HOME | DD

Description
Two feet.

Had he hit the railing just two feet further along the road, he wouldn't have gone over the slope. Sarah's mind continued churning the thoughts in her mind, thinking of all the years she still could have seen her son, the woman he might have met, even the grand-children she might have entertained at Christmas.

But.

He had gone over at a speed approaching triple figures, splitting trees before they had their chance to light up or build or furnish a home. Ford's handiwork was undone in less than three seconds and hers in a second, the end of over one hundred years and twenty emphasised by the glass still scattered around a low stone wall.

Months.

Only three had passed since Simon had died, but she had never known three longer since her birth. Simon's father, Michael, was still in the house, but they only acknowledged one another for a painful hour at dinner, and then only when she could bear to be in his company. The first night, she had stayed in his room, staring at the posters she had kept fixed to the walls for him while he was in university. She had smelt the faint, undeniable scent he had when he had left only two years? Yes, it was two years... Ago.

The second night, she had let the tears fall onto his pillow, while Michael slept in their bedroom, sullen and drunk. The third, she had done the same. The fourth, she took one of the pins from Simon's favourite U2 poster, and drove it into her index finger. She had explained it as an accident, and hated Michael for believing her. The truth was; she had needed to know, in some small way, just what he must have felt when he hit the steering wheel. Well, she may never have become a doctor, but she did know that a pierced finger was not a shattered rib-cage. That was why, on the fifth, she had tried to see him once again, but that idiot Michael had pulled her out of the water.

She looked up from her musings at the trees as they drove on. Michael slowly pulled up by the scenic point that Simon had kept closed for the last two months. She closed the door gently, honouring the time Simon had spent in the back seat, and eventually in the front, when he had helped her pick up shopping. He slammed it, remembering their argument from lunch-time... Yes, it must have been that. He generally showed that he was upset very rarely, a testament to his being "fucked-up" in the first Gulf War. PTSD was one hell of an emotional imbalance, she considered.

The scene itself was like one of the battlefields of the first world war she had visited as a child: empty, with no evidence of an event. In Ypres they had sat under the trees, and eaten apples with schoolmates, but here she walked gently up to the rail, gingerly gripping the shiniest part of the rail, just to make sure.

She looked at Michael with dead and trembling eyes. "Should we lay them here?"
"No. The car landed near the homestead over there"
"But... This is where it went over..."
"It would be a better reminder down there"
"Is that all this is? A reminder? Do you even care about him dying?!"
He slapped her roughly, his hand burning itself onto her skin.
"How dare you?! He was my son too! He would want others to know..."
"I don't give a fuck about any others, MICHAEL! He was MY SON!!!"

The words broke in the air, the condensation drifting into the hazy fog above them. Silence dawned for several minutes, as they stared at each other, both resigned to the fact that their marriage had ended as soon as his car had disappeared into the night gloom. Michael got back in the car, gunning the engine. "Find your own way back to the hotel." The dust settled, and she looked back to the railing, gently laying the flowers down.

A sympathetic sunset shined on her, and Sarah stared at the clouds high above, frozen in time as they turned lazily to travel East. She had no tears left to shed, so instead she pulled out a few strands of hair and left them on the side of the road, the rest of her red hair flailing out behind her in the breeze.

She looked over the flowing valley in front of her, with the sun kissing the hillside, and trailing long fingers on the trees, and despite herself, she smiled. Simon couldn't have chosen a more beautiful place to die. Very much like him, she thought, he had been the artist of the family. She sighed, and looked out again. He'd always said she would make an excellent artist. She thanked him under her breath. That was what she would do. She would paint.