Red Picket Fences

by Daphne McLean

  When the other neighbors noticed the coroner, the group stared in disbelief. Some of them began to cry, and others decided to go home. It seemed distasteful to stay now that they knew there were deaths involved. Speaking of distasteful things, Jennifer was now very aware of her shirt and quickly zipped up her hoodie. It had never registered with her before that with all of the true crime shows, documentaries and podcasts she devoured, there were real people behind all of those salacious stories and tragedies. She was witnessing the latter right before her eyes.

  Jennifer had a million questions swirling around her mind. Where are the kids? What happened to Ethan and Sarah? Is everyone safe? How could something like this happen? First and foremost, she wanted to make sure the children were really safe, so she made her way to a police officer who was manning the barricade. He seemed awfully young, and Jennifer wondered if he was a rookie.

  “Excuse me, Officer,” Jennifer said as she approached. “I know you probably can’t say much, but I’m concerned about Sarah’s children. Are they in there?”

  “Miss Jennifer?” the rookie started. “It’s me, Jimmy. My kid sister watches William sometimes.”

  Jennifer’s face flushed. She was bad with faces. It was detrimental to her PR career. She was supposed to know who the big players were, and recognize every actor from the A list to the Z list, and she never could.

  “Oh, Jimmy. I’m so sorry,” she said. “You look so grown-up in that uniform. I didn’t recognize you at first!” There was a pause, and then she noticed Jimmy’s chest puff out, and he let a smile slip. She had recovered from that faux pas nicely. That, she was good at.

  Jimmy Sullivan composed himself, and in a more official and somber tone, he said, “I’m sorry, Miss Jennifer. I can’t tell you anything about the victims.”

  “There are victims? What do you mean, victims?” she asked.

  “I-I-mean … deceased … residents. I meant to say, residents,” Jimmy replied nervously.

  “So, they’re really dead? Both of them? Also, you can call me Jennifer.”

  “Mi- Jennifer, I just started on the force a few months ago. I wasn’t even supposed to say that they’re dead. My boss is gonna have my behind,” Jimmy replied. Jennifer noticed small beads of sweat forming on his forehead.

  “Listen Jim — Officer. I’m not here to get you in trouble. You must know that I don’t like gossip, and pretty much everyone in this community is either related or have been family friends for decades. I wouldn’t say anything for fear of inadvertently giving someone a death notification. I’m just a mom with a little boy at home, and that gives me a soft spot for all children. Please tell me they’re okay.”

  Jimmy paused. He knew from what his sister had told him that Jennifer wasn’t at all like the other busybodies in town. He could tell she was worried, so he decided to confide in her. “They’re okay,” he said. “Please don’t give out this information. We have detectives who are heading over right now to the aunt’s house to tell her and the kids.”

  Jennifer started to see a glimpse of a grown-up police officer emerging in Jimmy. She vowed not to tell, and thanked him. It was time to leave and let the police conduct the investigation. She didn’t want to stick around to see them remove the bodies, anyway.

  As she turned to leave, her eyes started welling with tears. She could feel her heart breaking at the thought of those four little kids being told about their parents. If she remembered correctly, the youngest was William’s age.

  Her pace quickened with each hot tear that fell. She just wanted to leave and get home to her boy. As she approached her front steps, she saw Suzanne nervously waiting by the door.

  “Are they okay?” Suzanne asked.

  Jennifer had to catch her breath while simultaneously stifling sobs. “They’re gone,” she replied as she grabbed her son and sank to the floor.

  Chapter 3

  6 Months Earlier

  Sarah Ashton sat at the Formica kitchen table, working on her laptop, clicking through the open tabs on the web browser, hoping in vain to see something different each time a new page popped up. It was the end of the month, and each tab represented a company whose bill she had to pay. She kept checking the balance on the bank account tab to figure out which bills she could pay this month, and which she needed to let ride until next month. Ethan was washing dishes with his back turned to her, trying to hide the fact that his face was flushed red with embarrassment.

  Sarah wasn’t used to barely scraping by. Growing up, her family had had more than enough and never really had to sacrifice much at all.

  However, she had left that all behind when she followed her heart and married Ethan, defying her father’s wishes. They seemed less like wishes and more like controlling demands, which was also why she had left. Even with the stress of struggling, she was freer than she ever had been before.

  Sarah’s father, Samuel, had followed through with his threats and cut her off completely. She accepted that she would be at risk of being in the very situation she was in now; a stay-at-home mother with four mouths to feed, an overworked husband, and a rental house that was too small for everyone. On top of all of that, she was alone in Pittsburgh, PA, which was far away from friends and family. However, it was harder than she had thought it would be, and the stress of it all was weighing on her.

  “You pick this time, Ethan,” Sarah said. “Credit card or electric?” She tried to muster a cheery tone to keep the conversation light.

  “Well, we need electricity to cook, use water, and do laundry, but we need to keep paying the credit card so our credit report looks good enough to buy a house soon. It’s a tough one,” Ethan replied. He felt his heart ache and his chest tighten from the stress of it all.

  “Let’s pay the minimum on the credit card,” Sarah said. “We’re not near the max yet, so we can then at least charge a portion of the electric bill on the credit card, and not get our power turned off.”

  She looked up at Ethan, and smiled, looking quite pleased with herself. Ethan kissed the top of Sarah’s head. He lifted her chin up gently so that they were looking each other in the eye.

  “Sarah, I promise you to do whatever it takes to get us into a house. My company is responding to a request for proposal out in Jersey, and it’s a five-year contract. I didn’t tell you at first because I didn’t want to get your hopes up. It seems like we need a little hope right now, though. It will be okay, Sarah. I promise you,” Ethan said assuredly.

  Sarah smiled, kissed Ethan, and turned back to her computer quickly so he wouldn’t see that she was tearing up. It’ll be okay, she thought. Ethan and his co-worker John Miller were working on a new smartphone app that might revolutionize the way take-out was ordered. With their new app, Deliver-ease, anyone could sign up to be a delivery person, and instantly every restaurant in town could potentially become a place that delivered. Sarah had suggested they add ice cream and wine delivery options for moms who were stuck at home with children. They were excited about the project, and were working on it non-stop on top of their regular hours at Centech.

  Ethan was the developer, and John was the project manager who had a knack for business. If Deliver-ease succeeded the way John had projected it would, Sarah and Ethan would finally be on their way to a more financially secure life.

  Ethan wanted to prove to Sarah’s family that they were wrong about him. He had worked hard to break his own family’s dysfunctional cycle and escape his past. Ethan had come from what many in his town called ‘the wrong side of the tracks,’ and when he was younger, he had started to fall into the same bad habits his father had. Ethan smoked too much, drank too much, and gambled way too much. However, meeting Sarah was a major turning point in his life. Once they started dating, Ethan vowed to leave that lifestyle behind and straighten his life out.

  The temptation for one last bet or one last cigarette was always there, especially in times like
this when he was watching his wife try to scrape together enough to pay the bills. Ethan knew Sarah was crying, and instead of comforting her, he retreated back to his office to work on Deliver-ease.

  John had called Ethan earlier to tell him that he had scored a meeting with some potential investors in a few weeks. This meeting was high stakes, and Ethan knew it. If they could get some investors, it would mean he would have enough money for a down payment for a house. He hoped that house would be in New Jersey, where his company was hopefully opening an office. He didn’t tell Sarah about the meeting because he couldn’t bear to disappoint her again. A big change was on the horizon. Ethan could just feel it.

  Sarah was walking past Ethan’s office on her way to their bedroom. She peeked in the open door and said, “It’s getting late, hon. Why don’t you come to bed and watch an episode of Stalker Walkers with me? We’re two episodes behind, and I don’t know if I can wait much longer!”

  She smiled at Ethan as she leaned against the doorway to his office, which was really the laundry room, and also the room they used as storage. Sarah was magnificent at stifling her emotions and pretending everything was all right. Ethan wished she didn’t have to, but he appreciated the effort.

  He looked up from his screen. “I’ll be right in. Queue up the show for us.”

  Sarah furrowed her brow and said, “You’ve got five minutes. After that, I’m going to start the show and find out which one of our favorite main characters becomes zombie chow this episode. You better believe that I’m going to spoil it for you if you stand me up again.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Ethan replied. He saluted her as if she were a drill sergeant, and then turned to his computer to finish one last piece of code for the night.

  His phone buzzed, and he looked down to see the name of a person he hadn’t seen or thought about in years, his childhood buddy Joey Mazzetti from the old neighborhood. A call out of the blue from Joey after all these years could only mean one thing, and it wasn’t good. Ethan let out a sigh, closed his eyes, and hit the decline button. He was under enough stress right now, and he didn’t need to be resurrecting ghosts from his past.

  Chapter 4

  Present Day

  Jennifer ambled through the rest of the day like a mindless drone. She didn’t want to cry in front of William and upset him, so she let him watch a little more TV than usual and used his nap time to try to process everything.

  She felt guilty for thinking badly of her neighbors earlier. Maybe they weren’t feigning concern but were actually concerned like she was. She probably knew less about the Ashtons than they did, and she was a mess.

  Peter was home now, and was just finishing up the dishes. “Still feeling down, babe?” he asked.

  “I just — I’m in disbelief that they’re gone,” she replied tearfully. “My heart is aching, and I don’t know how to handle it. Sarah doesn’t have the chance to see her children grow up. She told me how happy they were to finally buy a home, settle down, and plant roots. All of that hard work, worry, and stress was for nothing. A faulty wire, an unattended candle, a cheap cell phone charger … gone in a literal flash.”

  “A literal flash, you say? Was there an explosion of some sort?” Peter asked teasingly, trying to distract his wife from the sheer sadness of it all.

  The fact was, he was pretty broken up about the whole thing as well. Peter had met Ethan a handful of times. He’d actually just seen Ethan a few days ago, struggling with his lawn mower, and had decided to help. They’d fixed it together and then exchanged small talk over cold beers. Ethan had seemed optimistic about the future. Hell, he was happy about the present too. His company had just moved to New Jersey for a long-term project. He had been promoted to lead developer, and he was working on some sort of app. A meeting with big investors hadn’t gone as planned a few months back, but he’d found a new one, and things were finally looking up.

  “Yeah,” Jennifer replied, a bit annoyed. “A literal flash.” Was he mocking her use of ‘literal’? At a time like this?

  “I only meant that if it were a candle or a cheap cell phone charger causing the fire, it would have been a slower burn,” he replied. “It seems odd to me that the house went up that quickly.”

  “Well, it did,” Jennifer snapped back.

  Peter was right, though. Neither one of them was a fire expert at all. The only experience with fire they had was trying several times unsuccessfully to get one going in the fireplace last Christmas. Jennifer had even thought at the time that it was odd how house fires could spread so easily when they were intentionally trying to light a fire and failing. Her brother had stepped in, the way brothers did, and lit the fire for everyone.

  He had explained that fires needed oxygen to burn, and in some cases accelerant. Jennifer had a flashback to the scene earlier this morning and remembered that the front windows had been open.

  “Oxygen,” she said out loud.

  “Oxygen?” Peter asked. He was confused. Jennifer had a habit of having conversations with herself inside her head, and then talking to Peter as if he had been a part of the conversation from the start.

  “The windows were open at the Ashtons’ house,” she said. “Isn’t that odd for this time of year? I bet it was oxygen that helped the fire along. I think they were open, at least. Maybe the firefighters did it? Maybe the fire broke the glass? The only other time I’ve heard fires going through houses that fast is when they were lit on purpose. I’ve seen it a million times.”

  Peter’s distraction had worked. Jennifer was now mentally replaying every case that had to do with fire in her head.

  “Where have you seen this a million times?” he asked. It suddenly hit him that she was talking about her true crime investigation shows. His distraction tactic had backfired. He definitely didn’t want her going down that rabbit hole. He shook his head and let out a sigh. “Ooh, Jen. This is real life. Not a mystery show.”

  “What?” she asked indignantly. “Something isn’t right here. I just can’t fathom a family being ripped apart by something as insignificant as a faulty cell phone charger.” She was crying again.

  “You would rather it be an act of malice?” Peter asked.

  “I guess that’s what I am saying,” she replied. “I don’t know. I mean, I’ve been crying all day for people I barely know. It dawned on me that maybe a big part of the reason I’m beside myself with grief is because I keep imagining this whole scenario happening to our family. I keep picturing William without us, and I feel sick to my stomach. At least if it were an act of some psychopath, I could try to make myself feel better by saying, ‘Well, we don’t know any psychopaths. This can’t happen to us.’ However, if it were something more random, trivial, and uncontrollable, I might not ever sleep again.”

  Jennifer buried her face in Peter’s chest. He hugged her tightly as she sobbed. He didn’t know what to say to comfort her because he was facing his own mortality after what had happened today.

  He felt he needed to say something to make her feel better, so, after a minute of silence, he blurted, “Are you sure there are no psychopaths on your mom’s side?” He often used humor as a coping mechanism. Jen let out a giggle between sobs, and Peter smiled, knowing that this time his distraction tactic had worked.

  After Jennifer had gathered herself, she asked Peter if he could handle bath time while she went for a walk to clear her mind. She kissed William on the head and promised him she would be back in time to read him a story. He reached up and gave her a hug with his chubby little arms. He touched her cheek with his warm and slightly sticky miniature hand and said, “BAF!!! Dada … BAF!”

  Jennifer kissed William’s sweet tiny hand and smiled as she walked out the door. The sun was just setting, and she needed to get one lap in to calm down. She almost went in the opposite direction from the Ashton house to avoid seeing it altogether, but she had an internal tugging in her brain, the way Wi
lliam tugged at her arm when he wanted a snack. She had to go back to the house and see if the windows were open, if they still existed.

  Jennifer braced herself as she rounded the corner from her house. She had no idea what the house was going to look like, and she didn’t know if there was a crowd still outside or if any police investigations were still going on. The smell of burned wood hit her before she even saw the house, which was in fact still standing. As she approached it, she noticed that she had been correct. While the fire had broken the glass, she could still tell that at least one of the front windows was open. The fact that the window was open didn’t really prove much at all, because it could have been done by anyone at any time.

  The sky was turning from blue to a soft pink, and Jennifer decided to keep walking so she would be home in time to put William to bed. Yet she couldn’t will herself to keep going. She just stared at the empty shell of a house that had once been the Ashton home.

  Her gaze shifted from the wreckage to the front yard that had somehow remained relatively unscathed. It was an odd juxtaposition to see a cheery white fence, a few outdoor toys scattered about, and a bike thrown haphazardly near the driveway, against the backdrop of a home in ruins. If you only looked at the fence and the front yard, you could almost pretend none of it had happened.

  Sarah had planted some wildflowers earlier in the summer that were starting to wilt and turn brown. She put them right in front of that beautiful white picket fence, and when they were in their prime, the bold colors looked gorgeous in contrast with the white fence. Oftentimes when Jennifer wandered by, Sarah had been cutting the flowers to bring some inside.

  Among the sad wilted blooms that had once been a beautiful garden, Jennifer saw that a tiny purple flower remained. It was in danger of being destroyed when the police returned to take down the caution tape. Jennifer felt compelled to pick it and preserve it in an attempt at honoring Sarah’s memory. Maybe she would press it and frame it for the kids to have one day.