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After: Did They Get the Shooter?


Ashley

"In a grocery store?" Presley asked. Her voice shook, like I'd some how shattered her view, like she'd found grocery stores to be safe places before. I guess most everyone else would think they were. When you haven't been through all I've been through. Zoey's the only one of my kids who seemed unphased by the words. She, of course, knew exactly what happened.

"Who shot him?" Oliver demanded. His voice was rough, as rough as I've ever heard Oliver, my soft spoken, sweetheart of a boy, sound.

I took a deep breath. This was gonna be told my way. Despite their questions. "We were fighting. I don't remember why, it was so trivial that it faded out of my mind almost instantly..." I bit my lip, stared down at my hands on the table. "Then I remembered we needed milk at home, and I got out of the car and I went inside to tell him and he was there, in the produce section, he was picking up a bunch of bananas. And the sound of it - God, the sound of it. It echoed in the store so loudly, and people everywhere dropped down, but your dad..." I closed my eyes. I could see it in my mind. "He dropped... but... for a different reason. And I saw the blood blossom out on his shirt." I choked. I couldn't breathe.

All four kids, even Zoey who knew, were crying. I saw the tears hanging from even Oliver's eyelashes. He'd diverted his gaze to the floor, an almost sick expression on his face.

"I've never run so fast in my life as I did to get to him..."

I could still smell the blood in the air. I could still see his eyes as he grabbed onto me, clutched my arm, stared into my eyes... could still hear him trying to get out the words...

My jaw trembled.

Leslie's voice was thin, "Did they get the shooter?"




Nick

I didn't know where I was, so I didn't know how to go home. I just drove and waited and hoped I was going the right way. The wheel trembled beneath my fingers, and I thought of nothing but Ashley.

I thought about birthdays and anniversaries and Valentines and midnights spent roasting marshmellows over the grill on the back deck. I thought of the excitement of the kids being born, and of countless kisses, hugs, and nights in each others arms. I thought of the day we drove two miles per hour along behind Oliver the first time he wanted to walk to school alone. I thought of Leslie's first bicycle, with the purple streamers and the Disney Princess basket on the front. I thought of long nights we spent watching DVDs and Ashley jumping at the scary parts, about Steve Perry breaking down the bathroom door one night to leap onto her lap when she screamed over a particularly tense moment in a movie. I thought about the lives that we'd made, the times we'd shared, the love we'd grown.

As I drove, I really saw things. I was alone on the road, so I allowed my eyes to wander. I saw the trees, I saw the way the sunlight came through their leaves. I really saw all the colors in the sun's rays, and the way it lit up the edges of a cloud like it was glowing from the inside out. It was beautiful, the world, I thought to myself. I saw stuff and thought that Louis Armstrong should be singing in the background as I looked at everything. And I dunno maybe it was heavenly stuff, maybe that's why it looked so beautiful, I have no idea. But it was beautiful.

I don't know how long it took, I lost track of time then as I did with everything else. Maybe it was days, maybe it was weeks, maybe minutes, seconds even. I don't know. But when the tour bus pulled up in front of the house, I could feel her, like gravity.