Julie lay in the bed next to her husband. She had been listening to the rise and fall of his breath for an hour now, her back to him. And then the soft murmur of his sleep went silent and after a pause, she lifted the arm that rested on her side and reached behind her, her hand grasping his forearm, her fingers running over veins and skin and muscle. He didn’t move. She waited with him as the depression crept into the room and hovered over him, fastening him to the bed with what seemed like a very heavy blanket. He lay there, letting her touch him and she felt his body relax into the softness of the mattress. She could sense the heavy blanket begin to lift. Turning to face him, her body drowsily moved closer to his, an arm wrapped around his chest, her head resting on him.

“Are you okay?”

Silence.

“You have to do this, okay? You can do this.”

“No. I can’t do this.”

“You have to. You can’t not show up.”

“I’m a mirage to those people. I’m nothing like the man they think I am. I don’t know if I believe most of the things that come out of my mouth when I’m up there.”

The hinges of the bedroom door whined, and a ginger halo appeared moving toward them, covered in elephant print pyjamas.

“Mommy,” Rylan said.

“Yes, my love. Come here.” Julie reached down and scooped the child in a quick motion onto the bed.

“Mommy. Is it Sunday School today?”

“Yes, precious.”

“Get up, Daddy.” The tiny girl motioned with one chubby hand raised toward her father who was lying on his back and looking pale, his eyes staring at the ceiling.

“Daddy is still resting. Would you like to help Mommy make some coffee for him?”

“Cereal?” The girl’s head tilted, eyebrows raised, a smile curling at the edge of her mouth.

“Yes. Mommy will make you some cereal. Is that what you want?” The girl nodded.

“Okay, let’s go.”

Julie picked up Rylan and carried her to the kitchen mechanically, placing her on a stool at the bar. The sunlit room was a welcome contrast to the dark bedroom with its drawn shades. Julie tilted her head. The rising sun warmed her skin and opened her eyes. Then with the recognition that she had duties that morning, turned to the cabinet and pulled out a yellow box, then a bowl with a butterfly design, then a gallon of milk. She poured the Cheerios into the small bowl. The child puckered her lips, making an impatient popping sound. The mother pulled a banana from its resting place on the banana stand as well as a butter knife. She peeled the banana and began slicing it over the Cheerios.

“Mmm, banana. Is that my banana?” Jason walked in, sleep still worn on his face. He smiled at his daughter.

“No! My banana!” the child retorted, her facial features compressing together, her lips protruding into a tiny pout.

Jason smiled again. Julie could tell it was a forced smile. It wasn’t like the smile he once gave her from across the cafeteria tables in the dining hall of their seminary years ago.

He had been confident then, even though he was still wearing his plaid pyjamas and hadn’t bothered to change clothes that morning. He only smoothed his fingers through his handsomely unwashed hair and Julie, who had never been comfortable with male attention, pretended like she did not see him making his way toward her through the room full of students. He seated himself inches beside her and began to eat his breakfast burrito as if it wasn’t unusual for a total stranger to sit so close to someone and not make eye contact; especially when they were the only people at the table. Julie hesitated at the awkward silence. She hated awkward silences and she felt he was testing her, almost mocking her anxiety with an amused sneer until she finally blurted, “Are you gonna eat that muffin? I mean, it looks like you have enough food to feed your entire dorm.” He was shocked. And then he silently picked up the muffin and placed it on her tray, his eyes fixed on her. Julie bore this characteristic tactlessness as if it was an extension of her body. It was a defence mechanism—a way of distancing herself when she realized she wanted too much for someone to like her.

After he seemed to recover, he softened and looked at her, his eyes travelling over her, “You’re way too beautiful to be mean.” Then he smiled and continued to inhale his breakfast burrito.

Julie grew more embarrassed as she felt hot blood rushing to her face, “You could have just opened with something like that instead of waiting for me to make a fool of myself.”

“Look,” he said, amused. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I’ve seen you around and you look like you could use some fun. Let’s get coffee sometime.”

Julie paused, staring at her food as if she believed it might crawl off her tray. “Well, that is very brave of you.”

“I think so. Bravery is hot, right?” Jason looked at her, a comfortable, unruffled grin spreading across his face. Julie thought he still looked so much like a boy with his rusty hair and smattering of freckles. He looked like the boys she went to high school with—the ones that stared at her from afar but were too nervous to approach her for fear she would eat them alive. But this boy wasn’t scared at all. This unnerved her. She sat there noticing how much weaker her body felt, how something hard and protective began to slide off her shoulders, down her back and to the floor around her feet.

She sighed, “Okay. Alright.” She felt self-conscious about how stupid she sounded.

“It’s a date then.” Jason nodded at her and smiled, seemingly pleased about his most recent achievement.

Julie continued to eat in silence even with swarms of students encroaching on their awkward exchange. She was surprised at how quickly she agreed to the date but was even more surprised when Jason didn’t take her out to coffee at all, but to a place in the middle of nowhere with a hand-painted sign advertising “Barn Swinging.” It was exactly how it sounded; a barn with a rope hanging from its beams and piles of soft hay to land in. It was in a place like this, in the backwoods of Texas, that Jason taught her how to have fun as she swung shrieking over the length of the barn, letting go of the rope and allowing herself to fall heavily into a mound of straw below. She remembered the feel of his chest against her back as he placed her hands, one on top of the other, curling around the rope, his hands then easing down to her hips. She looked over her shoulder at him before she stepped off the platform, their breath rapid, and his eyes flickered with excitement as if he were taking a photo of her in his mind.

Jason had roared with laughter as he watched this formerly stoic girl flying twenty feet in the air. He had created a monster. Julie knew that there was straw in her hair and that her body probably looked clumsy and uncertain, but the boy who was also buried in the expanse of straw looked at her with such hunger. He pulled her to him, his lips meeting hers and Julie felt her body sink into his. He stopped for a moment and jokingly declared, “So this is where the phrase ‘a roll in the hay’ came from!” She rolled her eyes and punched him in the arm but couldn’t help exploding with laughter. The two rarely stopped laughing after that. Julie couldn’t believe that she had gone so long without laughter and wondered at the euphoria it gave her. Laughter had the magical effect of chasing the sadness away and it also made her feel closer to this new person who filed down her hard edges and seemed to expand the place in her chest where all the heaviness lay, making room for something better than the pain of doubt in a world where doubt was something to be ashamed of.

 

As Julie spread butter on her toast that morning, she regretted that she wasn’t that girl anymore. She wasn’t sure if she could be that girl without Jason being the same boy he was when they met. When it became too much for her, when his depression became more than what she thought she could handle without answers from God, she considered other ways she could have hope for something better.

Being a pastor’s wife was not as dissimilar of an experience from her time as a seminary student. She had believed, after these several years, that having this title would somehow eliminate any misnomers that attached themselves to her consciousness. But Jason, who she once thought would have the answers to all her questions, now left her with even more questions about God than before. It wasn’t that she doubted the existence of some higher being, she just wondered if he liked her very much and if he did, why did he never seem to show up when she needed him the most? Why didn’t he intervene when tragedy seemed just around the corner? There was a vague sense that this God sat with her when she was at her most despondent; that maybe he was really there to fill some vast loneliness. Maybe she had it all wrong and that he stuck around not to fix all the broken things but to make sure she didn’t experience all the broken things by herself. It was as if she expected some cosmic superhero, but it might have been possible that this is not what she needed at all.

As Jason corralled their child out the door, Julie reached for a couple of envelopes on the entryway table and quickly placed them in her purse, holding the bag protectively to her body, the bag containing evidence of her deception—of her doubt. These were the moments when shame would weaken any arguments she had about taking matters into her own hands when she felt the weight of credit card balances that continued to increase each month. She was afraid to look at these bills although she sometimes managed to add up the phone charges in her head, giving her some semblance of control. Jason could never know what was in those bills. He could never know about the phone calls she had been making for several months.

***

It was winter, the year before his death. Monday mornings were Jason’s day off and the only time during the week that she could get away from home, escape motherhood, wifedom and church problems, and pretend like there was a different world out there that she was, indeed, a part of. Pike’s Peak was hidden that day. A layer of impenetrable fog obscured the great mountain, her favourite site in the city. She stopped at Wayfinder, a coffee shop with exposed brick walls covered in amateur art. After she ordered an Earl Grey, her long fingers cupped around the warmth of it, she walked outside in her down puffer coat, a blanket scarf muzzling her chin and mouth. She walked along the sidewalk passing the panelled windows of bookshops and boutiques, wishing she had the time to read a new novel and the body nice enough to buy some new clothes. Julie smoothed her sides, touching the soft area where her waist met her hips. Making a baby had not been kind.

She looked across the street to see if there was something there that might be of interest when she noticed a garish neon sign with the words “Psychic Readings” emblazoned in large pink letters and a curious caricature of Merlin. She remembered a place like this when she was eleven years old and her mother drove their car to places where she might not get caught sleeping with her daughter in the backseat. She remembered parking a block away from one of these fortune teller shops’, her mother tucking blankets around her to keep her warm during the Wyoming winter. They had finally left Julie’s father because after he was finished beating her mother, he began hitting Julie too. One day, soon after the last incident with her father, Julie questioned her mother about the place with all of the sparkles and lights and her mother answered that it was a bad place, a place where people tried to be God but failed.

“Everyone who comes out of there looks so happy,” Julie said, still gazing curiously at the storefront.

“They don’t stay that way. They are always told that good things are going to happen, but they never do.” Julie watched her mother who was staring at the shop. She looked tired and still and quiet. “We’re all looking for answers, Julie. God is the only one who has those answers and I guess sometimes he doesn’t think we should know what they are.”

Her mother pulled a book from behind the driver’s seat. It was thick with a brown, worn cover, the corners folded down. In faded gold lettering on the front of the book, it read Paradise Lost. “Your grandfather gave this to me on the day of my high school graduation.” She opened the book and let the pages fall slowly and stopped when the book opened to a small purple flower that had been pressed flat, its many tiny, slender petals spread like a fan over the page. Julie reached to touch it, but her mother covered it with her hand. “Don’t touch, Julie. It’s very fragile.”

“What kind of flower is it?”

“It’s an anemone. It symbolizes two very different things: one, that bad things are always gonna happen, and two, that we aren’t ever alone, even when the bad things do happen. Eventually, everything will turn out to be okay. Sometimes I just open this book and see the flower there and I feel better.  It’s like God’s little way of reminding me that things will improve—that I can hope again.”

Julie recalled the flower as she stood across the street from the fortune teller shop, squinting at the bright sign snapping on and off intermittently. She briefly wondered what became of the delicate purple anemone. The memory was short-lived.

Now Julie, the adult woman,  the pastor’s wife, wondered about this place that her mother insisted only brought disappointment. She wasn’t yet convinced of her mother’s assessment. This one didn’t look nearly as enchanting as the one she had seen as a child. Its windows were covered with a thick film of dirt and cheap drugstore candles covered in images of Saint Joseph and Saint Francis were strewn across the narrow window ledge. She looked around her as she crossed the street. What if someone from the church saw her? What if they recognized her? She pulled her scarf over her blonde hair and dry, reddened cheeks and felt compelled out of curiosity or desperation, she didn’t know what, to enter this place.

There was no one in the waiting area when she entered. The door sounded with a bell and a man appeared from behind a beaded curtain. The man looked at Julie, his face was kind, but his eyes seemed tired. At first, Julie was doubtful that she would find any answers from him.

“What can I do for you?” he asked, his arms crossed, but his voice attempting to be cheerful. His hand extended toward a check-in table and his fingers drummed on the surface with the anticipation of a successful encounter.

“Well—I don’t know. I wasn’t really expecting to come in here.”

“I understand.” He smiled and then waited, seating himself in a vinyl waiting room chair, looking at Julie as if he knew everything about her already. “Would you like to sit down?”

“Yes. I suppose.” Julie shrugged reluctantly and seated herself two chairs from the man.

“What is your name, if you don’t mind?”

Julie said her name and then swallowed. She was very aware of how uncomfortable she must have looked, her body rigid with suspicion.

The man paused and then looked her in the eyes. “Julie, I think you came in today because you need some answers, am I correct?”

“I don’t know—I—”

“You are wrestling with something. You don’t know what to do about it and need some direction.”

“Yes.” She looked down and the sadness washed over her.

“If you would like, I can do a reading for you. It is just fifty dollars for a half-hour.”

Julie bit her lip, thinking. Her palms rubbed against her knees and she looked away from the man, wondering what he would do if she just ran out the door. She thought about what she had always been taught—that these places were evil and full of charlatans and she would be disobeying God by talking to one but the great sadness that filled her was distracting her from any rational thought.

“Okay.” She nodded in agreement. “Okay. Yes. I would like one, please.”

She followed him to a room behind the beaded curtain. The room didn’t have a round table with a crystal ball in the center like the one Whoopi Goldberg’s character had in the movie Ghost. Instead, it had a desk, similar to what you’d expect to see in an attorney’s office or the office of a podiatrist. A cozy armchair sat in front of the desk and one of those small electric waterfall fountains sat on a shelf to the left making a soft tinkling sound. They sat down and the man reached into his desk and pulled out a stack of cards.

“Now, I’m going to shuffle these, and you just tell me when you think I should stop,” the man said, and Julie nodded in agreement. She watched his fingers nimbly pull out the center cards and place them on the bottom of the deck over and over, in an almost hypnotic rhythm. She heard the clip of the cards as they touched and momentarily felt the regret of her defiance toward God. Even still, she had to listen to what this man said. She was determined. She let the strangeness, the confusion of it all float over her, past her, out of the room.

“Stop!” She said, with almost too much volume.

One by one the man drew from the top of the deck and firmly placed them in a cross-like arrangement. “This is called the Celtic Cross,” he said.  Julie felt guilty at the mention of religious symbolism, but she couldn’t leave now. Her future was literally laid out in front of her and there was no looking away. She was shocked at her sudden willingness to believe what this man told her and began searching the elaborate and colourful images.

He touched one of the cards that pictured a man and a woman, both naked, their forms plump and at ease, content even. They reached toward each other in a gesture of intimacy. A winged figure emerged above them and Julie imagined it was God looking down on the couple. Well, that’s not so bad, she thought. “You have been in love. Are in love, actually. You were lucky to find each other…Hmmm…” The man looked at the cards, deep in thought. “It looks like something happened here.” He touched another card, one with a black background, dark and foreboding, a tower crumbling as lightning strikes it, people spilling from the windows to their deaths. “Something happened not too long ago that upset your life with this person you love.” Julie looked up from the cards and nodded.

“Yes, my husband—”

“Don’t tell me anything,” the man interrupted. He returned his focus to the cards again.

“That doesn’t look good,” Julie pointed to a card. The grim reaper, a skeletal figure wearing a suit of armour and carrying a scythe had dead bodies scattered under the hooves of the white horse he rode upon. Death, it said, on the bottom of the card.

The man didn’t look at her for a moment as he carefully thought about his answer. “I know this looks bad,” he said, “but a Death card can also mean something good. It can actually mean regeneration or transition, something going away and something new starting again.”

“Is that what it means in my case?” Julie became aware of how quickly her heart was beating.

“Probably.” He hesitated and didn’t look her in the eye as he so confidently had before. “Yes, probably. That’s what it means.” Crestfallen, Julie stared at him. He was lying.

“Let’s just take this one step at a time.” After a moment, the man looked at her again. “Why don’t you take my business card. You can call me whenever you like. I go through a call service that takes credit cards. It’s much easier that way.” He handed her a small blue rectangle of cardstock and she numbly rose from her seat, being careful to hide the card behind some unused credit cards in her wallet.

Julie’s recollection of that moment haunted her in the year that followed. She learned to distance herself from the guilt and shame of it but the constant need to know all the answers seemed to be the only thing that kept her present and attentive to her family.

***

The crowd—mostly young—swarmed the large auditorium. They came to the church because the pastor was young and hip. He wore Patagonia pull-overs and distressed jeans. He spoke the language of the millennial. He used analogies involving smart technology and indie films and Lumineers lyrics to illustrate theological concepts. The young women would whisper amongst themselves about how “hot” their pastor was and hoped they could find a man like him. Some of them secretly wished they had met him before Julie had.

The music was also a draw. The church had a full band and a young woman with long wavy hair and a guitar sang in a slightly raspy voice about God and his love. Some of the songs were more upbeat and this is when the overhead lights would dim and pink, yellow, blue and green lights would swoop around the room in time to the music, giving the service the effect of a rock concert. The young people swayed and clapped and often sang loudly if they knew the song well.

Julie was proud of these moments when she could sit up front during worship with her husband at her side. It was one of the only things she really looked forward to anymore. It was the side of herself she actually liked. It was easy to pretend that the chaos in their lives didn’t exist when so many people adored them. Or at least adored who they thought their pastors were.

Julie watched Jason during worship. These were the moments when she could remember who he really was when he seemed to be himself—high-fiving some of the younger men and women, joking with them. It was in this setting that the real Jason emerged; a helpful, friendly, even jovial, Pastor Jason.

Jason approached the microphone with what appeared to be confident. Indeed, it was confidence, Julie surmised. She felt her shoulders lower, her breathing slow. Things are going to be okay. He paused for a moment, taking in the sight of his congregation and then flashed them a relaxed smile. The computer tablet with his Bible app was already waiting for him. For the next forty-five minutes, he gave a charismatic message about joy in difficult circumstances. She sat in her seat, poised, nodding and laughing at his funny anecdotes and analogies. And when the message ended, he called for anyone to come to the alter who needed prayer. She walked to the front, making herself available. She was the picture of a compassionate woman, supportive, always there to listen when after the service, the people would walk to the front with expectations of relief from their burdens.

I need a new job.

My boyfriend of two months is breaking up with me.

I don’t know what graduate program to apply to.

I’m scared I will be a terrible dad.

She and Jason would dutifully lay their hands on each shoulder, whispering into their ears everything they sometimes wished others would say to them.

We love you guys. God cares for you.

We’re here for you, any time you need to talk.

We would never judge you. There’s no need to feel shame. God’s love is unconditional.

***

However, it was just the night before when Jason paced the living room in large, quick strides with his hands shoved deep into his pockets. A thin line formed in the center of his forehead and his nose wrinkled in what looked like determination. She watched his manic march across the newly stained pine floor; the floor with the knots and imperfections, the deep grooves whose job was to show that they were rugged Colorado people. They had character. They could handle anything. She didn’t know that a floor could try to say so much yet be so terribly wrong.

A guttural groan slipped from his mouth when he remembered his pain and he could no longer mask it with his pastor alter-ego. He would mention someone, normally unspeakable in the everyday, and she knew that he was remembering something terrible, re-living it in fact. As she watched him fighting, she hoped that he would not give up. Her knees drew closer to her chest, her fingers tangled together in what could be construed as some sort of desperate prayer. And maybe it was a prayer. Maybe God knew that she was no longer left with words to say to Him. If he was as omniscient as they all said, He would know how her heart splintered at the sight of her husband’s frailty. She didn’t need to say words. Prayer could be so formal and she was starting to understand that God was not impressed with her formality.

He mumbled something incoherent, his finger shaking at some invisible entity while his strides grew more emphatic.

“You can’t do this to me. You can’t. You liar. I hate you. I hate him. I hate him.” His voice rose louder, reverberating off the cathedral ceiling, “Please stop hurting her. Please stop.  STOP!” His pacing became more frantic, faster. His sentences clipped and his thoughts trailed like they normally did during manic episodes.

Two weeks after Rylan’s birth, when Julie lay in bed one morning, the small movements of the baby’s heart and breath and mouth flittering against Julie’s bare skin, Jason leaned over the two of them. He saw the tiny rosebud lips of his new baby girl and kissed the ruddy, flaming cheeks. He gazed at the faint crescents of lashes and began to weep.

“What is it?” Julie asked, startled.

It took him a long time to speak as he attempted to form words. “My father raped my sister and he forced me to watch.” Jason gasped for air as he uttered the words out loud for the first time. The sheer sadism of it had been enough for him to push those memories to the lowest realms of consciousness. His carefully constructed self-containment began to shatter as he considered the small life now under his protection.

“You’ve never told anyone about this?”

“Never.”

“But I don’t understand. How could you have lived with this your entire life and walked around like a normal person?”  Julie recognized the question rise in her own soul even as she asked it. “How do you not hate God?”

At Jason’s confession, their world began to unravel. It was like Pandora’s box opened and all hell began to pour out. And now, scenes such as the one playing out before her were common. Her husband began to demonstrate behaviour so peculiar that it was as if she had married a completely different person. At night, after their daughter went to sleep, the frantic pacing and mumbling began. The once confident young man she had met in the cafeteria began to turn into a child again—a broken, wounded child.

During the day, however, they could look out their picture window and see the jagged silhouette of the Sawatch Mountain Range. They would breathe in the sight of it, and somehow the peaks gave them comfort that there was something bigger than them—that they were surrounded by something strong and fierce and wonderful. But that night the mountains were obscured by the night sky. For a moment, in her panic, she wondered if they would still be there in the morning.

She closed her eyes and tried to imagine Jesus there, next to her but this time, like so many other times before, the fear wrapped around her chest like a boa constrictor. She braced her hand against the wall, forcing herself to rise from her seat and continued to brush her fingers against the wall for support as she made her way to the dining area where her purse was. Reaching for her cell phone, she opened the door and immediately felt relief as she pressed the numbers, hearing the tone of each button as it was pushed. She had the number memorized now. The sing-song melody of the buttons pushed in order had been imprinted on her brain. She walked down the street quickly, as far away from her house as she could get, before she heard him answer. He recognized her voice.

“Julie. You’re calling late tonight.”

“Yes. I’m sorry. I know it’s late.”

“Oh, it’s not a problem.” The male voice was apologetic. “Good thing I was working tonight. What’s going on?”

“It’s Jason. It’s so bad tonight. Really terrible. I don’t know how much more I can take.” She nervously scraped the toe of her Converse against the pavement.

“Jason needs your support, Julie. You two will get through this. He just needs to know that you’re there for him.”

“When will things get better? When will things be okay again? I just need to know if we will make it. If he will survive this.” She could hear the strain in her own voice.

“Let me look at the cards.” There was a brief silence as she heard cards being shuffled on the other line. “Let’s see,” he paused again, and Julie waited. “Let’s see. I have the Hierophant card. Jason is in a process of internal reflection. That means it will take some time for him to come out of the hole he is in. It may take about six months but if you continue to encourage him, it is your love for him that will heal him. I really believe that, Julie. Just stick with it. It will be okay.”

Julie was skeptical. Her mind returned to the card that had prompted her obsession a year ago. Was he telling her only what she wanted to hear—no needed to hear? She wasn’t sure why she continued to make these phone calls, spending money that she knew they didn’t have if that were the case. She only knew that they made her feel better somehow. “Six months. That seems like such a long time from now. Are you sure we’ll be okay??”

“Well, I can never be certain but that’s what I am seeing. Hang in there, and if you need me, you know where to find me.”

She hung up and began walking back to her house. She walked in a meandering way, her head and neck and shoulders felt lighter, her breathing became steady and the thudding of her heartbeat did not feel, any longer, like it was forcing its way through her chest. That phone call felt like what she imagined a shot of heroin would be like, and she felt as guilty as if she had just stuck a needle in her arm.

When she returned to her bedroom Jason appeared almost comatose. He lay in bed bare-chested and she too stripped off her clothes. Straddling him, she pushed his boxers to a messy pile under the sheets. Her knees and calves pressed against his side as she drifted over him, kissing his neck and then chest, repeating the pattern again and again in a frenzied attempt to make both of them feel better. He didn’t move at first, but she could not stop now. It wasn’t long before the feel of her weight, her kiss on his abdomen, and the subtle grazing of her pelvis caused him to harden. Julie knew it would all be okay when he reached his hand to her head, his fingers grasping her loose hair, his hands sliding down her neck and back, guiding her closer to his body.

***

Monday morning the winter sun shone white through the windows of their bedroom. Mondays were always the worst day of the week for Jason so Julie made sure to leave the drapes open on Sunday night to ensure he would not awake to a dark bedroom. It was on this day that Jason would feel the height of his depression. The euphoria of a successful sermon and the adoration of his congregants—the validation that he was doing something well and that he was helping others—that all drifted away as soon as he opened his eyes. It was for this reason that Julie also needed to get away, to shake off the residue of dread from her husband. But this particular Monday didn’t feel typical. Something felt different with Jason. She might say that it even felt normal.

She was already up that morning, slipping into a floral kimono over her t-shirt and jeans. She bent over and kissed Jason on his forehead as he lay in bed, “You should really get up and start your day. It will help.” He groaned resentfully at this interruption of his sleep. “I’m going to take Rylan to the park today. Will you be okay?”

“Yes.  I think so.  I’ll get up and get some coffee.  Maybe read.” Still lying down, he reached for her hand and smiled. “I love you. Have fun today.”

Julie bent down and lightly kissed him on the lips. He smacked her backside playfully, squeezing one cheek before he pulled his hand away and rested it behind his head. He looked peaceful, content, like the naked man in the Lovers card. She shook her head at the thought and chuckled to herself. “Bye, hun. We’ll see you this afternoon.”

Julie put a red windbreaker on Rylan and they strolled hand in hand to a park a few blocks away. It was a park the family went to often, mostly known for hiking trails. It also had a soccer field and a robust playground with a complicated structure of bridges and playhouses, slides and swings. Patches of cheatgrass and thistle bordered the playground and occasionally peeked out through the small stones that covered the ground. Sometimes she would notice a wildflower brightening the otherwise drabness of early spring.

Julie held Rylan’s hand as she slid down the wavy slide and watched her carefully as Rylan gripped the chain railings of the swinging bridge. Rylan turned to face her mother, giving her a saucy grin, her face now dirty from play and pink with exertion. They had played for an hour when a loud noise sounded in the distance.

“Mommy, what’s zat?” Rylan questioned.

“Come here, sweetie. Time to come down now.” Julie felt panicked again. That could not have been what it sounded like. How far away was that?

Rylan came down the steps of the playhouse and immediately bent down to pick something from the ground. Julie pulled her into her arms and lifted her, a fist of something still in Rylan’s hand. Julie felt as if she floated all the way home. She felt haunted by the quiet, haunted by this silent walk to her house. She hadn’t always felt this ache from being alone. She had grown up alone, except for maybe the presence of her mother, and had never noticed the pain of it until now. Julie was so distracted by the need to see her husband again, to let him soothe this ache as best as he could in the state he was in, that she didn’t notice the blue and red lights blinking through the trees as she walked the last two blocks.

But when she could no longer ignore the presence of three police cars surrounding her home, a new feeling, a tormenting one, much stronger than she had felt before, swept over her. The officers were just now walking to the door and after they stopped her to ask some questions, “Do you live here? Who is in there right now?” she couldn’t speak. She only wanted to rush inside the house. She handed Rylan to an officer and ran to the door, the sound of her daughter’s fussing and ensuing screams drowned by thousands of terrifying thoughts. Another officer rushed toward her as she fumbled to place a key in her door. “Ma’am. You shouldn’t go in there. Let us go in there.”

“But this is my house! My husband’s in there!”

She ran from room to room screaming Jason’s name and finally entered the bedroom where they had woken up together that morning—the room where she had kissed him and made love to him. The body of a man lay with his arms stretched wide across the bed; ribs exposed through taught skin. A Remington lay on the floor where his blood pooled into the crevices and knots. A red spray crowned the wall above the headboard.

Dazed, she wandered outside and walked to her child who was still in the officer’s arms screaming. She reached for Rylan as the officers asked her more questions, all of which she ignored. Rylan quieted as she placed her head on her mother’s shoulder, still gripping something in her hands.

“What have you got here?” Julie gently used her thumb to open the tight fist of her daughter and ran her finger over the strands of grass in Rylan’s palm nearly missing the sight of the slender purple petals as they fell to the ground.