In Memory
I don't think I've ever posted this online before. Not sure I've even shared it with many/any friends other than my significant other. I originally wrote this 10 years ago and I'm still actually very very proud of it, so I dusted it off, tweaked it (but only barely) and now unleash it upon the world. Please enjoy.
In Memory
The gentle rain had at last subsided, but the dark clouds had not yet cleared. The man turned, glanced back once and then continued home. ‘Home’ he muttered to himself distain etched in the word. The town he stood in at this moment was where he belonged, but he had left when the misery was too overpowering knowing it would forever pull at his heart. Home, the word echoing in his head. No, the place where he was headed to was not home, it was simply where he lived.
He slid his hand across the smooth marble as he made his way through the wet grass. He managed to find the energy to lift his feet and trek the distance from the rectangular structure behind him to the cold uninviting metal of the vehicle several yards away. The bitter laugh came again. He wondered if anyone else had ever been in this situation before, finding a grave to be more comforting than a car. He climbed in and turned the key in the ignition, the sudden roar of the engine shattering the silence that had been looming in the air only seconds before. Slowly he shifted the car into gear, pulled away from the curb, and headed toward the ‘home’ that would again, he could reasonably presume, be empty.
As he parked in front of the unlit house he vaguely registered the magnificent sunset and rainbow behind him. He was dazed, lost in thought again, and it was a few moments before he noticed he had inserted the wrong key into the door. He stood there, trying again, as if this time the key would change where the door led and he would find himself walking ten years into the past. Staring into the pitch-blackness of the entryway, he found himself disappointed as always. His body, cold from standing in wet clothes, had been able to do what his mind could not and found the right key to let him inside.
This is how life was now. A wave of depression struck him and he stumbled into the study, slumped into the armchair and began to cry. He wasn’t sure how long it was before the pain subsided and he was able to collect himself, but it was completely dark outside now. He glanced up through water filled, blood-shot eyes at the large grandfather clock. The hands and numbers on the face told him that the time was now 1:30 am. Then, the clink of a key in a doorknob was heard down the hall, the prelude to the jolting slam of the back door.
He stood up and walked briskly to the dining area. “One thirty!” He shouted. As he rounded the corner a girl with short spiky black hair and bright green eyes filled his vision. “And what are you wearing!”
“Oh, you’re still up.” The teenage girl remarked indifferently. She was clothed, if it could be called clothed, in a black leather mini skirt and a green tank that she had rolled up to show half of her stomach. “It’s what everyone wears,” she shrugged off the demand as nonchalantly as she shrugged off the strap of her purse, tossing it on the kitchen table.
“Oh, so it’s one of those ‘I’m going to express my individuality by doing what everyone else does’ kind of things is it?”
“Look, it’s none of your business what I wear!” She retorted, her voice registering some anger, changing from the monotone callousness it had been before.
“Yes it is! I’m your father! And it’s a school night! Why on earth were you out so late? I can’t understand why you keep doing this to me! The school keeps calling saying you’ve been skipping classes or smoking in the bathroom. Do you have any concern at all for your future!” His voice rose in volume again.
“Whatever,” she mumbled under her breath. It was the same old lecture she always heard from him. “You shouldn’t yell so much, you woke sleeping beauty.” The rebellious teen was looking past her father to the other occupant of the house, an unseen spectator till now.
The man spun around to see the unheralded entrant. “Bu-” he started but was interrupted. “Chloe,” the girl who now stood behind him corrected. She widened her soft blue eyes in the slightest of warning. She had medium-length blonde hair, was dressed in baby blue pajamas, and like her sister was in her late teens.
“Sorry. I didn’t know you were home, there were no lights on…” he trailed off.
“I was in the studio,” she responded tersely, quietly.
The dark haired girl started up the staircase without a word.
“Where do you think you’re going? I’m not finished talking to you yet!” the father’s voice regained its earlier volume in a split second with the expertise that seems to come only to fathers.
“Well I’m finished talking to you. I have no business with someone who’s stuck living in the past trying to call up the spirits of people he killed.” The girl flipped a long gold earring dangling in lieu of hair due to her short cut and continued ascending the stairs.
“Madison! That was way out of line, even for you!” Chloe’s voice reprimanded. Her yell was strained though, sounding as if the voice that produced it was either too accustomed to yelling, or too used to whispering.
If Madison heard the weak chastisement the only acknowledgement she made was to raise her hand and wave, with one finger. Then she disappeared around the corner of the upstairs landing. Chloe turned her attention back to her father who had collapsed onto a bar stool by the kitchen counter and buried his head in his arms.
“Are you okay?” she whispered softly in his ear.
“No,” came the muffled reply. “None of us are.” He gave a deep sigh and raised his head to look at his daughter. “So what were you working on?”
“Oh, uhm, the usual,” Chloe stammered, caught off guard by his sudden change in topic and tone.
“Can I see it?”
“No. Not yet. It’s not…I’m not…” her voice retreated into the dark corners of the house.
“You used to come running to me with your artwork.”
“Yeah, when I was five.” She gave him a slight sarcastic smile.
There were a few moments of silence. Father and daughter just sat there, Chloe studying her father’s face; her father, starting at the refrigerator perhaps seeing some of the bright crayon drawn pictures that used to hang there.
“How did she know I went to the grave today?” his question finally ended the silence.
“Huh?”
“How did she know I went to the grave today?” he repeated. “She said...” but he couldn’t bring himself to repeat the vicious words Madison had lashed out with so it came out chopped between sobs, “stuck,…past,…people.”
“You’ve got mud all over you. And the car too. Office buildings don’t have dirt floors.”
Father turned to face daughter again. She gave him a knowing smile.
“And also,” Chloe paused. “I think she went today too.” She let out a tiny sigh and gazed at the stairs where her sister had ascended.
He widened his eyes at this revelation. “What? But I thought she said-”
“Maddy goes too. She doesn’t like to let us know. But she goes. She’s trying to escape the past by running headlong into the future.”
The man looked down at his daughter with saddened eyes. “You know too much about our pain,” he wanted to tell her. “And you?”
“I do art.” Chloe answered simply.
The quiet morning air was disrupted by the sound of someone descending the steps. Madison was surprised to see her sister sitting at the table quiet munching on a bowl of cereal.
“What are you still doing here? He’s not here is he?” Madison looked around the room listening for any sign of their father.
“No, he’s at work.” Chloe said looking up at her sister. She pushed a bowl and the carton of milk to the opposite side of the table. Madison accepted the invitation, sat down, and started to pour herself a bowl of cereal.
“He’s not supposed to work today.”
“And we’re supposed to be at school today. Yet here we are.”
“So why are you skipping? Especially after all the lectures I get.”
“It’s Math today,” Chloe answered, her eyes looked down at the table.
“Oh.” Madison said in understanding. “I’m surprised the school hasn’t called about you. You’ve skipped that class several times. And you don’t ever talk at school. People keep asking me if you’re a mute.”
Chloe played with her cereal for a few seconds before returning her gaze to her sister. “You should apologize to him. What you said last night was awful.”
“He deserved it.” Madison retorted in a huff snapping her head to stare out at the backyard.
“You don’t mean that.” Chloe said, watching as her sister glanced at her then darted her eyes to look out the sliding glass door again. It was one of the signs Chloe recognized. One that showed Madison didn’t have full conviction behind her words.
“He’s never around anymore. He’s always …there…or at work.”
“He has to work the long hours to make money. And-” Chloe cut herself off, not quite sure how to respond to the other part of the accusation. “You go there too,” she reminded, barely above a whisper, face down looking sheepishly at the table.
Madison decided to ignore the second part. Usually such a claim would send her into a loud defensive streak that would end with her stomping out of the house and disappearing for several hours, but she found she was feeling like talking today. After the way things had gone last night at the party, talking things out with her sister sounded like a good idea. A moment later she choked out, “He hates me.”
“What?” Chloe regarded at her sister in shock.
“The only time he pays any attention to me is to yell at me! He hates me! He blames me I know it! And he should! It’s all my fault! If I had just…I had been...” Madison melted into a fit of crying she herself was surprised by.
“No! No, no, no!” Chloe leapt around the table and threw her arms around her sister. She held her close and rocked her gently trying to sooth her. “He yells because he loves you, and he worries about you so much. And it’s not your fault. And, it’s not his fault either.” After several minutes of unrestrained crying Madison wiped her eyes and looked up at Chloe, her expression an unexpected one of confusion.
“Ooneether.” Madison mumbled into her sister’s shoulder.
“Hmm?”
“You said it wasn’t my fault, and it wasn’t his. It’s not yours either Chloe.”
Chloe looked away, her doubt reflected in her actions. “But I was so useless. I, I couldn’t do anything. I was…”
Madison chuckled. “I guess we’ve all been dummies huh? We’ve all been blaming ourselves, or each other.”
Chloe gave a weak misty-eyed smile. “A bunch of dummies.”
“Why don’t you ever go? To…the grave?” Madison paused, her mouth choking on the word they all hated saying.
“I can’t face her yet. Not until…”
“You’re done? Will you let me see it?” A flicker of hope lighting up Madison’s green eyes.
“I can’t. I’m not ready for you or Dad to see it,” Chloe stepped back, retreating again physically and emotionally, then went to the sink to clean up her dishes. Madison gave a sigh and handed her dishes to her sister.
“I’m going to go get groceries or something. We’re out of milk now.” Madison grabbed a light jacket out of the hallway closet and headed out the back door.
“Not my fault? Not Dad’s fault, and not Madison’s fault. So why do we all feel guilty? You would have straightened us out, wouldn’t you? We’re all pretty helpless without you.” Chloe gazed around the empty kitchen and dining area, fighting back emotions that threated to leak from her eyes. “I really miss you sis.” Chloe headed up the stairs, “Better work on laundry I guess,” she said in an almost sing-song voice to herself as she continued to talk aloud as a distraction for her mind.
She entered Madison’s room and began gathering up some of the dirty clothing that were strewn about when she noticed something on her sister’s bed that made her drop everything she had just picked up. She was in such a state of shock that she didn’t hear the back door and the footsteps coming up the stairs.
“I forgot my wallet!” Madison’s voice shouted, and then Madison entered the room. “Chloe?”
“Uh, laun…laundry.” Chloe stuttered, and then pointed to the object on the bed.
Madison ran over to the bed and threw the covers to hide what her sister had just discovered. “Uhm, it’s just...I...” it was now Madison’s turn to stutter.
“I thought you broke it that night.”
“I did.” Madison relented and tenderly pulled the covers back open and the two girls gazed at the object from a life long gone. It was a large white telephone with a red receiver and a strange face painted on it. “But I fixed it. On the night, when she…she died, I never wanted to hear that phone again. I smashed it on the ground, but I somehow, just…never threw it away. I’ve been working on it, just every now and then. I’m kinda good with electronics I guess, so I hope I can have it done by, uhm, y’know. I was going to take it, and show it to her.” Madison fidgetted with her gold earring. “Call it a, birthday present, I guess.”
Chloe’s eyes filled with tears and she threw her arms around her sister. Madison just stood there and tried to soothe her sister. “I think we’re finally ready to move on, aren’t we?” she said bemused. Chloe nodded into her sister’s shirt.
Later that night the small still muddy car pulled into the driveway, and was followed by the sound of feet in the front hall
“I’m making dinner. It’s almost ready if you’d wash up.”
The man of the house poked his head into the kitchen a look of complete shock on it.
“What?” Madison asked.
“You-, you’re fixing dinner?”
“Yeah. People gotta eat you know.”
“But usually-”
“Dads with dirty hands don’t get anything though.” Madison scolded her dad with a wag of the large wooden spoon then turned from her father back to the stovetop.
“R-right.” The man put his briefcase on the table, took off his long white coat and hung it in the hall closet on his way to the bathroom to wash his hands and face. A few minutes later he returned to the kitchen to find the table modestly set for two. “What about Chloe?” he asked.
“Oh, she got a burst of inspiration and said she’d be working in the studio. She uh...suggested we, you and I…take some time to talk.” Madison sat down across from her father. She looked around the room uneasily for a few seconds. “I’m sorry. About, what I said yesterday,” she began. “It’s just, it’s been so much easier to blame you, than to have to deal with blaming myself, or…blaming no one.” She sighed almost defeated.
“I’m sorry too.” he began. “I…I know I’m not here for you and Chloe like I should be. I’m sorry I yell. It’s just, I worry that one of these days, you’ll go out, and you won’t come back, and I…I can’t stand to lose you or Chloe like we lost-” he began to break down again. Madison looked at him awkwardly from the other side of the table then gave in and slunk over to her father and gave him a big hug, the first in several years. “I’m so tired,” he moaned from beneath the folds of clothing. “I’m so tired of crying. I still miss your sister so much. But I’m ruining what I still have. I can’t keep crying forever. I know I have got to move on. But-“
“Don’t worry. I don’t think she’ll see it as us forgetting about her. I wish I had cried a bit more. But, it’s been ten years. I think she’d tell us to get on with things by now. I can’t help...but wish sometimes, it would have been me.” Madison’s father looked quickly up at her, his very dark eyes glistening in the kitchen light. “She was always the strongest one, and she really kept us together,” she trained off contemplatively.
Father and daughter sat holding each other for a while before Madison finally spoke again. “I want to go see her. All of us. On Wednesday.” He nodded with a pained knowing half smile.
“It’s been almost three days.” Madison said with a tone somewhere between annoyed and amused, staring at the doorway into the small shed that served as Chloe’s studio.
“I heard her getting something to eat at about 4 this morning, but by the time I got to the kitchen she was back out here working again.” The girls’ father stood next to her.
“She hasn’t forgotten what today is has she?” Madison sounded both worried and indignant. He looked down at her eyebrows raised. Madison looked back up and let loose a short laugh. “Of course not, it’s Chloe,” she answered herself. Madison nervously adjusted her green T-shirt before raising her hand and knocking on the door. “Are you coming?”
“I’ll meet you there!” came a soft shout from inside. “Don’t worry! I’ll be just a few minutes behind!” Madison and her father looked at each other frowning for a few seconds, then shrugged and went to get in the car. Chloe could still follow in the truck.
Madison climbed out of the car when it had come to a stop in the cemetery, the man following behind. “So, are you going to tell me what’s in your backpack yet?” he asked eyeing the green and black bag Madison had slung over one shoulder.
“Are you going to tell me what’s in that folder?”
He smiled. “Guess we all have our surprises. Look.” He pointed to the baby blue truck that had just backed up next to the little white car the two had arrived in. In the bed was something massive tethered down and covered with a few old bed sheets.
“Made it.” Chloe panted as she came jogging up to her sister and father. The three of them turned and each taking a deep breath walked towards a very large square chest tomb near the center of the cemetery.
They all stood there silently reading the inscription and thinking to themselves for several minutes and then Madison made to take off and unzip her backpack. “I’m ready again. I told you, that I wouldn’t let you down, and, I’m finally ready to keep my promise sis.” Madison pulled out the phone that Chloe had seen in her room the previous week. “It’s all fixed. It’ll buzz again, and the nose will light up just like it used to.” Madison set the phone down and stepped back her father and sister watching as she tried to sneak wiping her nose.
“My turn.” Chloe walked quickly over to the truck and began undoing tethers and bungie cords. “I’ve been working on it for a while. It, didn’t seem right though, but I tried again this week and well…” she pulled back the bed sheets letting them drop in the truck bed and on the ground.
“It’s her,” he whispered in awe. “You made a sculpture of her.”
“She’s a hero. It’s only right that she have a true monument.”
The three of them stood eyeing the massive artwork of a young girl in a dynamic pose. Although the sculpture was white, the three of them saw the fiery red ponytail and eyes and the familiar pink bow and dress. Their eyes then led them down to the single word etched at the bottom in capital letters:
BLOSSOM
“I guess that means it’s my turn.” The man pulled the large envelope out of a pocket in his white lab coat, then reached into envelope and pulled out a stack of paperwork and three keys. “Let’s go home girls. Home to Townsville.”
In Memory
The gentle rain had at last subsided, but the dark clouds had not yet cleared. The man turned, glanced back once and then continued home. ‘Home’ he muttered to himself distain etched in the word. The town he stood in at this moment was where he belonged, but he had left when the misery was too overpowering knowing it would forever pull at his heart. Home, the word echoing in his head. No, the place where he was headed to was not home, it was simply where he lived.
He slid his hand across the smooth marble as he made his way through the wet grass. He managed to find the energy to lift his feet and trek the distance from the rectangular structure behind him to the cold uninviting metal of the vehicle several yards away. The bitter laugh came again. He wondered if anyone else had ever been in this situation before, finding a grave to be more comforting than a car. He climbed in and turned the key in the ignition, the sudden roar of the engine shattering the silence that had been looming in the air only seconds before. Slowly he shifted the car into gear, pulled away from the curb, and headed toward the ‘home’ that would again, he could reasonably presume, be empty.
As he parked in front of the unlit house he vaguely registered the magnificent sunset and rainbow behind him. He was dazed, lost in thought again, and it was a few moments before he noticed he had inserted the wrong key into the door. He stood there, trying again, as if this time the key would change where the door led and he would find himself walking ten years into the past. Staring into the pitch-blackness of the entryway, he found himself disappointed as always. His body, cold from standing in wet clothes, had been able to do what his mind could not and found the right key to let him inside.
This is how life was now. A wave of depression struck him and he stumbled into the study, slumped into the armchair and began to cry. He wasn’t sure how long it was before the pain subsided and he was able to collect himself, but it was completely dark outside now. He glanced up through water filled, blood-shot eyes at the large grandfather clock. The hands and numbers on the face told him that the time was now 1:30 am. Then, the clink of a key in a doorknob was heard down the hall, the prelude to the jolting slam of the back door.
He stood up and walked briskly to the dining area. “One thirty!” He shouted. As he rounded the corner a girl with short spiky black hair and bright green eyes filled his vision. “And what are you wearing!”
“Oh, you’re still up.” The teenage girl remarked indifferently. She was clothed, if it could be called clothed, in a black leather mini skirt and a green tank that she had rolled up to show half of her stomach. “It’s what everyone wears,” she shrugged off the demand as nonchalantly as she shrugged off the strap of her purse, tossing it on the kitchen table.
“Oh, so it’s one of those ‘I’m going to express my individuality by doing what everyone else does’ kind of things is it?”
“Look, it’s none of your business what I wear!” She retorted, her voice registering some anger, changing from the monotone callousness it had been before.
“Yes it is! I’m your father! And it’s a school night! Why on earth were you out so late? I can’t understand why you keep doing this to me! The school keeps calling saying you’ve been skipping classes or smoking in the bathroom. Do you have any concern at all for your future!” His voice rose in volume again.
“Whatever,” she mumbled under her breath. It was the same old lecture she always heard from him. “You shouldn’t yell so much, you woke sleeping beauty.” The rebellious teen was looking past her father to the other occupant of the house, an unseen spectator till now.
The man spun around to see the unheralded entrant. “Bu-” he started but was interrupted. “Chloe,” the girl who now stood behind him corrected. She widened her soft blue eyes in the slightest of warning. She had medium-length blonde hair, was dressed in baby blue pajamas, and like her sister was in her late teens.
“Sorry. I didn’t know you were home, there were no lights on…” he trailed off.
“I was in the studio,” she responded tersely, quietly.
The dark haired girl started up the staircase without a word.
“Where do you think you’re going? I’m not finished talking to you yet!” the father’s voice regained its earlier volume in a split second with the expertise that seems to come only to fathers.
“Well I’m finished talking to you. I have no business with someone who’s stuck living in the past trying to call up the spirits of people he killed.” The girl flipped a long gold earring dangling in lieu of hair due to her short cut and continued ascending the stairs.
“Madison! That was way out of line, even for you!” Chloe’s voice reprimanded. Her yell was strained though, sounding as if the voice that produced it was either too accustomed to yelling, or too used to whispering.
If Madison heard the weak chastisement the only acknowledgement she made was to raise her hand and wave, with one finger. Then she disappeared around the corner of the upstairs landing. Chloe turned her attention back to her father who had collapsed onto a bar stool by the kitchen counter and buried his head in his arms.
“Are you okay?” she whispered softly in his ear.
“No,” came the muffled reply. “None of us are.” He gave a deep sigh and raised his head to look at his daughter. “So what were you working on?”
“Oh, uhm, the usual,” Chloe stammered, caught off guard by his sudden change in topic and tone.
“Can I see it?”
“No. Not yet. It’s not…I’m not…” her voice retreated into the dark corners of the house.
“You used to come running to me with your artwork.”
“Yeah, when I was five.” She gave him a slight sarcastic smile.
There were a few moments of silence. Father and daughter just sat there, Chloe studying her father’s face; her father, starting at the refrigerator perhaps seeing some of the bright crayon drawn pictures that used to hang there.
“How did she know I went to the grave today?” his question finally ended the silence.
“Huh?”
“How did she know I went to the grave today?” he repeated. “She said...” but he couldn’t bring himself to repeat the vicious words Madison had lashed out with so it came out chopped between sobs, “stuck,…past,…people.”
“You’ve got mud all over you. And the car too. Office buildings don’t have dirt floors.”
Father turned to face daughter again. She gave him a knowing smile.
“And also,” Chloe paused. “I think she went today too.” She let out a tiny sigh and gazed at the stairs where her sister had ascended.
He widened his eyes at this revelation. “What? But I thought she said-”
“Maddy goes too. She doesn’t like to let us know. But she goes. She’s trying to escape the past by running headlong into the future.”
The man looked down at his daughter with saddened eyes. “You know too much about our pain,” he wanted to tell her. “And you?”
“I do art.” Chloe answered simply.
The quiet morning air was disrupted by the sound of someone descending the steps. Madison was surprised to see her sister sitting at the table quiet munching on a bowl of cereal.
“What are you still doing here? He’s not here is he?” Madison looked around the room listening for any sign of their father.
“No, he’s at work.” Chloe said looking up at her sister. She pushed a bowl and the carton of milk to the opposite side of the table. Madison accepted the invitation, sat down, and started to pour herself a bowl of cereal.
“He’s not supposed to work today.”
“And we’re supposed to be at school today. Yet here we are.”
“So why are you skipping? Especially after all the lectures I get.”
“It’s Math today,” Chloe answered, her eyes looked down at the table.
“Oh.” Madison said in understanding. “I’m surprised the school hasn’t called about you. You’ve skipped that class several times. And you don’t ever talk at school. People keep asking me if you’re a mute.”
Chloe played with her cereal for a few seconds before returning her gaze to her sister. “You should apologize to him. What you said last night was awful.”
“He deserved it.” Madison retorted in a huff snapping her head to stare out at the backyard.
“You don’t mean that.” Chloe said, watching as her sister glanced at her then darted her eyes to look out the sliding glass door again. It was one of the signs Chloe recognized. One that showed Madison didn’t have full conviction behind her words.
“He’s never around anymore. He’s always …there…or at work.”
“He has to work the long hours to make money. And-” Chloe cut herself off, not quite sure how to respond to the other part of the accusation. “You go there too,” she reminded, barely above a whisper, face down looking sheepishly at the table.
Madison decided to ignore the second part. Usually such a claim would send her into a loud defensive streak that would end with her stomping out of the house and disappearing for several hours, but she found she was feeling like talking today. After the way things had gone last night at the party, talking things out with her sister sounded like a good idea. A moment later she choked out, “He hates me.”
“What?” Chloe regarded at her sister in shock.
“The only time he pays any attention to me is to yell at me! He hates me! He blames me I know it! And he should! It’s all my fault! If I had just…I had been...” Madison melted into a fit of crying she herself was surprised by.
“No! No, no, no!” Chloe leapt around the table and threw her arms around her sister. She held her close and rocked her gently trying to sooth her. “He yells because he loves you, and he worries about you so much. And it’s not your fault. And, it’s not his fault either.” After several minutes of unrestrained crying Madison wiped her eyes and looked up at Chloe, her expression an unexpected one of confusion.
“Ooneether.” Madison mumbled into her sister’s shoulder.
“Hmm?”
“You said it wasn’t my fault, and it wasn’t his. It’s not yours either Chloe.”
Chloe looked away, her doubt reflected in her actions. “But I was so useless. I, I couldn’t do anything. I was…”
Madison chuckled. “I guess we’ve all been dummies huh? We’ve all been blaming ourselves, or each other.”
Chloe gave a weak misty-eyed smile. “A bunch of dummies.”
“Why don’t you ever go? To…the grave?” Madison paused, her mouth choking on the word they all hated saying.
“I can’t face her yet. Not until…”
“You’re done? Will you let me see it?” A flicker of hope lighting up Madison’s green eyes.
“I can’t. I’m not ready for you or Dad to see it,” Chloe stepped back, retreating again physically and emotionally, then went to the sink to clean up her dishes. Madison gave a sigh and handed her dishes to her sister.
“I’m going to go get groceries or something. We’re out of milk now.” Madison grabbed a light jacket out of the hallway closet and headed out the back door.
“Not my fault? Not Dad’s fault, and not Madison’s fault. So why do we all feel guilty? You would have straightened us out, wouldn’t you? We’re all pretty helpless without you.” Chloe gazed around the empty kitchen and dining area, fighting back emotions that threated to leak from her eyes. “I really miss you sis.” Chloe headed up the stairs, “Better work on laundry I guess,” she said in an almost sing-song voice to herself as she continued to talk aloud as a distraction for her mind.
She entered Madison’s room and began gathering up some of the dirty clothing that were strewn about when she noticed something on her sister’s bed that made her drop everything she had just picked up. She was in such a state of shock that she didn’t hear the back door and the footsteps coming up the stairs.
“I forgot my wallet!” Madison’s voice shouted, and then Madison entered the room. “Chloe?”
“Uh, laun…laundry.” Chloe stuttered, and then pointed to the object on the bed.
Madison ran over to the bed and threw the covers to hide what her sister had just discovered. “Uhm, it’s just...I...” it was now Madison’s turn to stutter.
“I thought you broke it that night.”
“I did.” Madison relented and tenderly pulled the covers back open and the two girls gazed at the object from a life long gone. It was a large white telephone with a red receiver and a strange face painted on it. “But I fixed it. On the night, when she…she died, I never wanted to hear that phone again. I smashed it on the ground, but I somehow, just…never threw it away. I’ve been working on it, just every now and then. I’m kinda good with electronics I guess, so I hope I can have it done by, uhm, y’know. I was going to take it, and show it to her.” Madison fidgetted with her gold earring. “Call it a, birthday present, I guess.”
Chloe’s eyes filled with tears and she threw her arms around her sister. Madison just stood there and tried to soothe her sister. “I think we’re finally ready to move on, aren’t we?” she said bemused. Chloe nodded into her sister’s shirt.
Later that night the small still muddy car pulled into the driveway, and was followed by the sound of feet in the front hall
“I’m making dinner. It’s almost ready if you’d wash up.”
The man of the house poked his head into the kitchen a look of complete shock on it.
“What?” Madison asked.
“You-, you’re fixing dinner?”
“Yeah. People gotta eat you know.”
“But usually-”
“Dads with dirty hands don’t get anything though.” Madison scolded her dad with a wag of the large wooden spoon then turned from her father back to the stovetop.
“R-right.” The man put his briefcase on the table, took off his long white coat and hung it in the hall closet on his way to the bathroom to wash his hands and face. A few minutes later he returned to the kitchen to find the table modestly set for two. “What about Chloe?” he asked.
“Oh, she got a burst of inspiration and said she’d be working in the studio. She uh...suggested we, you and I…take some time to talk.” Madison sat down across from her father. She looked around the room uneasily for a few seconds. “I’m sorry. About, what I said yesterday,” she began. “It’s just, it’s been so much easier to blame you, than to have to deal with blaming myself, or…blaming no one.” She sighed almost defeated.
“I’m sorry too.” he began. “I…I know I’m not here for you and Chloe like I should be. I’m sorry I yell. It’s just, I worry that one of these days, you’ll go out, and you won’t come back, and I…I can’t stand to lose you or Chloe like we lost-” he began to break down again. Madison looked at him awkwardly from the other side of the table then gave in and slunk over to her father and gave him a big hug, the first in several years. “I’m so tired,” he moaned from beneath the folds of clothing. “I’m so tired of crying. I still miss your sister so much. But I’m ruining what I still have. I can’t keep crying forever. I know I have got to move on. But-“
“Don’t worry. I don’t think she’ll see it as us forgetting about her. I wish I had cried a bit more. But, it’s been ten years. I think she’d tell us to get on with things by now. I can’t help...but wish sometimes, it would have been me.” Madison’s father looked quickly up at her, his very dark eyes glistening in the kitchen light. “She was always the strongest one, and she really kept us together,” she trained off contemplatively.
Father and daughter sat holding each other for a while before Madison finally spoke again. “I want to go see her. All of us. On Wednesday.” He nodded with a pained knowing half smile.
“It’s been almost three days.” Madison said with a tone somewhere between annoyed and amused, staring at the doorway into the small shed that served as Chloe’s studio.
“I heard her getting something to eat at about 4 this morning, but by the time I got to the kitchen she was back out here working again.” The girls’ father stood next to her.
“She hasn’t forgotten what today is has she?” Madison sounded both worried and indignant. He looked down at her eyebrows raised. Madison looked back up and let loose a short laugh. “Of course not, it’s Chloe,” she answered herself. Madison nervously adjusted her green T-shirt before raising her hand and knocking on the door. “Are you coming?”
“I’ll meet you there!” came a soft shout from inside. “Don’t worry! I’ll be just a few minutes behind!” Madison and her father looked at each other frowning for a few seconds, then shrugged and went to get in the car. Chloe could still follow in the truck.
Madison climbed out of the car when it had come to a stop in the cemetery, the man following behind. “So, are you going to tell me what’s in your backpack yet?” he asked eyeing the green and black bag Madison had slung over one shoulder.
“Are you going to tell me what’s in that folder?”
He smiled. “Guess we all have our surprises. Look.” He pointed to the baby blue truck that had just backed up next to the little white car the two had arrived in. In the bed was something massive tethered down and covered with a few old bed sheets.
“Made it.” Chloe panted as she came jogging up to her sister and father. The three of them turned and each taking a deep breath walked towards a very large square chest tomb near the center of the cemetery.
They all stood there silently reading the inscription and thinking to themselves for several minutes and then Madison made to take off and unzip her backpack. “I’m ready again. I told you, that I wouldn’t let you down, and, I’m finally ready to keep my promise sis.” Madison pulled out the phone that Chloe had seen in her room the previous week. “It’s all fixed. It’ll buzz again, and the nose will light up just like it used to.” Madison set the phone down and stepped back her father and sister watching as she tried to sneak wiping her nose.
“My turn.” Chloe walked quickly over to the truck and began undoing tethers and bungie cords. “I’ve been working on it for a while. It, didn’t seem right though, but I tried again this week and well…” she pulled back the bed sheets letting them drop in the truck bed and on the ground.
“It’s her,” he whispered in awe. “You made a sculpture of her.”
“She’s a hero. It’s only right that she have a true monument.”
The three of them stood eyeing the massive artwork of a young girl in a dynamic pose. Although the sculpture was white, the three of them saw the fiery red ponytail and eyes and the familiar pink bow and dress. Their eyes then led them down to the single word etched at the bottom in capital letters:
BLOSSOM
“I guess that means it’s my turn.” The man pulled the large envelope out of a pocket in his white lab coat, then reached into envelope and pulled out a stack of paperwork and three keys. “Let’s go home girls. Home to Townsville.”