Ahead is the conclusion to Recovery. I hope to write a part two soon. I hope you all liked this story as much has I liked writing it. Enjoy the last chapter and feel free to comment and review. Be warned there is some sensitive material ahead.
It is a cold night, as Frank and Robert build a fire pit near the old barn. He throws document after document into the fire watching it burn; his own little book burning his father would be proud Frank thinks.
"Do you think we can destroy all the evidence sir?" says Robert Frank's driver.
Frank rubs his hands together to make them warm.
"We have to, I have to disappear. Cease to exist after tonight. All my activities will be traced back to Tony and he will be going back right where he came from. I won't stop until he stays there."
Robert says nothing more and grabs another pile of documents and throws them into the pit. He then reaches hesitantly for the bag containing the cassette tapes.
"These to sir?" Robert says hesitantly.
"Yes those as well Robert."
"Are you sure you want to be getting rid of these?"
"Yes," Said Frank pointedly for he was now getting suspicious. "Now throw them in."
Robert made the motion to throw them in when Frank told him to hold on.
"Wait a minute, give me the bag. Just want to make sure they are all in there. Well expect the ones the Doctor has, but don't worry I'll get those soon enough."
"I just don't understand sir? Why get rid of these, aren't they an important weapon against Gordon?"
"It's a like the scorched earth policy. It may be important to me, but it is just as important to the enemy. Therefore they need to go. Burn them."
Robert threw the cassettes into the fire and Frank watched them burn. He watched his driver closely as he walked away from the pit back to the car. He decided he no longer trusted him; he cared too much about Tony Gordon. Perhaps this was Dr. Harrington's lame attempt at espionage. Silently Frank crouches down and crawls back to the town car. He spies on his driver as he texts away furiously on his mobile.
"And just who are you contacting so urgently at this hour?"
"Sir!" Robert said he turned around to see the Barrel of Frank's gun pointed at him.
"Who the fuck are you texting so late at this hour?"
"M-my wife, my wife sir!"
"You're a fucking liar," Frank felt a sudden rage as he pried open the door and pulled his driver out and threw him to the ground.
"I'm going to give you one more chance. Who were you just texting?" Frank heeled a blow into his driver's stomach and the man squealed out in agony.
"Katherine-Katherine Harrington."
"How the fuck did she get access to you?"
"I-I don't know", the man squealed. "I was out with the wife and kids, this women just came up to us. She was all lovely said she was having trouble finding her way around. We helped her out, she gave me her card…"
"How long have you been spying for her?"
"She introduced herself as Olivia James, I swear I didn't know at first."
"How long?" Frank threw in another blow and his driver keeled over.
"Before you met her. Before she ever came to the house. Tony must of put her up to it. She probably didn't know what he was up to."
"Did you send her the text?"
"No, not yet you came to quickly." Robert tried to reach for his phone but Frank kicked it away. He was so furious.
"Yet when you found out who she was and who she worked for, you still spied for her like a little snitch."
"Sir, she threatened my wife and kids!"
Frank picked up the phone and began to read the text.
URGENT! FRANK IS BURNING THE CASSETTE TAPES AS WE SPEAK AND A WHOLE BUNCH OF DOCUMENTS ON THE OFF SHORE ACCOUNTS. HE HAS REINSTATED TONY ON ALL ACCOUNTS ONCE MORE AND PLANS TO FLEE TOWN.
Frank couldn't help but laugh, "You know Robert I always took you for a piss poor driver, never thought you'd be a piss poor spy as well. Shame really." Frank considers deleting the text but thinks better of it. He only erases a part of it so that it now reads:
URGENT! FRANK IS BURNING THE CASSETTE TAPES AS WE SPEAK.
"There, a little goodbye gift for your friends. You were of good service, but unfortunately for Tony I don't like to share my things." Frank kneels down next to his driver and pushes the gun to his temple. "Any last words?"
"Sir please, I've got a son and a daughter. I got my wife."
"Should thought of that before."
"Where is your humanity? Have you no God?"
" Don't bring God into this. I don't live my life for him I am nothing to him. Nothing that is good or bad. Everything I am I am in my own right. I don't seek any divine inspiration; I am a mind all on my own. And that's what makes it easier. I can kill you; in fact I will kill you. And I can walk away, because I don't owe any gods a single thing. Especially not the life of a treacherous scum like you."
BANG
The gun went off and there was blood all over the grass. The fire still burned and Frank thought to himself, what a stupid man. He just died for nothing. Frank was considering burning him in the fire pit, but he thought better of it. He would just pin this murder on Tony as well.
MEET ME AT THE OLD BARN DR. HARRINGTON; FRANK IS LEAVING AS WE SPEAK.
He pressed send and was now out of breath. It had been a crazy night and to think Robert had died for nothing. Frank only burned the copies he still had the originals all of them. But it was a test of loyalty and Robert had failed miserably. Tony Gordon was fast becoming the weaker villain.
"I don't really want to listen to Adele," whined Maria. They had only just reached the outside of the city and were driving along the country roads. The clock read 10:55. "I mean she is a great singer, but I want something else."
"GAHH," said Michelle throwing her hands up into the air momentarily. "I swear Maria I am going to hit you! You freaking need to shut up already. I like Adele we are listening to Adele. I said we could listen to Whitney Houston, Celine Dion, or Adele and you chose Adele. DEAL WITH IT."
"Oh keep it down, Liam is sleeping! How many times must I tell you this, but nope you have to be a drama queen."
"Me the drama queen Maria, ME? You are drama rama 24/7 and quite frankly I am tired of it, so shut that hole in your face or you will be walking to the airport."
"Keep using that threat, we aren't going to make it anyways. You just had to stop for gas and to use the rest room and then you got snacks. Remember how you yelled at me today about the cheese and crackers? And to top it off you drive like a turtle."
"You told me not to speed Maria!"
"Well yeah, but that doesn't mean you have to drive like a turtle."
"GAWD bugger off will ya! You want faster, I'll give you faster."
Michelle hits on the gas and her car accelerates down the country road.
Carla had run out of the kitchen and up the stairs barricading her self inside Paul's old bedroom. Helen let her leave; she was too upset to stop her. She collapsed in tears, Paul knew. He was the sound they had heard that night in the kitchen and that car she thought was a rowdy neighbors it was his own.
And then she thinks about the poem, the one written for Paul when he was born and how she told the old man it was beautiful poem, her favorite so open ended about a journey on a road.
"Miss Connor, this wasn't the deal. Come out of there." The old man is banging on the door from outside.
"GOD! Just leave me alone. I just want to be left alone…"
Alone, alone on the winding road
The road of which no man dares go
It is a road to which men in trust
All fears and deepest hopes
A road to greed or that of sin
By way of nature or by way of grace
A man shall fight
But he shall see
That winding road left to past
Its end reveals all truth
It was like Helen knew; she always knew this was the path her oldest son would take. Is that why she clung to him when he was a baby? Because she knew when she wrote that poem, felt him move inside her womb that this would be his script his play of which to live out. Is this why she couldn't stop being angry now? Did her words become the prophecy she never would have dreamed of happening? But then Carla thought, she first printed the poem in her Anthology of Dreams, so maybe she knew it was going to come true eventually.
She thought of a toddler Paul Conner sat up on a stool as his mother told him every morning,
"There are two ways through life: The way of nature and the way of grace. Nature only wants to please itself. Get others to please it too. Likes to lord it over them. To have its own way. It finds reasons to be unhappy when all the world is shining around it. And love is smiling through all things. Grace doesn't try to please itself. It accepts being slighted, forgotten, and disliked. Accepts insults and injuries."
Did he think about those words when he died? She imagines him pressing down on his gas pedal going down that road, his own little road past all the things he lived, all the things he knew. He knew it in the end, what mother had said was true, he knew the truth and that was his end.
He can't think and he can't feel a thing. The tears are streaming down his face and his whole world is ending around him as he speaks.
"I saw them mum, I saw Liam and Carla. I saw them…" Paul's phone is on the passengers seat as he drives away from the house in the opposite direction of the downtown center.
"Paulie tell me! Speak to me baby…" His mother Helen pleads with him through speaker phone. And Paul can't help but feel furious like she had wanted this all along.
"My own brother, my own wife and YOU knew. Couldn't you care?"
"Baby please…"
Put Paul doesn't want to hear it anymore. He has an uncontrollable need to drive and just keep driving until he can't anymore. He knew the truth, he knew this road his fate and in one last act of defiance against the mother who shaped him and his life like he was some prophecy, in defiance against that ingrained grace she so diligently tried to instill in him every morning he swerves his car off of the road. He wasn't giving anyone the satisfaction, not Carla, Liam, or his mother. He would reach that end, and it wouldn't be the one his mother chose for him. It would be on his own terms. It was an oak a big white oak, instinctively he rears the car in that direction. He accelerates his gas and then everything is black.
"Michelle slow down!" Maria hollered. "If you are trying to prove a point it's getting old. It's not funny anymore."
Michelle was panicking. She was trying to step on the brakes but they seemed to be failing her.
"Maria I'm trying but the brakes aren't working!" Michelle cried. " Maria it won't slow down."
"Are you sure?" Maria was on the verge of tears and there shouting had alerted little Liam. His blue eyes roamed between his mother and his auntie. He knew something was wrong. " Well maybe try getting off the main road."
"This car is uncontrollable," Michelle was trying to swerve it but it had a life of its own.
Maria didn't remember much after that there was some more hysterical screaming, more crying and then she remembers panicking seeing the white oak tree, and trying to grab at Liam and shield him but she didn't move quick enough, the car slammed before she even had time to move her hands and then everything was silent. Everything was black.
When Carla came out of Paul's room finally she saw that the old man had left. But she still went back down the stairs into the living room, through the kitchen and through the hall into the den. She say a word, she just sat down in her designated chair. Helen was already tied right back up again, and she seemed lost in another world. Lost in the past, a past she could never repeat.
Carla held out her hands for the old man to tie them, and he did. It was late now probably almost midnight. This day had drained her emotionally, it had drained everyone, changed their world and how they thought things had been.
"You can't repeat the past you know," says the old man. Carla notices that his grey eyes normally so expressionless and cold have some depth to them. He looks like he is decent, like he could be a man who wasn't what his work was.
"And how do you know this?" Carla whispers.
"You think you've lost them, all those people that died on you. I am no expert on your situation, but I've lost a lot of people near and dear to me in my long time on this earth. Time doesn't heal all wounds, but it doesn't have to leave them open either."
Carla tried to take in his words of encouragement, but she felt her eyes welling up again.
The old man reaches into his pockets and retrieves fresh Kleenex. He gently dabs the tears away and Carla thinks that he must have been a great father, if he ever had the opportunity to have children. He sighed.
"You don't believe me, but when I was a boy I lost my father. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time as these things often go. But he was a great man, he taught me a lot of great things better than what I am now. But that's another story for another time. We didn't have much, but my father still knew the importance of a good education. He used to read to me from set poems written by the Roman philosopher Ovid, Metamorphoses."
Carla was familiar with the work; she had seen a quote from it in Paul's room. It was on the picture, a message inscribed from Barry.
"Well there is a part where Ovid says, Nothing in the universe is ever perishes forever. They only ever vary and adopt new forms. When one says they are born they only ever mean it as phase. That it is something different from what one was before. You die and you cease to be in the form which you were and so on and so forth. But each time you move onward you, let put sum it up like this…though this thing may past into that, and that into this, yet the sums of things remain unchanged."
"You really believe that? That everyone we lose isn't really gone. That God doesn't take them away from us?"
"You don't need God to tell you anything, you know what's in there." He points at Carla's heart. "You don't need any proof beyond the proof you give yourself. Are you not a child nature?"
"I don't want to be that."
"But you are, and whose says that's a bad thing. Whose to say it is wrong to want to be happy, to give yourself to sadness if it suits you from time to time. Nature finds it way to, just because it isn't the path of grace it doesn't make it any less important. If it pleases you to think the ones you've lost are with you, then they will be just that. Who cares what any one, whether it be God or human has to say about it."
Carla sat staring at the profoundness of this man. The irony that he was both her capture and her saving grace. She thought of how Dr. Harrington or maybe it was Helen she could remember told her that she was asking all the wrong questions. But she didn't think they had right, not at all. Carla had set out on her path to recovery, not asking the wrong questions, but instead seeking out the wrong answers.
"Thank you," Carla whispers and she means it. "Thank you from the bottom of my heart."
Maria opens her eyes she can smell the aroma of gasoline and fire flowing through her nostrils and she is disoriented for a while until she realizes what has just happened. She pulls her head sideways and she can see Michelle, but where is Liam?
"Liam!" she cries out at first in barely a whisper. She is so weak and she can barely bring herself to move but then an amazing strength comes over her, she has a need to find her child and protect him. "Liam," she cries out again as she drags her bloody legs through the dirt.
Her vision has been impaired by the accident and there is a smoggy feel to the airs that is making it difficult for her to breath as well as navigate. But then she sees her baby he is stuck under a dismantled door, near Michelle. She pulls at it tugging helplessly and crying.
"God please!" and with surprising strength she moves it off of her son like an adrenaline rush. She props her little boy up onto her lap. His head has a big gash and he is bleeding profusely. He doesn't seem to be breathing, and Maria panicking tries to recall her first aid training from her days as a candy striper. She breaths into his mouth and does the motions "Come on Liam, breath please breath baby." But he is not responding, not at all.
No Maria thinks to herself. He is too young! He is much to young. Liam, Paul, Tom, somebody do something. He is your son, your nephew don't let him die. Little Liam is starting to turn blue, no, no, NO! And then she feels a weight around her shoulders around her waist. An ambulance working is pulling her off. How could she have not notice they got here? When did they arrive?
Maria looks around to see them assisting to Michelle. They are putting her on a stretcher she seems to be alive. The EMS worker is looking at her with sorrow in his eyes; he has blue eyes just like her little Liam.
"Oh thank God you're here! My baby is hurt my little Liam somebody do something!"
"Ma'am I am so sorry," the EMS working is not moving towards her son like the two others on the scene are. One of them a girl with long blonde hair and grey eyes looks up at Maria with sympathy and compassion. Maria is confused and annoyed. She doesn't need compassion she needs help her son needed help. Why was everyone staring at her with sympathetic eyes?
"I am so sorry miss, your son he's dead. He was dead upon our arrival."
Maria couldn't believe her ears and she shook the one EMS workers hands off of her and rushed to her son in the dirt. She wouldn't let him go, she wouldn't let them tell her any such lies.
"YOU'RE LYING. Why are you telling such terrible lies? All he needs is to get to the hospital and then everything will be fine."
"No Miss, I am so very very sorry for your loss." The blonde EMT was crying now.
"Stop crying, I don't know why you're crying." Maria only noticed now how much she was crying to. That what they were telling her was true. She was now holding onto her baby boy. But then they pulled her off again, and Maria didn't know why she did it, but she dug her nails into the earth praying as she clasped the dirt in her hands. She held it up, and in her mind she asked if there was God any God out there at all that could here her…
"I grabbed a pile of dust and holding it up foolishly, asked for as many birthdays as the grains of dust, I forgot that they be years of youth."
But didn't want youth, she just wanted life not for herself but for her son. But God doesn't bring the dead back. And because Maria could not stop for death, he stopped for her instead. He let her take it in, she saw her sons eyes open as a baby, and she held him in her arms. The first silence before the scream, and now here he was silent once more. His eyes shut tightly and his lips and nose scrunched up. Gone the same way he had come. Where would he be? Only time would tell.
Piles of dust mean nothing.