When Happily Ever After Ends

by Lurlene McDaniel

  Had they done something to disappoint him? Had they hurt him or made him feel unwanted? Hadn’t they loved him enough? She didn’t know, neither could she ask the questions aloud. She stared out the window at the sunlight until it burned her eyes.

  Shannon found it hard to come home. As the car tires crunched on the driveway, she watched the old farmhouse rise against the sky and trees. Once a symbol of safety and security, it now looked foreboding.

  As the car inched along, she studied the old river stones of the house’s foundation, set in over one hundred years before. Above the smooth stones rose weathered wood siding and two brick and mortar chimneys. Shannon and her parents were the third generation of Campbells to live in the house. After Grandfather had given it to them, he and Grandmother had moved to a condo on the Tennessee River.

  The car stopped at the back porch, and even though afternoon sunlight poured through the open windows, she couldn’t bring herself to go inside. She jumped out of the car. “I think I’ll go to the barn and check on Black.”

  “Wait,” her mother said, quickly struggling from the car. “The study’s been cleaned and the door’s shut. We can keep the door shut for as long as you like.”

  Shannon figured her mother was reassuring her, telling her that she shouldn’t be squeamish about going into the house. “I still want to go down to the barn first.”

  Her mother continued. “I talked to Heather’s mother and she’s been kind enough to call my clients and tell them we won’t do anything until after the funeral.” Her voice caught. “I’m not up to seeing anybody just yet.”

  “And the horses?”

  “I’ve asked Zack to stay around and handle the animals. He’s the only person I want on the property right now.” Shannon wasn’t sure she could face him either. “I’m going up to my room to lie down for a while,” her mother added tonelessly.

  Shannon walked down the path to the barn. Butterflies still fluttered in the pasture, but today she could hardly stand to watch them—they seemed frivolous and carefree, too colorful for the darkness that hung over her heart.

  At the barn, the scent of freshly strewn hay filled the warm air. She heard Black whinny, and he poked his head over the top of his stall door. The sight of him made her remember her birthday. A lump lodged in her throat. The horse’s ears pricked forward, as if he was asking, “Where have you been?”

  She let herself into his stall and rubbed his muzzle. He nosed her pocket and snorted. “No carrots,” she told him. Tears started down her cheeks and Shannon hugged her horse’s neck and let them come. Soon his sleek, dark coat was wet with them. “Oh, Black, what are we going to do?” The horse didn’t move, allowing her to cry and lean against him.

  “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  Zack’s question caused Shannon to stiffen. Furiously, she wiped her hand across her cheeks. “Don’t sneak up on me,” she said sullenly.

  She heard him let himself inside the stall and come up beside her. “I’m really sorry, Shannon.”

  She looked at him then and when she did, she felt her face turn crimson with shame. When she had thought that someone had murdered her father, she’d speculated that maybe Zack had been responsible. Did Zack know what her father had done? Did everybody know? “I’m sorry, too,” she managed.

  “I’ve been watching the horses,” he said. “You don’t have to worry about them at all.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I think Black’s been missing you. I was wondering if you might want to ride him. He needs to stretch his legs.”

  “No. I don’t feel like riding. Just turn him out in the pasture for me. Maybe I’ll feel more like it in a couple of days.”

  “If there’s anything you or your mom want me to do …” he offered, leaving the sentence open-ended.

  “When we got home from the meet the other night, the horses hadn’t been fed. Why?”

  “You dad came down to the barn while I was sweeping out the feed room. He told me to go on home.”

  Shannon’s eyes bore into Zack as she realized that he was probably the last person to see her father alive. “How did he act?” she asked. “What did he say?” She was hungry for any information, any clue that somehow it had all been a big mistake or an accident.

  “He was calm. We just talked for a few minutes.”

  “You talked?” She could hardly believe it. How could her dad act so normal, then go back inside the house and—and—“That’s all you did? Talk? What about?” She heard her voice rising, but couldn’t stop it.

  “The weather. And how I liked my job. What I was going to take in school this fall. Then he told me to go home, that he’d feed and water the horses. He said that he wanted to do it.”

  “This is your job, not his.”

  Zack’s lips pressed into a line. “He was my boss, Shannon. I was only doing what he told me to do.”

  “In all the time you’ve worked here, has he ever offered to do your work? Weren’t you suspicious?”

  “Don’t you think I’m sorry I left? I’ve asked myself over and over why I didn’t come back to make sure the horses were fed. Maybe if I had, you and your mom wouldn’t have had to come home to what you did.”

  His expression looked so miserable that she felt sorry for him and ashamed that she’d yelled at him. She hugged her arms to herself. “Forget it. It’s not your fault.” Yet, deep down, she wanted it to be somebody’s fault. Someone should have known and been able to have stopped her father from shooting himself.

  Shannon spun and hurried up the winding pathway leading to the house, anxious to get inside before the sun set and the world went dark.

  Chapter Eleven

  “ ‘In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you.…’ ”

  Shannon tried to concentrate on the minister’s voice, on the vision he painted of a city of golden light. Warm midmorning sun shone down on the cemetery. In the distance she saw familiar blue-green peaks reaching upward into a jewel-blue sky. She studied the living carpet of green grass instead of the green tarpaulin that stretched across the ground in front of the minister. Beside it stood her father’s casket.

  “We come here today to lay all that was mortal of our brother, Paul Campbell, in this new-made sepulcher,” the minister said. They were going to put her father into a freshly dug, dark grave. She shivered and huddled closer to her mother and grandmother.

  “As Paul’s body was taken from earth, so shall it return. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” The minister scooped up a handful of soil and Shannon watched as the dark silt trickled through his fingers to become so much dust in the wind.

  Only the immediate family—Shannon, her grandmother, and her mother—were at the grave with the minister. The visitation at the funeral home had been full of people who had come to pay their respects. They’d come in a steady stream all afternoon.

  At the funeral home, she’d felt numb and detached, as if she were somehow floating above the sadness. The casket had been kept closed the entire time, and for that, Shannon was grateful. She didn’t have to go near it, and she could pretend that her daddy wasn’t really inside it.

  Grandmother had been composed and gracious. Her mother, teary-eyed and quiet, had seemed restrained and controlled. Shannon herself kept her tears inside, refusing to shed them in public. Friends from school came with their parents, and girls from the Pony Club came, too. Tammy, Cathie, and Melanie clutched Shannon and started crying.

  “I felt like he was my dad in some ways,” Melanie confessed between sobs. “He was so nice to me. He never yelled at me when I messed up in the ring.”

  Heather’s mother came, but not Heather. Mrs. Banks explained to Shannon, “I thought it best if Heather stayed home.” She sounded apologetic, but Shannon couldn’t understand why her best friend had stayed away. What kind of friend was she, anyway? She would have been there for Heather.

  Shannon’s grandmother’s friend, Made
line, approached Shannon and took her aside. “I’ll be praying for each of you. I’ve told Betty to call me if she or you and your mother need anything.”

  Shannon’s numbness had seeped into her mind, making her feel like a block of wood. The only thing she needed was to have her father alive. “Thank you,” she mumbled.

  “Give yourself time to grieve,” Madeline added. “Don’t rush through it. Grieving is good for your soul and your heart.” Shannon wanted to tell her that nothing about the pain she’d experienced over the previous few days could be good. Nothing.

  “Thank you,” Shannon mumbled again, and turned away. No one can help, she thought.

  Standing outside in the bright sunlight, this final ritual, the burial, seemed unreal, like phantoms from a nightmare that clung even though she was fully awake. “Despite the shadow and sorrow caused by his absence, we recognize the immortality of Paul’s soul,” the pastor’s deep voice said. “That through Christ we have the hope of eternal life in heaven, where these mortal bodies shall come forth to the rewards of eternity.” He closed his service book and pronounced a benediction.

  Shannon followed the man from the funeral home back to the long black limo for the ride to her house. Once in the car, she sat stiffly between her mother and grandmother.

  Grandmother blew her nose on a lace-trimmed hanky. “It was a lovely service,” she said in a shaky voice. “All the time Paul was in Vietnam I rehearsed that service in my mind. I was so sure they would send him home to us in a pine box.” She wiped her eyes. “Some of his friends came home that way. Dead, in coffins. But Paul made it. And now, to have to put him in the ground when he was at the prime of his life—” Her voice broke altogether and Shannon felt chills running up her arms and legs.

  Her mother reached over and clasped Grandmother’s arm. Their hands linked on Shannon’s lap, but she didn’t feel like part of the bond. She felt isolated. She hadn’t known her father before Vietnam. At the moment, she wasn’t sure she’d ever known him.

  At the farm, Grandmother said she preferred to go home and promised to call later. Her mother headed straight upstairs. After three days of constant togetherness, Shannon understood the need each of them had to be alone. Still, she wished she could pour out her heart and mixed-up emotions to her mother. Maybe in a few days they could talk, she told herself.

  The kitchen counters were full of casserole dishes left by friends and members of their church. Shannon put as many as she could fit inside the refrigerator, then anxious to keep her hands and mind busy, she unfolded the afternoon paper. An article buried toward the bottom of page one jumped out.

  PROMINENT LOCAL MAN KILLS SELF

  Paul Campbell, a longtime resident of Lookout Mountain and area businessman, died of a self-inflicted single gunshot wound to the head late Saturday night. Although police could furnish no reason for Mr. Campbell’s death, he had been experiencing severe depression. Mr. Campbell co-owned and operated a riding stable with his wife Kathleen on the mountain. He was a decorated Vietnam veteran and a member of the Better Business Council. He is survived by his wife, daughter Shannon, and mother Mrs. Betty Campbell.

  The print began to wiggle as tears stung Shannon’s eyes. She wadded up the newspaper and bolted from the house. “Take it easy,” Zack said, stopping her in her tracks and grasping her upper arms as she ran into the barn. “What’s the hurry? Are you all right?”

  “This!” She flung the newspaper at him. “Why did the paper write about my father this way?” Seeing her father’s existence summed up in a few brief lines of copy seemed cold and cruel.

  Zack quickly read the article. “It’s a news story, Shannon. That’s their job. It’s nothing personal.”

  “It stinks! What do they know about my father and our lives? ‘Severe depression.’ ” She spat the phrase. “My father was good and kind and … and … they should have said that!”

  “I don’t think they meant to be mean.”

  “Why are you defending them? What do you know about it anyway? You don’t even have a father!” She regretted the words immediately. She had no right to hurt Zack. He’d done nothing to hurt her.

  “I have one,” Zack said quietly, his face pale. “I just haven’t seen him in a long, long time.” He let her go.

  “Well, I hate the reporter. I hate the newspaper. I wish their whole building would explode!”

  “Would it make you feel better?”

  “Yes!”

  “Would it bring your father back?”

  His words hit her as if he’d slapped her. As if he’d torn open the raw and oozing wound in her heart. Nothing could bring her father back. A strangled cry escaped Shannon’s mouth, and she shoved Zack as hard as she could and ran outside. “Wait!” he yelled.

  Black grazed in a nearby pasture. Shannon seized a bridle hanging on a hook and called the horse to her. Her hands were shaking, but she got the bit into Black’s mouth, hoisted herself onto his back, and dug her heels into his flank. The dark horse leaped forward. Shannon leaned low across his neck. She saw the fence loom on the far side of the pasture and she urged him forward. She felt his muscles bunch and then his forelegs lift as he soared effortlessly over the barrier. He hit the ground and galloped hard across the pasture.

  Shannon gulped in air while wind whipped through her hair and stung her eyes, making them water even harder. Trees dashed past in a blur of green and all she heard was the steady pounding of the horse’s hooves against the ground.

  As she tasted the wind, felt the jarring ground, and smelled the scent of Black’s sweating coat, Shannon turned off her thoughts and became one with the galloping horse. Sometime later, she felt the horse’s gait slackening as he slowed to a canter, then to a trot, then to a walk. She heard him breathing hard, saw flecks of white foam on his neck, and felt his sides heaving beneath her legs.

  “Whoa.” She reined him to a halt and slid off his back. Her legs trembled and her body felt limp, but the ride had helped purge her of her seething anger. In its place was numbness and exhaustion. Shannon dropped the reins and let Black nibble on the grass. Wearily, she sat on the hard earth, facing westward, and stayed there until the sun went down.

  As darkness fell, she thought of her mother. She hurt too. Over the past several days they’d eaten and slept and walked around the house together in a numb daze. If only they could talk, really talk, about what had happened. But Shannon wasn’t sure where to begin. Her father was dead, and without him, their family seemed to lack cohesion.

  Shannon had seen him put in the ground, with only a bronze plaque, wreaths of flowers, and a mention in the newspaper to mark his existence. How could she go on without him? How could her family ever be a family without him? Shannon buried her face in her hands and allowed two days of pent-up tears to flow. Afterwards she felt better.

  She didn’t return until it was dark, but as she rode up to the stable, she saw that Zack had left the light on for her. It shone like a steady beacon to light her way home.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Why didn’t you come to the funeral home?” Shannon asked, coming up behind Heather, who had tethered Fantasia at the barn door for grooming.

  Heather jumped and dropped the currycomb. “Don’t sneak up like that. You scared me to death!” Heather complained, stooping to retrieve the brush.

  All day long, the other girls had been coming out to ride and care for their horses, and all day long Shannon had waited for Heather to arrive. She had decided to confront her. The afternoon air was hot and sticky, making Shannon feel even more irritable. “Everybody was there but you,” Shannon said, crossing her arms defiantly. “How come?”

  “Didn’t my mother tell you?”

  “All your mother said was that she thought it was better if you didn’t come. You’re my best friend. Why didn’t you tell your mother you wanted to be with me?”

  Heather did not meet Shannon’s eyes, but stepped to the far side of Fantasia and swept the brush along the animal’s flank. “She deci
ded I was too young to go to a funeral.”

  “You’re fifteen, Heather! Even Melanie was there and she’s only eleven.”

  Sunlight bounced off Heather’s unruly red hair as her head bobbed over the curve of the horse’s sleek back. “Funerals are depressing, that’s all. She didn’t want me to be depressed.”

  Incredulous, Shannon walked around Fantasia and stood face to face with Heather. “Depressed? It was my father who died! I’ll tell you what it feels like to be depressed. It’s when you’re going through the worst day of your entire life and your best friend doesn’t even care enough to be with you. You never even called me.”

  “I wasn’t sure what to say.”

  “Everybody else found something to say.”

  Shifting from foot to foot, Heather set about untangling Fantasia’s mane by running her fingers through the coarse hair. “I’m sorry, okay. I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I’m sorry your father died.”

  “Funerals are supposed to make saying good-bye easier, but it wasn’t that way for me.” Shannon shook her head sadly.

  “The whole thing gives me the creeps.”

  “Thanks a lot.” Shannon let her frustration come through in sarcasm. “I’m real sorry that my life made you feel creepy.”

  “That’s not what I meant.” Heather chewed on her bottom lip. “I just don’t know what to say to you,” she wailed. “What do you want me to say?”

  “Nothing, Heather. The time for saying things has passed. Just forget the whole thing. In fact, just forget everything. I hope I never make you feel ‘uncomfortable’ again.” Shannon turned and stalked toward her house.

  Shannon rattled around the kitchen. She wanted to find a clean cereal bowl, but dirty dishes were heaped in the sink. She opened the dishwasher only to find it stuffed with more dirty dishes. She’d forgotten to turn it on the night before. “Cancel the Frosted Flakes,” she muttered in the empty room.