Through the Windshield Glass (7 page)

“Candlelight
looks good on you,” I said, to Daman.

I felt him
laugh, “You should see yourself. It’s not fair to all the other girls here.”

I blushed and
was grateful that even with the candles it was still dark enough that he
couldn’t see.

The band kept
playing and we kept dancing until the candles had burnt low and hints of dawn
were playing at the edge of the horizon.

Then, in
unison, the band ended their song, removed themselves from their perches and
began leading the procession out of the park. All the other couples followed,
except Daman and I. It just didn’t seem right to leave.

We stayed
there, Daman holding me close, and me breathing in the scent of him.

“Alice,” Daman
said softly.

“Yes?” I was
half asleep standing there with my head on his chest and my eyes closed.

“I have
something for you; I found it in my pocket when we were at the café. I think
it’s meant for you.”

I was suddenly
more alert. Daman released me and I was
　
aware
that the night was colder than it had seemed. He reached into his pocket and
dropped to one knee, holding my left hand.

“Alice,” Daman
said, “Would you marry me?”

I gasped; my
hands flew to my mouth and I couldn’t seem to find any words. All I could do
was nod and allow Daman to slip the simple diamond ring onto my finger. It was
faster and more reckless than any romance Verona had ever seen, but we were
already dead, how bad could a whirlwind like this be?

The scene
around me changed in an instant. We were still in the park, but it was twilight
again. All the dancing people and musicians were back, but there was an order
to their motions now. The band was playing another familiar song and as I
looked up to see what Daman was making of the event, I realized he was thirty
feet away, wearing a suit and staring at me in anticipation.

Chapter Eleven

I had a sudden
feeling of deja vu and looked down at myself just to make sure. Curled loops of
my hair fell down around my face and tickled my jaw; I brushed the tendrils
away impatiently and stared at my apparel.

I was wearing
the wedding gown I had seen in my vision after Daman's life.

All at once,
everything clicked. Daman had just asked me if I would marry him, and suddenly,
here we were. A man behind Daman was motioning me forward. He was holding a
book and was dressed like a priest, but I still didn't catch on. It took
someone hooking their arm through mine to wake me up. I looked over to see who
was touching me and realized it was my father.

I gasped and
jumped on my dad, hugging him to me tightly. At first he was surprised and
didn't respond, but after a moment he hugged me back.

I had always
taken my father's hugs for granted; they were always there for me to have. I
had pushed down the pain of missing my family, but now it was resurfacing. It
shouldn’t have been so painful because my dad was right there, but I knew as
soon as I’d had the experience in this door.

Someone in the
audience cleared their throat and I finally broke away from my dad with tears
streaming down my face. My dad reached over and dropped a veil over my face.

The band took
up the tune of 'Here Comes the Bride' and my father and I began walking toward
Daman. As we approached I recognized other members of the audience. My mom and
Lacey were standing on Daman's left, both smiling joyously. I resisted the urge
to run and hug both of them, but, of course, I had something else to do first.

My dad handed
me off to Daman who took both my hands in his.

I tried to
listen as the priest read the vows, but the harder I tried to listen the more
scrambled the words seemed to be, I focused my energy on studying Daman
instead.

Daman was
looking at me strangely. I couldn't quite place why, but the look made me
uneasy, did I note a kind of hunger in his eyes? A blink later and my
apprehension was gone, as was the disconcerting look, all I saw now was love.

"Alice,"
Daman whispered, "Say 'I do'"

I hadn't
realized that the priest had asked me if I was willing to marry Daman because
of my preoccupation with the latter's eyes.

"I--,”
there was no opportunity to finish. Daman dropped both my hands and suddenly he
was changing in front of me. He looked oddly blocky and was turning black as
the night around us. I realized what was happening a second before Daman
completed his transformation into a door emblazoned with ‘Loss’.

"No,"
I whispered to myself. I tried pinching myself, but Daman stayed a door and I
knew I had to go through it.

I looked back
to see if everyone else had witnessed what had just happened, but no one was
there. Not even a trace of them. It seemed like all the stars had gone out
leaving just the musty glow of the streetlamps. A chill wind blew past moving
my now straight hair into my face. I brushed it carelessly aside and looked
down at myself.

“I already
suffered loss!” I screamed. The wind stole the words and threw them against a
tree. Torrents of wind swirled around me, whipping my hair and chilling me
through before it stopped suddenly.

No longer was I
wearing the fantasy dress, just my old jeans and sneakers. The only reminder of
what had just happened to me was the glittering ring on my finger, like the
glass slipper that didn't fade after the ball.

I stretched out
my left hand, keeping the ring in sight should it attempt a disappearance, and
opened the door.

Raw emotional
pain ravaged my soul. It wasn't as if Daman had just disappeared, it felt as
though I would never see him again, not like he was dead, but worse. I felt
like he had left me on purpose, for another woman? Because I wasn't good enough,
that was it. But how could he know that already?

The ground
around me changed slowly into the carpet of my hall, the night morphed into the
containing walls, and soon I was facing an expanse of blank wall. Both ‘Love’
and ‘Loss’ were gone from the array of exits. Apparently, the second door I’d
gone through with Daman had still been leading me through love.

I desperately
wished I had saved the ‘Love’ door for last, at least then I would have
something to look forward to, instead I was stuck with mostly depressing
choices, I would just have to do the worst first. I anxiously twisted my ring
around my finger and decided to choose ‘Misery’.

Chapter Twelve

I landed on the
porch of my old house. I gasped and turned around to look down my old street. Everything
was exactly how I remembered it, right down to our neighbors golden retriever
chained in the yard trying to attack the floating dandelion seeds. I walked
over to the dog and scratched between her ears; she shook her head and licked
my hand. I used to hate when dogs would do that, but now it was just another
sign, that even if it was only artificially and temporarily, I was alive, and
this animal knew it. The ring on my left hand caught my eye again and I sighed
wishing Daman were here to help me through this door. It didn’t sound like it
was going to be easy to do alone.

A tap on my
shoulder startled me, I whipped around and almost fell over when I saw who was
touching me.

“Daman!” I
practically screamed. I ran to him and leaped into his arms, burying my face in
the smell of him.

“Hi, Alice,”
Daman said, “Are you okay? I just saw you an hour ago and now you’re acting
like you thought I had died or something,”

I stepped back
away from Daman and looked at him, puzzled, “An hour ago?" Then I
recovered, "It felt like ages, sorry."

“It's okay,”
Daman said, “maybe the stress of telling your parents we’re
　
married got to you,”

I was terribly
confused, “Yeah, that must be it.” I couldn’t help but wonder why I would be
nervous about telling my parents we were married, hadn't they just seen us tie
the knot? My dad had walked me down the aisle for heaven’s sake. Daman grabbed
my hand, and I immediately felt better. He lifted my hand up to his mouth and
kissed it, “They’ll be fine with it, don’t worry,”

“Why would I
worry?” I asked. Maybe in some romantic movie that would be a line full of
faith in my parents that they would love my husband, but this wasn’t a romantic
movie, this was some weird after life thing that was happening to me and I
really wanted to know why I should be worried at all that my parents wouldn’t
like Daman. They'd seemed perfectly fine with him when the priest asked for
objections to our marriage.

Together, Daman
and I walked up to my front door; he reached out a finger and rang the
doorbell. Within seconds, the door swung wide open, revealing my mother. I
couldn’t help myself, I jumped on her and hugged her tightly, but she didn’t
respond. She didn’t look happy to see me, in fact, she looked half murderous.

“Why,” she said
icily, “did you bring
that
here?” She pointed a menacing finger at
Daman.

“Mom!” I said.
I was appalled, my mother had never been one to hate anyone, let alone refer to
a person as an object or put that much feeling into one word for that matter.
My mother had always been a quiet woman who hardly spoke above her ‘inside’
voice.

“We have
something to tell you Mrs. Patterson,” Daman said diplomatically, “Can we come
in?”

“Anything you
have to say can’t deserve that much pomp and circumstance, what do you want?”
my mom asked. By now my father and sister, Lacey, had joined my mother at the
door, mirroring the hateful look on her face.

“Mom, Dad,
Lacey,” I said, addressing each of my family members, “we’re married, we want
you--”

“You got her
pregnant didn’t you?” my father asked, “That’s the only way you would want to
marry her,”

“What? No!” I
tried. How could my dad say that? It wasn’t just an insult to Daman, but an
insult to me. Daman was attractive for sure, but it was his choice to marry me
not the other way around. Besides, he’d turned into a door before the audience
at our wedding could even clap for us.

“Mr. Patterson,
I have the utmost respect for your--,” Daman started.

“Don’t even
start with me, Daman, we know your background,” Dad said.

“His
background,” I asked, growing angry with how terrible my family was being, “How
could you be so prejudiced? You didn't have a problem at our ceremony!"

“We didn't go
to the ceremony, remember?” my mother screamed, “And you should know why we're
upset. Your new
　
husband was
driving the car that killed your brother!”

My jaw dropped.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. My brother hadn’t died in a car crash!
He had died a hero in a fire; Daman had nothing to do with it!

“Your son was
drunk, Mrs. Patterson,” Daman said calmly, “He ran a stop light, I just
happened to be the unlucky one who hit him when he did that,”

That wasn’t
true either! My brother would never drink! My parents had raised us not to, we
had relatives who did, we had seen what alcohol did to them and we had promised
ourselves when we were young that we would never touch the stuff. Besides, I’d
been the one killed by a drunk driver, something was horribly wrong and I knew
it would only get worse.

By this time I
had let go of Daman’s hand. Both of my own hands were clenched into fists, my
throat hurt from holding back tears and my face was burning hot from the anger
I felt at my parents for being so cruel. I tried to prepare myself for what
they might say next, I didn’t do a good enough job I guess.

“And you picked
up my daughter at the scene,” my dad said angrily, “If you marry him that’s a
betrayal of our family, and I won’t be able to call you my daughter anymore,
you’ll just be another stranger on the street who messed her life up. Except
you didn’t ruin your life with substance, you married a killer,”

My knees
buckled from underneath me and I fell to ground, Daman attempted to help me,
but I didn’t want to get up, my legs weren’t strong enough to hold me. All I
could do was sit on the porch and look at my parents and my sister. The people
who I had thought were more loving than any three people on the earth. My dad
who had been, strong and brave while I died, my mother who had tried to
reassure herself that I’d be okay, and my sister, who had once cried for three
days out of empathy for one of her friends whose dog had died.

　
“Lacey,” I started to say.
Surely if I could get Lacey to side with me my parents would come around,
“Lacey, come on, Daman’s not a bad guy! It wasn’t even his fault that Jamie
died!”

Even though I
knew Daman killing James wasn’t true, it felt like it was, as though my
subconscious had created a nightmare so vivid I was living it.

Lacey’s gaze
was as stone cold as a statue’s, “I thought you loved James.”

Her words cut
me deeper than any knife ever could have. These were words coming from my own
sister. She was saying that I didn’t love my brother. She couldn’t have been
more wrong, she had to know that! James and I had been closer than I had even
been with Maria, and we had been best friends since Kindergarten. The
relationship I had with James was different than just any other brother-sister
relationship I had ever seen. Most sisters I’d seen had hated their older
brothers because of how much they teased them, and older brothers I knew
thought their younger sisters were pests. Not James, he was respectful, he
protected me, and he made me feel like a princess. If he ever saw that I was
suffering from middle-child-syndrome, he would take me out for ice cream, or
out for a drive, or before he had a license, he would even sit down and play
Barbie’s with me. If I didn’t love James, then I didn’t know what love was.