Finn and Rachel had gone to bed early that night. They were both exhausted from all of the prom preparations and picture taking, so they had passed out in bed as soon as they climbed in around 11:00.
By 12:30, they were being woken up again.
"Mom, dad," Alexis said as she came into her parents' room, "There's someone knocking on the front door."
Rachel mumbled something under her breath and rolled back over to sleep some more, but Finn popped open one eye and looked up at his daughter. "Alexis, sweetie, your mother and I are extremely tired, and you should be in bed," he told her stifling a yawn. "What was so important that you felt the need to wake us up?"
"I told you," she replied crossing her arms in front of her chest. "There's someone knocking on the front door, and it's keeping me awake. Go downstairs and make them go away."
Finn started to climb out of bed and finally heard the knocking. "Alright, I'll go downstairs and see what's going on. You go back to sleep." He brought his daughter back to her room as the doorbell started ringing. "I'm coming. I'm coming," he grumbled as he made his way down the stairs. He undid the various locks on the door and pulled it open to reveal a police officer standing there.
"Is this the home of a Mr. and Mrs. Finn Hudson?" he asked.
"Yes it is. What seems to be the problem, officer?" Finn asked unsure of why he would be getting a visit from a law enforcement official at this hour of the night.
"Sir, could I come inside for a moment?"
"Uhh, sure. Make yourself comfortable." Finn let the cop into his house and led him to the living room. He then sat down in one of the arm chairs and waited for the cop to sit down across from him.
"These kinds of calls are never easy," the cop started. Just then, Rachel came down the stairs with her robe wrapped tightly around her.
"Honey, what's going on down here? Come back to bed." When she turned into the living room and saw her husband sitting across from a police officer, her sleepy demeanor changed to one of worry. "Is there a problem," she asked as she sat down on the arm of the chair that Finn was sitting in.
"My name is Officer Rosenthal," he started. "We got a call earlier this evening around 11:45. There was an accident down on North Road. From what we've gathered in witness statements and the Puckerman boy, he was driving your daughter to her friend's house for the evening when their car was hit by a drunk driver. They swerved off the road and hit a telephone pole."
"Is Calliope okay? Do we need to go to the hospital? Finn, get the car keys. Now." Rachel asked as she stood up from the chair and started to go and grab her coat. Officer Rosenthal followed after her and brought her back to the living room where Finn instantly pulled her onto his lap and wrapping his arms around her waist to keep her from jumping up again.
"Ma'am, please calm down," Officer Rosenthal told her.
"I won't calm down. Where's my daughter? What happened to her?" Rachel asked obviously hysterical with worry.
"We got on the scene as soon as we could, but there was nothing we or the paramedics could do. Your daughter died on impact. The paramedics said that it was a quick death, and she wouldn't have felt much pain if any at all. We have the things of hers that were recovered from the car down at the station, and you can come pick those up whenever you're ready."
"You're kidding me, right?" Rachel asked starting to get hysterical. "This is just a sick joke, isn't it?"
"Ma'am, I assure you that I would not be here if it wasn't serious. I'm so sorry for your loss."
Rachel let out a small, strangled sob as she sunk down into Finn's arms, the realization of what had just happened finally sinking in. Finn almost couldn't react; he just sat their holding his wife as part of their world crashed down around them.
They just sat there like that for a few minutes before Finn had to get up to head back to the door with the police officer. "I'm going to get my wife back upstairs, and then I'll head down to the station to pick up Calliope's things. Expect me sometime in the next hour or so."
"Of course, Mr. Hudson" Officer Rosenthal said as he was leaving. "Again, I'm so sorry for your loss. I could never imagine losing one of my kids."
"Yeah, neither could I."
Finn had to practically carry Rachel back upstairs to bed. She could barely move on her own; all she could do was cry. And Finn couldn't blame her. He just felt numb all over.
"What are we going to tell the girls?" Rachel asked once Finn had laid her back in the bed.
"I don't know," he replied. "Just let them sleep. We'll talk to them in the morning. I'm gonna go down to the police station and get her things. You go back to sleep." He kissed his wife's forehead and headed back downstairs so he could drive over to the police station.
The drive there was short. He could barely remember getting in the car and driving over there, but there he was standing in front of the building almost too afraid to go in. Going inside would make it real. Picking up her things from some police officer who had probably never met his little girl before would make it real. Sitting there alone in the car kept him suspended in limbo where he could pretend that his daughter would be waiting at home to give him a hug when he got there.
He must have sat in that car for at least an hour before he made any move to get out, and even then he was moving painfully slow, doing anything to prolong the amount of time he had before he had to face reality. He finally entered the building and walked up to the first person he saw.
"My name is Finn Hudson," he said lifelessly. "I'm her to pick up my daughter Calliope's things."
The cop left him for a moment and returned carrying a plastic bag. "I'm so sorry for your loss," the cop said as she handed him the bag.
"Thanks. So am I." He walked out of the police station, climbed back into the car and just sat there with the plastic bag for a moment. When he was back at the house, he didn't remember turning on the car and driving home. Something in the back of his head told him that wasn't a good thing, but a larger part told him he didn't care.
He headed back inside and decided that he should just go to bed and leave her things for the morning, but when he got to his room, he found his bed crammed to capacity with his wife and daughters. No room for dad in the bed tonight.
He went back downstairs with the plastic bag still in his hand and collapsed on the couch. He tried to fall asleep, but his head was plagued with unpleasant thoughts. 'Might as well go through her things now,' he thought. He wanted to fight through the pain no matter how hard it hurt.
The first thing he pulled out of that plastic bag was her purse. A simple gold clutch that she had borrowed from Rachel earlier that evening. Just like the shoes. Opening the clutch, he emptied to contents onto the table. Nothing special was really inside, just some lip gloss, her prom ticket, a prom court ballot, her camera, and her phone. He made a mental note to look at the pictures on her camera later once he'd gotten some sleep. One of the lights on her phone was blinking, so he picked it up and noticed that she had about ten unread text messages. All of them were from various friends saying that they'd heard there was an accident and they were wondering if she was okay. That was another thing he was leaving for tomorrow. He couldn't deal with her friends right now. Not when she wasn't around.
He thought that her purse would be the only thing in the bag because he didn't remember her leaving with anything else, but there was something else in the bag. Two more items to be exact. The first was their prom favor: a small picture frame with the words "A Night to Remember" written across the bottom. The second item was a gold, plastic tiara with fake gem stones glued to it. He knew she hadn't had a tiara on when she left the house.
He stared at the tiara for a moment before looking back up around the rest of the room. And there, sitting across from him on one of the armchairs, was Calliope, still dressed in her prom clothes just as she had been the last time he saw her.
He set the tiara down on the table thinking that his eyes were playing tricks on him, but then she spoke, and he heard her voice just as clear as it had been when he talked to her earlier that evening.
"They crowned me prom queen, daddy," she beamed. "Can you believe it? Me a prom queen? And it was the best prom ever. All of my friends were there, and Kyle was a perfect gentleman all evening. He told me that he loves me, daddy. And I love him too. Everything was absolutely perfect."
She stood up from the chair and walked over to him, picking up the tiara and placing it on her head as she crossed the room. "Do I look pretty, daddy?" she asked him with bright eyes.
"You're beautiful, princess. Absolutely beautiful." He reached out to touch his daughter standing before him, to pull her into a hug and never let her go again, but she vanished before he could get close enough to even brush his fingers past her wrist. He blinked a few times, and she really was gone; he was unsure if she'd ever really been there in the first place.
The tiara was sitting back on the table just as he left it. Sitting there looking at that tiara, he cried for the first time since he'd found out. He laid down on the couch and closed his eyes preparing to cry himself to sleep and praying that he'd find all of this to be a nightmare when he woke up the next morning.
