Reed Coleman - Empty ever after

Katy, still fully dressed, didn’t stir when I came into the room. She seemed utterly zonked. We had shared the same bed for twenty years, but I wasn’t sure I recognized the woman before me. It can take a lifetime to become familiar and only seconds to become strangers again. I made to leave, but stopped. I removed the message tape from her answering machine, took one more look at Katy, then left.

I think I knew something was wrong even before I turned the car back onto Hanover Street. Sarah sensed it too. I could see it in her expression.

“Dad, what did you do with the security tape?”

“Oh, shit!”

Our worst fears were confirmed when we saw the flickering light through the otherwise opaque living room window. It was a bit of a blur from then on. I couldn’t remember putting the car in park or closing the car door behind me or putting the key in the front door lock. The first thing that stuck was the image of Katy laying face down in a sea of broken glass, blood oozing out of the gash on her forehead, the VCR remote clenched in her right fist.

“Dad! Dad!” Sarah was screaming. It didn’t register as screaming. Her panic reached me as a tiny voice at the end of a kid’s string and soup can telephone. “Dad, Mom took pills, lotsa pills.”

I think I said for her to grab the bottles. I was already carrying Katy to the car.

When Vandervoort came in, I jumped at him.

“This isn’t funny anymore, Pete,” I growled, pinning him to the wall. “This is attempted fuckin’ murder.”

If anyone in the emergency room waiting area hadn’t heard the first part of my rant, that second part surely got their attention. I must’ve been pretty scary, not because Vandervoort looked frightened-frankly, I was rage blind and couldn’t’ve described the sheriff’s expression-but because a steel hand clamped down on my right shoulder.

“You okay, Sheriff?” a deep voice wanted to know.

“I’m fine. Thanks for asking. He’s just a little upset is all.”

Deep Voice was unconvinced. “You sure?”

“Why don’t you go and sit back down,” Vandervoort said. “You look like you could use some help yourself. What the hell happened to you?”

“Had to lay my hog down when some asshole in a SUV ran the light at Blyden and Van Camp.”

The steel clamp eased off my shoulder and I turned. I regained the use of my right arm and my vision. Deep Voice was a big man, barrelchested with a beer keg belly to match. He had a thick neck and thicker arms that were covered in blood and tattoos. He had a young doughy face, but was no kid. His gray beard was braided like a pirate’s. It too was soaked with blood and the gash on his forehead was nastier than Katy’s.

“Don’t go anywhere. When I’m done with this gentleman,” Vandervoort said, nodding at me, “I want to talk about your accident. Maybe we can discuss why you weren’t wearing your helmet.”

“Okay, Sheriff.” Deep Voice was sheepish, touching his hand to the cut on his head. He went and found his seat.

I backed off Vandervoort and gave him the details as we walked outside.

“She was totally asleep when we went to Molly’s. I didn’t think-”

“Stop beating yourself up over it. You couldn’t know what she was going to do. Where’s your kid?”

“She’s in the treatment area with her mom.”

“So that guy on the videotape with the candy bar message, he-”

“-looks an awful lot like Patrick, but the tape’s so fuzzy. It would be impossible to make a positive ID from it.”

“Look, Moe, don’t take this the wrong way, but your ex-wife did try to… Well, she seems pretty convinced.”

“So you believe in ghosts now too?”

“Nope, I’m just saying…”

“I wasn’t kidding in there, Pete. This isn’t funny. If I catch that motherfucker, I’ll-”

“Watch what you say and do,” Vandervoort cut me off. “Maybe that’s what these folks want, the ones behind all this. Your ex-wife goes off the deep end, you end up killing somebody and get shitcanned for life. Your daughter, for all intents and purposes, winds up an orphan. I’d say that’s playing into their hands, wouldn’t you?”

“You’re right. You’re right. I know you’re right, but you shoulda seen Katy laying there on the broken coffee table glass. I thought she was dead, for chrissakes. Sarah was freaked.”

“How is she now?”

“Sarah? She seems all right, but it’s hard to know.”

“And Katy, what do the doctors-”

“She’ll be okay. They pumped her stomach. It’s a good thing we got back when we did or more of that crap might’ve gotten into her system. They’re keeping her here for observation.”

“Maybe that’s a good thing,” he said. “I’ll keep a man posted outside her door for the duration.”

“Thanks, but I doubt they’ll try anything here. Too many people around.”

“Let’s hope so. Listen, I better go talk to that biker in there, but don’t forget our appointment later this morning.”

“It’s a date.”

We shook hands. This time he gave my hand back promptly.

Sarah was waiting for me outside the treatment cubicle when I went back inside. She’d been strong through all of this, but now that the adrenaline was wearing off, the fear and exhaustion were showing through. She was white, her eyes shot red with blood. For the first time in her life, Sarah looked old. Welcome to adulthood.

“Dad, you’re bleeding. Your shoulder.”

“Oh, that,” I said, pulling my shirt around to look. “No, that’s somebody else’s blood. A guy who had a motorcycle accident, put his hand on my shoulder.”

For some reason, that was the last straw. Sarah broke down. She fell into my arms and began sobbing.

“Shhhhh, kiddo. It’s okay. Everything will be okay. Shhhhh…”

When she was a little girl and would come crying about scraping her knee or some kid in her class making fun of her red hair, those words were magic. Now when I said them, she simply cried harder. Had she finally outgrown the magic, I wondered, or was it that the magic wouldn’t work if the magician no longer believed in his powers?

Later that morning, I was quite amazed at how easily I rattled off the litany of secrets and sins to Sheriff Vandervoort. Yet, rattle them off I did. No hedging, no holding back, no compromising, no spin, just the raw, unvarnished facts. I suppose most of the people in my life knew some of the details of my involvement with the Maloneys, but drips and drabs of reality, no matter how sordid or saintly, never amount to the whole truth. And regardless of what people say, there is only ever one truth of things. There are different versions of reality, not of the truth.

Vandervoort now knew more about what had gone on between the Maloneys and me than anyone on the planet besides myself. By the look on his face, I wasn’t so sure he was happy to hold the honor. It was a tossup as to whether Pete seemed more horrified by the revelation that Francis had once raped and beaten a transvestite prostitute or that he had once encouraged Patrick to commit suicide.

“Christ… I’m not sure which I want to do more, throw up or take a shower,” he said. “Do Katy and Sarah know any of this?”

“Not the real details, no. I’ve carried this shit around with me for twenty-two years. It ruined my marriage and that’s where the damage has to stop.”

“I’ll do what I can. The thing is, I can see why someone might hate the father. And lord knows there’s plenty of people who hate fags-sorry, gays, but that doesn’t explain why this is going on. This has got to be about you,” he said.

“That’s the assumption I’ve been working under since it all started.”