“Yes, with the help of a little squealing.”
Anna chuckles. “Good. I feared for the poor thing. Graham was so scared he actually tried to stomp on it. I wasn’t thinking clearly when I handed him that bucket. I’m glad it worked out.”
Suddenly I’m more creeped out by her lie than by her annihilation of the poor mouse. Actually, it’s not the lie, it’s how well she told it. If I didn’t witness the display outside I would have believed her. I still almost do. She should get a talent agent.
“Well, looks like were done here,” she says with a breath of relief. “Shall we head out to lunch? Dealing with all this has made me hungry.”
Funny, dealing with all this has made me sick.
Chapter 31
A cardboard box, a worm infested hole in the ground, or a meat grinder?
It turns out that my bailing on helping with Mom’s burial arrangements is quite the opposite of disrespectful, since part of me wants to skip the luxury of a pine box, throw Mom in the mud, and be done. Anna and Christopher are less than thrilled that they were shoved off to handle the funeral arrangements. Clearly the compassion of Nurse Anna has dissipated since her husband got a new mystery instead of his answers—hence Christopher's involvement. He is the voice of reason, though he’s rather disgruntled about it.
The surviving Becketts have spent the morning rummaging through the garage. It is mostly bare and unchanged since Donovan helped Dad clean it the week of his final Christmas. If we are going to find happy reminders of our childhood, it’s here.
Donovan grabs a box of ancient playthings and sits on the cold cement floor, looking at treasures in wonder. My mind flashes to Christmases past and his excitement over new gems. “Looks like there are some things you might like to keep.”
“Nah. Almost everything in this house is best long gone,” he states while gliding a model airplane.
“No way. Your face has the same glow as when you unwrapped those. We should keep the mementos of when we had a fantastic family.”
“You have no idea how much I want to remember. I’m just trying to let go a little.” He dumps the plane back into the box, and his eyes scan the garage, resigned to the end of a part of his life.
“There are some things you should never let go of. You know that.”
“You’re right.” He looks down at the box with a semi-smile of resignation, yet his eyes sparkle with a glimmer of hope. “Some things I wish I could hold on to a little tighter. Life slips away too quickly not to cherish that which is worth loving, but sometimes you need to weed through the buildup that you should have discarded long ago before you find the treasure chest that reminds you of who you are. Then you just need to keep it close.”
“I found something matching that description.” From under the tool bench I unearth a true treasure. “Think fast,” I burst while tossing him a football. Not just any football—the football. His throat swells as he marvels at it, like that little ball is the source of great power. “Careful,” I warn while sitting next to him. The shiver sent up my spine from the chill of the concrete floor is muted by his presence. “That thing is capable of magic. It can make you fall in love.”
“Boy, can it ever. You know how in all those supernatural TV shows there are cursed objects that should be locked away forever? This is one of those objects.”
“I prefer to think of it as charmed,” I say, snuggling into his shoulder. Memories float over us like sweet perfume. His breath melts into mine, and I become jealous of the marriage of our molecules. Forcing my heart away from our growing sense of longing, my lips rise with the intent of giving him a kiss on the cheek—sweet, innocent, sisterly. He has the same intension with a kiss to my forehead, but the ability to calculate distance is elusive, and our lips touch in the corners. A thrilling jolt of terror freezes us when the miscalculations are realized. After baited hesitation, Donovan veers to the left and softly finishes what nature started—what it wanted fourteen years before. Regaining our beauty, even if only for a moment, makes me whole again.
Magnetically our foreheads meet. Donovan looks as consumed as he did the last time this football shared our touch, causing my voice to stammer. “I uh, I think we had better put that in the box—quickly.”
“No way. This comes on the plane with me.” Cupping my jaw like a fragile possession, his breath touches me like silk. “I’m never letting this treasure go.”
His words lock in my throat, making my need to flee all the harder to vocalize. “We’d better go tackle our rooms.” Popping up, I shove aside vulnerability so we can face the task we dread most. “We get in, grab what’s important, throw the rest in boxes for charity, then run and never look back. Easy.”
“Yeah,” he sighs. “About as easy as it is for some people to throw a football.”
Oh, his snicker is so wicked I really want to let him have it. “Hey, I seem to recall the last time I threw a pass at you I nailed it.”
He clears his throat as if to imply something a little dirty. “I think you got pretty lucky with that pass. Actually, luck had nothing to do with it. It was all in the ball.”
“Stop looking so smug! Besides, some would say it was you who got lucky!”
“Touché!”
Filled with the relief of surviving a battle, my mind sees only a faded photograph as I take a final look at my former bedroom. With the exception of a few mementos, nearly everything was discarded. My eyes hood before I turn away, not wanting to see the door close. Though I am no longer that girl, a part of her hurt still resides.
Entering Donovan’s room is just as painful. He’s reflective as he stands before the bed, his eyes fixated on the corner where his nightstand once sat. Resignation rings in his words. “The last time I stood here, I thought we would be together forever. Until today this room contained us as we should have been. Now it knows what happened. The last bit of everything is now dead.”
My fear that any consoling in this empty house, where so many battles were fought, may cause me to again try to fight our war keeps me at bay. “We should have had Christopher and Anna help us,” I say. “It would have been easier.”
“No,” he states with resolve, suddenly coming alert. “Then I wouldn’t be able to give you this.” Crouching down where his nightstand formerly resided, he peels back the carpet, removing the pad with it. “This is yours.” Donovan reveals a colorful canvas of devotion and sorrow. The section of floor is covered with dated drawings, poems, and the words, “I’m sorry,” inscribed over and over again. “All those nights I hid in here, this is how I spent my time.”
My knees meet the floor so I can examine the depiction of love. He points to one of the many apologies after another. “This is from the day Lisa left my room half undressed. This is when I yelled at you for giving me a note that dinner was ready. This ornate one is from the night of the school dance when I first realized how badly I was hurting you. I spent every moment of your hangover working on it.”
I touch his hand, halting it from progressing to the next offering of remorse. “Donovan, it was never your fault. If anyone owes apologies, it’s me. I should have handled myself differently.”
“Lily, we’ve been through this before.”
“I should have left you alone, but I knew you were hurting. I wanted to help you so badly and couldn’t find a way.”
My jaw cradles in the comfort of his touch, my heart breaking all over again at the memories his words bring back. “I didn’t exactly make it easy on you. I should have told you the truth.”
“You were only trying to protect me.”
“And you were only trying to get me to open up,” he gently insist. “We were teenagers thrown into adult problems. Your aggressiveness was the only reminder of who I really was. Without it, I would have faded away. No one knows how to love me like you.”
“No matter what I did I felt I couldn’t get a handle on what you needed,” I confess.
“That's because your old soul was speaking to your new bod
y that was being driven into a frenzy by teenage hormones. When I fought you, it made you crazy because you knew me so well that it was a signal to your old soul that something was desperately wrong. Remember the time your English teacher called Mom and hinted that you may not have written your creative writing project because your voice was so mature? That's why. When I wrote Alex’s letters I couldn't figure out where the hell my words came from, then I found Jonathan and it became clear. Add that in with teenage confusion and we did the best we could.”
The intensity of his words make me want to flee, both into his arms and out the door. How do I turn my back on the sorrow he has just uncovered before me? “This floor makes me feel as if I have finally gotten a piece of the past back. Now I need to walk away again.”
His eyes search mine. “Do you really still want to hold on?”
“Of course I do.”
With a firm look of resolve, he grabs a screwdriver and hammer off of his desk, and then drops to his knees, hunching over the floor and whittling the blade into the wood. “We are eternal,” he declares, chiseling one length of an infinity symbol into a board. “I promised to ensure you got everything you wanted in life. You said you wanted us to be together in the end, and we will be. We are still in this life together.”
He hands me the tools to complete the pattern. “You bet we are,” I declare, carving in my own length. After engraving the last bit of wood, I abandon the tools, feeling like I’ve taken a stand against the world.
Donovan nuzzles his chin on my shoulder, enrobing me from behind and locking on like shackles. “I swear Lily, give us another chance and I will never let you go.”
My heart flatlines. I’ve become accustomed to remorse, but this assertion sounds like he’s actually asking. Is being in this house bringing about his sudden aggressiveness? Panic brings my words spurting forth. “Donovan, we need to get out of here.”
“Not before I grab a saw out of the garage.” Abruptly he rises and heads for the door. “Once we each have a loop of that symbol, then we can walk away.”
My eyes return to Donovan’s testament. Words of apprehension should come forth, yet as my fingers follow the curves of our reaffirmed devotion, my lips mutter, “We’ll never walk away.”
Chapter 32
Our stance is strong, our hearts weak while looking down into a cave of despair and relief. This is where the body of my mother will reside. To my left, I finally lay eyes upon my father’s tombstone, and my stomach churns. I was banned from this spot over a decade ago, as was Donovan. He stands to my left with one arm around me, his other hand holding that of his wife, just as my other hand is interlaced with Christopher’s. All of the tensions in our bodies pour into each other, clinging to the cornerstone that only our bond can provide.
As the snow wisps down from above, my father’s glare imposes from below. He never knew about Donovan and I; now I feel he has somehow learned. Though Donovan and I stand strong before their remains, we feel less than victorious.
The straps that suspend the coffin send it on its downward descent. I expect the feeling of a chapter ending, but the realization that I have never grieved for my father makes the final sentence a fish too elusive to catch. A few moments after learning of his death the remainder of my family crumbled when Mom’s years of betrayal surfaced from the abyss. There was little time to heal from the shock before I learned how deeply the knife she wielded repeatedly plunged into Donovan, and he needed me to tend to his wounds.
Trekking through the snow, we start to leave Mom behind when Anna puts her hand out to stop me. “Lily,” she says softly, nodding back in the direction from which we came. Donovan has collapsed onto his knees into the mattress of snow that covers the earth. Mutely he sobs into his hands. Anna stops Christopher from following as I head to Donovan. “We can’t help them,” she accepts. “Only they can help each other now.”
Joining him on my knees I take Donovan into my arms. A moment ago my heart was as frigid as the ice below that shivers my spine, but now I need to help this poor soul who has already suffered so much—the closure of all those years of abuse slicing through him.
“Irrational thinking,” he calmly consoles himself. “Irrational thinking tells me it’s my fault she’s dead. She started smoking again and drinking because I put her through hell. I will not succumb to it.”
Though he is a different man now, the damage inflicted by his pain years before still shadows our lives. My concern compels me to face Anna and Christopher, still standing by the car, looking so helpless. “It’s okay,” I call to them. “Pick up the children and we’ll meet you at the hotel.” My darling Christopher starts to protest before Anna motions him to her rental car. A rip shoots through my heart as they drive off, wishing Christopher could be by my side at this moment when I so desperately need him holding on to me, unknowing if I can keep it together, even for Donovan's sake.
My eyes beg for Donovan’s heart to liberate all it has sealed inside. “You can say anything, irrational or not. We need to both let go.”
With tightened eyes he draws in calming oxygen, centering himself. “There has to have been something I could have done differently,” he anguishes. “Maybe if I didn’t fight her every step of the way we all could have come out of this less damaged. Maybe then she never would have started drinking herself to death. Maybe—”
“Maybe she would have died a bitter old fool anyway,” I snip. Donovan's reserved pain has just punched my snapping point. I’ve already let go of my real mother, now it’s time to say goodbye to the monster in the dirt.
“Mom treated you worse than a prisoner of war.” I back away from Donovan so my arms can flail out my anger and accent my words. “Hell, the Geneva Convention was created to ban what happened to you. Why can’t you just hate her? She deserves that. I hate that bitch! I absolutely fucking hate her! How can you give her even a drop of your compassion? She forced you to hurt me while using me in an attempt to gain information to support her delusional theories about you. Theories that were driven by hatred of a stereotype that you wanted nothing to do with. Look at both of you right now. Who’s the victim? There’s a vast difference between the Mom we loved and the devil she became. I’m not the least bit sorry for that bitch and neither should you be!”
Softly I cup his red, tear streaked cheek in my hand. “Donovan, why you have struggled for so long to find forgiveness?”
Loosely hooded eyes reflect his quest for inner peace that calms his breath like a stream on level ground. “Because I had a crazy dream,” he confesses. “Remember how dedicated Mom’s parents were? They enjoyed nearly sixty years of marriage and died never having kissed another, surrounded to the end with love from their family. I wanted that. I wanted to find one woman and have everything with her. It’s one of the reasons why I couldn’t bring myself to act on us early on, but I couldn’t fight it anymore. My feelings for you were too strong—so strong that I knew the one person I truly wanted was already in front of me. The cruel reality of it was unimaginable.”
He takes a moment to gather himself, inhaling another cleansing breath of frigid winter air. “It killed me inside when you lost your virginity to Christopher—like my dream died. God knows I wasn’t perfect, but when that happened it was like I had already lost and all my waiting was in vain. When I met Marcia I thought I could move forward. Then I screwed that up, and I kept losing more and more of what I wanted. The last bit I could cling to was all of us getting together for Christmas every year. For all the nightmares it brought, for as awkward and scary as it always was, I don’t regret a moment of it. Mom was the last of her generation. At least we passed on a taste of that to our children.”
His eyes turn deep into the dirt-lined cavern before him, his tears splattering like the pain in my soul. Donovan’s voice strengthens, morphing from hurt to intensely serious. “We could have had it, Lily. It was in our hands, and I don’t understand why we were robbed.”
Snow falls like tears from heaven upon us, as
if the angels mourn fate’s cruel joke. Stolen moments like these are all that remain of Donovan’s dream.
Chapter 33
Christmas Eve finds my home all a-glitter and sparkle, like an enchanted wonderland. Twinkling lights and boughs of pine and holly enliven my home, but it’s the nine-foot tree in the family room that captivates me. The Balsam Fir, enshrouded in colored lights and ornaments dating back to Christopher's great-grandparents and mine brings forth sweet memories. Tucked up towards its top is the Teddy bear Donovan gave me, still adorned with a silver football necklace, his note sewn inside the hat.
This Christmas brings forth the dawn of new traditions. In what may be my worst idea ever, after Christmas Eve dinner we all rough it out for the night on the family room floor next to a roaring fire. After singing carols over video chat with Christopher’s family as they welcome Christmas morning, we all fall asleep, only to soon be awakened by the jingling of bells.
A jolly “Ho, Ho, Ho!” emits from the kitchen as Donovan strolls to us in a full Santa suit and carrying a huge sack, reminding me of how Dad loved to dress as Santa Claus when we were kids. The children bolt out of their sleeping bags and go in for the attack, gathering at Santa’s feet as his butt hits the sofa. Anna grabs her camera to preserve every bit of the sight. Where the heck is Christopher?
“Ladies first,” Santa says.
Anna nudges Sunshine to sit on Santa’s lap. Sunshine looks up to Santa in awe, completely speechless at the man in the funny suit—her eyes wide, her mouth silent and agape, her brown hair a mess of loose curls. She holds the silent pose as Santa asks what is on her list and continues to maintain it as he reaches into his bag and hands her a stash of gifts. Finally Anna takes Sunshine away, her little gaze still locked on the man with the bag.
“Okay, Antonia. Your turn,” Santa encourages.
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