So, I quit my job in Chicago working as a high-profile lawyer at a prestigious law firm and moved us out here to the middle of nowhere. I thought things would move slower in a small town, so maybe that’s the way to start moving again.
Here we are, in a small town where nobody knows us, and I still feel lost. I tell myself that it will just take some adjusting. I need time to get the new house in order and to get used to things around here. That includes finding something to do with my time now that I’m no longer practicing law.
I pull the truck into the drive, and the moment I shut it off, Margo is bailing out, running around the truck and to the front door.
“Come on, Daddy. Hurry!”
I laugh as I’m walking up behind her to unlock the door. “Why are you in such a hurry?”
“I’m going to miss Sophia!”
“Alright, alright,” I say, opening the door. She rushes into the house, over to the couch, and plops down, turning the TV on. It’s still on the kid’s channel from last night so she needs no help. I lock the door behind me and go into the kitchen to start unpacking and putting things away.
I have to say that I love this place so much more than I ever loved our penthouse in the city. There, I’d wake up and look out my window, only to see buildings and busy streets. Here, I look out the window and see nothing but Shadow Mountain Lake. The best part about it is that there’s almost no neighbors to deal with. These houses costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. Nobody who works here can afford to live on the lake, which means that most of the houses nearby are actually filled year-round. It’s mostly people from out of town who buy these houses to use as a second home or vacation home. I might have neighbors one week or one month out of the year. It’s perfect for a man like me to hide away.
With the town being so small, the school system is amazing as well. Margo’s preschool consisted of five hundred students. That doesn’t sound like much until you consider five hundred toddlers. The grade school has even more, ranging into the thousands. She’ll be in a smaller school here, which means that much more attention. It’s safer too. All around, this is a better place to raise a family. I only wish my wife could be here for it too. It took losing her to realize everything I’d been doing wrong in my life, like working eighty-plus hours a week. It seemed like Margo was born, and the next day, she was two. I’ve lost too much time with her, time that I’ll never be able to get back.
Unpacking the kitchen is work that keeps my hands busy, but not my mind. Before I know it, I’m slipping back into the past.
“You promised me a dinner,” Kate says, walking up to the back of my desk chair and wrapping her arms around my neck.
I kiss her hand. “I know, but this case is really important.”
“Every case is important, Carson. I have a babysitter, and we are getting out of this house tonight. Got it?” she asks, putting her foot down.
I shake my head and rub my tired eyes. I’ve been staring at this computer screen for far too long. “Alright. Dinner, that’s it. No drinks, no dancing, no meeting up at a bar with friends. Got it? I want to be home by nine so I can try to finish this before bed.”
She smiles wide, the blinding smile that made me fall in love with her to begin with, as she bounces out the door of my home office.
A couple of hours later, we’re in the car and coming home from dinner. She’s happy that we got out of the house, and I can tell she’s already trying to think up an excuse to keep us out longer, but she promised.
“We don’t do this enough,” she says, taking my hand in hers.
“I know.” I feel my eyelids getting heavy.
“You need to slow down at work. You’re working too hard.” Her other hand comes up to run her fingers up and down my arm softly, teasingly.
“I know, Kate, but if we want to be able to provide Margo with her first car, college, and a wedding, these hours I’m pulling are needed.”
“I know, I know,” she agrees, removing her seatbelt and leaning over the console between us to press her lips to the skin of my neck.
“Remember this?” she asks. “See what you’re missing.” She kisses her way up to my ear and nibbles on it.
It makes my body come alive. It’s been far too long since we’ve been intimate. I let out a hissing sound.
Her lips move back to my neck, pressing soft kisses along my neck and jaw, and her hand drops down to my lap, where she squeezes my thigh before moving it up to cup me over my pants.
“Kate, you need to get back to your seat,” I tell her, more than ready to pull this car over to have my way with her.
“Oh, come on. You used to like it when I pleasured you in the car, remember?” She pulls away with a smirk.
“That was when we were still dumb enough to know better. Put your—” I don’t get to finish the rest of that sentence because there’s a hard hit catapulting me into confusion. At first, I don’t even know what’s going on. It was so fast that the lights coming at us from her side didn’t register. It felt like getting hit in the side of the car by a freight train, a sudden, immense impact that jerked my head to the side, making it smash off the driver’s side window. Everything goes black.
I shake the memory from my head as I feel my chest begin to cave in. My breathing is suddenly hard to get control of, coming too fast and in short spurts. My heart is racing, and there’s a ringing in my ears so loud that I can’t hear anything else above it. I’m paralyzed, unable to do anything but slide down the wall onto the floor. I can’t feel my legs. I can’t think. All I can do is feel the crushing weight of the smashed-up car like it’s sitting on my chest. I feel the sticky warm blood as it runs from my head and drips onto the roof of the car. I feel the blinding pain in my head as the dizziness takes over. My eyes blur as they try to focus on the here and now and forget the dark, rain speckled highway that I was on that night.
Just like I knew I would, I see her face. But it’s not the face I fell in love with. Not the face I watched change and age over the years. It’s the face of ruin, the face of pain, the face of loss. Her eyes are wide open as she gasps for air on roof of the car. We’re upside down and I’m hovering over her, held in place by the seatbelt. Her mouth opens as she works to take in another breath. Her brows are lifted, causing lines to appear on her forehead, and her body is broken and twisted, covered in cuts and blood.
With a loud gasp, I pull myself from the memory, forcing my lungs to work properly. Margo hears the noise, and she comes running in.
“Daddy, what you doing?”
I wipe the tears from my eyes that I didn’t realize had formed. “Nothing, honey. I’m just taking a little break from unpacking. Your show over?” I ask, still unable to look at her, in fear that she’ll see something is wrong with me and worry.”
“No, I thirsty.”
“I’ll pour you some milk and bring it to you in a minute, okay? Go watch your show.”
“Okay, Dada,” she says, turning and running back out. I hear the moment she’s no longer in the kitchen, her feet now pounding against the soft carpet instead of slapping again the tile of the kitchen.
I open my eyes and force myself to take in the kitchen before me, reminding me that I’m here, not in that car, watching my wife die before my eyes. I take inventory of everything, a way I’ve learned to handle these episodes. I see the oak cabinets with their black granite tops. I see the built-in oven and white tiled floor. I see the boxes I still have to unpack on the floor, next to the stack of empty boxes I’ve already put away. As I list off each thing I see, my heart rate drops a little more until it’s finally returned to normal. As my heart slows, so does my breathing, and I’m no longer feeling the dizziness. I finally have the strength to push myself up. Slowly, I walk to the fridge and get the milk, testing out my balance. I pour some into a cup and take it to her in the living room, where she’s still in front of the TV.