Chapter Nineteen

Facing the Past

July, Last Year

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Sinclair. There was nothing we could do,” the weary police officer said. He removed his hat and placed it across his chest, large distressed eyes staring at me. “I’m sorry.”

I fell to the floor in my front foyer, a weeping mess. Will hurried to my side.

“Mom! Mom! I’m here. Don’t cry!”

Then he was crying in my arms. Finn came. He wailed and screamed and hit me. We lay in a heap on the floor.

The pine-scented cleaner stung my nose—I had washed those floors that morning.

My children’s tears soaked my blouse.

The officer continued with his apologies, his voice muffled by Finn’s howls. When my baby lowered his wails to sobs, his face still red and blotchy, the other officer crouched beside us. “Mrs. Sinclair, we have grief counseling. I can get you information from the station. We have a counselor there we can connect you with,” she offered.

I nodded, her words falling on deaf ears. I inhaled, then exhaled. I chewed on my lip to stop the trembling. “Do I need to come and…” I couldn’t finish it.

“Yes, ma’am. A visual ID helps us confirm. When you’re ready. We can send a car for you or you can come with us.”

I nodded. “I need to get a sitter. M-Make calls.”

Patsy and George. Oh, my God. I had to call people. I had to tell them that Harrison was dead.

“Come on, honey, stand up, okay?” I said to Finn. Will had already risen. Finn got to his feet, but then he pounded his hands into my chest.

“Noooooo!” he howled, crying harder. “I want Daddy!”

I turned to Will. His face was also splotchy and tear-stained. “Come, Finn. Let’s go upstairs,” he said.

Finn resisted and spat at Will. He then ran upstairs, growling.

My heart could not break any more than it did in that moment.

“I’ll watch him, Mom, while you call Grandma.” Will took each step painfully slow as he went upstairs, sniffling. He paused. “He’s really dead? Gone? Not coming back?”

I gulped. “Yes, honey, he’s not coming back.”

“Your mom will take care of him in heaven, right?”

I was wrong. My heart broke more.

After an excruciating call with Patsy, the stringently clean morgue identification room awaited me. Nobody tells you about this part of death. I remembered my mother’s death as well, but I didn’t have to take the lead on all the calls or arrangements. My father had shouldered that burden. Now I was the adult. It was my job to break the awful news. It was my job to identify my husband and arrange a funeral.

It was my job to raise the kids alone.

Before me on a metal slab, lay my husband, mangled and bruised, but recognizable and cleaned. Forever closed were his baby blues. His dirty blond hair was swept away from his forehead. I memorized his face…the curve of his chin, the long slender nose. He didn’t have his glasses on, which now he wore for more than reading. His long, wispy eyelashes…the speckled freckles that dotted his arms and across the bridge of his nose…the simple, gold wedding ring that was no longer on his left ring finger, and instead in a plastic bag along with his wallet and cell phone, now tucked in my handbag.

My children would never see their daddy again.

Part of my soul left me that day at the hands of a drunk driver.

I cried for the life I would never have again. Just like that, fate steered me on an alternate path.

I still heard Will and Finn’s cries of “Mom” deep within my bones.