Blake Pierce - Once Gone

Riley recalled once again Betty Richter’s assessment of the odds that Peterson had been killed.

I’d say ninety-nine percent.

But that nagging one percent somehow rendered the other ninety-nine meaningless and absurd. And besides, even if Peterson really had died, what difference did it make? Riley remembered Marie’s awful words on the phone on the day of her suicide.

Maybe he’s like a ghost, Riley. Maybe that’s what happened when you blew him up. You killed his body but you didn’t kill his evil.

Yes, that was it. She had been fighting a losing battle all her life. Evil, after all, haunted the world, as surely as it did this place where she and Marie had suffered so horribly. It was a lesson she should have learned as a little girl, when she couldn’t stop her mother from being murdered. The lesson was hammered home by Marie’s suicide. Rescuing her had been pointless. There was no point in rescuing anybody, not even herself. Evil would prevail in the end. It was just as Marie had told her over the phone.

You can’t fight a ghost. Give it up, Riley.

And Marie, so much braver than Riley had known, finally took matters into her own hands. She’d explained her choice in five simple words.

This is the only way.

But that was not courage, to take your life own life. That was cowardice.

A voice broke through Riley’s darkness.

“You all right, lady?”

Riley looked up.

“What?”

Then, slowly, she realized that she was on her knees in a vacant city lot. Tears were running down her face.

“Should I call someone for you?” the voice asked. Riley saw that a woman had stopped on the nearby sidewalk, an older woman in shabby clothes but with a concerned look on her face.

Riley got her sobbing under control and rose to her feet, and the woman shuffled off.

Riley stood there, numb. If she couldn’t put an end to her own horror, she knew a way that she could numb herself against it. It wasn’t courageous, and it wasn’t honorable, but Riley was past caring. She wasn’t going to resist it any longer. She got into her car and drove toward home.

Hands still shaking, Riley reached into a kitchen cabinet for the bottle of vodka she’d stashed, the one she promised she would never touch again. She unscrewed the bottle cap and tried to pour it quietly into a glass, so that April wouldn’t hear. Since it looked so much like water, she hoped she could drink it openly without lying about it. She didn’t want to lie. But the bottle gurgled indiscreetly.

“What’s going on, Mom?” April asked from behind her at the kitchen table.

“Nothing,” Riley answered.

She heard April groan a little. She could tell that her daughter knew what she was doing. But there was no pouring the vodka back into the bottle. Riley wanted to throw it away, she really did. The last thing she wanted to do was drink, especially in front of April. But she had never felt so low, so shaken. She felt as if the world were conspiring against her. And she really needed a drink.

Riley slipped the bottle back into the cabinet, then went to the table and sat down with her glass. She took a long sip, and it burned her throat in a comforting way. April stared at her for a moment.

“That’s vodka, isn’t it, Mom?” she said.

Riley said nothing, guilt creeping over her. Did April deserve this? Riley had left her at home all day, calling occasionally to check up on her, and the girl had been perfectly responsible and had stayed out of trouble. Now Riley was the one being furtive and reckless.

“You got mad at me for smoking pot,” April said.

Riley still said nothing.

“Now is when you’re supposed to tell me that this is different,” April said.

“It is different,” Riley said wearily.

April glared.

“How?”

Riley sighed, knowing her daughter was right, and feeling a deepening sense of shame.

“Pot’s illegal,” she said. “This isn’t. And – ”

“And you’re an adult and I’m a kid, right?”

Riley didn’t reply. Of course, that was exactly what she had been starting to say. And of course, it was hypocritical and wrong.

“I don’t want to argue,” Riley said.

“Are you really going to start into this kind of thing again?” April said. “You drank so much when you were going through all those troubles – and you never even told me what it was all about.”

Riley felt her chin clench. Was it from anger? What on earth did she have to be angry with April about, at least right now?

“There are some things I just can’t tell you,” Riley said.

April rolled her eyes.

“Jesus, Mom, why not? I mean, am I ever going to be grown up enough to learn the awful truth about what you do? It can’t be much worse that what I imagine. Believe me, I can imagine a lot.”

April got up from her chair and stomped over to the cabinet. She pulled down the vodka bottle and started to pour herself a glass.

“Please don’t do that, April,” Riley said weakly.

“How are you going to stop me?”

Riley got up and gently took the bottle away from April. Then she sat down again and poured the contents of April’s glass into her own glass.

“Just finish eating your food, okay?” Riley said.

April was tearing up now.

“Mom, I wish you could see yourself,” she said. “Maybe you’d understand how it hurts me to see you like this. And how it hurts that you never tell me anything. It just hurts so much.”

Riley tried to speak but found that she couldn’t.

“Talk to somebody, Mom,” April said, beginning to sob. “If not to me, to somebody. There must be somebody you can trust.”

April fled into her room and slammed the door behind her.

Riley buried her face in her hands. Why did she keep failing so badly with April? Why couldn’t she keep the ugly parts of her life separate from her daughter?

Her whole body heaved with sobs. Her world had spun completely out of control and she couldn’t form a single coherent thought.

She sat there until the tears stopped flowing.

Taking the bottle and the glass with her, she went into the living room and sat on the couch. She clicked on the TV and watched the first channel that came up. She had no idea what movie or TV show she’d happened upon, and she didn’t care. She just sat there staring blankly at the pictures and letting the meaningless voices wash over her.

But she couldn’t stop the images flooding through her mind. She saw the faces of the women who had been killed. She saw the blinding flame of Peterson’s torch moving toward her. And she saw Marie’s dead face – both when Riley had found her hanging and when she’d been so artfully displayed in the coffin.

A new emotion started to crawl along her nerves – an emotion that she dreaded above all others. It was fear.

She was terrified of Peterson, and she could feel his vengeful presence all around her. It didn’t much matter whether he was alive or dead. He’d taken Marie’s life, and Riley couldn’t shake the conviction that she was his next target.

She also feared, perhaps even more, the abyss that she was falling into now. Were the two really separate? Hadn’t Peterson caused this abyss? This was not the Riley she knew. Did PTSD ever have an end?

Riley lost track of time. Her whole body buzzed and ached with her multifaceted fear. She drank steadily, but the vodka wasn’t numbing her at all.

She finally went to the bathroom and combed the medicine cabinet and found what she was looking for. Finally, with shaking hands, she found it: her prescription tranquilizers. She was supposed to take one at bedtime, and to never mix it with alcohol.