Sweet Adaline

Chapter Thirty

The heavy white luminance of Angela's headlights, overlapped elliptically upon the door to the open garage. The light poured down the hall, reflecting off ceramic tile onto the figure hunched on a bar stool at the kitchen island.
She pulled fully into the garage and left the car running. The figure of Jack sat still, unflinching, under the hard white light. She stepped in through the open door and walked down the hall, moving out of the light and around the island. Angela watched him, fixated on the empty glass before him next to an empty bottle. A book sat beside him, and on top of it, three folded pages. He'd read them over and over before, but now, they sat undisturbed.
"I wasn't going to marry again." She said, uncertain of why. "I didn't want to do it again. I've made that mistake enough for one life. Every time I thought I'd found the right man," she paused for a moment, "I was wrong. Maybe it was my leaving that made me wrong. Maybe. It was." That was the one realAngieation she'd denied most vehemently her whole life. She was faulted just as much as any husband ever was. She'd confessed to me, idly, but never to herself. "It was. So, how could I do that again?"
"But then I met you, Jack. A single father, trying to raise an angry and hurt little girl. A little girl that wouldn't even speak to you. It wasn't hard to see why I met you. See, I'm one of those naive romantics that think there really are special chances, clandestine. I thought Adaline could have been my second chance. And I thought, who better to try it with than her father.
"I don't know what I want more. To tell you to your face how angry I am, or for you to hear it. Something tells me, however no matter what I say, you won't hear it."
"What do you want to tell me?" He said with his head hung by the shoulders. Punch drunk and haggard, he lifted his sunken eyes to her. "You were right? Is that right? Because you were."
"No." She said, aggravated by his disregard. "I want to tell you I feel badly about this. All day today, I've been telling myself we could get this thing back together. It would be rough, but we could do it. We could because we've got more than each other. We have a family." Angela spoke firmly with a hint of resentment.
"Family?" He huffed snidely.
"Yes!" she responded harshly, though reserved. "Because it doesn't matter who knocked up her mom, Jack. If you raise her, you're her father. You're her father because no one else would be." She leaned down to his level, looking intensely into his eyes. "And somewhere in there is the man that loves her." They stared at each other arctically.
"Then she called me twenty minutes ago, and everything changed," she said disdainfully.
"Oh?" He replied caustically. "And what happens next in your fairy tale, Angela?"
She snarled at the tone he'd summoned, in mocking her.
"What happens next, Jack, is that you resign legal custody of Adaline, and you never speak to her again. You never attempt to contact her in any way. You become what you seem to have always wanted. Nothing." She spat.
"And?" He replied, toying with the moment. She stared at him, appalled by his brass indifference. He scoffed.
Angela stormed from the kitchen, up the stairs to the linen closet, quickly finding the emergency flAshlights. Swiftly, she searched the closet in the master bedroom for her last suitcase, finding it almost immediately. It was nearly half full. She'd lived there for seven months, but still hadn't fully unpacked. She shook her head at herself. "Last time, Angela."
She took the suitcase to Adaline's room and began packing it with anything and everything that seemed worth taking.

The car accelerated down obsidian streets. He was weightless inside it, pulsing hands on the wheel. He looked out through the windshield seeing perfectly, nothing. His murder weapon lay in his lap like a pet.
Smokestack Lightning kindled flames in his brain. Empty serenity filled his pocket of space, where everything seemed possible and was justified. What had to be done is what he could do. He was alive, he thought, as dead as can be. Brian was the car, it's fleshy organ. He was the gun. Its bullets, like fists. He was astral, untouchable, as he cut through the onyx abyss, swift to deliver vindication to the eye of the storm.
Adaline had reached the end of her trek, dragging her bag down the sidewalk in the rain. She was glazed over, burnt out, and twisted inside out. She stood before the aluminum door that she thought could be asylum. She was listless and weighted, patiently waiting for her final dive into oblivion when she could sink like the stone she had finally become; Smooth and solid, dense and impenetrable. The guilt of what she'd done to Jack wrapped her in cold lead.
Brian promised he would only return the car to Angela, if she was even there still. He'd return as soon as he could get back, however he possibly could. Adaline resigned with out question to whatever he said.
She knew it, finally. It had become so clear, there in the night, beneath the rushing currents of the vigilant rain that coursed through her hair. The lies she'd told herself, the ones that she needed to for survival, washed away like dirt. It was the grime of sin that washed from her anemic spirit. Her eye's no longer stung from it. Her hands, wrinkled and warm, welcomed it. Her royal blue top clung tight as new skin, and baggy cargo khakis sunk low on her waist, dragging in the mud. She followed a flagstone path around the empty house to the side door into the garage which Brian had left unlocked.
The warm, humid air was refreshing in it's own right. There was no light. No eyes. Only the cold, dusty concrete. She drug herself across the single car garage to the bare sheetrock wall across from the side door, which she'd left open to look out into the rain. Moonlight ran across the smooth white concrete, failing just before her. She remembered her red duffle bag on the driveway. "Fuck it" she muttered, planting her back against the wall and sliding to the floor, weak and listless.
She pulled the jar of moonshine from her purse that she took from my apartment earlier that day. The lid clung tightly. Her cold soggy hands slipped with pitiful effort. She wrapped it with her soaked shirt for grip. It popped, spilling some in her lap. "Shit" she hissed, moving it away clumsily.
It was a pungent potion, smelling basically like whiskey, musky and sweet. Kind of like bitter molasses. She was hesitant, but took a swig. It was sour and robust, knocking the wind out of her. She'd had enough of it with me to know it was no Black Label booze. Only, there was no one to prove herself to in the chilly space. She choked and coughed but wound right back up for another swill.
Immediately she began to really feel it. The warmth like a soothing tide, it rushed in with it's numbing tingling sensations. It felt so good, so liberating. She braved another swig. Again like her first, it struck her throat as she choked it down, coughing hard and helplessly.
***
Brian pulled over to the side of the house, shutting off the lights. He sat in silence, with only the distant whisper of the radio. Shaky from the adrenaline and overcome with a sense of weakness, he felt like he could pass out. As he stared at the piece that sat in his lap, heavier than he'd imagined it would be, he contemplated taking the bullets out. He only needed to scare him. If he was lucky, Jack would be as cowardly as his actions would suggest and he would cower at the sight of it. Brian wanted nothing more than to shatter this man that made him a liar. He'd made her a promise that he would protect her. He swore that his love would keep her safe. Now she waited at his house, destroyed, and he was another liar. No better than anyone else that ever offered someone they loved up for sacrifice.
With a snarl, he grit his teeth. "Fuck that" he swore. "The bullets stay in. More weight to pistol whip this son of a bitch. He's gonna fucking pay!" He swung open the door, leaving the engine running, shoving the heater in his drawers. Then, with his head low, he ran to the front door and pounded on it with surprising force.
He pounded again, impatiently and waited. Just as he lifted his fist again, it opened.
"What the hell do you want?!" Jack barked as he looked over the boy's wiry frame.
Without a word, Brian dropped the butt of the gun in his face, popping his cheek bone with a muffled crack. As Jack stumbled back, disorientated, Brian confidently strode in, closing the door behind him. He was buzzing, riddled with juice and maddened by the visceral rush he got from bringing that pistol down on Jack's face.
"Think about it. I'm sure it'll come to you." He continued to follow Jack as though he were prey, helpless from the blow. Jack stumbled into the kitchen, drawing a knife from the block. He followed cautiously. Jack had pinned himself against the wall, on the other side of the island, brandishing the blade.
"What do you want?" he shouted in agony. Then it came to him. "You're the boyfriend, aren't you?" He said with humor and disgust.
"Yes. I am." Brian proudly replied with matching disdain. "And you know why I'm here..." he continued around the island, until they were faced off.
"I guess... that you're the stupid kid that she's convinced to come and, do what you're doing. Brian, isn't it?" he replied with hateful discount. "And you're ok, ruining your life here? You do know you are, while she's probably with him." Jack stared hard, trying hard not to flinch with each pang.
Searing pain surged across the left side of his face and up through his eye with blinding fury, as blood pulsed from the gash across his cheek bone. Still he held his despicable smirk of mockery.
"Fuck you!" He spat, a spray through the crack in his enfeebled dam, hatred pouring over it.
"No, Brian." Jack said, responding to Brian's shaky tone. "That's you, Brian. That's what they're saying right now. He's the one holding her, protecting her from the evil world, from evil Jack. And he'll be the one that has her, when you're taken away for doing this. And you won't have a leg to stand on." Jack spoke so assuredly now, in more of a whisper, subdued with confidence. If there was anything he knew of Adaline, it was that she was sketchy and let no one in. She was just like her mother in this respect as well. And looking at the desperate boy, his bet was placed on jealousy. Brian was a predictable teenage boy, he thought, perpetually insecure. And now, watching it take hold, he reveled in it.
Brian's eye's narrowed as he popped the safety on the gun, any remaining circuits of reason were blown by the rage that overtook him.
"You think I don't trust her?! I give my life to her!" He shouted, shaking the pistol in Jacks face.
"That's exactly..." Jack started.
"I'll fucking kill you," he shouted, spraying spit from his veiny, reddened face. "And I'll kill him too! He's nothing! A drunk piece of shit!!"
"Ash?" he replied with curious surprise. It made sense once he heard it. "You don't have a chance, Brian. Ash is a man. She see's that. And you," he smiled, gesturing Brian's frantic demeanor, and the tears that unwittingly streamed down his face, "you're just a kid."
"Shut up!" He cried, desperately. "Shut up! Shut up!!" He shook the barrel with each declaration, growing more frenzied by the second. "You don't know what I can do!!" He screamed.
BANG!! The deafening crack of Brian's mother's .38 Special echoed through the house. Almost immediately after his eyes readjusted from the start, the look of utter shock that froze Jack's face was permanently embossed in his fractured conscience. Speechless, he slid to the floor and crumbled into a heap. One knee bent, slack jawed, swiftly gone. Thick bright blood crept out of his chest, until it flowed heavy. He had to watch, compelled by uncertainty with the need to understand.
Brian's face contorted from a look of hate into white horror. The thoughts were still only processing as he hung onto that moment, out of his body. There was nothing before. Only the shot. Then the flood consumed his brain. Blank. Angela hurried up the carpeted stairs as quietly as she could, trying not to stumble over herself with fear.
He ran out the door, clinging to his gun with all of his strength. Back in Angela's car, tires spun on the soaked asphalt as he floored the gas. He screamed at the car, overwhelmed by the panic that engorged him. He screamed and sobbed as he picked up speed, in full realAngieation of exactly what he'd done. He'd just killed a man in cold blood in his home. Jack was right. His life was over. He'd lost it completely, convulsively shaking with rabid adrenaline, the gun still welded in his grip.
The rain came with hail, pelting the windshield as he drove. At the lights, his revolver fired over and over inside him, as hunks of ice like rocks pounded on the steel roof. He caught every light home.