Cause and Effect

Chapter 28

oubliette [ˌo͞oblēˈet]

(n). a dungeon with a door in the ceiling; a place where you put people to forget about them

//--//--//

Once upon a time, Sadie Adler had been married. 

She had met Jake Adler in high school. High school sweethearts, everyone said quietly, scoffing behind closed doors, they'll never make it, they never do. 

He had gone to trade school, a welder, and she had taken over her daddy's business. They'd gotten married young, nineteen, full of love and mistakes and fire, but always love. 

She married him under a giant oak tree, her in a rain-splattered dress, and him in his father's old Sunday suit fitting wrong in all the right places. It rained perfectly that day, and they danced in the rain, a crown of wildflowers braided into her wild hair. 

If anyone asked her about that day, she would get quiet, a heavy nostalgia wearing down on her young soul. The rain married us, she would say softly, the rain and flowers, and my old aunt. 

They lived in a crowded home, ripe with a future, and love, and they were ready for it all. 

Except for April 11th, five years after they had married each other in the rain. 

Barely twenty-four, Jake Adler crossed that final threshold into the unknown. He had lived his life, although he had not known it, and had lived it to its fullest, full of love and strength.

His life had been ripped away, with a cruel shot to the head. 

For years and years after, Sadie would lie awake, in her husband's shirts, holding desperately on to his fading smell, and wonder if the last thing her Jake ever heard was her anguished screams. A selfish part of her hoped that he hadn't even realized, hoped that it was over as soon as it started for him, and that he didn't die worried for her. 

Sadie buried him under that oak tree. It rained then too, a heavy sorrowful rain, like the sky was sobbing for her. 

It would have destroyed her, and there were nights she almost let it, anger and anguish shaking her soul into fragments, holding onto those shirts and pressing them close to her tear-stained face. But Sadie sold the family business and packed her belongings up to fit in a van and headed off to find the men responsible for murdering her husband, and killing her soul. 

And somewhere in all of this, she found herself for the first time since that blood-stained night, setting aside that revenge-focus that had a chokehold on her and sidestepping the O'Driscolls. They had been right there, but she had been okay with letting them be for the moment. 

It almost scared her. 

Almost like she wasn't willing to finally pull the trigger on them, because if she did, and it was all said and done, she was scared to come face with her reality. The one without Jake, without the men responsible, the one without her righteous cause, and the one with just her, aimless, floating. 

She didn't know if she could live without this fiery hatred burning in her soul. This righteous need to keep pushing, to keep living, just to give her Jake peace. 

So she'd let them live, just so she could find reason to live another day in this purgatory.

//--//--//

The wind whistled across the grass, making the stalks duck and wave almost like an ocean. Abigail glanced up from where she was sitting, a book open on her lap. Her eyes tracked her son, watched him dig curious hands into soft black dirt, and pound his hands together happily, squealing as he watched dirt fly around him.