Masked

Chapter 1

It's been two months since it happened. I'm standing in a grassy field peppered with tombstones. At my four-year-old daughters funeral.

We were picnicking together, just the three of us: my wife Helen and our daughter Sofia. It was one of those days where it was warm and cold at the same time, those were her favorite kind of days. My wife and I were eating sandwiches and talking about her upcoming family reunion, we were distracted. That's when Sofia started walking away. There was some butterfly that she was chasing and she ran into the road. I didn't see her until it happened. I tried to run after her but it was too late, she was too far. Helen and I both saw it happened and we couldn't believe it. Sofia wasn't dead, we thought. She crossed the street safely and the parked semi truck was blocking her from view, but denial only lasts for so long. A couple days later we're sitting in our kitchen planning the funeral.

Seeing Sofia's casket getting slowly laid in the ground really hit me. I didn't even watch the whole thing. My denial was kicking in again. She wasn't gone, she was at home watching Looney Tunes with her babysitter while Mommy and I are at an old relatives funeral. Helen noticed I was missing and came to looking for me. She found me in a crouch behind our parked SUV. We sat there for a long while, just holding each other and wondering how life can exist without her.

Three weeks pass and I still can't get over the fact that the house is so quiet now. There's no Daniel Tiger playing in the background. No sound of her talking to her dolls in her bedroom. Just the dull weatherman telling us about the rain that's coming tomorrow. I spend my days either on the couch or in her room talking to the walls.

"Sofia," I say, "guess what Daddy made for breakfast?"

No answer.

"Hey Sofia," I say. "look who's here to visit you!"

Nothing.

Helen is dealing in her own ways. She doesn't have the kind of denial I have, she just goes to her mom's house and stays there for hours at a time. Her and I talk over dinner, but never about Sofia. It just brings up blame where there shouldn't be any. I blame myself over it and Helen tries to blame herself and then we both argue over who's to blame about it when no one did anything wrong. After dinner we sit on the couch together in silence. We watch mindless soap operas and family game shows. When the clock reads 10:30 we both go to bed. There isn't any actual sleeping done, we just close our eyes and lie down in silence. You can't sleep when your kid is in the ground two miles from their bed.