Excerpt: Untitled as of yet

This is a very rough first draft of the story that I am working on this year. I know it needs a lot of work. That being said, it at least gives you an idea of some of the players involved. I expect that, come December, there will be a lot of editing work involved.

Prologue

December 12, 1994

“Don’t you walk away from me when I’m talking, Brian!”

He stopped in the doorway; a bitter laugh escaping his lips at her words. It was like this all the time. It didn’t matter what he tried to say to her, nothing ever made a difference. She was always right, and he was always wrong. There was never any “in-between.”

If he didn’t say anything to defend himself, he was accused of ignoring her. If he did try and defend himself, he was accused of making excuses and everything he said was not good enough. One time, he decided to agree with her, just to see what she would do. She accused him of patronizing her and stomped out in a huff. There was just no way to win.

It didn’t matter that he worked himself to death at the factory all day, or that he hadn’t been feeling well. To her everything was an excuse and she was hearing none of it.

Rather then saying what he really thought about her words, he just turned around and shook his head and sighed.

“What do you want me to say, Angela? I’m tired. It’s never good enough for you… nothing is ever good enough.”

“Oh, so now it’s my fault?” she snapped acidly

He walked right up to her so that their noses were practically touching. His grey eyes searched hers and for a moment he thought he saw something… but then it was gone.

She spun violently on her heal and slammed the kitchen door behind her.

He walked over to the front door and leaned heavily against the frame; all the while, biting back a scream of frustration. A moment later, he was outside the house, gravel crunching beneath his feat as he walked through the crisp, December, night air.

It didn’t take long before he reached the highway. Slowly he began to up his pace from a brisk walk to a jog. It wasn’t long before he was flat out running, his breath coming in short gasps as he attempted to escape all the pain that he had left behind. After a few minutes, the frigid air burning in his lungs, he stopped and fell to his knees, panting.

As his breathing slowed, Brian thought about what it was like when they were younger. Things had been so different then.

They had been high-school sweethearts and married straight out of school. It was unplanned and extremely impulsive but all that did was make it all the more exciting.

For their ‘grad-night’ all the seniors went to Vegas for the weekend. After a night of partying they drunkenly decided that they should get married. They broke off from the group and went to the closest chapel they could find. It even had a drive-through. When they woke up the next morning, each sporting identical hangovers, they realized what they had done. After discussing the issue over coffee and agreeing to never drink again, they decided that they would not have the marriage annulled and that they would keep it a secret from their respective families; at least until they could find a suitable time to break the news. For the next two months, they managed to keep the secret. They each lived with their respective families and continued to act as if nothing had changed. Every once in a while, they would sneak out and spend the night in a local motel.

Things seemed to be going extremely well when they were thrown a proverbial curve ball; Angela was pregnant. They did the test three times to be sure but it came back the same every time. There was obviously no way that they would be able to keep this from their families. After several hours of discussion, it was decided that breaking the news that they were married was preferable to letting them believe that she was pregnant out of wedlock. Her parents were rather strict in their views of what was proper.

They decided to get both of the families together for dinner at a local restaurant; figuring that if they were in public, there wouldn’t be as much yelling.

The screaming that echoed throughout the entire restaurant served as a shining example of how wrong they were.

Jabs and insults were thrown from both sides and in the end, the two families decided that the best thing to do would be to have the marriage annulled and the pregnancy terminated.

Both Brian and Angela objected to this and flatly refused to go through with it. It didn’t matter what their parents thought. They were married, in love, and about to become parents. Even the announcement that she was to be cut off from her inheritance didn’t faze them.

Before the night was out, the two of them had moved into a dilapidated, run-down motel; confident in their belief that, once morning came, they would make everything work.

The obvious problem of money pushed both of them to find a job. Neither Brian, nor Angela, had ever held a real job. Both of their families were relatively well off and so they had always depended on them for everything. As a result, they really didn’t have any marketable job skills.

After a month of searching, with only short, odd jobs, here and there, he still had not found anything permanent. Angela did find some secretarial work but, like Brian, it was not a permanent job and didn’t last very long. As soon as any prospective employer found out that she was pregnant, they immediately found reasons why she didn’t meet the criteria. The most common one was, ‘not enough experience.’ But Angela knew the truth. As much as it pained her, she could understand where they were coming from. How could she expect someone to hire her on a permanent basis when she was going to have to leave in a few months to have the baby?

As time went by; and the jobs became scarcer and scarcer, Brian began to sink into a deep depression. He continued to search for a job but didn’t have much luck. Between the money that was left in Angela’s personal savings, and the small amount of money that was coming in from his odd jobs and her secretarial work, he figured that they would be broke and on the streets within two months.

The night of that revelation found him at the local bar. It was there that he had a breakthrough.

As he was ordering his fourth beer, a man in a light grey business suit sat down next to him. This unknown man listened to Brian’s drunken tale and told him that he worked at the steel factory just outside of town. He was willing to overlook Brian’s lack of experience if he would agree to join their team of assembly line workers. His reasoning was that it would be easier to shape and mold him to the position if he had not had any previous training.

Two hours and several cups of coffee later, he stumbled home to tell Angela the good news.

When he got there, he found her curled up in a ball on the bathroom floor with tears streaming down her face. Sobs wracked her small frame as she haltingly told him that her father had died, earlier that morning, from a massive heart attack and they had been banned from attending the funeral. It was at that moment that she realized just how cut off she had become from her family.

He pulled her up off the floor and moved her to the bedroom where he held her until her sobs quieted and her breathing evened out.

Over the next few months, things started getting better and better. Every day, Angela would come by the factory to visit and have lunch with Brian. Everything seemed to be perfect.

One day, in her sixth month of pregnancy, Angela began to complain of cramping pains in her stomach. Brian rushed her to the hospital where they found out that she had gone into an early labor. The doctors tried to stop the process but it was too late. After an hour of surgery, the doctors emerged from the operating room and told Brian that they were able to save Angela, but the baby had been too far underdeveloped. There was nothing more that they could do. On top of all that, the doctors said that Angela would never be able to have children again.

Angela had been crushed. She had always dreamed of having a large family. Now that dream would never come true.

Brian had tried to be supportive but he was just as devastated as she was. On top of all that, he felt a lot of guilt as well. As much as he knew that it wasn’t either of their faults, a small, irrational part of him felt that if they hadn’t eloped in the first place that none of this would have happened. She would still have her family, money, and her ability to have children in the future. It didn’t help that the letters that they had sent to her family, informing them of the loss, were all returned unopened.

As time went by, both Angela and Brian began to distance themselves from each other; and then the fighting began.

They had been married for six years now and this is what their marriage had been reduced to. He’d go to the factory early in the morning and work until it was dark. He’d be so tired when he came home that all he would be able to do is eat a small dinner and then he collapse into bed. The only time they would speak is when they were arguing.

Brian turned himself over and attempted to stand up, his joints creaking in concert with the pins and needles that filled his legs. He turned towards home, walking slowly and shaking his legs in an attempt to regain proper bloodflow.

He had walked only a few feet when a loud screech rent the previously still night, he spun around as two cars came pealing around the bend. The first car was swerving in an attempt to regain control as the second car pulled along side it and rammed it towards the ditch on the side of the road.

Brian watched with horrified fascination as the first car came dangerously close to the ditch and then came strait for him. His brain started screaming at him that he had to move but his legs refused to cooperate. The car was so close that he could see the terror in the woman’s eyes and then he knew no more.

__________________________________

Angela heard the door close and the crunching of the gravel beneath his feet as he walked away. She leaned against the countertop and squeezed her eyes shut to ward off the prickle of tears. Grabbing a dirty dish, she started scrubbing it in an attempt to distract herself from the tears falling down her cheeks. She didn’t know why she said the things that she did. She didn’t really mean them. She just got so mad that things just flew out of her mouth without any thought from her brain.

She knew that he was slowly killing himself working at that factory. If it weren’t for the fact that they were so dependent on the money that he brought home, she would have insisted that he quit a long time ago.

It had seemed like too good of an opportunity to pass up at the time. It had come at a time in their lives when it really made all the difference. It really was a life-saver. They had been so broke that she wouldn’t have been surprised if they were homeless within a few months.

As dependent as he had become on that job, she really worried about him. More and more often, he was coming home at night looking tired and pale. The shadows under his eyes were becoming more pronounced and she could tell that he was in pain by the way that he tossed and turned in his sleep.

She reached for another dish and found, to her dismay, that they were all clean.

She dried her hands on a nearby dishtowel and then walked into the living room to find something else to do. Even though it was spotless, she pulled out the vacuum anyway.

Five minutes later, her vacuuming done, she collapsed onto the couch and looked out the bay window for any sign of her husband.

‘When he gets home, we are going to have to have a long talk,’ she resolved silently to herself. ‘Things will get better. I’ll make sure of it.’

It was with that thought in mind that she relaxed into the slightly worn, mismatched, cushions of the couch to wait.

___________________________________

BANG, BANG, BANG!

Angela woke with a start. She blearily looked around and saw that she had fallen asleep on the couch. As she looked at the clock on the wall, she was startled to see that it was 3:00am.

BANG, BANG!

The pounding started again and she realized that someone was knocking on the door. She groggily stood up and wrapped her robe around her body while she staggered to the door.

She opened the door and felt her breath hitch in her throat. Standing at her door were two police officers. They didn’t have to say anything. One look at their faces and the hats that they held in their hands and she just knew.

Brian was gone.

_______________________________

Chapter 1

14 years later

Kira Louise Meyers sat on the front lawn of her high school with her back against the trunk of a very large oak tree. She had her nose in a book and, thanks to the headphones that she was wearing, was completely oblivious to the outside world.

She was so completely distracted that she didn’t even notice as her boyfriend, Josh, snuck up beside her. He picked up her fuzzy topped pencil, which was sitting on the grass beside her, and lightly brushed it against the back of her neck.

Her hand shot up and swiped as if she were swatting away a fly. Nevertheless, her attention never wavered from her text.

He always loved the fact that she could concentrate so completely so as to completely block out the world around her.

Josh smiled as he once again brushed the top of the pencil across the back of her neck. This time her hand shot up and grabbed the offending object. She turned, pulled the headphones off and looked at him incredulously.

“What’re you trying to do, give me a heart attack?

He laughed at her attempt to feign outrage.

“I couldn’t help it. You just looked so cute.”

Kira tried to keep the smile off of her face but she could tell that she was fighting a losing battle.

“Not funny, Josh! I thought something was crawling on me. Do you have any idea how gross that feels?”

HONK HONK!

Kira and Josh both jumped at the interruption.

Kira’s father, Thomas Meyers, had arrived.

She waved at her father and then set to picking up all her books and papers. Josh helped her up and she gave him a quick kiss on the cheek.

“See you this weekend?”

Kira walked over to the car, opened the door and tossed her book bag on the floorboard of the front seat before responding.

“I’m really sorry, Josh, but I’m going to see my mom this weekend.”

She turned back to him and frowned when she noticed that his face, which had previously held a look of expectant hope, had melted into a look of disappointment.

“Isn’t she in some kind of a…” he fumbled for the right word, “…institution?”

Kira bristled at his choice of words.

“No, Josh,” she said with a frustrated sigh, “a long term care facility… a home, if you will… she’s in a coma, not insane.”

Her father cleared his throat, clearly not impressed with being kept waiting. She turned to him and smiled before turning back to her boyfriend.

“I’m really sorry, Josh, I’ll call you later”

___________________________________

After the door closed she looked at her father. He had a frown on his face.

“You’re going to see your mother, this weekend?”

Kira rolled her eyes at the obvious disapproval in his voice.

“It’s the same every year, Dad.”

“She doesn’t even know that you’re there,” he countered.

“You don’t know that! It’s her birthday; she deserves to have some visitors.”

She looked out the window at the cars passing by and sighed. Every year, since she was old enough to know why her mother didn’t live with them, she went to the home where her mother lived, if you could call what she did living. Fourteen years ago, her mother had been in a horrific car accident. As a result, she had slipped into a coma and, to this day, the doctors held little hope of her regaining consciousness. Regardless of this fact, Kira made it a habit to go and visit her on special occasions. She liked to believe that her mother appreciated the time that she spent there… that she enjoyed hearing about the things that happened in her daughter’s life.

Her father just didn’t understand, though. He thought that it was pointless. She didn’t know what had happened between her father and her mother before the accident but whatever it was, she thought it was completely ridiculous.

“Don’t you think Mama has suffered enough for whatever it was that she did?”

She looked at her father for an answer but he kept his gaze firmly planted on the road ahead.

“I mean… she’s been in a coma for most of my life. I don’t even remember what kind of person she was before the accident. When will it be enough?”

She jerked forward slightly as her father stopped at the red light a little harder then was necessary.

“What happened between your mother and me,” he began as the car started moving again, “is none of your concern. Perhaps when you are older…”

“Older!” Kira screamed indignantly, “I’m sixteen years old. My seventeenth birthday is in two weeks. How much older do I need to be?”

“That’s enough!”

She jumped in her seat, startled at the tone of his voice.

He saw how she had jumped and he took a deep breath to calm down. When he felt that he had sufficient time to regain control of his voice, he continued.

“I am not punishing your mother. I don’t know where you got that idea from.”

He took another deep breath before he continued.

“Believe it or not, I loved your mother very much. I was… disappointed… in some of the choices that she made. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t love her.”

He paused as he maneuvered the car into their driveway. Even after the engine was turned off, they sat in silence.

A few minutes later, Kira spoke up again.

“But then why are you with Jennifer?”

Before he had a chance to answer, the front door to the house opened up and three dogs came bounding out to the car; a Beagle, a Labrador, and a Jack Russell Terrier.

He opened the door and laughed as the Jack Russell jumped in and started licking his face.

Kira couldn’t help but smile as she saw the antics of the dogs. She turned her attention to the front door and the smile on her face on her face fell immediately. Standing in the doorway was none other then her father’s fiancé, Jennifer. She had her hands on her hips and while she was smiling at the scene her fiancé and the dogs were making, the smile seemed forced, almost… worried.

Kira and her father stepped out of the car and walked towards the house. She exchanged the requisite pleasantries with the woman who stood before her before pushing her way into the house.