by Dan Dillard
Chapter 16
The trip to Walker’s Woods to bury another one of my siblings was all I could take. It was made worse because we had to swing by and pick up John. That was more unbearable because I had to watch him bury another child, and even as bad as we’d had it, even as much as—aside from genetics—we still weren’t father and son…John and I had made great strides and I was torn apart watching him get torn apart.
Watching Danny burn in my own home wasn’t as wrenching as seeing that old broken man not outlive another of his children. Maybe that was his punishment, or maybe, just maybe it was all for me. Maybe it was my payment from that ghost, but why was my toll so much heavier than Sean Chambers? It was all his stinking idea. Maybe he just took the easy way out. He knew the truth early on and he just took the easy way out. It made sense that Robin go first. If there was a heaven, she would be in it and she would have suffered the least of us all.
By that logic, maybe suicides did go to hell and if so, for that moment, I hoped Sean was there. I hoped he was burning for what he did to all of us and for what he’d done to himself. Having watched Danny burn, it seemed suitable that Sean spend eternity suspended inside a bolt of lightning. White and light. I was so angry, I couldn’t even cry. There were just no tears left.
I didn’t hear a word spoken at the service. One of his fraternity brothers delivered the eulogy. The illusory Elizabeth sat in the back with her husband, a man I didn’t meet. I despised her. What did she know? Did she know how he loved her, but never told her because she was with another man? Would it have changed anything if she did know? Maybe he would be alive. Maybe things would be different. So much could be different if only…if only things had been different.
Standing there at the graveside, I held more hatred in my heart than I ever had before…or since. I hope to never feel that way again.
“What’s bothering you?” Vicky asked me as they lowered my brother into the ground.
“Are you joking?” I said.
“No, Todd. I know you’re upset. Everyone here is upset, but you are somewhere else. Is there something besides…all this that is bothering you?”
She gestured gently, not drawing attention and her words were near whispers. I swallowed a lump in my throat and hugged her and said, “I love you, you know that right?”
She nodded and mouthed the words, “I love you, too.” Tears started as her bottom lip pulled up and shook. Vicky had a tissue crumpled in her hand that she’d been wiping her eyes with throughout the morning and she held it up to her nose.
“I have a lot of…anger today,” I said.
“And that’s understandable. But I know you, and there’s something else there. Or maybe something used to be there and now it’s missing.”
She did know me. She always has.
“I just want to make sure you aren’t going to do anything…anything stupid. There are lots of people counting on you. Three in particular.”
At once, I had the urge to cry. The urge to hold my children, but they were with their grandparents and so I hugged Vicky again and held her tightly.
“No way. No way I would do anything like that.”
