Windows

Baby Blue Window

Walking along the shore of the Pacific Ocean on the California coast of Santa Barbara, an elderly man makes his journey back home. The only problem was that he couldn't remember which house was his. As he walks, he gazes into each window he passes, trying to remember. Like always, he came to the familiar sight of the baby blue window of the petite house on Shoreline Drive, but looking inside, he quickly realized that this was not his home. Looking in, he saw a mother, her face full of pure joy as she stared into a crib that was imprisoning her child. The elderly man watches as the mother picks up her child, her smile bright and warm as she places her child on her hip. The man stares at the face of the woman, trying to remember his own mother as happy as the woman through the window, but all he could remember was the upset look on her face the day he stared down at her in her own crib.

He remembered slowly creeping open the white, wooden bathroom door, and seeing his mother on the toilet, a telephone wire wrapped tight around her arm as a syringe's needle dug straight into one of the prominent veins on her forearm. He watched as his mother exhaled, injecting herself with the syringe full of sweet relief. He remembered the look on her face as she finally noticed that he was watching. She had ripped the empty syringe from her arm and threw it at his head, missing by only a few small inches. He remembered finding her on the ground later that night, covered in her own vomit. He had called 911, but even as he dialed those three numbers, he already knew she was gone.

Sitting on the front porch steps, he watched as an emergency team carried his mother's body bundled up in black on a stretcher. He stared down at the ground as they passed, but a young girl with hair as dark as the night knelt down in front of him and pulled up his chin till his gaze locked with her deep brown eyes. She spoke straight into his soul. "It's going to be alright ya' know." He stared at her, his face expressionless. "I really mean it." She nodded with her huge brown eyes which were filled with innocent concern. "My momma told me there's this man up in the sky, and he loves us, even when people do bad things. My momma told me that he makes everything okay, like when my daddy died. She says that the sky man just needed to borrow my daddy for a bit, and someday he'll give him back, when he needs to borrow me, too. I bet he just needs to borrow your momma, too, just like my daddy." She cocked her head and smiled down at him. He stared up at her, thinking of something to say, but was startled by a deep voice before he could even respond.

"Maribeth." The Sheriff's voice was strong and cold, "Leave that poor boy alone, now." She gave the boy one last look before obediently running off to the Sheriff's side.

She was the sheriff's step-daughter, and she was the most innocent and beautiful thing he had ever seen.