A crazed man walked into the brightly-lit restaurant, started screaming at his ex-wife, then pulled a semi-automatic gun out of a bag and started shooting anyone and everyone in sight. In the end, none of them made it back. Nicolai took a bullet to the right side of his face and stomach, he was declared dead in the ambulance. Julian’s parents were both killed on scene and from what I remember, Julian had only a superficial gunshot to the leg.
We never saw him again; he was sent to Puerto Rico to live with his grandmother. The gunman, Ignacio Juan Hernandez took the coward’s way out of this world by putting a bullet in his own head.
When my parents were notified, my father took it the hardest. My mother, though heartbroken tried to be strong but even she had her moments of weakness. I was too young to understand much more than a very evil man had stolen my brother from me and he was never coming back.
It took two months for my father to completely lose himself. We started seeing it a few days after the murder; he had locked himself in the attic for a full 24 hours. When he finally emerged he was barely recognizable. We would catch him talking to himself, which we later found was him talking to my dead brother. My dad eventually told us Nicolai would come to him, face bloodied, a giant hole in his stomach telling him how much he missed being with us. It was so terrifying that on occasion I could swear that I saw him too, just as plain as day.
Dad would often burst into flying rages, screaming at the top of his lungs, clearing counter tops, shelves and throwing anything and everything he could get his hands on. Even his speech changed, he cursed all the time and often sounded drunk and lethargic, even when perfectly sober. Eventually my mother had to send him away for treatment which was when the doctor, with the permission of my father, explained to us that my father was schizophrenic. They said it had probably been lying dormant inside of him his entire life. My brother’s murder had awoken it and without proper treatment it would destroy him.
We had hoped his 6 month stint away would make him better and in the beginning it did. He was regularly taking his medications and he no longer lashed out. He wasn’t the same as he had been before Nicolai was taken from us. For one thing, I never heard my father sing again. He had locked up his beautiful voice deep down inside of him. Anytime I asked for a song he would ignore me and pretend I wasn’t even in the room.
He stopped working, citing he couldn’t handle the responsibility, so my mother went back to teaching, something she had given up years before. They had mutually decided it would be more beneficial for her to stay home and be a full time mother than a mother to a room full of strangers. But she no longer had that choice; she had to take care of what was left of her family.
After a few months, it was decided that we would move away. Not a single one of us could ever be happy living in a town where the incident was being shoved down our faces. We couldn’t go grocery shopping without someone walking up to us with an “I’m so sorry for your loss” or some other generic term of endearment.
Not to mention my brother’s room was still a constant reminder of his horrific end, every inch of the house rubbed his absence in our faces. My father had forbidden us from entering his bedroom; he told us we were not to ever even open the door. But one day I had wandered in wanting to feel some sort of connection with the boy I loved and lost. That was when I saw his A&M cap hanging on the footboard of his bed; he had loved that hat, so I took it. I had only wanted something he loved, something close to him that made me feel like he was still there. The hat smelled like him and I needed it, I didn‘t know why. But once dad saw me wearing it, giving me a look of what I can only describe as pure hatred, he ripped it off of my head taking a handful of my hair with him. The next day the door was padlocked with the hat safely inside.
Nobody had really considered my feelings in everything and who was I to say anything, I was only eight. Plus, I was too busy watching everyone else fall apart. I didn’t want to make things worse for fear I would lose my mother and father as well. So I stayed quiet and when not in school I spent most of the day in my room to stay out of the way.
When I was not listening to sobbing from one or the other of my parents through locked doors the house was so quiet that I found myself feeling completely and utterly lost and alone. So naturally, I was shocked when my mother came into my room and told me we were moving closer to Aunt Tilly.
“Jemma, daddy’s not feeling well and we can get him the best help in Austin. They have some amazing doctors that can make him better. Plus we can wipe the slate clean and find a whole new life. A better one, what do you say?”