A Death in the Family

Chapter 3

Fern Solomon, 36, lived down the street from the Dooley's. Through neighborhood scuttlebutt she had heard about the death of Mrs. Dooley, but that was all she knew aside from what she had read in the papers.

Fern and her husband Richard had been struggling to have children for years and after one last ditch effort with IVF they had found out they were pregnant with sextuplets, a large pill to swallow, but they were grateful nonetheless. Fern had been on bed rest since she was 15 weeks; they were hoping to get the babies to at least 30 weeks though they were still in that precarious situation of holding their breath every doctor's appointment for fear that everything they had been given would be taken away.

Fern had no idea how what she was experiencing would entangle her lives with the Dooley's and how her pregnancy would be just one of the mysterious circumstances that would be tangled up in a very complicated investigation.

Meanwhile, another shouting match had broken out between Steve Dooley and his sons.

"What you're just going to throw everything away!" Connor yelled.

"Well no," Steve replied carefully, "but it's taking up space, space that we need."

"Oh, so mom's stuff is just space!" Connor yelled.

"No, but she can't use it anymore." Steve responded gently.

Henry Dooley stood in the doorway of his parent's bedroom and watched his brother tear past him. A few minutes later both father and son heard a door slam at the end of the hall, the room which had been Lara Dooley's studio.

"Give him time." Steve Dooley sighed. "This isn't easy for any of us."

"Yeah." Henry replied. As he pushed his long dark bangs out of his eyes. It was hard going through his mother's things but it was like each item helped him process things a little bit more, but even that would take some time.

They finished packing up the closet and clearing out part of the dresser. Lara's makeup, such as it was, was packed away with her jewelry and eccentric scarves and set aside. Once again as they methodically went through things Steve considered calling the counselor particularly after Connor's latest outburst. Mentally, he put it on his to do list.

Behind closed doors, Connor sat in the armchair in his mother's studio. He looked around at everything but there seemed to be no life in the room anymore.

Absently, he flipped through his mother's old sketchbooks and there, folded in the back, were several loose pieces of paper. Carefully, he unfolded them.

His mother had drawn an entire scene and it was explicitly detailed. He saw a bridge and a woman falling or jumping off to the side, below was the river. He even saw a purse and a bag laying on the ground and far in the distance was a retreating figure, unidentified.

Connor sat stunned, had his mother predicted her own death? How was that even possible? He even wondered if he should show his father. Carefully he refolded the drawing and put it back in the sketchbook, then he took the sketchbook and headed quietly for his room.

Connor told no one he had taken the sketchbook, not even Henry or his father. Surely his father would make him give it away or something like that, but something made him keep it to himself. Every once in a while he opened the book and looked at the drawing, frown, and close it again. Even if his mother wasn't here, flipping through the sketchbook made him feel close to her and he felt slightly better; he left for school the following Monday in better spirits.

Steve Dooley noticed the change in his son and smiled to himself as he left that morning where he worked at a financial firm downtown, he knew it would take family time to heal and if the boys were finding ways to process their grief he was happy about that.

It wasn't until later he found the reason for Connor's change in mood. He was in the process of returning his son's schoolbook to his bedroom when he had found the sketchbook that was lying haphazardly on his son's bed.

It was one of Lara's many sketchbooks, smiling, he flipped through it. He was about to close it and put it back on Connor's bed when something fell out of the back. It was a drawing on a larger piece of paper that had been folded multiple times to fit in the 9 x 11 sketchbook, the drawing itself that had been taped together so it showed an entire scene.

Steve study the scene carefully. It was a scene from the bridge overlooking the river for several random details: a woman pushing a baby stroller, a man walking a dog, and a random looking homeless man that looked somewhat shifty.

On the far side of the paper Steve did a double take at what his wife had drawn. A woman, falling backwards, presumably towards the river below, but gave no indication about how she had ended up in this position..

He looked closer at drawing. The bridge didn't exactly look like any bridge in the area he had ever seen it was much more ornate than any of the architecture possibly something that you would see in a big city not a small town. The pattern of the rails along the bridge booked unusual too, like the distinct shape of a particular part of a woman's body he was sure his sons made jokes about.

Why would Lara draw something like that? This pattern was repeated several times going into the distance until it was too small to see. He counted the pattern at least six times from where he could see it.

Shaking his head, Steve closed the sketchbook and put the drawing back on the bed. Was it possible? What was he thinking things like that only happened in the shows that the kids liked to binge watch on the online streaming services.

There was no way his wife, even as freethinking as she had been had predicted her own death. Could she?