TILL DEATH DO US PART | JENLISA

TWENTY-FIVE

JENNIE

***

Absolution

December 15th, 2027

(3 years left)

***

I pull the car into the driveway and stomp on the brake with a heavy foot. My eyes trace the snow covered awnings of our house and the antique Christmas lights that glitter in the frost. They are warm, charming, and cast a shimmer of light over the snow laden bushes in the yard.

I turn the key in the ignition and listen to the slow tick of the engine in the silence. I know I should get out of the car, but I just can’t do it, not when I look to my right and see the spread of the front yard and the tire swing dusted in snow.

I stare at it, until my tears fall.

It isn’t just the tire swing, it’s that I promised Lisa I would swing her in it and I haven’t. It’s that I’ve somehow become the woman I hated so much, the woman that died so long ago. My secrets and sacrifices used to feel like an homage to love, and now it feels like the poison of it.

It kills me one tiny lie at a time.

And now that I stand at a crossroad in my life, I wish I had my love to keep me strong. I wish I had my wife to keep me upright. I wipe my face, eyes fixed on the snowdrift near the tire swing. There is another reason I’m crying here in the car over that tire swing. It’s because of my dream, the nightmare I couldn’t remember that has been chasing me for five very long years. I can hold onto it now.

And it starts right here.

I pop the car door, letting the cold wind rush in on me. Instead of heading inside, I walk across the yard, my boots crunching over snow, as I trace my way to the swing. Once there, I crouch down until I’m eye level with the top of it.

I’m staring into bright hazel eyes. They are framed with a curtain of curls that sway in the breeze. The little girl is plucking at her pant leg, sitting alone. Waiting. She has my eyes and Lisa’s chestnut hair. She’s our baby. I know it like I know my own name. She looks so much like Emily used to when she was little with her angelic little face. The girl’s expectant face lifts to focus on something behind me. When I turn, I see a car pulling into the driveway. It’s not mine or Lisa’s, it’s another car. The back door pops open and a garbled voice pours from it.

I can’t understand the words, and I’ve tried so hard to hear them.

Our daughter slides free of the tire swing and walks into the car. Every time I dream this, I try to tell her to stop, to not get into a car with someone, but she doesn’t listen. She can’t hear.

She just goes.

And I follow, moving faster than I’ve ever run. The ground speeds beneath me, and I keep with the car as it blurs over the street. I follow it until New York City as all its monochrome glory juts into the sky like the teeth of a hungry animal.

Ready to eat me up and tear me to pieces.

Then, I trip and fall because I know where I’m going and what day it is.

The street is hard against my hands, palms scorched by skinning them in my fall.

It takes a moment, but the jerk of reality shifts me somewhere else. I’m standing in midtown. I know it well, the congestion of other cars humming with purpose. The vehicles blow past me, unaware of my presence, and I spin searching for the vehicle that holds our daughter. It passes right by me, within range of my touch and I pound on the window, but my fist bounces off it soundlessly.