Obsessed(50)

He’d said good night to me last night, and he’d called me his butterfly. I’d rolled my eyes at the name because I was too old for that shit. Call me a butterfly again, Dad. I’ll do anything to hear it.

Now he was dead.

I’d taken every moment for granted, believing there would always be a never ending supply of “good night, butterfly”.

Aston collapsed to the floor. It was that sudden movement that pulled me out of my stupor. I leaned over him, hugging his back as he broke down. Tears fell from my eyes, but only lightly. I was in shock, and Mom had distanced herself from us, falling into the chair in a dazed heap, staring at nothing.

It was a messy scene. I was holding on to a broken man as he lay in ruins, trying to keep him together, and my mother was nowhere near us for emotional support. I reached my hand out to her, but she didn’t take it. I felt like Sticky Tack, trying to keep things together but failing miserably as the weight of our loss broke through the links that bound us.

“Mom,” I choked out. “Please.”

She wouldn’t move. She wouldn’t fucking move and I just wanted to mourn! I needed her strength. I needed her arms around mine as I held Aston to me, and she wouldn’t give it to me.

When I saw Adrian wrap his arm around her, I focused back on Aston. I hugged him tight, and leaned my face between his shoulder and neck, whispering in his ear, “I know. I know. It’s okay. I’m here, Aston. I’m here.”

He shook so violently. He’d come apart at the seams, and I was helpless. I couldn’t make him feel better, so I let him weep there, and I bottled my grief to be the strength he needed.





Aston

He shouldn’t have died.

It should have been me.

It was my fault. It was my fault. It was my…





17.



Elise

Life has a funny way of changing in the blink of an eye. It’s so unsteady. One minute love is the answer to everything, and the next you’re hopelessly trying to use it to fix the unfixable.

I felt like I was holding on to something that was already slipping away from my grasp. Aston was distant. We went home that night and he wouldn’t let me near him. Neither would Mom. I went back and forth, from him to her, and they shunned me in their grief.

I swallowed the pain, knowing if I fell apart too we would never go through with the process. I was seventeen and forced to fill out paperwork and arrange a burial service. Adrian helped out a lot, along with the police department who paid us a visit in the following two days. Without them, I don’t think I’d have been able to cope. Their gentleness nearly killed me, but it was also just what I needed to push through.

The death had travelled across town like a shockwave. People I didn’t know came around, paid their respects, and all the while it was me at the door, answering it time and time again, It was the last thing I wanted to do. Visitors fed me stories of the father I loved and what a great man he was. Food flooded in. Casseroles and desserts, cards and flowers, and letters – so many letters of sorrow. It hit me hard. People had loved my father. I had never known just how many lives he had touched selflessly working a job that put him at risk every single day.

My hero.

My role model.

The man that loved so hard, he brought another child into our lives just to see that child smile again.

And he died trying to do a noble thing. Adrian had explained what had happened the very next day. “He saw a couple outside arguing. The husband shoved her against the car and was beating on her while their kid cried in the backseat. Instead of driving away, your father cut in, tried to break the fight apart without realizing the man was armed. He shot him in the chest point blank and then he ran from the scene of the crime. We’ve caught him since. He won’t see the light of day. There will be justice, Elise. I promise.”

Could there ever be enough justice done for a senseless death like that? Would life imprisonment truly be enough? It wasn’t fair that man was breathing and my father wasn’t. It was the first time I ever thought along those lines, and it frightened me the route my brain took at the thought of justice. But my justice sounded more like revenge the longer I tortured that man inside my mind. I had to switch off so I didn’t lose myself to anger.

The night before the funeral, I picked out a black dress for Mom to wear and hanged it up on the hook behind her door. I tried to comfort her as she lay in bed, the covers over her small body. Her short blonde hair covered parts of her blank face, and every time I brushed them away, they fell back again. She was doing it. She was trying to hide. She didn’t respond to my touch, so I left her after a while. Then I knocked on Aston’s door and waited for him to open.