Crescendo by L. Marie Wood

Author:L. Marie Wood [,]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781736850114
Publisher: Cedar Grove Publishing

Chapter Thirty-Five

James saw Andrea watching him from the house, the pain in her eyes evident from outside. He couldn’t say anything to her even though he wanted to. He wanted to tell her that he was all right and he’d be inside in a minute. He wanted to tell her that he had taken the day off especially to spend time with her. He wanted to say something that would make sense as to why he was sitting outside on his lawn staring at his house as though he had never seen it before. Thinking of getting the house repainted? Admiring her remarkable garden? his mind quipped. How about this? I don’t know why I’m looking at the house. Honestly, I thought I was in front of a different house, one about four hours away from here, in Maryland, where my father and grandmother used to live. Something. But James couldn’t say any of what he was thinking, not the lies nor the truth. All he could do was stare at the house, in awe of it being there.

James sat on the lawn until Andrea came outside, trying to make sense of what was going on. The last thing he remembered doing, the last time he remembered having control over his actions, was looking at his grandmother’s death certificate. James remembered reading it completely, even reading the name of the certifier who stamped and filed the document. James read it all. He remembered thinking he would go up to bed, maybe take the next day off from work, and drive out to the address on the death certificate. Part of him knew that going there would answer some questions for him. James didn’t know how he knew that. He just did.

The part of his mind that knew he would go to the house eventually tried to muscle out the disjointed memory of a woman—his grandmother—rising from the floor, her straight white nightgown swaying at the sides when she approached the window quickly. Too quickly. Confused images crowded James’ thoughts. The same woman, younger now, shouting instructions at a young boy, a woman’s body on the floor, lifeless, a faceless woman laying broken in front of an apartment building wearing a white nightgown that was stained with blood. The images ran together in his head, one after the other, zooming in and out, like a horrific collage. There was an underlying current to all of the images, one that he wanted to close himself to, but couldn’t. He wasn’t supposed to, James understood now. Finally. “You know,” a gravelly voice repeated over and over like a chant. “You know.”

Andrea ran to her husband, at first to bring him inside to get him warm, but that changed almost as soon as she opened the door. As she raced to him, the coat she held in her hands a second before abandoned, she heard him yelling, “Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!” Over and over he repeated the line as loud as he could.

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