Chapter Twenty Two

“Abby?”  Jon called out as he roamed through the upstairs of the seemingly overlarge house.  Although he loved living in the Hamptons he was seriously thinking about selling up and buying a smaller property.  When all of them had lived there the house had been filled with love and warmth and happiness and now?  All it seemed to be filled with was his bitterness and anger.  Abby hadn’t deserved his wrath; she had done nothing to warrant it.  She had done nothing at all, except step out in front of his car at the wrong possible moment and catapult herself into his life.  The house groaned and creaked in the silence, pressing in on him, making him feel suddenly claustrophobic.  There were twenty one rooms in total in the house, and he felt like he’d searched all of them.  There was one room he hadn’t been in but he knew he wasn’t ready to do that.  He wasn’t ready to confront the overwhelming emotions locked up inside him that threatened to destroy him with every waking moment; he kept them carefully locked up inside.  His breathing was erratic and wild as he walked; locked in his mind.  Why had he gone out that day?  Why hadn’t he let Dorothea go as she’d wanted to?  Why had his mind wandered at that particular moment?  A lone tear fell from his eye before the steel cage of his mind snapped shut and his face hardened slightly.  Not here, not now.  He wasn’t ready damn it!  He stopped walking down the heavily carpeted hallway and looked at the door in front of him.  He reached out a hand, tentatively, and brushed the wooden door, tenderly. Surprised as it swung open slightly, Jon looked inside and all but snarled as he saw Abby sitting on the bed.

“What the… you have no right to be in here!” he shouted, storming into the room, “Get the fuck out of here right now.  You can’t be in here.”  He made a move towards her but she held her ground, sitting on the spacious double bed, crumpling the smooth white comforter.

Sunlight streamed through the white muslin curtains, illuminating a thick layer of dust.  Posters hung lopsided on warm peach walls, make up lay strewn haphazardly across shelves and a laptop sat, open, on a desk.  The chair and the floor underneath were covered in clothes and shoes lay strewn under the desk.  A hairdryer, still plugged in, lay on the desk at an angle, next to a hairbrush containing short blond hair.  An open pot of hairgel had dried into a thick plastic blue gunk.  He stiffened as he heard laughter and smelled apples. He stood in the middle of the room, looking around as if he had never seen the contents before.  Everything seemed foreign to him.  He ran a finger over the nearest shelf and stared at the thick dust on his finger. 

“I need to tidy this room up.  I had no idea it was this..” whatever he was going to say was lost as another tear ran free and rolled down his face.  He stumbled to the bed and sat down, blinded by tears.  All the anger and fury he’d kept inside was trying to leak out and he battled the urge to scream and rip up everything in the sunny, bright room.

Abby looked up at him.  She was cradling a photo frame tightly to her.

“Jon?” she said softly, keeping her arms wrapped around the photo.

“Jon?” she repeated, watching as he raised a tear stained face to hers.

“Whose room is this?” she asked, her voice full of choked emotion

“Hmm?” he murmured, not listening to her.

“This room.  Who did it belong to?”

“Stephanie.” Came the reply, so low she had to strain to hear it.

“Who’s Stephanie?” she asked, dreading that the answer what be what she thought.

“My daughter.” The tears were flowing freely now and he blinked to clear them, his blue eyes dulled with pain.

Abby swallowed hard.  She knew the answer but had to ask him, all the while not really wanting confirmation. 

“What happened to her?”

Fury rippled across his face and he tensed.  Abby’s eyes widened and she shuffled back across the bed.

Jon sprang up and paced, relentlessly across the pale pink carpet with its red rosebud inlays.

“What happened?  You want to know what happened.  What happened to my beautiful, wonderful, funny, loving, smart, kind daughter who I love with all my heart?  My firstborn, my child; the one woman I would have done anything for with no questions asked?” His voice cracked and he swallowed the lump in his throat.  Pure, raw emotion fought with his steel cage for a moment before overwhelming his defenses.

With a roar that scared her, he shouted “I killed her! That’s what happened! I took a corner too fast and slid on black ice.  The car hit a tree and she was killed.”

Jon was crying fully; the emotional freeze had thawed and he slowly crumpled into a heap on the floor.

Abby looked down at the photo she had cradled, protectively, in her arms; at the young woman smiling up at the camera, her arms thrown around her proud, loving, laughing dad and laid it on the bed.

She cradled Jon’s head on her lap as he wept.