Her Bells

Salvation of a Dead Man

     I haven't slept more than two restless hours a night since August 12th 2010. I see her face every time I lay down at the day's conclusion. Her round angelic face is always beet red and heavily tear streaked. Her once optimistic hazel eyes are now dull hollow orbs that bore into me pleading and unblinking. Countless vessels have been strained to the point of bursting, splotchy red bruises dominate the whites of her eyes. Every night whispering words I've yet to decipher. The whispers keep me awake until exhaustion mercifully shuts them out. The first thing I see when I wake is her face. I lay motionless for hours, my crying eyes locked with the eyes of the little girl in the intricate silver frame that sits on my nightstand. Atop her sandy blonde ringlets is a bright yellow bow with a glittering pink chevron pattern. Her smile is so large and proud as she excitedly points a sticky little finger to the gap left behind after losing her first tooth. The front of her sunshine yellow party dress is nearly entirely obscured by blue and pink cake icing. I desperately wish this were the version of my daughter that haunted me when the world around me is fast asleep. I'd give everything and more to go back to that moment in time. To go back and celebrate her sixth birthday until the earth stops turning. No parent should ever be forced to watch their child die. I couldn't help her. I wasn't there to help her. I was nowhere to be seen as her tiny hands struggled outstretched, desperately searching for the comfort and safety of my own. Her eyes begged for me to save her when her words and her breath, were being ripped away from her. I watched the exact moment the life was snuffed out of her eyes. I remember the inhuman shrieks that tore through me, and the tears that burned like blue flames racing down my face that followed. I remember the iron tight embrace of Special Agent Hogarth Dobre after shutting off the video of my daughter's last agonizing moments of life. I remember the warmth of his own tears that freely flowed as he clutched my heaving body to his own. Even in my own pain, I could feel his. He'd promised they'd find her and bring her back home to me. And in a way, he did. But not the way any of us had hoped. Five weeks after kissing the velvety soft cheek of my daughter before bedtime for the very last time, I kissed her urn goodnight for the first. Today I wake knowing that tonight, I'll kiss her urn for the 1,096th time. Tonight I'll fall asleep knowing that tomorrow, the man that stole my daughter from this world will walk out of prison a free man.
-----
     I know my mother is speaking, but her words are as good as silence as I watch Evan Torrance shake his lawyer's hand and grin to the countless news cameras and reporters that swarm him. His cocky smirk violently turns my stomach. Broken and meaningless words penetrate the fog that envelopes my brain. Words like "technicality" and "overturned conviction" coax my morning breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast from the spot they lay resting in my stomach. I vomit onto my living room floor as the large crawling banner at the bottom of the television reads "ONCE CONVICTED ACCUSED CHILD MURDERER FREED FROM CUSTODY THIS MORNING AFTER TEN YEARS ON DEATH ROW" I sob uncontrollably as my mother fetches the mop from the hall closet. "I'll take care of this," she says softly, placing her frail but expertly manicured hand on my convulsing shoulder. In moments, the floor is cleaned and looks as if nothing had ever happened. Snot runs unhindered down my lips and chin and accumulates with the tears that have soaked the front of my ex husband's tattered old FSU shirt that now acts as my pajamas. "It's not right" I manage to choke out after what feels like hours of deafening fuzzy screen static in my brain. I don't understand how we got to this place. I don't understand how he gets to live his life while my daughter is gone. My eyes lock on her urn and I can feel the all too familiar brewing of another bout of rage induced nausea. This time, I'm able to direct the remainder of my breakfast into the wastepaper basket under the end table. Evans attorney, Marlon Weston beams proudly as he waxes on about the triumph of their new ruling and how true justice isn't an innocent man dying for the sin of another in the wake of tragedy. How the loss of a second innocent life isn't the justice my daughter deserves. Weston embraces Torrance and thanks the team of fucking idiots that worked tirelessly to get that pedophile piece of shit back out into society. I am numb and in this moment, I wish a car would smash through my living room. I wish for the spark of my mother's cigarette lighter to set alight an undetected gas leak. I wish for God to strike me down where I sit. It's simply not right. Nothing will ever be right again. Not unless I make it right.
The rest of the day passes me by, somehow both too fast and excruciatingly slow. I don't recall a single word spoken over lunch with my mother, or the taste of the Panera soup and sandwich that my body instinctively ate while on autopilot. I don't remember driving to my safe deposit box at FirstFinancial downtown. I don't remember any of it. But as I sit at my kitchen table staring down my late father's retired service revolver and box of expired ammunition, I know I must have. The clock above the China cabinet says it's 7PM somehow. I write two short sentences in my stenographer spiral with her favorite cyan gel pen and pick up the firearm. Despite never having held a gun, I grip it with a competent determination and bring it to my chin. For the first time in a long time, I don't cry at the memory of her sticky little hands or her soiled party dress. For the first time in a long time, I don't see her pleading eyes when I close my own, because I know that in mere moments, I'll have her in my arms where she has always belonged. Tonight I will not kiss her urn. Tonight I will finally kiss her soft cheek again. We will have an eternity of goodnight kisses.

"Now everything is right. Now I am home."