When she goes home to pick up her bags, Ben's gone. No note. No nothing. She changes into a blouse that covers her chest piece. Since she feels like walking, she drags her bag behind her all the way to the station, the scraping sound loud behind her on the quiet morning streets.
On the way, Cheryl thinks about her father, and how much she wishes she could call him.
"Mom died," she'd say.
"I heard," he'd say.
"You get the same hysterical call from Lori?" she'd asked.
"Yeah," he'd say, raspy, slow, steady.
They'd be dates for the funeral, going for a farmer's breakfast after and order beer with it. They'd end up laughing at how morbid they look, dressed all in black.
She wonders what he would think if he could see her now; pregnant, aimless, in love with a ghost. If he knew about it all, what would he think? If he'd seen everything that happened since he'd gone, would he still love her?
Then she wonders if Daddy's waiting for Mama in heaven. They separated years ago, but maybe he's still waiting for her. She hopes he's waiting for her.
After, she's disgusted with herself for thinking like that, for being so sentimental.
"Grow up," she tells herself.
It doesn't work that way.
"I don't know if your father knew. If he did, he never spoke about it. I didn't like the whole thing. I didn't like David from the
beginning, I didn't think it was right. Your daddy was a good person and he loved Shannon. And in some ways, she did love
your Daddy but not..."
"But not how she loved David?"
"No. Never how she loved David. She loved David enormously. More than I think people should love. It was scary almost."
Every word goes through Cheryl like a bullet, the hot metal melting away her delicate skin, leaving her organs exposed.
"What happened?"
"They got together, you know, after meeting at work. At some bar in town. Your Mama didn't plan it. She told me once it was like she had no say, no control, no choice, and she was thrown into something head first, and before she could blink...they were heavily involved."
"Did she want to leave Daddy for him?"
Aunt Lori brings her hands to her face, sucks in her lips, tight, and doesn't move.
"Forgive me," she whispers.
She looks at Cheryl, and for the first time, Cheryl feels an honesty between them. It's as if the old Aunt Lori has melted away, and now they are just two adults, sharing the same space, confused and lonely but now together.
"She was torn. She was really torn up about it."
"What does that mean?"
"I think she would have. If he would be there for her. But she loved your father, she did. She was just complicated, you know. "
"And Daddy wasn't complicated."
"He put up with a lot from her. He didn't understand her, but he wanted to. He did love her. Your Mama wished that she could love him the same too, I know she did."
Cheryl loved her father because he wasn't complicated. He loved her back, but he never really knew her. They were like two differed breeds, existing in different parallels, but pretending they breathed the same air. Their differences were too great, Cheryl was too complicated for him to even begin to know. Her world existed in colors. He, colorblind, was unable to see anything but black and the white. But colors are not only brilliant, and sometimes the vibrancy is frightening. She longed for the simplicity of the starkness.
Was it the same with Mama?
"What was David like?"
"Handsome. Dynamic. Different from your father. I hated him from the moment I met him, but it wasn't easy."
"What did he look like?"
"Dark-haired. Very tall. He had a width to him, he was strong-looking. Blue eyes. He had soft features. He looked younger than he was. There's a picture of him, upstairs in the hall, with your Mama and I in it. Next to the bible verse. I keep it up because she looks so happy. It's so nice to see her so happy, even though I curse him."
That's the man who looks like Ben, thinks Cheryl. Her body suddenly cold, goose bumps grow all over her, her blood evaporating.
"I don't know what else to say, really. He was magnetic. Funny, smart, stubborn. He wanted bigger things than this town had to offer. He was strange though. There was something tragic that surrounded him. He was a lot like your Mama."
Lori looks down, a new sadness finds her features.
"He was lot like Shannon," she says privately.
"So what ended up happening?"
"Well, they were involved for a long time on and off. Two, three years or so. But when she married your Daddy, she stopped seeing him. I know she did, she changed after that. It was like a light was sucked out of her. She changed, altogether after she stopped seeing him. It was like she died in some ways, right then."
"Really?"
"Yes. The grief she carried around was heavy after they finished. He haunted her. He changed her. Some love is so powerful that it destroys you, I believe that. It destroyed her."
I don't want to be destroyed, thinks Cheryl. Please, don't let me be destroyed, she prays, hoping someone is listening.
"It was him that did it? You believe that?" asks Cheryl, feeling bound. She doesn't really want to know the answer.
"I think...I think she had a hand in it. But she was weak, your Mama, and I don't mean to speak ill of her. But I don't think she was equipped to handle loving someone that deep. I think it was just bad luck that they ever met. Because I don't think she could control it. I think it was almost forced on her, and it got so big, so heavy on her, that she could ever get out from under it. So yes. He did destroy her."
"But she did leave him? Eventually, she left him?"
"Physically, she left him. Yes. Physically she did. But if you want to know the truth, I think she loved him until her heart stopped."
And now, I'm loving someone just as hopelessly. That love didn't stop with her heartbeat. It's alive in me now. Mama's breathing in me, thinks Cheryl. The love, so powerful, so vital, so haunting, will exist beyond time.
"Do you know where I could find him?"
Lori looks winded.
"Why?"
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