IT TOOK FOUR hours before I could get out of the car and walk through the door of Nikki’s house. It took thirty minutes before I could actually walk through the door.
The blood stains in the living room made my breath hitch. I avoided them, heading up the stairs. My head increasingly pounded along the way.
After psyching myself up for a few minutes, I opened the door to her mother’s bedroom.
It was furnished with a crib, rocking chair, dresser, and toy chest. The walls were light gray and the baby furniture was white. There was a teddy bear and a blanket neatly set up inside the crib. Both were monogrammed with the initials DMB.
My posture folded and I couldn’t leave the room fast enough.
I knew what I felt all those times before when I was lost.
The feeling I couldn’t describe.
I felt it harder now. Harder than I’d ever felt any emotion in my life.
It’s very fucking lonely on the way down to the bottom.
Now that I’m there, I can feel it completely. My heart has been annihilated.
I HEARD THE DOOR swing open but kept my face mashed against the pillow. I couldn’t stay in Nikki’s house last night and came back to my house in the middle of nowhere.
When the sun poured in from the retracted curtains, I grumbled, “Leave.”
“It’s time to get up and stop pitying yourself.”
“Casper,” I muttered into the pillow. “If you don’t want to see a side of me you’ve never seen before, leave.”
“I’m not quite sure what to say to you about what happened to Nikki and Dom—”
Lifting my head, I squinted at him. “I couldn’t fucking care less about Dom, the goddamn traitor who is the reason I lost my wife. He can get fucked by a phallic shaped piece of burning coal from here to eternity while he’s immolated over and over again in the pit of Hell.”
Hitting me on my shoulder, he pushed and pushed until he got a reaction.
“What the fuck do you want?” I asked, jolting out of bed. “How did you find out about this place anyhow?”
He clutched a familiar black box. I didn’t bother to catch it and it dropped to the ground, spraying paper everywhere.
“Did you read them?”
“Every last sordid one,” he replied, his voice trembling.
“Did you come here to tell me how disappointed you are?”
Shaking his head, he pressed a jittery hand to my chest. “No, because I know the man who did those things wasn’t you. It was your father’s influence on you. The man I knew as a child was slowly killed by him. And Dom? I think he was killed by the same things you were a long time ago. For him to go against you like you claim…he wasn’t the Dom I once knew.”
“Which father would that be?” I asked, ignoring the topic of Dom. He wasn’t worth a second of discussion. “Eamon or Victor?”
“Eamon Brae was your father,” he said, making it his final word.
“Do you want me to tell you about all the ways in which you are very fucking wrong?”
He cut his eyes at me, the same look he gave me when we were kids and he heard news about my less savory activities. “Eamon Brae was your father, Ethan.” Exhaling, he sat on the edge of the bed. “Carmen is downstairs waiting for you. I suppose people do peculiar things when they are grieving. She’s currently baking enough pies to serve a small community. I haven’t told her of what I’ve learned, and I’m never going to. Neither are you.”
“So you read the letters. You know what I’ve done to you. If you know, why are you here? Can’t give up on your need to be a masochist, huh? I’m not in the mood to play sadist with you.”
“No, you’re obviously filling the role of the masochist and the sadist right now. You aren’t going to push me away. Please, stop your pitiful attempts at trying to offend me. I spoke with the woman who gave me this box. Janet. I barely knew her besides my interaction with her at the one dinner we attended in Nikki’s honor, but I surely know a lot more about her now.” His eyes began to narrow. “We had a very long conversation about you and…the very dearly departed Nikki.”
It cut a little. Departed. Dead. Nikki…was dead, and I was still living in a nightmare I’d never wake from. “And?”
“I know you inside and out. I’m not here to pass judgment. Redemption is free for anyone who wants it badly enough, and no one is so far gone they can't have it. Call me batshit crazy, but I believe the same of you, Eric.”
“You are fucking certifiable, Casper. Do you want to know how many people I’ve killed? What I've done to them?”
“As I understand it, they were bad people or people who needed peace.”
I stared at the floor for a second. “Does it matter what kind of people they were? They are dead because I killed them. If I know Janet, she sent you here to make sure I picked up my daughter. What the fuck does it look like—me raising a kid alone?”
He started shoving me. No matter what I said he wouldn’t stop shoving me.
I snapped. “What the fuck is your problem, Casper?”
“There. Get angry, but point it in the right direction.” He paced around the room, finding his man purse in the corner and wrestled out a mirror. Opening it, he held it in front of my face. “Get angry at him, curse at him, and then change him. Because you have a daughter who is going to need you. You were given the hefty responsibility of shaping an angel. Don’t muck this chance up.”
Catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror, things felt different. I was the man who was broken by his family—broken into sharp pieces that mutilated everything I came into contact with.
Victor may have had his hand in dismantling our life together by using the people I once surrounded myself with, but I was the one who really killed her. I did this to us.
Snatching the mirror from his hand, I threw it against the wall.
“From what I understand,” Casper studied the broken mirror before turning to me, “she has a pretty hefty inheritance in front of her. Do you truly want that innocent baby girl to get into the foster care system?”
“No, I don’t,” I said, my voice showing every inch of my fatigue. Nikki’s letter did a number of things to me. For the point, it sapped any semblance of confidence in my ability to be a single father. We were always supposed to raise our kid together. Nikki anchored me; she could also do the complete opposite. I lost the ability to grasp any cognition of what I felt—there were too many things to name and it was more beyond being heart-broken. The feelings I never thought I could have came rushing in like a flood. I couldn’t discern one from the other because I was too busy drowning. “You won't believe what Nikki—” Shoving my hands in my hair I shook my head. “Nikki never loved me."
“If I’ve ever believed anything in my life, Ethan, I do believe that is bullshit. I know love when I see it, and that woman loved you. I can't say I agree with what she did, but I understand some of her reasons. She gave her life to give you and her daughter a new one. She believed in the real you. Don't let her down." He grabbed my shoulders. “I think you did everything you could to make her belong to you, but you made numerous missteps and forgot to show her how much you loved her. Don't make the same mistake with your daughter. Love her, because you and I both know you’re capable. The shadow over your heart, making you think you were incapable is gone. You no longer have any excuses.” He dropped his hands and headed toward the door. “I’ll give you five minutes to get yourself together and get downstairs to eat one of those delicious pies Carmen whipped up. Afterward, we are going to pick up your baby girl…together.”
Staring at the shards of the mirror in the corner of the room, I watched the sun hit a shard just right and reflect off the ceiling. I felt…her.
I couldn't remember her voice or her smile before, but now I could remember it all. She was speaking to me through other people. She knew my every move. She knew if she broke me too much, I'd give up on everything and rightly knew the only person who could bring me back. But what I remembered most, was one thing:
“Do you think killing yourself over love is dying for a cause?” Nikki asked.
“It’s ridiculously stupid,” I had replied.
“Would you put your life on the line for someone you loved?”
“There’s a difference between killing yourself because your love wasn’t returned, and putting your life on the line to save the person you love. The former is dying aimlessly. The latter is dying for a cause...for a purpose. I think most wouldn’t mind dying for a cause.”