasn’t dressed for work. “What’s wrong with you? You know you’re going to be late?”
“I called out sick.” I stirred the pot of soup and didn’t look up at him.
“That’s just great! You get a damn stuffy nose and suddenly can’t work. Pathetic!” I heard him turn around and head out of the kitchen. His words hurt me. Even when I was sick, I still did everything I needed to do. His lack of compassion rubbed me the wrong way. Why hadn’t he even asked if I was okay, or what was wrong with me?
I walked right into the living room and found him sitting with the kids. “What is your problem? I never call out sick. Don’t you even care if I’m okay?”
He laughed but never took his eyes away from the sports channel. “Whatever, Ves. You’re obviously fine if you are up in my shit about it. How much longer before dinner is ready?”
I put my hands on my hips. I knew that I could cry or I could get pissed. We’d been together way too long for me to be okay with the way he was acting. “You’re the one with the problem! I’m sick and you’re busy treating me like crap. Wow! I’m so glad that you don’t give a damn about me or my health. What would you do if I just dropped dead like my mother did? Would you even care?”
Tears filled my eyes immediately mentioning her. I missed her so much and it was days like this that I needed her the most.
I made my way into the kitchen and leaned against the countertop to regain my composure.
Hands wrapped around my
waist and I felt Gavin breathing against my ear. “I’m sorry. I had a shitty day and told some of the guys they could come over and watch the game tonight. I didn’t mean to be a dick to you.”
I turned around and looked into his eyes. “Sometimes I feel like you don’t even care about me anymore. It’s like you don’t even consider my feelings.”
He frowned in a joking kind of way. “I’m sorry.” His hand slid up the back of my shirt. Right away, it gave me the shivers. When he reached my bra line, I gasped and leaned back on the counter.
“Am I still attractive to you?” I knew I wasn’t ugly; in fact, I got hit on all the time. After having two kids, I had nice curves, but was still petite and pretty thin. My hair was long, half down my back, with different colored blonde streaks through it. I didn’t have wrinkles and my breasts didn’t sag. I could spend minimal time in the bathroom and feel good about myself.
He kissed the side of my head and pulled me into his arms. “Of course you are.”
I slid my hands up the back of his shirt and pulled his warm body against mine. “You never want to spend time alone anymore. Is there someone else?”
He pulled away and started to walk out of the room, before turning to point right at me. “I can’t believe you went there, again.” He shook his head and then rubbed his face. “Look, I know you don’t feel well. I’m just going to call my friends and see if we can hang at one of their houses instead.”
Okay? I guess I pissed him off again. Maybe it was always my fault that he avoided me. He could tell me that his cheating meant nothing, but it didn’t hurt me any less. I felt like if I was doing my job being a wife, then he wouldn’t have had to do it in the first place. Maybe if I had my mother to talk to she could tell me what to do. It wasn’t like his mother was ever going to be on my side.
I watched Gavin walk all the way outside into the cold dark night to make his phone calls. It seemed weird to me, but since I’d already pissed him off about my trust issues, I knew it wasn’t a good time to accuse him of being secretive again. Still, I stood at the window and watched his body language. He was all smiles and even laughing at times. I turned away from the window when I saw him hanging up.
Blinding Trust Page 24
