(My thanks go to CambriaRose for sorting this two chapter story out for me. It sure flows better now she worked her magic on it. I hope you the reader enjoy this first chapter.)
*
I promised her I would go on, I promised her I would find someone else and live again. I lied.
The fateful day I lied to the one person who was the most important to me, was a Tuesday in March. Both our work schedules came together on a beautiful, sunny day and we went out and enjoyed it. We were less than five miles from home when a drunk crossed the intersection causing our car to be totaled. She knew she was dying. It took me a few minutes to figure it out for myself. I refused to believe it, but you could see it in the paramedic's eyes, when they were brave enough to look at us, while they tried so hard to get my wife and I out of what was once our car.
It took the fire department twenty minutes to cut Traci out of her side of the car. We both talked and cried the entire time. We talked about my future, and not once did we talk about us being together when all of this was over. She made me promise one final time. I could feel my heart break in two as the fire crew finally took what was left of the roof off and away from the car. I looked into her eyes and saw the light start to fade within them. Those last few words she heard of mine on this Earth were a lie. I couldn't go on without her.
Traci was the reason I breathed. She was that one person in my life I shared everything with. It was a perfect life with her; there wasn't a life after Traci. She was everything to me. I couldn't face living without her by my side. This woman who sat bleeding next to me was everything to me. If I could have change places with her at that moment I would have and she knew it.
I was grateful to the hospital; they put me back together, even if it was only temporarily to attend the funeral. I wanted to stand but the cast on my back was simply too much. My brother wheeled me to the edge of the grave and I watched as she descended to her final resting place. It was well attended. She had so many family and friends in attendance it seemed to take forever for them all to say those words that meant so little, but made them feel better saying it.
Just before I returned to the hospital, I made my brother my power of attorney. It kept the ambulance chasers off my back since he was a lawyer himself. I learned later that he used a scorched Earth policy; no one was safe and most thought it wise to settle out of court.
The drunk driver tried hiring a fancy lawyer, but it did him no good when my brother showed the video of the crash taken by the fire crew. The judge made everyone sit through the whole video. Most cried when they listened to Traci, and one guy in the courtroom had to be restrained when the video paned to the drunk driver singing 'Old Lang Syne' only seconds before he was sick in the back of the police car.
My brother's policy also kept the press at bay, even more so when one of my neighbors phoned the police after one of the press was caught, not only in our garden, but trying to take pictures through the patio window.
The paper quickly settled out of court but not before the judge got to hear about it and he told the press, in no uncertain terms, that if he ever heard of such a thing happening again, he would personally see to it that he was the judge on that trial.
It took a further six months of rehab before I could walk again. Something that comes to you so easily as a child has to be relearned as a thirty one year old man. Physically, I was now fit enough to leave the hospital. On occasions I still resorted to the help of a cane. The last thing I wanted was to share my grief in public, so I went out of the hospital with one of the paramedics and they dropped me off on the corner away from the crowd. My brother picked me up and took me straight to an airport hotel where we could finally get things settled, at least on paper. My brother showed me my bank balance and I winced, I cut a chunk out and tried to give it to him.
He refused, so we settled on me paying for his two girl's college education, and a lump sum when they turned a set age. My brother knew me better than most. He knew he was saying goodbye to me, for how long I don't think either of us knew the answer to. I understood it was hurting him so much, even his wife Miranda knew what was going on and insisted she came with him to the hotel. With the paperwork settled, he handed me a plane ticket and a set of keys and told me what I had asked for was in the long term parking lot.
I couldn't stay, every time I looked at Miranda I saw Traci. When the McKenna twins proudly announced their marriage to the Thomson brothers the whole town just smiled and said 'about time.' We even made the local paper, well the third page anyway, but that was enough for our folks to go to the store and buy thirty papers each that day and send them to every known relative. I hugged Miranda one last time, and, for what felt like the hundredth time, told her I was sorry. She couldn't help but burst into tears and run from the hotel room.
I took the shuttle bus to the airport alone and checked in. The flight itself was uneventful and for that I was extremely grateful. It was dark when I left the airport so I checked into one of the airport hotels and decided to start in the morning. Room service got a call and the music stations kept me company. It's amazing what gets left in hotel rooms. Someone had left a country magazine in one of the drawers of the little cabinet by the bed. Odd night reading that was for sure, in it was an article on a young couple buying and renovating a few log cabins up at the lake some two hundred miles from the airport. I figured that would be a good place to start.
The next morning I got my truck out of the long term parking and headed to the lake.
******* The McDonalds were a nice couple; they had both been laid off and decided to buy the cabins and start their own business. I could tell that it was taking its toll on them and the fact that Jenna McDonald was three months pregnant didn't help them either. I asked for a six month stay and paid it all in advance, I had no intention of staying that long but the look on their faces showed they could sure use the money. Cabin seven was the most recent to be modernized and the smell of varnish came to you as you opened the door just to remind you.
The television got pushed into the closet alongside my fishing rods and tackle box. I made myself at home and even got to the store before it closed and stocked up on food and any other items that caught my eye.
The next morning cabin Seven yielded yet one more surprise, it had its own jetty that jutted out onto the lake by some fifty feet, all recently renovated and showing a new coat of varnish. For the next two weeks, I fell into a habit, breakfast, grabbed my fishing equipment and sat out on the end of the jetty. I never caught any fish. I don't even know if there were any in the lake, but I went out anyways.
As I sat and watched the scenery in front of me I let my mind mend itself, or at least try to mend itself. It was the mental side of me that I was worried about. The image of Traci in those last moments of her life, knowing that I lied to her as she took those words with her became all consuming. Thankful that my hat and sunglasses hid my tears, soon I became a creature of habit. As soon as I woke and had a coffee I would walk to the end of the jetty, set my rod up, and sit.
The images of the crash were still fresh in my mind, but slowly the events on the lake kept my thoughts occupied enough that those images became less painful, at least during the day. The lake seemed to be used a great deal; I would always see a small boat off in the distance moving along the shoreline. Jenna Macdonald would occasionally drop by to see if I had caught anything, I never did and I didn't have the heart to tell her why.
