by Rick R. Reed
Dane got it.
He grabbed Clarissa’s hand, clutched it tight, and swiveled to look at Joey, who wouldn’t look back but continued to simply stare ahead. Dane turned back to Clarissa and drew in a shuddering breath, wiping away tears he was just now aware dampened his face. He tried to sit up straighter.
He couldn’t say the words. Later he would think that what his tortured psyche allowed him to say was worse than uttering the simple truth. “She’ll want something simple.”
“What?” Clarissa asked.
“She’ll want it simple. Her funeral. Wildflowers and, uh, some classical music, something not sad. Bach? I don’t know!” He snorted. “What do I know about classical? I used to think Billy Joel was high class.”
“Dad?” Clarissa looked at him, blinking, her expression slack, expectant.
He reached out, desperately stroked her masses of reddish hair, his hand getting tangled up in it. He was trapped. He let his hand hang in her hair, feeling stupid. “She’s gone, honey.” He looked to Joey, who at last stared back. His eyes were filled with tears yet to spill.
To Joey he said, in an emotionless whisper, as official as that patrolman, “Your mother was killed in an accident involving a drunk driver this afternoon. When paramedics arrived, she was already gone.” He turned back to Clarissa, managing to finally free his hand from her hair but clutching her with his other hand so hard that, when he looked down at their hands, they had both gone white, bloodless. “They said she was ‘dead at the scene’ and that—” His voice broke; he couldn’t help it. A sob escaped like a hiccup. “And that she didn’t suffer.” He said the words he’d thought so foolish and futile earlier. “She was, um, taken instantly.” He repeated, as much for his kids as for himself, “She didn’t feel any pain.”
And his kids, God bless them, became the parents for just a little while. Both Clarissa and Joey, as if born to it, knew to gather around their father. They knelt in front of him and at his side and wrapped their arms around him, holding him as he sobbed.
They cried too. There were no admonishments—wisely—from either child, telling him things would be okay (they wouldn’t, no, not ever) or that they would get through this together. None of them knew at this point, Dane thought, how the broken path of their lives would affect their futures as they moved forward uncertainly with grief and rage as their companions.
It seemed like they were frozen in this little fractured family tableau for much longer than the time that actually passed, which had to have been only a few minutes at most. But in that moment where time stood still, Dane felt both joy, horror, and shame. Joy because he had these children, these products of his and his Katy’s love, and it was more consolation, he thought, than he deserved.
The horror and shame came from the crashing and crushing realization that, with Katy gone, his secret self could finally emerge. He could lay down the shield and the sword, cast off the mask. And the thought of doing that terrified him.
He eased away from his daughter’s and son’s caresses and stood. “Come on. We need to get home. There are a lot of things to be done. Calls to make. Arrangements.”
He started from the waiting room, expecting Clarissa and Joey to follow, but they didn’t. He looked back to see two lumps in orange plastic chairs. Wet faces and open mouths, trying to breathe.
“Come on,” Dane urged gently.
Joey at last spoke, his voice a quiver, five years old again. “Are we just gonna leave Mommy here?” His voice went up, breaking on the word “Mommy.” He seemed panicked. “We can’t just leave her,” he whispered.
Dane walked back, knelt before his son. He brushed hair off his forehead, digging deep for some vestige of strength he must have somewhere—he had to—and said, “We’re not leaving her here.” Dane let his hand slide down to the boy’s cheek. “Because she’s not here. What’s here is a shell. You know? Your mom went to heaven when that car ran into her.” Dane, at this moment, wasn’t sure what he believed in as far as an afterlife. But he did believe that Joey was not too old for fairy tales, and if the idea of heaven was a small comfort to the boy, by God, he would believe in it, if only for the immediate present. “She’s in heaven, Joey. What will stay here is kind of like a husk.” He let his hand drop to his son’s sweaty hand and squeezed. “She’s with us right now, and she always will be. You can bet she’s looking down on us, expecting us to do the right thing. Do right by her.” He tugged at the boy’s hand. “Come on now. Let’s go home.”
Clarissa was standing now, and she neared them. “It’s what she would have wanted, Joey.”
Dane stood too, and his eyes met his daughter’s in a kind of understanding. She had grown up a lot in these last few moments.
Dane drew both of his kids close, his arms draped over their shoulders as they headed toward the green Exit sign, toward a future that was as terrifying as it was uncertain.
Dane paused as they reached the corridor that would lead them outside and felt as Joey had—they were just leaving her there?
How could they? How could he?
He drew in a breath, shut his eyes, and thought of his wife as she was as a young girl, a teenager at Ohio State University. She was in front of a bulletin board in her dorm, and she was smiling at him as if she already knew him, already knew the future they would share, and asked, “You’re Dane, right?”
Early January
Chapter 4
SETH WOLCOTT sat in his Nissan Leaf electric car in the parking lot of Summitville High School, watching everyone go inside. They were all hurrying, heads bent, because the snow was coming down faster and faster. When he had started up the Leaf, the snow was little more than a few flakes, dancing on the currents of freezing air—pretty.
Now it was a threat. Surely this first day of school after the holiday break would have been canceled if they could have seen what was poised on the brink. Now the snow drifted down so hard, it was accumulating fast and blotting out the hill-covered landscape under a screen of white.
Seth could use the day off, even if it was his first at the school, sliding into a spot as an English teacher—with a specialty in drama—that had been vacated last semester by Gretchen Schmidbauer, who’d gone on maternity leave when she gave birth, like the Virgin Mary, on Christmas Eve. Seth could only hope she’d had her little one in a hospital, rather than a barn, because Summitville was fucking cold.
Not that it was any better where he’d just been—the Windy City, the Second City, the place Carl Sandburg had called the City of Big Shoulders. Chicago. The place where Seth had lived his entire adult life, or at least since he had set out for parts west, not getting very far after graduating from Indiana University at the early part of the new millennium. Sandburg, in that same poem where he christened the city, also called Chicago “brutal.” And Seth had to snort at that, because although he agreed with the poet’s assessment, he was certain Mr. Sandburg had a completely different opinion on what constituted “brutal” from Seth’s.
A quick image flashed in his mind—his boyfriend, no, fiancé, Luke, and his surprised face, over broad naked shoulders, when Seth came home early from teaching English at Senn High School. He had found Luke on the couch with his legs in the air, his buddy Ryan, from the gym, between them.
Seth snorted with bitter laughter. He’d thought, until that morning, when the beginnings of the flu had sent him home after lunch, that such tawdry antics only occurred in the movies, to people like Sandra Bullock. It was a cheap plot point. It didn’t really happen to people, not in real life.
It wasn’t so romantic comedy when it happened to you.
“But it was only the one time!” Luke had tried to assure him later, as if that made a difference, as if that would make Seth feel better. One time or a hundred, the betrayal still stung like hell. Their trust had been ruined. Seth hadn’t realized how important—and fragile—trust could be until he’d lost it.
Seth hastily canceled their Christmas nuptials and was lucky to find the job in
eastern Ohio right away. He’d never heard of Summitville, but oblivion and escape was what he craved. The picture on Wikipedia of the little Ohio town on the river, in its valley of tree-covered hills, looked like a place where Seth could vanish.
The snow, as suddenly as it had made a blizzard, seemed to change its mind and head in the opposite direction. Seth looked up at the dwindling flakes, now sparkling with early morning sun, and saw a patch of blue had opened up among the heavy gray clouds.
Maybe it was an omen. Perhaps a chorus of angelic voices should have sounded with the appearance of that patch of blue. Maybe the universe was telling him that this new beginning, in a place where he knew absolutely no one, had been the right choice. He whispered to himself, “Yeah, right, the universe, so vast and mysterious, so chaotic, has made my happiness its business. And is sending me signs to boot!”
Seth gathered up his messenger bag from the passenger seat to go inside and stopped when a man passing his car caught his eye. Seth’s breath froze in his mouth. If he’d been asked, even seconds ago, if any man could “catch his eye” in his current state of loss and betrayal, Seth would have said “Get out of here!” and meant it.
But the libido and the roving eye of a relatively young man were not as unforgiving as the heart. Eye and libido still had their needs despite a smashed heart, Seth thought, staring at the stranger in the navy blue coat as he passed by Seth’s Leaf. Seth took in the broad shoulders, the proud bearing, and the shaved head that said, in no uncertain terms, that a real man was passing by.
Seth was surprised at the pulse of longing and electricity that coursed through him at just a glimpse of this stranger, who must also be on the faculty, because Seth would have judged him at least a few years older than himself.
And he was gorgeous! First, it was just his sheer size, his magnitude that caused Seth’s pulse to quicken. Seth liked ’em big, he always had, and this guy was a giant. He must have been around six feet six inches and was, as they said in the ads, HWP, or height and weight proportionate. What? Two hundred? Two twenty? No matter. Seth’s fickle lust could only imagine what all that height and weight would feel like spread out on top of him. A man blanket. The mind reeled.
Shame on you, Seth Wolcott! his conscious mind admonished in the voice of Dana Carvey’s Church Lady. In that same superego-inspired voice, Seth asked, “What’s gotten into you? Satan?” And he answered, ignoring the reference to Satan, “I don’t know, but I know what I’d like to get into me.”
Seth shook his head and permitted his sad-sack self an indulgent grin. He pulled his messenger bag on his lap to both get himself going and to hide the burgeoning erection in his jeans. Just as he was about to open the door, the giant turned his head to look at a colleague coming up the front walk, and it was his face that really sealed the deal. That face, so angular, so manly, so kind, caused Cupid to release his arrow from its bow. “It’s hopeless!” Seth wailed. “I haven’t even gotten out of the car yet on my very first day, and already my heart has been stolen.” His erection, growing ever harder, reminded him that, in all actuality, another organ was the object of thievery.
But the guy was beautiful, the kind of man Seth’s fantasies would conjure up and file under the word perfection. Seth admonished himself in a whispering voice, hoping no one saw his lips moving, “He’s probably the wrestling—or no, the football—coach and is as straight as they come. Let’s not sentence ourselves to unrequited pining on our first day! Get out of the fuckin’ car and be a professional, not one of those adolescent boys you are about to teach—ones whose hormones are in overdrive.”
The wind, despite the snow dribbling down to a few spotty flakes, was bitter when Seth opened his door. He watched as his giant went inside the school and wondered if he’d have the chance to meet him today. Seth hurried up the walk. He had an appointment with the principal, Doug Calhoun, first thing, and he didn’t want to be late.
Just as he neared the door, the giant turned, as if he felt Seth’s rapt gaze upon him. Or maybe he had—what was the word?—a presentiment that Seth was about to do something righteously embarrassing and hysterical.
And perhaps because Seth worried about making an ass out of himself in front of this man he found gorgeous, he did precisely that. The universe, once again laser-focused on Seth, caused his right foot to come down on a patch of ice cunningly hidden in a shadow cast by Summitville High. His foot went dramatically forward, extending so much it called to Seth’s mind an old Monty Python sketch, “The Ministry of Silly Walks.” Right leg extended beyond what was natural, Seth crumpled to one knee, a silly grin barely masking his pain. He tried to grab his messenger bag to keep it off the wet ground and succeeded in somehow flipping his body down so that he did a cheek plant on the asphalt. His glasses skittered across yet another unseen patch of ice.
He lay on the ground gasping, wishing that blizzard-like snow would return and mercifully bury him. Wasn’t there some way he could just make himself melt into the ground, a la the Wicked Witch of the West?
Alas, real life did not offer him any such flights of fancy. Seth felt a strong pair of hands on his shoulders, gently pulling him up. He didn’t have to look to know whose they were. And as much as he wanted to meet this man he’d just rhapsodized over in the car, he was now recalling the old adage, “Be careful what you wish for.” He didn’t care. He wished again—wished that he’d look up and someone else would come to his aid. Perhaps a nice middle-aged algebra teacher, the water polo team coach, perhaps? Or maybe a student who wanted to brownnose the new teacher.
Of course, the universe could have none of that. It was none other than the object of Seth’s lust tugging him kindly upright again. Seth looked into his eyes—blue as that patch of sky he’d seen emerge earlier—and tried to smile, but it was damned hard to do when his face was burning so fiercely Seth was surprised it didn’t melt the snow for miles around.
“Are you okay?”
Seth struggled to get to his feet, grunting, awkward, and his hunky Good Samaritan rose with him. Seth stooped once more to snatch his glasses from the ground, thankful they weren’t broken or thrown out of alignment. He clumsily affixed the horn-rims to his face and met the gaze of the man before him. “Okay? Other than feeling like a complete jackass, I’m swell. Right as rain.” Seth attempted a grin but had a feeling it came out more as a grimace.
The guy cocked his head, looking at Seth like he was some sort of curious specimen.
“I’m Dane Bernard,” he said. “I teach English here. And you are?”
“You’re Dane Bernard?” Seth asked, laughing. “I’m supposed to meet with you this morning. You’re going to be what they call my faculty buddy.” Seth’s mind went to another f-word buddy he wouldn’t mind Dane being. And what a great name! Dane! It seemed so, so—big—and strong and manly. Great Dane!
Seth mentally kicked himself. He was thinking like a schoolgirl, if what was running through his head could be properly qualified as thinking at all. And regardless of his very close proximity to a school, schoolgirl or even schoolboy thought was simply not acceptable. He wiped the grit off his hands on his jeans and extended one of them to Dane. “Seth Wolcott.”
Dane’s features relaxed into a smile. “You’re Gretchen’s replacement. Principal Calhoun has told me all about you. Chicago, huh?” Dane clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Buddy, you’re in a different world now.”
Seth wondered if Dane was privy to the sordid details of why he’d fled Chicago, heart roadburned by infidelity. He doubted it. Somehow, Seth chastised himself, you need to pull yourself together. He took a deep breath and allowed himself the time to let it out slowly. “Right. Right! I’m so happy to be here! So happy, in fact, I tried to dance a little jig, but I kind of screwed that up.” He chuckled.
Dane smiled, and his expression reflected the two-word thought he suspected was running through Dane’s mind at that moment—humor him.
“Uh-huh,” Dane said, just as the final bell rang. He looked Seth
up and down. “If you’re sure you’re okay, no broken bones, no concussions or cracked ribs, I need to get inside. My homeroom can get out of hand quicker than you could imagine.”
“Oh, I could imagine. I taught at an inner-city high school in Chicago.”
“I’m sure this will be a little different. Good luck. We’ll talk later, okay?” And without waiting for a response, Dane Bernard turned and hurried inside the school, along with a few final straggling students.
Seth started up the steps, when he felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned to see a woman about his own age, with red hair styled in a kind of retro 1960s bubble cut. She was grinning. Her green eyes seemed magnified by her Catwoman glasses. She wore a coat that had to have come from the Salvation Army store or a very fancy vintage clothing store—teal, knee-length, wool, with big plastic buttons. Everything about her screamed “character,” and Seth immediately drew the conclusion that was entirely her goal.
“Be careful with that one.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah,” she said in a kind of motherly, pitying tone, leaning in close.
How she managed to put all that into one word was beyond Seth, but she did it.
“He just lost his wife.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Car accident.”
“Oh, that’s too bad.” Seth wanted to slap himself for having the thought that a wife—even a dead one—probably equaled Dane Bernard being as straight as a two-by-four. “And you are?”
“Betsy. Wagner. Human Sexuality 101 and health sciences.”
She held out a white-mittened hand, and Seth took it, squeezing gratefully.
“I’ll take you to the principal’s office, mister,” she said sternly and then laughed.
“Seth Wolcott. English composition, Introduction to Poetry, and Drama.”
Betsy said, “I know who you are. Everybody does.”
“Oh really?”
“Yeah. No secrets at Summitville High.”
