True Heroes (19 page)

“How could I even begin to believe this isn’t all there is to my life? I’m here rolling around in my own failures like a dog and you think there’s an upside?”

“You could too. You could give meaning to everything you’ve done and everything you’re still going to do.”

Mrs. Drit looked at the ceiling and scoffed as her tears welled again. “I have so many regrets from this life. The future looks no different.”

A horrid taste of doubt stripped his voice for a moment. ‘So much of me truly wishes that time would restart here, now, for her. She’s always been there for me. Maybe her intentions were a little more skewed than I thought, but still. Doesn’t matter. Even I can’t do that.’ “More than those regrets have shaped you into the person you are today, Mrs. Drit. All of that has driven you to desire great things, so go do them. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to reach across your desk and shake you until you quit that stupid job. It’s not right. That isn’t where you’re meant to be.”

A small smirk broke through her sad composure. “Why so?”

“Because you don’t belong there! You belong in a place so much higher than this. You’re right, it’s absolutely stupid that you’re not the highest paid person in this house because you’re definitely prettier than your husband and I’d place my money on you being smarter too. There’s a meaning behind that. There has to be.”

She outright laughed at Caleb’s comment. Her hair flipped and a trace of her old glow returned while her breath normalized. “You really believe that don’t you?”

Caleb nodded with pure confidence pouring from his eyes. “Just because we haven’t invented a time machine doesn’t mean we can’t change the past, and just because we can see a path beneath our feet doesn’t make it the right one.”

‘A prideful smile…does she think she taught me something here? Not even close.’ She stood up and quickly fell onto her leather couch with a groan as Caleb moved back onto the footstool and wiped her extra lip-gloss off his own mouth. Minutes seemed to fly off the clock as they both sat collecting their thoughts before a very soft voice sounded from Mrs. Drit’s mouth, “Can you help me see like you do?

              -                            -                            -             

              Caleb saw everything under a darkened veil. ‘Odd how that’s always how it is. Movies and TV…nobody’s apathetic at funerals. Who could be?’ The day was bright, spring-warm, and rather pleasant, but not where he stood. Where he stood, Carol holding his hand on one side and his father by a space on the other, the sun couldn’t pierce, the air never flowed, and pleasant breezes fell on the numbed nerves. A small crowd of fifty people stood at his back and listened to the empty words of the nameless preacher while he felt their frowning faces through his black suit. As everyone’s heads dropped for a prayer, his looked up. His glassy eyes stayed open as a breeze swept by very gently, and his power stretched straight up. Reaching higher and higher, he and his abilities stacked until some internal barrier had reached its limit and some movement of Carol’s brought his unfurl crashing back. ‘Still not powerful enough.’

              A group “amen” broke the group with his father’s arm draping over his shoulder for a second before the man walked to the preacher. Carol hugged his arm and placed her head on his shoulder. ‘To hide her tears, I’m sure. Hold it back.’ He just hugged her tight as his father folded his hands in front of his massive body and began to speak. “Thank you all for making it out today even if it’s to the saddest event any of us could gather for. Audrey was someth—” a sudden shock of sadness caused the proud man to stop for a second. “Screw the formalities. This woman was shot down by some bastard who was more cowardly-animal than man. What kind of a world do we live in where soulless people can take away someone this precious? Where the hell is the justice in that? Doesn’t…doesn’t this seem wrong? This woman put up with more of my crap than anyone in the world ever should, and I tried my damndest to show her how much I loved her with a good life where she never had to worry about money.” He stopped and caught his breath before just adding one more line, “Money can’t solve everything.”

              His father stepped over to the same side of Caleb as before. ‘Truer words won’t be spoken today, Dad.’ Carol’s easy grip attempted to drag him up to place her rose on the coffin. She looked back at him quizzically as he stayed planted. ‘Please…keep it away from me. Don’t make me walk up to it. It’ll become real. I’ve lost if that happens. Damn it—she’s dead and gone forever. No justice. Nothing right about this. Absolute wrong won today. Jesus.’ Carol came back to his side and kissed him, slowly and understandingly, on his cheek before gently pulling him to the brown box. Both of their hands entwined, she reached out and placed the back of his hand on the capsule. ‘Now I know I’m not dreaming. That pain hurts too deep to be fake.’ The beating heart within his chest started to implode and crumble in on itself with only his deep breaths and Carol’s cooing words keeping him from destroying everything within his power’s reach. Not a single person at his back looked on in judgment or even in sorrow; all hung their heads in a somber acknowledgement that the pain in the air was not theirs to bear.

              As he came back to his father’s side, the rest of the people seemed to be stuck on fast-forward. Their roses were piling quickly and the body was in the grave before his thoughts ever gathered together again. The next time coherency crossed his mind was when he was standing over to the side, greeting and thanking everyone who had come. Both the known and unknown faces passed by until the Mrs. Stog came by with a bright smile on her face. ‘Same gown as that damn night.’ She extended both of her hands and clasped at his while her smile widened. “Caleb is it? It’s such a lovely day to be outside! I hope we weren’t too late.” Caleb’s heart squeezed tight enough to drip sorrow into his blood like acid. “I do wish your mother was here to enjoy it with us. When will she be back in town?”

              Caleb’s misting eyes darted to the son behind her and tried to ask what this was while the woman stared back, absolutely flabbergasted as to why there were tears in the young man’s eyes. ‘She was right there and she doesn’t remember a thing.’ He turned and quickly walked away, leaving his father to fill the void while Caleb attempted to fill his own. His heart wouldn’t stop squeezing and his blood wouldn’t stop coursing its painful course while deep breaths ripped in and out of his lungs. ‘Fall into your power. Let it all wash away again, but don’t half-ass it this time. Suffocate for as long as it takes to stop this hurt—’

              A hand on his shoulder suddenly shocked him away from thought. “Are you okay, kid?”

              It was the son of the woman handing him a tissue and asking questions. “Yes,” he said as he pushed the offering away. “Everything kind of overwhelmed me there for a second.”

              “Well, I’m kind of surprised you didn’t hear about my mother’s amnesia, but…,” ‘the man looks as though he has a thought in his large head.’ “Listen, I wanted to say some things to you today about your mom. No one bothered to ask about what the guy looked like because my mom told the police nobody got a good look at the killer. But…but I did.”

              Caleb’s interest was piqued. “What did he look like?”

              As he spoke, the details wrapped themselves around a mannequin in Caleb’s mind until a workable image was created. ‘Tall, green and yellow, short-sleeved striped shirt, long blue jeans, dress shoes, short hair and a tattoo of a dragon down his forearm.’ The entire image mixed and matched with the unknown details being guessed at by Caleb. His mind wandering, he thanked the son and began to walk back towards the crowd of people still huddled around his father. Caleb’s eyes had dried and his insides were stimulated by a jumping, electrical effect. He fell back next to his father just in time for Father Lawrence to walk by and shake his hand. No words were spoken until Caleb’s father walked away to talk with his group of friends. “Are you ready to believe?”

              That question brought a curious smile to the Father’s face as they dropped each other’s hand. Caleb walked past the prideful holy man and, accidentally, crushed the flower he had laid at his mother’s gravestone.
  

Chapter 5

             
Caleb jogged into the hospital quickly enough to dodge the sudden downpour of rain and wiped the droplets off his arm. A few people piled into the tiled lobby behind him, shaking out their wet clothes while Caleb smiled. Walking by the nurse’s station, his destination already engrained within his mind, he didn’t bother looking around. Thirty steps counted down until he needed to take a left, then another hundred and twenty strides until the half-glass, half-aging-wood door came into sight. The vertical blinds across the door and windowed wall of the front of his office were open, giving the doctor sitting behind his desk the look of a prisoner behind impenetrable bars. ‘It’s been a month of second-guessing and excuse-making. Get your answers and then…him.’

              He knocked on the clear door and awaited the doctor’s approval to come in. “Caleb? Welcome, please have a seat.” Caleb smiled and gratefully took the offered chair after a quick handshake. An eternal second passed before the doctor sensed Caleb’s hesitance to make the first leap. “I hope you’re not sick, because I’m fairly certain the world would end if that were the case.”

              Caleb barely smirked, trying not to be rude. “I expected to see you at my mother’s funeral. Last month.”

              Their eye contact broke with the doctor’s head drop before the pen he’d been holding rolled from his hand and skittered across the desk. It interested Caleb to watch Fink’s reaction; ‘his slumped shoulders are relaxing his usually fidgety hands, even if the brims of his eyes are searching for words or an answer or distraction, all the while his bald spot is staring at me more than those puzzled eyes.’ Everything seemed to gel for the doctor at once as his head rose and voice sounded, “Did your mother ever tell you about us?”

              “I never knew you guys were an ‘us.’”

              Thomas Fink pulled a smile from his soul and flashed it for only Caleb to see. “There wasn’t, really, but I always wanted there to be. Our colleges were right next to one another and we randomly met one night at a slow party, which certainly wasn’t unusual for a college-built town. She’d already met your father, so I was too late before I was ever on time. Problem is in the pain; it was painful seeing them so happy together but even worse when I tried to avoid her. She became my only need all throughout our years until she graduated. Then,” he opened a bottom drawer and the clink of a glass bottle alerted Caleb of the retrieved object before it came into sight, “I, of course, had to fill the void she left. So, a bourbon bottle became close and dear to my life. It was a stroke of luck that you brought her back with your birth. Who knew how radically that event would change everyone’s lives?”

              “Births change lives all the time. You know that more than me, Doc.”

              “And you should know more than me how different you are.” Fink leaned back and spread his arms over his flushed head. “In this, my own hall of achievement, I am exactly zilch compared to you, and compared to life. I’ve always…wanted to hate medicine because it introduced me to a woman I loved but could never have. In a way, I was right next to you at your mother’s gravestone, only a cold glass was the only comfort around me.”

              “I’m sorry, but that’s not an excuse.”

              “I’m not excusing myself. That’s just what happened.”

              Caleb could only sit there. ‘He really cared about her beyond himself. How remarkable. My friend that sits before me could have been my father, but he isn’t. He didn’t choose himself. He chose what he thought was best for everyone.’ “I’m sorry I didn’t know anything like that happened.”

              A wrinkled, defeated hand waved aside the apology while his mouth sounded a change of subject. “I know that’s not what you came here for. Let’s hear it.”

              Caleb smiled innocently and sat forward. “That’s along the same subject of why I’m here. You’re the only one that knows my past well enough to explain it to me. Medically speaking, what makes me strange?”