Safe and Sound(54)

Blair took a drink of her tea and stared out the window, a thoughtful look on her face. “Lana was nineteen, Ben was twenty. It was wintertime and he was stopped at a set of stoplights. She rear-ended him.” She laughed. “He said he got out of his car ready to do some yelling and then he looked at her and forget everything he was going to say. They were married less than a year later.”

Lola took a shaky breath, rapidly blinked her eyes. She turned the page. A wedding picture of her mom and dad was on the page. They were looking at each other, smiling. Her dad was in a black tuxedo and her mother in a frothy dress of white. They were beautiful, happy.

Another page showed her father holding her as a baby, beaming. Lola was fat and bald and drooling. He was even handsomer than at his wedding.

“I don’t understand how I can miss him so much when I don’t even remember him,” she whispered.

“You were his world. He loved you so much,” Blair said quietly.

An ache formed where her heart was. Lola sat back, head down. Sorrow overwhelmed her. Her throat was tight as she tried to hold tears in.

“Don’t be sad for not knowing him, Lola. Be glad he knew you, if only for a short time.”

Lola wept, shoulders shaking. She wanted her dad. She wanted him back and alive and she wanted to erase everything, all the years, since his death. Lola wanted them to start over; her mother, her father, and her. She wanted to know her father.

She wanted her mother back too. She missed her so much. Lola couldn’t believe how devastated she was by her mom’s absence. She didn’t want to know any of this, any of this pain and sadness and tragedy.

Lola wished she could go back in time; Lola wished all of them could. Her pain escalated when she thought of Jack and his life. She just wanted him okay. Lola wanted his mother back in his life and his father gone and he and his sister okay. She wanted him never to have been hit or yelled at or made to feel like he was nothing.

Her sobs turned uncontrollable. Lola wanted to close in on herself, to curl up in a ball and disappear. Awful, heart-wrenching sounds left her. She couldn’t stop. She couldn’t stop them. It was too much.

All of it was too much and Lola was cracking under the strain of holding it all together when all she wanted to do was lie down and never get up, never face any of this again.

Blair wrapped her arms around her and helped her to the floor, where she rocked her back and forth, caressing her hair and saying nothing. Lola clutched her aunt, needing to be comforted, needing to know someone cared.

“Everything’s going to be okay, Lola, I promise,” her aunt told her, her tone soothing.

Lola desperately wanted to believe her.

***

It was cold and rainy the day Lola found herself outside her house. The sky was gray, everything darker than usual. It fit somehow.

She stood on the sidewalk, staring at the tan building that had been a haven at one time and then a prison. No lights shone from the inside. No black car took up the driveway space.

Lola shivered, her jacket protecting her from the damp, but not the chill in the air. She didn’t know why she was there. She supposed it was time to confront her mother, if she wanted to move on.

She slowly walked to the front door, not sure if she knocked or just walked in. Lola knocked. When there was no answer after the third knock, she glanced over her shoulder, and seeing no one watching her, tried the doorknob. It was locked.

Relief and disappointment hit her at the same time. Lola crouched beside a window and put her hands to it, trying to see inside. From what she could see in the darkened living room, it looked the same as it always had. Lola wasn’t sure what she had expected to find; some visible sign of the tragedy that had taken place there, she supposed.

Lola swallowed and moved through the wet grass to the side of the house, pausing next to her mother’s bedroom window. Without warning fear slammed into her and Lola sucked in a sharp breath, hurrying past the window. She stopped near her old room, hand to the house, and hung her head.

Her head snapped up and she studied the window, wondering if it was still unlocked. Lola put her hands to the cool wet glass and pushed up. It opened, her pulse quickening as it slid up.

Before she could change her mind, Lola maneuvered herself through the window and into her bedroom. The room was cool, musty smelling. She glanced around it, emotions strangling her the longer she stood there. Lola blinked her stinging eyes and moved on, into the hallway.

The house seemed empty, disused.

Her heart pounded and Lola had to keep reminding herself that Bob was locked up, he wasn’t there, he couldn’t harm her anymore. She stared at the closed door to her mother’s bedroom, struggling to breathe. Her hand shook as it closed around the doorknob and she slowly pushed the door open.