Chapter 3

When it came time to identify his wife, he saw the scratches on her arms and hands, and was told by the doctor that she likely got them trying to protect Kim right up to the end. It didn’t surprise him in the slightest, and for a brief moment he thought about how she had once told him she never felt like she was cut out to be a mother. She was the fiercest protector he had even seen, and being with Kim had awakened a part of her that was at the same time so strong yet so vulnerable, that it had been truly awe-inspiring to observe. He was continually amazed by their love for one another.

As he looked down at her lifeless body, he reached down and put his hand on her face, remembering as he did the first time he had ever done this as she lay quietly sleeping beside him the very first night that they had met. He thought about how much he was looking forward to watching this face change over the years. How it might have changed as laugh lines and wrinkles and life’s travails continued to add to its character. He would only touch it again in his imagination now, and he held his hand to her face for as long as he could possibly could, before the doctor came and gently led him out of the room.

He walked down to the edge of Lake Michigan to a place he used to walk with Stephanie when they first met, and watched the lights of Chicago, thinking about the lives that were going on somewhere behind the lights. He wanted to tell them to take some time and look at the people they loved very closely, because life could intervene any goddamn time it wanted and take it all away. In some terrifying and completely random way, the predator could find a perfectly happy family and snuff them out without any kind of rhyme or reason.

Back in his car, he took the bottle back out of the glove compartment and had another swig. As he did, he reminded himself that he had to keep it together for at least a couple of more days before surrendering completing to his destructive impulses, even if that was the road he chose to go down. He had phone calls to make and arrangements to make, and he knew he owed it to the girls to do it properly. He put the bottle away and began driving very slowly to his empty home. Knowing it was a home that would never be the same again.