Down the Darkest Road

restaurant.

Leah was in tears. The Westins were embarrassed. Kent had a few sharp words for Leslie. We were humiliated. A vein bulged out in my husband’s neck, and I was afraid he might have a stroke. His blood pressure ran high in ordinary circumstances. His face and neck were bright red.

When we got home Lance went into Leslie’s room and ripped the phone cord out of the jack. He took the phone, shouting at her as he left the room that she was absolutely grounded for the next month.

I went to Leah’s room and reassured her that things would be better tomorrow. I let Leslie stew.

The next day Leslie snuck out of the house to go to a softball game.

She never came home.

The tears came in a burning torrent, as they always did. Lauren buried her face in her hands and tried not to make any noise.

It was one forty-five in the morning. Leah was asleep in her room down the hall.

The pain never lessened. Never. Every time the wound opened anew, it was just as hot and raw as when it had first happened.

People always tried to tell her that the pain would lessen over time, that time healed all wounds. People who said those things had never been in pain, not this pain. This pain was like an alien living in her chest. Only, when it burst out of her, she didn’t die from it. She only wished she could.

She cried and cried and cried. She tried to choke the sobs back down her throat, swallowing and gasping like she was drowning. She didn’t want Leah to hear her. She was supposed to be the rock her younger daughter could rely on. What kind of mother could she be like this?

Despondent, she grabbed a handful of Kleenex and blew her nose. She grabbed the glass off the desk and drank the vodka like it was water.

The thing with alcohol was that the effects were not immediate enough.

She drank the whole glass of vodka and still felt the guilt, the despair, the fear for Leslie, the fear for Leah, and the fear for herself. She still felt like some giant hand had broken through her ribs and torn out her heart.

All she could do was wait for the numbness to come.

8

“You’re not supposed to go anywhere, Leslie,” Leah said. “Daddy grounded you. I heard him. The neighbors probably heard him. Everybody in town probably knows it by now.”

Leslie gave her a nasty look from the corner of her eye as she stood primping in front of the bathroom mirror.

“Daddy’s not here,” she said. “And Mom’s not here either. They won’t know.”

“I’m here,” Leah said. “I’ll know.”

Leslie rolled her eyes. “Why do you have to be such a little Goody Two-shoes? I’m just going to a softball game. What’s the big deal?”

“You’re grounded,” Leah said, not understanding why Leslie didn’t think that was a big deal.

Leah had never been grounded in her life—nor did she ever plan on being grounded. Getting grounded meant you broke the rules, and if you broke the rules, Mom and Daddy would be disappointed in you. Leah couldn’t stand the idea of disappointing her parents.

Leslie heaved a sigh. “You’re such a child, Leah. It’s not the end of the world if you break a stupid rule. So what if Daddy’s pissed off? He’ll get over it.”

Leah frowned her disapproval, but tipped her head down so Leslie couldn’t see it. She didn’t like to disappoint her big sister either.

“You’re not telling, are you?” Leslie asked.

She assessed herself in the mirror. She had very carefully dressed in khaki shorts and penny loafers with a lightweight, off-the-shoulder, oversized black sweater over a hot-pink tank top. She had smoothed her long dark hair into a ponytail with a pink scrunchie, and made sure her bangs were just so to frame her big blue eyes.

Leah said nothing.

“You’re such a baby,” Leslie declared. “I’ll be back before they get home.”

As she watched her sister ride down the street on her bike, Leah secretly hoped that didn’t happen. She hoped Leslie would be hours late for dinner so she would get in even more trouble than she was already in.

Leslie became smaller and smaller as she rode away, and then she was gone.

She never came back.

Leah sat up in bed, gasping for air. She had left the light on, as she did most nights. She had never been afraid of the dark as a child. Now she dreaded it for the dreams it would bring.

Tears streamed down her face as she pulled her knees to her chest and pulled the covers up to her chin. The guilt felt like she had swallowed something that was too big for her throat.

She knew logically that she hadn’t wished her sister away, but that didn’t change the feelings. She was almost the same age Leslie had been that terrible day, but in the wake of the nightmares, she felt like the child her sister had called her.

She wanted desperately to cry, but not alone. Crying alone was one of the most miserable, depressing things she knew. It only left her feeling even more empty and abandoned than she already felt, as if the earth had opened up a huge black hole for her to fall into all by herself.

If Daddy had still been alive, she would have gone to him and asked him to hold her and comfort her, but she didn’t want to go to her mother. Both her parents had been devastated by the loss of Leslie, but they had reacted differently.

Where Daddy had seemed sad and lost, her mother’s emotions had been raw and angry. Her mother had needed to fight against the pain, where Daddy had gradually let it crush him. It made Leah angry sometimes that he had given up and left them, and at the same time it made her all the more sad that he hadn’t thought she was reason enough to get up and fight. Had he loved Leslie so much more that he couldn’t bear the thought of life without her?

The tears welled up and balanced on the ridge of Leah’s eyelashes. She felt so alone. She didn’t want to go to her mother, but she got out of bed just the same, and went out into the hall. She could see the light shining in the study where her mother was working on her book. Slowly, reluctantly, she made her way toward the door, holding herself tight, being so careful with each step not to make noise.

When she got to the door, she stopped, holding her breath. She didn’t want to knock. She didn’t want to say anything. She was trying so hard not to cry that her eyes felt like they would explode. What she really wished was that her mom would have come to her bedroom to check on her and realized that she needed a hug. But that hadn’t happened. It hardly ever did.

A fresh, bitter feeling of despair pressed down on her as she heard her mother crying on the other side of the door. Leah could tell she was trying not to make noise as she did it, just as Leah was trying not to make noise as the tears spilled down her own cheeks.

As she leaned back against the wall for support, she pulled the bottom of her T-shirt up and covered her face with it, and cried into it.

She couldn’t go to her mother. Her mother had her own grief, her own guilt, her own struggle to deal with her feelings. Leah wouldn’t add the weight of her own pain to her mother’s.

She wished she could, but she couldn’t.