4,146 words
Darryl slotted three quarters into the vending machine and punched the button for the packet of salted peanuts, ignoring the call of the Snickers bar right next to it. After ten hours on the road, a shot of sugar was sounding pretty good, but he’d hate himself when he did his next blood check and saw the spike in his levels.
“You don’t have to come,” Lin said, from behind him. He braced himself before turning around. Her head hung at an unsettling angle on her broken neck. She’d died in a car accident. She said she couldn’t remember it, but he’d found an article about it on one of the Santa Fe news sites. Her car was the only one involved. She ran off a wet road and through a barricade, into a construction site, and impacted a crane at high speed. It was late at night, fortunately, he supposed. Nobody else was hurt. Seemed like she was speeding and lost control, or lost her brakes, or something. Maybe an antelope ran across the road. None of his questions about it seemed to jog her memory.
“We’ve been over this,” he said, tearing open the plastic packet before turning to face her. “I lived with you and your mother for two years. I mean, maybe I wasn’t much of a step-dad, but even if you weren’t haunting me, I’d have wanted to go to your funeral.”
“You were nice to me,” she said, “and I don’t mean to be haunting you.”
He nodded, wandering aimlessly toward the edge of the concrete area and looking into the dark mass of trees behind the highway rest stop. There were only three other cars at the stop, drivers asleep in two of them. Something he should consider doing. His back was killing him. Some Tylenol would help with that, though, as would a little while standing or walking around. He could keep going.
He hadn’t known he’d be making this trip two days ago. He’d been getting milk out of the fridge, on a perfectly usual morning, when he heard his girlfriend’s cat hiss. He turned around and there was Melinda, standing in his kitchen in broad daylight, having trouble looking him in the eye because of the way her head was hanging. She was obviously, unquestionably, dead. He realized a heartbeat later that the broken neck made that pretty clear, along with her sudden appearance in his kitchen, but in that very first moment, he just knew. She wasn’t gauzy and floating like ghosts in movies, and she didn’t look like a zombie from the movies, either. Maybe it was some sort of animal instinct, or some sense he hadn’t known he had, that said, “What you’re looking at here is wrong.”
His girlfriend, Trish, came in while he was gaping. She didn’t react to the dead girl at all. She looked at the milk spreading across the kitchen floor from the jug Darryl hadn’t noticed dropping. Maybe he looked white as the milk or something, because instead of lobbing a barb at him, she said, “Darryl, are you okay? Do you need to sit down?”
Darryl turned and vomited into the kitchen sink. He wasn’t sure if it was shock, or fear, or that feeling of “wrongness.” Trish was all worried now, and he let her help him into a kitchen chair and even let her clean up his mess. The whole time, Lin just stood there, watching. She looked solid, like he could reach out and touch her, even though Trish clearly couldn’t see her. The cat could, though. Or she at least knew something was there. She wasn’t even distracted by the spilled milk. She just crouched next to his elbow, on the kitchen table, hackles up and tail lashing. He rested a hand on her back. She allowed it, but didn’t seem any calmer.
“Melinda died,” he said.
“Melinda.” It took Trish a minute, then she said, “Oh. Your ex’s daughter? I’m so sorry. How? And when? Did someone just text you or something?”
He nodded, grateful for being handed the lie that he lacked the wit to come up with at that moment.
Trish sponged up the last of the milk, then sat back on her heels as it sank in. “Wouldn’t she still be a kid?”
He nodded. “Eighteen.”
“That’s awful, Darryl.” She rested a hand on his knee, then glanced at the cat, maybe looking for some way to lighten the mood.
“You freaked Trixie out.”
He nodded, stroking the cat a little. “I know. Sorry.”
Trish shrugged. “She’ll be fine.” She stood and leaned over to kiss him on the head.
“You want me to stay home today?”
She asked it with obvious reluctance, and he understood. They needed her paycheck more than ever since he’d been laid off. He was moved by the offer though. Trish could be prickly, but she was a decent person. She could probably do a lot better than a middle-aged man with a beer-belly, and now, no income.
“No. Thank you, but I’ll be okay. Sorry about the mess.”
She shrugged again. “Shit happens.”
And now here he was, accompanying Lin to her own funeral. She said he was the only one who could see her. She’d tried a few others. She’d even tried a priest. She said she wasn’t even sure how she’d found her way to Darryl. After her mother had thrown him out, they hadn’t been allowed to stay in contact. Darryl had wanted to, but he had no legal rights in the situation. He hadn’t even been married to her mother. Lin said she’d just wanted to see him and ended up in his kitchen.
“I missed you,” he blurted out, as he pulled out onto the highway again.
“I missed you too,” she said. “You know she’ll be there.”
“Of course. She’s your mother.”
“She’s married again. He’ll be there too, I guess.”
“I would hope so.” He glanced sidelong at her, in the passenger’s seat, and for maybe the hundredth time fought back the urge to tell her to buckle up.
“You like him?” he asked.
“He’s fine, I guess. He doesn’t bother me. I don’t bother him.”
They lapsed into silence for a while. Darryl wanted to start asking about the accident again, to see if she’d remember something, but she broke the silence by asking what he’d been doing lately.
“Fitness trainer,” he said, patting his belly. She laughed. It sounded just like it had when she’d been alive, and he suddenly had to choke back a sob. She continued on like she didn’t notice.
“You actually look better. Lost some weight?”
“I have. Got to, what with the diabetes. Not easy. Our neighborhood’s a – what’s that phrase for when you’re surrounded by fast food but have to drive ten miles for an apple?”
“Food desert.”
“Yeah, that’s it. But I try. And I’m still in demolition. Still tearing things down. Or I was. No work lately.”
“You’re really not like that, you know. You’ve just had some bad luck. Maybe the new girl will work out better.”
“Maybe,” he said, and left it at that. It was kind of her to say, but she really hadn’t known him that long. They’d been a rough couple of years, in some ways. He’d met Lin’s mother at an AA meeting. Maybe getting involved with another group member wasn’t his best move, but they’d liked each other. And, if he was being honest, he thought he could help her. Also not a great foundation for a relationship. Trish had since taught him what ‘patronizing’ meant.
Melinda hadn’t taken to him at first, and he couldn’t blame her; he knew he wasn’t the first boyfriend to move in with them. But she’d warmed up to him, and he liked her a lot more than he’d expected to. At first, he hadn’t really known how to be around a kid. He didn’t have any of his own. What did you say to them? Turned out, she wasn’t that different from how he’d been. Kind of shy. Kept to herself. Bookish, his mother would have called her. Darryl always thought she seemed kind of sad, not that he could blame her. It wasn’t easy, growing up with an alcoholic parent.
Darryl had never been the reader Lin was. He was more of a movie guy, but she liked movies too. He’d take her to see second run shows and matinees when she was out of school, because they were cheaper. He tried to get her out of the house, especially when her mother was off the wagon. One time, he’d even taken her to visit his parents for the weekend. Her mom had been invited, of course, but had said she had to work that weekend. The state of the house when they got home said she’d spent the time too drunk to work.
He used to worry, sometimes, that Lin’s mother was rough with her. He figured they probably did have that in their past, but he never saw it confirmed while he was there. Maybe she’d been afraid he’d step in? He liked to think that he would have.
Their last fight had been over Darryl pushing her to get back to meetings and her screaming at him that she was sick of his holier-than-thou bullshit and of him always trying to tell her how to raise her own kid. In hindsight, he had to admit the truth of that. She told him to go, and he did. It was a thing that still kept him awake some nights, wondering what he could have done. Should he have fought harder for the kid? Should he have called social services? Yeah, he always concluded. He should have. But what would they do? If they believed him, would they take Lin away? Put her into the system? She and her mother had no family that he knew of. They weren’t too likely to give Lin to him. More likely, they’d think he was making shit up to get back at his ex-girlfriend. Maybe they’d even see something “wrong” in his attachment to Lin. He had all kinds of rationalizations. Valid ones, Trish assured him. Trish was definitely too good for him.
He woke with a start as the car drifted over the rumble strips on the shoulder, and he realized he’d dozed off behind the wheel.
“Time to pull over,” Lin said.
“I guess so. Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about me. You’re the one who can still die.”
Darryl frowned, then cranked the air conditioning up so his shivering would keep him awake. “Is that what happened?” he asked, pulling into the next rest stop. “You fall asleep at the wheel?”
“I said I don’t remember.”
“Are you even trying to remember?”
“Why would I want to? Do you think you’d want to remember dying?”
“No. But you don’t want to stay like this, right? You want to figure out what’s keeping you here, you said. I mean there must be someplace – I don’t know – someplace else you should be?”
“You believe in an afterlife, Darryl?”
“I don’t know. But I’m pretty sure if everybody who died ended up like you are now, we’d have heard more about it.”
“Yeah. I think that too. Okay.”
“Okay?”
“I’ll try harder.”
“Okay, he said. I’m going to get some sleep.”
When he woke, it was still night, and he was still tired, but not as sleepy as before. He got a cup of terrible vending machine coffee, used the rest room, and got back in the car. Lin was just as she’d been, in the passenger’s seat. For the first time, he reached out and rested a hand on her arm. She was solid, like a living person, but cold, and she gave off that sense of “wrongness” so strongly that he had to yank his hand away. “Sorry,” he said.
“I get it.”
“Being in the car doesn’t bother you?” he asked, as he started it up and pulled out onto the highway.
“Why would it?”
Maybe it was time for the tough love approach, Darryl thought. Trying to be delicate about the whole thing hadn’t gotten him anywhere so far.
“Because you died in one.”
She didn’t say anything for a minute, then, “I told you, I don’t remember that.”
“What do you want, Lin?”
“I told you. I want to – I don’t know … move on. Go wherever I’m supposed to be. Not be like this.”
“What’s the last thing you do remember?”
“I told you.”
“No, you didn’t. You keep dancing around the question, like you’re doing now. What were you doing before you got in the car? Had you been drinking?”
“No! I don’t drink.”
“Drugs?”
“No drugs.”
“Had you had a fight with somebody?”
“I’d watched a movie. Then I went out for a drive. I was just driving around, listening to music. You know? Just thinking.”
“What movie? What music?”
“What does that matter?”
Darryl didn’t know why it mattered. He was no shrink. He hadn’t even gone to college. In group, you don’t push like this. You let the person settle in and learn to trust the group, let them come to sharing on their own time. Maybe that’s what he should be doing, but it felt like this was going somewhere. So he pushed. “I don’t know. Just tell me.”
“Okay. I watched Little Women. The new one. And I was just listening to a radio station.”
“Huh. I always listen to music on my phone.”
“How do you find new music?”
“You’re changing the subject. So you got in the car and you’re driving around listening to the radio. Why? Why just go driving?”
“Sometimes I just do that.”
“When? After you watch a movie?” Darryl wished he knew anything about the movie Little Women.
“No. Any time. I mean, usually at night. Because I’m at school during the day. I just want to get out of the house, you know?”
“You’re still in school? College? What were you studying?”
“Computer science. That and business stuff, or maybe law, or to be a doctor – that’s all anybody studies anymore. It’s all about getting a good job after you graduate.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing, I guess.” She waved a hand, a gesture he remembered as her way of brushing a subject away.
“Do you like computer science? You used to love to read. And play guitar. Do you still play?”
“I did, a little. When mom wasn’t home. She’d just yell at me to give it a rest.”
Darryl could picture that, especially if Lin’s mom was drinking again. “And your stepfather?”
“What about him?”
“He yell at you?”
“No. He mostly just ignored me. Which was okay by me.”
“You couldn’t afford to move out?”
“Nope. Not on what I could make working retail. I got loans for college, so –” Again, the wave of the hand.
“Lin, did you go driving when you were sad?”
“I suppose.”
Darryl drew in a breath and decided to just go for it. He’d been shying away from the thought for the last two days, trying not to think it. Maybe he needed a dose of that ‘tough love’ too. Maybe he just had to deal with it.
“Lin, did you drive into the crane on purpose?”
“I don’t remember!” she screamed, and disappeared.
Darryl kept driving, fighting back tears.
With the sunrise, the rolling hills of Oklahoma started to break up the monotony of the long, flat expanse of nothing that had been the drive through Arkansas. Well, nothing but bugs. Plenty of bugs, splattered all over his car. Lin reappeared in the passenger seat just as he was pulling into a gas station. He said nothing, got out and filled the tank and washed the windshield, then went inside to see if they had anything not made of processed sugar. She was still there when he got back in the car.
“I’m sorry,” they said in unison.
“Where’d you go?” he asked.
“Top of the Pedernal.”
“Seriously? You what, teleported there?”
“I don’t know how it works. I just wanted to be away from you.”
Darryl supposed he had that coming. After all, he had just asked her if she’d killed herself.
“I don’t know, Darryl,” she said, breaking the silence. “Did the article you read say anything about the car?”
“Like that you lost the brakes or steering or something? No. But they might not have known yet.”
“I don’t usually drive that fast. I don’t drink, like, at all. I don’t do drugs. Maybe I fell asleep behind the wheel?”
“And the car accelerated? Maybe, I guess. I don’t really know how that would work.”
“At least I didn’t kill anybody else.”
“Yeah. There is that.”
“I mean, I’m not saying I haven’t thought about it. Everybody thinks about it right?”
Did they? Darryl didn’t know if that was true or not. Certainly, he had. And a car often seemed like the perfect opportunity. You see a lake by the side of the highway and you think, what if I just ran the car off the road here into the water? Or off a bridge? Or into a concrete wall. Nobody else gets hurt. But what if you didn’t die? Sometimes he wondered if that was what stopped him, more often than not. What if you just suffered brain damage, or lost a limb, or paralyzed yourself? You already found life just a little too hard, and you went and made it harder.
“I don’t know. But I have,” he said, after what was probably a longer time than he should have remained silent.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Why didn’t you?”
He told her all that he’d just been thinking, then added, “Plus, my mother’s still alive. Imagine what that would do to her. She’d think it was her fault, somehow. And she’d be all alone.”
“Oh, I didn’t know your father had passed. I’m sorry.”
He nodded. “Yeah, a year after I left Santa Fe and went back to Georgia.”
“I don’t think Mom would blame herself.”
“Course she would, Lin. She’s got her faults. I mean, we all do. But she’s still your mother.”
She didn’t say anything. He glanced over once to see if she had disappeared, but she was still there.
“You were eighteen, right?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“Damn, Lin. Things would have gotten better. You’d have moved out. Put some space between you and your mother. Met somebody. Did you have a boyfriend?” Then added, “Or a girlfriend?” belatedly reminding himself that people were open about that sort of thing now.
“No. I mean, I went on a few dates, in high school. Went to a few parties. But nobody special, no.”
It was a little hard to tell just from her voice how she was reacting to something. All he could do was glance at her, given that he was driving, but she showed no body language at all, except for that dismissive wave of the hand. He hadn’t caught her shrugging, or turning her head away – maybe because she couldn’t – or shrinking down in the seat. But he thought she might have cringed, just a little, when he’d asked about that.
“Nobody you even liked?”
“I guess there were boys I liked. But it never went anywhere.”
Darryl frowned. He didn’t remember her having any close friends in the years he’d been around. She certainly never brought any kids home, and he totally got that. He’d rarely done that as a kid, especially during his father’s drinking years.
“And your step-father?”
“Why do you keep asking about him?”
“Because he moves in and your depression skyrockets, or plummets, or whichever way you’d say it.”
“We’re assuming that I committed suicide now?”
“How’s the idea feel to you?”
“How does it feel?” She was getting heated again. “It feels like shit! It feels like I’m a big zero! A failure! Like I couldn’t hack life past the age of eighteen!”
“But does it feel wrong?”
“No! Okay? Is that what you want to hear? It doesn’t feel wrong!”
It was absolutely the last thing Darryl had wanted to hear, and the thing he had most feared.
“I killed myself,” she said, like she was testing the words in her mouth. “I killed myself? I. Killed. My. Self. I stepped on the gas, drove the car through the fence, and steered it at the crane. I shut my eyes, at the end. I guess my aim was still pretty good.”
Darryl didn’t say anything. He felt like he should say something, but had no idea what. Maybe this was a thing she needed a minute to process on her own. Miles passed in silence, until Darryl couldn’t stand it anymore. “You’re still here,” he said.
“Yeah. I noticed that too.”
“So, that wasn’t the thing.”
“The thing that gets me to move on? I guess not. Maybe I’m stuck here. Maybe I’ll be like this forever.”
Darryl said, “Well, I mean, you’re welcome to stay with me as long as you want.” The words sounded so lame to him, like he was offering her a couch to sleep on. She didn’t seem to think so, though.
“See?” she said. “You were always nice to me.”
Darryl drew in a deep breath and said, “Okay. So. This might send you to the top of another mountain, but – ”
“Pedernal’s the only one I’ve ever climbed.”
“Okay. But . . . well, I’m just going to blurt something out. Again.”
When she said nothing, he pressed on. “Was your step-father, you know, abusing you? Doing wrong things?”
“No,” she said immediately, and with a conviction that sounded like truth to him. Darryl breathed out a relieved sigh.
“Mom did,” Lin said.
“Wait. What?” Darryl turned his head to look at her. The car swerved into the breakdown lane, and he hastily yanked at the wheel. Then he eased it right again and rolled to a stop, his hands shaking too hard to control the vehicle.
“What are you saying, Lin?”
“Mom used to come into my room at night and – well, look, do you really want the details?” Her voice was so low, he could barely hear her now, but then the words started flowing like water from a broken faucet.
“I remember now. I remember it all. Like every detail of my life. Stuff I thought I’d forgotten. I remember how she’d do – you know, the things she did. Then she’d be angry. At herself. At me. Like it was my fault, right? And I mean, it must have been because a mother wouldn’t just do that, would she?”
Darryl stammered, “But, you’re both –”
“Girls? Women? Yeah, I know. Women have sex with each other. I mean, usually not mothers and daughters. And you never knew!”
The last words were a shriek that no living human throat could have made. He pressed his hands over his ears and leaned his head on the steering wheel, fighting the urge to vomit.
“You said you loved me, and then she told you to go away, and you just – you just went! You left me with her!”
“I didn’t know. How could I know?”
“You lived with us!”
“Lin, I admit, I thought she hit you sometimes –” He stopped. He wasn’t going to do that. He wasn’t going to defend himself. She had to get this out. He leaned back in the seat, his head pounding in the aftermath of that shriek, and looked at her.
“Yeah,” he said. “You’re right. I should have known.”
Her rage left as quickly as it had come.
“No. There was no reason you would have. It wasn’t your fault.”
But it was my responsibility, he thought. I should have done more. And I’m always going to have to live with that. “What do you want me to do now?” he asked. “Do you want me to go to the police?”
“No. You’d just get in trouble. It’s not like you can prove it.”
“Then what?”
“Hold my hand,” she said. He reached out and took her hand. It was hard to hold onto. Every part of him wanted to pull away. But he held on like he would have if she were dangling from a bridge and he was trying to save her.
“I think I just wanted someone to know. I wanted somebody who loved me to know,” she said.
Then she was gone. Darryl sat there and cried until a state trooper came along and asked if he’d broken down. He said he kind of had and that he was on his way to his daughter’s funeral. The trooper offered condolences and didn’t give him any trouble. Darryl drove on alone.
Originally published in Hidden Villains, by Inkd Publishing, in 2023. If you liked this story, you may enjoy the anthology.