Letters From The Ledge (35 page)
“Miss?”
I was rocking again.
“Miss? Hey, is there someone we can call for you?”
Was there anyone? It was a valid question. There was dad. And there was Jenny. I had a few friends at school but I hardly ever went out. My best friends were my books and my writing. When I needed to process something I went off by myself and wrote a story about someone else's life. When my mom died I remember writing a story about a girl whose family moved to the other side of the country and how she had to learn to make friends all over again.
Somewhere in the distance the ambulance driver was still talking to me. I shook my head in the negative. “I called my dad at work. He’ll probably meet me at the hospital.”
“What about your mom?”
“She’s dead.” I swallowed. It had been a while since I’d said that…understood that. Felt it.
“Oh.” He managed. “I’m sorry.”
“So am I.” I put my head on the window and watched the houses speed past.
Then all of a sudden, Jenny just stopped. Her heart stopped. Her breathing stopped. She just… stopped. It sent the two paramedics in the back into a panic. The ambulance sped up, but I knew somewhere in my heart that we weren’t going to make it to the hospital in time, and even if we could it wouldn’t matter. She was gone. Gone to be with mom. It was like Jenny just up and walked out of that ambulance, but left her body laying on the gurney. I knew it as truth and yet I couldn’t connect it to a feeling, just numbness covering over everything else. Even after we pulled up to the hospital life went past in a slow-motion blur.
Jenny died that night in May. We buried her next to mom. It seemed only right. I handled all the arrangements. Dad barely spoke the whole summer. I tried to organize things best I could so he could manage ok when I left for NYU. By then he’d lost all three of us, one by one. Part of me wanted to stick around and just keep taking care of him, but when it came right down to it I just couldn’t live in that tomb of a house with its bloodstained memories. I tried to convince dad to move to a smaller place with less bedrooms and no grass to cut. He said he’d think about it.
I was hoping that maybe when I left he’d come back to life. Maybe when the grass got so long the neighbors started to complain he’d step out into the sunshine once in a while. Then again, maybe I was kidding myself. You just don’t recover from a series of losses like that. It’s not like the chicken pox where one by one all the spots go away and never come back. It’s more like tuberculosis, the bacteria brooding even in its dormancy, relentless in its pursuit, scheming at ways to overpower your defenses and stealing your breath away.
Till death do you part.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lynda Meyers
has been passionate about writing since childhood. Letters From The Ledge is a story she saw unfold in a vision one day, each character coming into view like a scene from a movie. Telling Brendan, Sarah, Paige and Nate's story has been an incredible journey.
Letters From The Ledge
is her second novel.
Her third novel (
truly.
) can be sampled on her blog at:
www.writeonedge.blogspot.com
, where it’s currently being serialized in weekly installments. She lives and writes in New York with her husband, four amazing kids and two pretty adorable Maltese puppies.
For the latest update on this title and others please visit:
http://www.lettersfromtheledge.com