One month after Kira’s death it started to become noticeable. And very public. I had been living in a trance, but when the trance wore off, fury took over. Everything was a great personal offense. Especially the woman at the supermarket yelling at her two-year-old daughter to calm down and behave. Two, the same age Kira was when she drowned. Two, too little to know how to behave in a supermarket. Two, an age far too young to be yelled at like the mother was doing. Something buried inside me – grief, anger, injustice, pain – snapped, and I unleashed it on that mother that afternoon.
Remembering it now, it happened in fast-forward. But that day, those minutes felt like slow-motion. It was the cereal aisle, as I vividly recalled. I was in the middle of a discussion with Elise on the health merits of Cheerios over Cap’n Crunch. Down near the Cocoa Puffs a mother had been screaming, red-faced, gripping her child’s cheeks between her talons screaming, ‘You behave right now or you’ll be getting a spanking you won’t forget!’ Strung between this was a handful of curse words.
I didn’t think twice – heck, I didn’t even think once – before I walked straight up to her, removed her hand from the girl’s face, and shoved my finger an inch from her eyeball.
‘Don’t you dare treat that child like that. You’re going to hurt her!’
The woman knocked my finger away, then leaned forward. ‘Excuse me? Don’t you tell me how to parent my child.’
Except in my mind that wasn’t her child. In my grief-stricken delusion, it was Kira who needed protection. So I raised my hand and slapped that woman so hard it left a red handprint on her face. Elise’s mouth dropped open at the scene, while Jackson hid his eyes beneath his hands. The woman cowered, then called, ‘Help me! This woman is attacking me!’
Attacking implied repeated hitting. I only slapped her once.
Two weeks later, a judge slapped me with a sentence for grief counseling. I was lucky it wasn’t worse, but when the judge found out I had just lost my daughter, he figured I needed therapy more than a night in the slammer.
If you’ve never lost a part of yourself, you wouldn’t understand this. But there is no cure for it. No amount of anti-depressants or anti-anxiety drugs can make you anti-human. When a piece of you breaks off, it can’t be glued back on. No matter how many drugs a therapist thinks will help. All the medicine did was inflame stomach issues and blunt my personality as it coated my mind in gluey syrup. It didn’t remove the vision of finding my dead daughter in my son’s arms, and that visual controlled the whole vicious cycle.
I knew I shouldn’t blame Jackson. I told myself this every day. He was a five-year-old boy when he led Kira outside the back door. He only wanted to play with her when he held her hand, their two tiny palms cupped together, and guided her toward the pool. He didn’t realize that his two-year-old baby sister couldn’t swim when he lifted her up, cheeks puffed out as he strained to carry her, and stepped into the water. He didn’t understand the gurgling was a cry for help as she sunk under the surface.
I shouldn’t blame him, a child, for killing his sister. And yet I did. Every day I blamed him, because I didn’t want to blame myself. I should have been watching. I should have insisted Ben put up the pool fence, no matter how many times he told me he’d ‘get to it.’ By the time he ‘got to it,’ my baby girl had already been gone and buried. I should have known something was wrong when the house went too quiet. When the chatter between Jackson and Kira paused. I should have, I should have, I should have.
And yet I didn’t. Until it was too late.
From Elise and Jackson’s bedroom doorway I watched them slumber, appreciating the preciousness of it. Elise stirred at the creak of the door; Jackson curled up into a tiny lap-sized ball. I wanted to forgive my son for leading Kira to her death. I wanted to forgive the ghost of my husband for not putting up the fence sooner. I wanted to forgive myself for not being omniscient.
But the truth of the matter is this: a heart that is broken doesn’t work anymore, and so it can’t forgive. All it can do is ache.
Chapter 31
Lane
‘Not a soul on earth will convict me when I murder your sister, Lane!’ After a long day taking blood pressure, administering medicine, and monitoring patients, I had barely made it through the front door before Candace’s verbal assault began. ‘Because the jury will feel so bad for me – a pregnant, newlywed wife who simply wants a little space – that they’ll applaud me for doing right by my husband.’
Not this again. It was the sixth time – yes, I’d counted – in two days that Candace asked me when Harper and the kids were moving out. I didn’t have an answer because my sister didn’t have answers. We were in the middle of a double-murder investigation and Candace was more concerned about painting the nursery than catching a killer.
I couldn’t blame my wife for feeling this way. Every day her patience was tried in new and creative ways. Yesterday, she found the pool skimmer clogged with Barbie doll heads, which led to a $500 filter repair. The day
