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Do It
The window on the side of the lean-to is gone. Immediately, I begin questioning whether it was a window that allowed me to see into the shed. Maybe I peered inside through a crack in the doorframe. But when I press my face against the door, aligning my eye with the crack between the door and the frame, I can’t see anything.
“Maybe it was a peephole. Does this shed have a peephole?” I ask Walker, and he shakes his head. “I’m not crazy. I saw the inside of the shed. I saw my phone in there. Give me my phone.” The pity in his eyes makes me violently angry, and I take it out by kicking the door. “Shit!” I yelp, realizing too late that I’m still barefoot.
“Let me look at that,” Walker says, dropping to one knee.
“I’m fine,” I insist, stepping around him and walking to the back of the shed to search for a peephole or a crack I can use to peer inside again.
“That sore on your heel doesn’t look good,” he remarks, following me. “You should let me clean it again.”
I turn to face him, cupping his face, so he doesn’t turn away. “Why are you doing this to me?” I beg, my chest muscles tightening painfully. “You’re hurting me, Marc. You’re making me think I’m crazy. Why are you doing this? Did—” I cut myself off before I can ask him if he’s punishing me for not giving him a child. “What did I do to deserve this?”
He shakes his head as he holds my gaze. “You didn’t do anything, Cass,” he replies softly, his country accent gone now. “I’m not trying to hurt you. I just want you to stay. I don’t want to lose you.”
“That’s why you hid my phone?”
He closes his eyes and lets out a soft sigh. “I didn’t hide your phone. You lost it. Remember? In the crash, you lost your phone.”
I shake my head. “You can’t even do me the courtesy of looking at me when you lie to me?”
He looks up, and the darkness in his eyes takes me by surprise. It’s not menacing. It’s the look of a man who’s been to war, literally or figuratively.
“You are not your father,” I remind him of the secret he shared with me. “You’re a good man, Marc. The man I married in that meadow would open this shed for me. Open the door, Marc. Please, honey. Open the door,” I plea as I stroke his beard. “I like you with facial hair,” I whisper, my eyes filling with tears. “Open the door, Marc. It’s time for me to go.”
He closes his eyes, leaning his face into my touch. “I can’t let you go.”
“Yes, you can,” I say, coiling my arms around his shoulders and pressing my lips to his soft earlobe. “I need to go home. I can’t stay here.”
Whatever this place is, I know it’s not where I want to be. If I’m losing my mind, I need to seek medical attention. The fact that I can form that rationale tells me I’m not going crazy. And that really only leaves two options.
Either I’m dreaming, or I’m dead.
I’ve never had a dream that lasted this long, which leads me to believe I’m dead. And this place, where my husband lives in my grandmother’s house and my father carries my dead children, can only be one thing. I’m in some type of limbo between life and death, a place my brain has constructed to keep itself occupied until it’s time for me to be with my father and my babies.
I unwrap my arms from Marc’s neck and look him in the eye. “You have to let me go,” I say, hoping he doesn’t hear the quiver in my voice. “Open the door, so I can get my phone.”
As he vacillates on the edge of uncertainty, I think back to the moment Mr. Beacham drove off with me in his truck. In my bones, I knew we were traveling in the wrong direction. Maybe I just wasn’t ready to go yet.
“Come on,” I say, taking Marc’s hand and leading him toward the shed door.
He stares at the padlock for a moment before he reaches into the back pocket of his jeans and retrieves a small, silver key. His hands tremble slightly as he slides it into the padlock.
I place my hand on his bare shoulder. “It’s okay.”
He lets out a deep breath, turns the key, then pulls off the padlock. But when he opens the door, the cell phone is gone, just like the window I glimpsed it through.
I shake my head. “That doesn’t make sense,” I whisper. “I’m supposed to be able to leave. I can’t be trapped here. That would be—” My eyes widen as I turn to face Marc. “Am I in hell?”
“Only if you think being with me is hell,” he replies, either trying to lighten the mood or to distract me from the truth.
I look down at my injured foot, and indeed it appears much worse than the day it happened. “In real life, this kind of wound heals quickly.”
“What do you mean, ‘in real life’?” he says, looking at me like I’m talking crazy. “This is real life.”
I shake my head adamantly. “No, it’s not. I’ll prove it to you.” I enter the shed and reach for the nearest shotgun. “Oh, wow. This is heavier than I imagined it’d be.”
“Give me that,” he says, holding both hands palm up. “You’re not holding it right. You’re gonna get one of us shot.”
“That’s kind of the point,” I say, twisting the shotgun around to try and point it at myself, but Marc snatches it out of my hands.
“What the hell are you doing, woman?” he cries, his country accent back again.
“I’m not going to kill myself,” I assure him. “You can’t die if you’re already dead.”
As the words come out of my mouth, they come back and punch me in the heart.
My father killed himself.
And Marc knew he was going to do it.
“I want you out of this shed,” Marc demands, positioning himself between me and the wall of guns. “Now. Go on.”
I shake my head as I realize the gravity of the words I just spoke: You can’t kill yourself if you’re already dead.
My father knew he’d die long before his body would be buried in the ground. By taking his own life, he was sparing us the emotional cost of two funerals.
I look up into those bright blue eyes I fell in love with so many years ago. “You have to do it.”
“Do what?”
I study his face for a long while. He seemed so fuzzy to me when I first arrived here. “I thought it was the crash that stole my memory, but it wasn’t,” I say, reaching up to trace the curve of his bottom lip with my fingertip. “It was grief. I was trying to forget. But that’s not it.” I look directly into his eyes, and he seems to hold his breath as he waits for me to continue. “Some of this,” I say, looking around at the guns and the tools. “Some of this is yours. These aren’t my memories. They’re yours.”
His eyes fall to the shotgun in his hands. “I can’t do what you want me to do,” he says, then he looks up at me again, but when he speaks this time, he sounds like my husband. No accent. No bullshit. Just the man I married in a meadow at sunrise eight years ago. “I was never supposed to fall in love,” he begins. “I was supposed to live and die alone in that old house, surrounded by my paintings. And even when I got out of there and went to college… I left my accent and my memories behind me, but I still didn’t think I deserved to be loved. Until you came along.” He reaches up with one hand and smiles as he tucks a lock of hair behind my ear. “I don’t know how you did it, Cass, but you made me feel like I deserved you… I can’t lose you. Please don’t make me do this.”
I shake my head. “You’re not losing me. I’m coming back to you.” I take his face in my hands and press my lips against his. I kiss him long and hard, then I lay a trail of soft kisses over his cheek to his ear. “Do it,” I whisper. “Please, Marc. Do it for me. Do it for us.”
I pull my head back and hold his gaze as tears spill over his cheeks and disappear into his dark beard.
“I’m so sorry,” he says as he turns the barrel of the gun, so it’s pointing at the underside of my chin, then he mouths, “I love you,” and pulls the trigger.
Shadow
Present-day
Cassidy opened her eyes again this morning. She continues to
mumble occasional words or phrases. Last night, she smiled and said, “You’re real.” At least, that’s what it sounded like to me.
Ruth thought it sounded more like, “Too real.” But Ruth doesn’t know that the first time Cassidy and I made love, I placed my hand over her chest, to feel her heart thumping against my fingertips, and whispered, “You are real.” And I’d rather not share that with my mother-in-law. Some memories are too sacred to be spoken.
When Cassidy opened her eyes this morning, I was alone with her. But I’m confident I heard her say, “Dad.” Just the sound of it had made me want to collapse.
