Teresa Hill - Someone To Watch Over Me

Maybe next week she’d find the name and number of the project leader and volunteer.

Gwen finished her dinner, eating no more than half of it, and quickly cleaned her plate and utensils and then faced her tidy, empty house.

She felt safe inside its walls most of the time.

Relatively safe. She might actually be getting better. Oh, she got impatient with herself and just plain mad at the whole world sometimes, but that’s just the way life was. Things happened.

Bad things.

People got hurt. They got scared. They got mad. They ran away. They got lost.

Why was that? Gwen just didn’t know.

She sat down on the sofa, curling up on one end, her head against the left arm, her feet tucked under her. Her eyes wandered around the house that still didn’t feel like her own, and she happened to glance at a figurine on the mantel, one her aunt had left behind. It was an angel.

A woman in a beautiful, long, flowing gown with something that looked like wings. She had the kindest expression on her face.

Gwen was at something of a standoff with God ever since the attack—she didn’t think she really believed anymore—but she liked having her angel on the mantel, liked to imagine a real angel sent by God watching over her. There was something motherly about the idea, and Gwen had been missing her mother since she moved here.

Her mother hadn’t quite understood what had happened to Gwen. Gwen understood not wanting to believe awful things could just happen to people. But when that led to people thinking she was somehow responsible…That’s when she stopped understanding and was just plain hurt.

Plus, there was that whole mad-at-God thing Gwen had going on, which her mother really disapproved of. The attack had somehow become a test of faith that Gwen had failed, at least in her mother’s eyes.

Things had gone from bad to worse at home, and Gwen had just wanted to get away. So when her aunt had decided to move, Gwen had jumped at the chance to come to Magnolia Falls.

She curled up on her couch, her head on a pillow tucked into one end, all the lights still burning, the music still playing softly to cover all those pesky little night sounds, her little figurine seeming to watch over her in a way she found comforting beyond any kind of logic, and in that moment, the day didn’t seem so horrible or overwhelming.

She needed someone to listen, to say that yes, sometimes life was really scary and so very difficult, and that people on Earth really didn’t quite understand why; she needed someone to even be a little angry on her behalf.

As if what had happened to her had been so bad, it could make God mad? It hadn’t been. Not in the grand scheme of things.

It had just shaken her to the core, left her feeling vulnerable and alone. It was like being dropped in a deep, dark hole and not knowing how to get out.

So she’d come here, to a place where no one really knew her, a place she’d visited a few times and always felt safe. To a place where the man who’d attacked her wouldn’t be able to find her once he got out of prison. That had been important to her—that he wouldn’t know where she was.

She’d told herself she’d rebuild her life here, that she’d get better.

Maybe she would.

In the meantime, she curled up almost in a ball and miserably poured out her troubles to an empty room and wondered if anyone was listening.

I’m so tired, Gwen said. Everything seems so hard, like such an effort. Sometimes, I don’t know how I’ll be able to go on, if things are always this hard. Help me. Please. Couldn’t you just help me? Couldn’t you just take all the pain away?

And when she was done, she cried a little bit, closed her eyes and imagined someone stroking her hair, telling her everything was going to be okay.

Jax woke disoriented, with the sun blazing into his eyes. He groaned and rolled over, to get away from the light, then realized he was on the sofa in his mother’s living room.

Wincing at the pain in his head, he stared at the clock, and saw that it was six-thirty. Late for him.

He rolled up and onto his feet, shrugging out the kinks as he walked down the hall, had the bedroom door open and actually stared at the empty bed for at least fifteen seconds before he remembered his mother was gone.

It hit him once more, as if it were happening all over again. He’d counted on this day being a tiny bit easier, but it didn’t seem to be working that way. He didn’t know how to do this, how to say goodbye to the woman who’d taken care of him his entire life, how to be without her.

The bedsprings creaked ever so slightly, and his heart gave a lurch, thinking maybe it had all been some horrible dream. He rushed over to the bed and started digging through the covers.

And uncovered the dog.

“Romeo?” he yelled. “What are you doing?”

The dog whined and laid his head down on the pillow. Big, sad puppy eyes seemed to ask where Jax’s mother was, why she wasn’t in her bed where she belonged and when she’d be coming home.

“She’s not coming back,” Jax said. “She’s gone.”

How would he ever make this ridiculous creature understand, when Jax didn’t understand himself?

Romeo made a pitiful squeaking sound and buried his nose in the pillow, as if he might find Jax’s mother there.

Jax was getting ready to yell at the dog again, when he heard a sound behind him. His sisters, all three of them, standing in a row like the little stair-step girls he remembered, crowded into the doorway watching him with the dog.

They’d spent the night, not wanting to be alone any more than he had, and now they looked bleak, exhausted, angry, as surprised as he’d been to see that today might even be harder than the day before and probably wondering how they, too, would get through it.

There was nothing to say. The reality of the situation said it all.

Romeo started whining again, low, heartbroken sounds, something like Jax might have made himself, if he’d allowed himself the luxury.

He was getting ready to yell once more, but Kim got to Romeo first. She knelt by the side of the bed, fussing over the dog and hugging him and crying.

Fine.

She could comfort the canine, offer him something Jax denied himself. He looked back at his other two sisters, who gave him a look that said plainly, What else is there to do?

Katie finally offered to go make coffee. Kathie said she was getting dressed because they had so much to do. Jax walked out onto the back porch, just to get out of the house and all the misery that seemed to be contained inside it. He stood there and listened to the birds making a racket, a car being started down the block, a siren blaring in the distance.

Day One without his mother.

It had to get better, because if it didn’t, he wouldn’t be able to stand it.

Jax got elected to go to the funeral home, something that made cutting off his right arm sound not so bad. He shoved open the door and marched down the hall, determined to get it over with as quickly as possible. He didn’t care what the funeral cost, and he really didn’t care what the service was like.

Sorry, Mom, he whispered, as if she might hear.

Jax knew the director, John Williams, who also served as the county coroner. How in the world did he handle those two jobs day after day?

John met him at the door and tried to put him at ease with small talk, but Jax cut him off.

“I need to do this and get out of here,” he said, taking a seat in John’s office.

“Sure,” John said, opening up a file on his desk. “I understand. And I have some…well, relatively good news. Your mother wanted to spare you and the girls as much as possible, so she came to see me a few months back and took care of all the planning herself.”