[u]CHAPTER ONE[/u]


Daddy was sick. 

It didn't matter how old Sarah became—eight, eighteen, or twenty-eight—he would always be daddy. The woman sat at his bedside. A sheen of perspiration dotted along his brow. Despite the tubes from the tank draped around his ears looping back around to his nose, his breathing remained labored. The extra oxygen funneling to his lungs did little to help. 

“Oh, daddy,” she said, reaching out to dab the sweat from his forehead with a damp cloth. The sixty-three year old family man had been in and out of the hospital for months now until the doctors finally decided there was nothing more they could do with him. Their suggestion was to take him home and make him comfortable in the last moments of his life. Sarah did her best. It was difficult for her to hear him wheeze and watch him slowly suffocate. 

Her mother remained a fixture at his side sitting in her distinctive cherry rocking chair. The back was curved with a reddish brown finish, the grain slightly wavy in the dense wood. Her brother, Sarah's uncle, had made it with his hands before his own passing many years earlier. She barely remembered the man, but the chair made a lasting impression. No one, except for her mother, was allowed to sit in it. When her father was discharged from the hospital, Sarah had been ordered to move it to the bedroom.

By now her mother had cried all the tears she possibly could. The wrinkles around her eyes were more prominent than before, the dark circles indicating a lack of sleep. Her face was slender now, the skin loose around her jowls where she'd lost a significant amount of weight. The sandwich Sarah left hours earlier she noticed hadn't been touched.

“Momma, you need to eat something,” she urged her, but the old woman just contorted her face in disgust as if the thought of food itself was a sickening one. The chair creaked as the woman rocked, a knitted quilt draped over her lap brushing against the floor. “How long have you been awake?”

“I'll sleep when I'm dead,” was her response and the curtness of her delivery stated that the topic, at least when it came to her, was closed. 

A few moments of silence stretched between them until Sarah finally sighed with defeat. Head turning to stare at the small table beside the bed, she eyed the car keys for a long time before reaching for them. “I'm going to the pharmacy to pick up his meds,” she informed her mother. A hesitance in her step and a reluctance to leave her alone, she glanced back over her shoulder. “Will you be okay?”

Their modest house was in a secluded part of the country sounded by nothing more than wheat-fields and farms. Down the street was an orchard where the Parson family produced wine and had expanded one house into three. Beside them was the Rydell farm where they had recently built a small dairy shop with exclusive ice creams and fresh milk. There was also a venue for weddings.

But when it came to shopping for necessities, the drive was a long one out to the nearest shopping center which was forty-five minutes out. There was a price to pay for the seclusion of being out in the countryside. “I'll be fine,” her mother assured her, the woman's voice cracking from dehydration. Clearing her throat, she reached for the glass of water beside the plate of food. The ice had melted and condensation had formed a ring, but at least she was putting something in her stomach and it made Sarah feel slightly better, if not by much.

Hand to the knob on the door, Sarah was stopped by the question she'd been dreading to hear. “Have you spoken to your sister?”

“No,” she lied. “I haven't heard from her.”

Quickly she rushed out the door before she could ask anything else. As she shut it, she could hear her father asking, “Lena?” while her mother tried to calm him down.

Lena wasn't coming. The last telephone call they'd had resulted in an argument. Sarah didn't understand the animosity between her sister and her parents. Lena always insisted they were fake, they didn't actually care about her, and since her mid-twenties she hadn't returned home. Though Sarah would have liked to say she was fond of her sister, there was a six year age gap between the two of them and they'd never been particularly close. Sarah could recall tumbling after her elder sister in admiration during her youth only to be shooed away for being a pest.

Over the years, Sarah had come to see Lena's narcissistic nature and she found herself detesting her for the strain she constantly put on the family. Only contacting her parents when she needed a bailout, now that their father was on his deathbed, Lena had the nerve to say good riddance—and Sarah, for the first time, lost her composure. 

Sarah had never been going anywhere in life, not like Lena who went everywhere, but she'd sacrificed what little independence and freedom she did have to stay and look after her parents. It would have been nice to share the responsibility with someone, but Lena was anything but responsible. After their turbulent conversation, Sarah had tried to contact her sister one last time only to find the number had been disconnected. To that, she callously repeated the words Lena had told her and said, “Good riddance.”

A cool autumn breeze rose the hair on the back of her arms as she stepped outside onto the deck Trees were starting to loose their leaves, a majestic warmth of colors decorating the lawn crunching beneath her footsteps as she made her way to her car. Out of the three vehicles, it was the only one that had gotten any use within the past few weeks and she doubted the others would start if she even tried after having sat idle for so long. Inserting the key into the ignition, the engine of the Toyota Camry revved to life and the radio sounded through the static in the speakers. 

Twisting the tuner to adjust the clarity, Sarah leaned back against the seat and stared at the presets as she listened to the music playing over the radio. It was the tail end of a song by a band called The Grim. The lead singer, Johnny Blackburn, was actually a native of their community—the town of Fairburrow, so small on the United States map that it might not even exist. As she shifted the car into gear, she paused her movements once the announcer started speaking over the outro.

“And that was The Grim, in town for a performance this weekend. Remember to stay tuned for you chance to win tickets to-”

Sarah turned the radio off.

It had been years since she'd seen Johnny. Her sister had been one of his groupies and, to the best of her knowledge, they'd had a relationship. Their parents had never approved of Johnny, thinking he was a nobody throwing his life away, and their disapproval had enticed Lena all the more to continue seeing him. Sarah didn't know what had happened between them, but she did remember peeking into Lena's room once to find her cursing his name and ripping his picture into pieces. 

He was well known—at least around the town. He was their pride and joy. The one person they could point to and say that he'd done something. People who once hated him now used his name where ever they went claiming to know him back when. Once or twice she'd been asked her opinion about him. There was one memory, sitting with her sister on an old beat up couch, watching him practice. Her sister had dragged her there when she was supposed to be baby sitting and Sarah had sat with her arms crossed in a huff wishing she could go home and watch cartoons instead. Johnny must have taken notice of the surly girl and he rallied the band to play the theme song to one of her favorite television shows to cheer her up. He seemed nice, she would say, but add that she hardly knew him.

The drive to the pharmacy seemed long and arduous. All she could think about was her mother at home beside her father. Chest constricting, she worried something would happen before she returned. Sarah's footsteps quickened as she walked towards the building, carelessly almost running into someone coming out of the door.

“Excuse me,” she said politely, offering an sheepish and apologetic smile. The person ignored her giving no indication that they'd even heard her other than a disgruntled growl of frustration. The woman shirked back wondering what his problems was when her eyes fell to the man's wrist. Indention of teeth left red swollen marks and she could see the bottle of peroxide he'd purchased from the store. A painful dog bite, she concluded as she made her way inside. She supposed being attacked by a wild animal would make anyone cranky.