School Spirits | I Don't Do Friends

12- A Good Father

The ambulance was gone when she got to her house, but the tire marks in the lawn were a dead giveaway that they had been there.

She bounded up the steps of the porch and tried to open the door. It was stuck. At a time like this?

She threw her shoulder into the door, once, twice, thrice. It broke off the hinges with a satisfying crack. The wood splintered throughout the kitchen.

"Pa!" She yelled, the walls shook. "Dad?!"

For a moment she let herself hope for the best case scenario. That he just fell in the bathroom or something, maybe a little tumble down the stairs?

That was until she heard him. "Carol?" A breathless voice uttered from his bedroom.

She gasped and ran in.

Her father was sitting on the end bed, defeated and looking up at her. He stood in disbelief, his daughter was standing right in front of him, looking the same as when she died.

"Dad!" She threw herself into him.

Her father was in shock. It wasn't because he was dead, he knew that, he accepted it before he took his last breath.

His daughter came back to him after he failed to protect her. Looking exactly the same.

"Hey, kid." He squeezed her so tight she felt like she could die all over again. It made her feel alive.

She couldn't say a word, not in a million years did she plan to ever see her father again, well for her father to see her. She didn't know where to start. She didn't plan for this.

"I'm so sorry, baby." He choked out as he rocked her.

"What are you sorry for? I left first." She cried.

"I was drivin', should've seen him." He fell back into the despair of eight years ago, when those doctors told him his daughter was gone.

She looked him in the face and shook his shoulders just enough to bring him back to her.

"There's nothing left to apologize for." She told him.

"Have you been alone?" He asked, scared of how she might answer.

"No, no I'm not alone." She promised.

He sighed in relief.

"You don't have to worry about me anymore. I'm okay." She nodded.

Tears welled in his eyes, he blinked them away so he could see her.

"Sometimes I was just worried I screwed you up." He shuttered.

Her heart shattered. He had always taken responsibility for how she acted. Fighting at school, no friends, no real interests besides her family. He blamed himself for Caroline's mother screwing her up.

"I love you, dad. I couldn't have asked for a better father."

Caroline felt an electric buzz. The lights of her home were flashing. She did what she usually did when she was confused or scared, she looked to her dad.

He was still smiling like the proudest father in the world.

"Dad?" She uttered.

He flashed in and out of view, she fell to the floor, his frame wasn't there to hold her up.

She looked back to where he was standing before, nothing. The buzz was gone and replaced with something light, something good.

He was gone. She felt it deep in her bones. He crossed over.

She wanted to yell for him, like he was outside in the garage fiddling with the old motorcycle he picked up off the side of the road. There was no use, she knew that.

All she could do was curl in on herself and breathe in the last moments she had with him.

She catalogued every memory she had of her father while frozen on his bedroom floor.