Chapter 16 #2
He looked around. Lilly’s backpack was by the couch, exactly where she always put it until it was time to do homework after dinner. No food or drink was in the living room, but a pillow was by the couch as if an eight-year-old girl had been sitting there and knocked it over when she stood up.
His eyes landed on the television. It was crooked in the large wooden stand. Though there was something off about… Jack’s eyes narrowed. Something was on it.
Jack walked over to it, not even sure he was breathing properly.
A hand print was smeared across the glass of the television.
It wasn’t bloody, thank God, but it was a defined smudge that said someone had tried to hold onto the stand and was forcibly pulled away from it, knocking into the television and their hand dragging along the screen.
He continued forward. The refrigerator door was left open, a jar of pickles broken on the linoleum beneath it. Lilly loved pickles. She usually had some with her afternoon snack. String cheese, usually, and maybe some carrots or crackers too.
An empty plate was on the counter next to the open fridge. A glass of milk sitting next to it. Lilly loved milk, especially since she no longer was forced to drink the powdered kind. The nearly empty glass jug was still on the counter with the lid off.
Jack closed the fridge. Turned and froze.
Mr. Zarin’s bottle of whiskey was sitting empty on the kitchen table. A cigarette butt had scorched a mark into the wooden table but thankfully had not caught fire. A note written over Mrs. Zarin’s shopping list.
Bring me what’s owed to me, boy! My money for the bitches!
It took Jack a solid minute of staring at the note to snap out of his shock. He knew exactly who had taken Mrs. Zarin and Lilly.
Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!
He dialed the operator and rushed out a demand to speak with the police.
Maybe he should have called Chief Cunningham’s home number but he had no idea if the Chief was home or still at work.
During a storm like this, the police station was used as a shelter for anyone who didn’t feel their home was safe to stay in.
Chief Cunningham was usually out helping residents pack up and escorting them to the station.
Even if he got Mrs. Cunningham on the line, she might not be able to get ahold of her husband quickly.
Dialing the station was still his best bet.
As soon as someone picked up, Jack explained where he was, what he believed had happened, and that he needed the Chief to his house immediately. He hated waiting while the officer who answered got the Chief on the radio. Finally, Jack was informed the Chief and two officers were on their way.
Jack hung up. Then snatched the phone off the wall again. He dialed Mr. Zarin’s work number, but it continued to ring and ring. He must already be on his way home.
Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!
What the hell was he supposed to do? His dad had Mrs. Zarin and Lilly! Who knew what he was doing to them? Where would he take them? The trailer? He needed to go there. He needed to find them, save them—
Movement in the backyard caught his attention. Jack’s eyebrows drew down. Through the falling snow, he saw the light in the back shed was on. It shouldn’t be. There was no reason for it to be.
The shed door flew open. Through the kitchen window, Jack saw Lilly in socked feet come running out of it.
Jack was out the back door and down the steps in a heartbeat. Lilly’s frantic eyes landed on him. It took Jack a second to realize she wasn’t holding something in her hands but that they were bound with rope at the wrists. He recognized the rope, too. It was from a spool Mr. Zarin kept in the shed.
Lilly threw herself into Jack’s arms. He went down on a knee in the snow, holding her to him.
She was screaming and crying so loud in his ear, but he didn’t care.
She was alive! Snot ran down from her nose to her lips.
Tears stained her cheeks. She had a red mark under one of her eyes like she’d been struck or maybe fell into something.
Jack pulled her back. As much as he longed to continue holding her, he needed answers. The police were on their way and they needed to know where Mrs. Zarin was.
His eyes landed on the snow on the ground before him. It was faint, covered by the falling flakes descent, but he noticed for the first time the boot prints—as well as the drag marks.
Jack’s heart hammered in his chest as his eyes landed on the open shed door. Through the wind and Lilly’s crying, he could just barely hear the sounds of someone shouting. It was too muffled and he couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman, but there was definitely someone inside Mr. Zarin’s shed.
“Get inside!” Jack ordered Lilly, standing. He needed to get to Mrs. Zarin!
But Lilly clung to him. Her little hands gripping the jacket he hadn’t taken off yet. She was panicked, rightly so, and a mess. His hyperactive brain picked up on the wet spot on her pants, though he didn’t blame her in the slightest.
“Lilly, I need you to go inside!” he tried again. How was she so strong? But she wasn’t listening. She kept grabbing for him, her words a jumbled mess of incomprehensible spluttering. Her gray eyes were wild with fear.
“Lilly, I—”
The gunshot shook the air, loud and distinctive enough to be heard over the storm.
Jack instinctively took Lilly to the ground. Falling into the cold snow with her big brother on top of her seemed to snap Lilly out of her panic. She took a gasping breath and blinked, looking around.
“Are you hit?” Jack demanded.
She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
He got up, staying low. There was no doubt that gunshot had come from the shed. “Get inside, Lilly!”
This time her argument was less panicked, but still just as fearful. “Jackie, no! It’s Dad! He has a gun!”
Jack didn’t need her to tell him that. Those were facts he already knew. But he still had to get in there. He had to save Mrs. Zarin.
An unhinged shout echoed, drawing his attention back to the shed just in time to see the muzzle flash accompanied by a second bellow of gunfire. Something splattered onto the frosty glass from the inside.
Frantic now, Jack pushed Lilly to the back stairs. It was a little too forcefully and she fell onto the snow-covered wood, unbalanced. Jack didn’t look behind him.
He ran for the shed.
He didn’t hear the oncoming sirens or Lilly shouting his name. He didn’t feel the cold of the storm or the slight heat of the shed. He didn’t see the flashing lights or the setting sun.
For one single heartbeat, he just stood there. Taking it all in.
His father was slumped on the floor, leaning up against the right wall. Half of his skull was missing. The crimson of blood and the gray of brain matter were splattered across the wall and window above him like spray from a faucet.
Drip…
Drip…
Drip…
A Colt revolver was still in his hand.
Across the small space on the floor by the table where Mr. Zarin had once sat Jack down to ask him about his and Lilly’s home life was Mrs. Zarin.
She was wearing that multicolored dress she loved so much.
Her hair was still up in the bun she wore it in for work.
She usually took it down after she got Lilly her snack.
Same time that she would take off her work shoes and slip into a pair of house slippers.
Her glasses lay broken beside her right hip.
Her eyes stared up sightlessly at the ceiling of the shed. Her chest, frozen in her last breath, was stained red.
Jack roared out his denial. She couldn’t be gone. She just couldn’t be!
Racing over, he ripped off his jacket and placed it to the gaping hole in her chest. He couldn’t remember if he said anything specific or if he just cried out his terror and pain.
She wasn’t his mother. She hadn’t given birth to him or raised him from a baby. She’d taught him in the first grade and then he hadn’t seen or thought of her again for nine years. Then, in the span of a single weekend, she’d become the mother of his heart.
She couldn’t be gone! He wouldn’t let her!
There was so much she still had to teach him, to experience with him. He was going to graduate high school next year and marry the girl of his dreams. He was going to go to college and buy a home and give her her first grandbaby.
She couldn’t be gone! No, no, no! This wasn’t happening!
Jack’s throat burned, but he continued to shout. He applied more pressure to her wound. Come on, come on… But nothing changed. There was no gasp of life saving breath like in the movies. There was no sudden blink as she came back to reality. There was no twitch of her fingers.
Hands covered his.
Jack jumped, so focused on Mrs. Zarin that he hadn’t realized others had come into the shed. His frantic eyes met the tear stricken face of Mr. Zarin. Jack heard an odd gasping sound as other sounds started coming back to him.
Chief Cunningham was standing over Jack’s father while another officer picked up the gun with a handkerchief.
“Son.”
Jack’s eyes snapped back to Mr. Zarin. “She’s not gone,” he gasped out. It was then that he realized that odd wheezing sound was coming from him. His short breaths were sharp, almost whistling on his lips.
Mr. Zarin swallowed hard as he picked Jack’s hands up off of his wife’s chest. It took him several tries before he was able to say, “She’s gone, son. You can’t help her now.”
Jack shook his head. “No! No! I can’t. She can’t. I…” He looked around, needing something, anything, that could help save her. But there was nothing. They were in a maintenance shed, not a hospital. “Get an ambulance! She’s not gone!”
Mr. Zarin moved Jack’s jacket to cover his wife’s face. He maneuvered himself over her legs to crouch beside him. “She’s gone, son.” His voice cracked. “There’s nothing more for you to do.”
“I tried,” Jack gasped. “I tried… I didn’t mean… I tried…”
“I know.” Mr. Zarin wrapped an arm around Jack, pulling him into his chest. The man was shaking so badly that it felt like he was being pressed up against a motor.
Jack gripped Mr. Zarin’s arm. Even with the jacket covering her face, he couldn’t look away. He could still see her smile, hear her laugh, smell her perfume… It was so vivid. Like she was standing right next to them.
Why was she gone? How? How could the world and the universe take away two mothers from him so cruelly? One by choice and the other by violence.
Why couldn’t he save her? Why hadn’t he been faster, smarter? If he’d only come home from school sooner or realized that they were in the shed instead of taken to his father’s trailer as he’d assumed? If only he’d gotten Lilly into the house faster, he could have saved her!
Jack didn’t know how long they stayed next to Mrs. Zarin’s body. He couldn’t feel anything beyond Mr. Zarin’s embrace. Someone mentioned Lilly’s name, and it snapped Jack out of his fog. Lilly. His sister. He needed to get to his sister.
He looked up. Chief Cunningham was standing right there. The man had his hat off and his head bowed, waiting as respectfully as he could. Someone had placed a white sheet over Jack’s father, which was now stained red.
Somehow, Jack managed to stand. He didn’t quite remember meaning to but at the same time knew he had to.
He stumbled. Chief Cunningham caught him with a hand around his upper arm. Jack nodded automatically to the man, too numb to register the gratitude emotionally. He managed to get himself to the door of the shed without falling. His legs didn’t feel solid. Was it possible he’d left his legs behind?
At a sound that could only be described as a heartbroken, keening wail, Jack paused and looked over his shoulder.
Mr. Zarin had pulled Jack’s jacket down to reveal his wife’s face. He was kneeling by her pristine hair, hunched over with his arms wrapped around his gut like he was trying to hold pieces of himself together as he cried out his anguish.
A zombie stumbled into the house through the back door.
Jack didn’t even remember walking through the snow to get to the house.
He just…found himself inside the kitchen.
Her kitchen. How was it that there was no food on the stovetop or in the oven and yet he could smell the spices of her pot roast and the aromas of freshly baked pies?
Her recipe books so neatly organized on the counter, not by author or by type but by her own personal preference. Her apron on a hook on the wall and the smaller apron Mr. Zarin had recently hung there for Lilly.
Jack looked down at his hands. They felt soaked, but there was nothing on them. Why weren’t his hands drenched in her blood? Had he not tried hard enough?
His fault. All his fault.
He should have never come here. He brought such evil into this house of goodness. Evil that was inside him too.
Drip…
Drip…
Drip…
Blood should have been flowing from his hands, stained with the sins of his father. He couldn’t understand why his hands weren’t red.
“Jack?”
Her voice was a balm to his soul, a healing salve. Jack closed his eyes against it. He didn’t deserve to be healed. He needed to feel this, he deserved to feel this.
“Jack?”
Hands took his, still raised from his examination. Jack ripped his hands back. He was dirty, tainted. Even if there was no blood on his hands, the blood was still there.
Jack lost his balance and fell backwards into the wall by the back door. His elbow clipped something ceramic on the counter and it rattled. Her chicken cookie jar. She’d painted the eyesore in a college art class and Jack had nearly broken it!
His legs gave out. Sliding down the wall, he covered his head with his arms. He’d almost broken her cookie jar! He couldn’t be trusted. He tried. He tried so hard but everything he touched broke. He wasn’t worthy of this house, this kitchen, those cookies…
Arms encircled him.
Jack wanted to push them away, but they were so warm. It never even occurred to him that she shouldn’t be there. It made no sense that she was. He was torn between pushing her away and pulling her closer.
“Shh…” he heard gently in his ear. “I’m here, baby. I’m here. I’m so sorry. Just let it out… I’m here…”
There was no sound, at least to his own ears. His throat was raw and his ears were ringing. Still, his mouth opened and he silently roared out his pain as she rocked him back and forth on the kitchen floor of the only home he’d ever truly known…and would never know again…