Chapter 33

SETH

^AGED TWENTY^

Sarah went with him to the hospital to officially identify the tiny body of his daughter. She looked as though she was sleeping, with no bruises to mark the violent way she had died.

Her black curly hair still had the white ribbons in, but her brown eyes would never smile up at Seth again.

He placed a kiss on her forehead and wiped his tears from her cheek before walking away from the only person that had tied him to Tereza.

Their next stop was the police station, where Sarah introduced him to the police officer who had been the first to respond to the accident scene.

He had been a few years ahead of them at school, and Seth was glad for that tiny connection.

He accepted the man’s condolences with a nod and sat down at the table in the tiny visitors’ room.

“What happened?” Seth asked, directing the question at his sister again.

She bit her lip before looking at the officer, then linked her hands on the table and kept her eyes on them as she spoke.

“Since you went back, Ranya has been with me. In the last four months, Terry had probably spent three hours a week with Ranya, and always with us.

“And then over the last week, she was there every day. I tried to make sure she was sober, and there was nothing to show she wasn’t.”

When she looked up at Seth, her eyes were troubled. “And then she asked if she could take Ranya to see Santa. I had a paper I needed to submit, and Nonna wasn’t feeling well.

“I…I let her take her. I said it was fine…Seth…if I had known…”

He put his hands over hers. “You trusted a mother to look after her child.”

The officer cleared his throat. Seth looked at him as he started speaking.

“I was on patrol and saw the first vehicle on the shoulder of the road. I checked on those occupants first…I asked my sergeant if I could show you the footage from my body cam.”

The officer placed a laptop on the table and clicked a key that started a video, showing the officer stopping his vehicle at a car in the ditch, the two lanes of the highway covered in debris.

~“Dispatch, I have a vehicle off the road on the K-10… Sir? Sir? Are you okay?” ~

~He neared the vehicle and checked on the older man. “I’m fine.” ~

~“I have one injured driver in a blue coupe.” ~

~The camera shook a bit as the officer ran toward three more vehicles, one on its roof, the other two joined at an unusual angle. ~

~A brief view of brown brush dotted with snow flashed on the screen as the policeman crawled to check on the occupants of the overturned car. ~

~His voice reporting constantly as he moved between the couple, his gasp of shock as the woman’s lifeless eyes stared back at him, her neck bent awkwardly. ~

~The husband was gasping for breath, each one calling for his wife to respond, his voice losing its strength as he begged her to say something. ~

~In the distance, there was the sound of laughter, disembodied, amused rather than hysterical, as if the person was listening to something hilarious on the radio. ~

~The officer checked the man’s pulse, and his voice was relieved when he reported that there was a weak heartbeat. He then crept back to his feet and turned to the other two vehicles. ~

~The blue car was flattened in the rear, the overturned vehicle had obviously landed on that car before rolling to the side. ~

~The driver was a young woman who kept calling for her babies who were strapped in the backseat that had been crushed, a tiny hand sticking through the rear window. ~

~There was a short pause in the narration as the policeman slowed his pace. The laughter was louder as he neared the cars. ~

~“Ah, shit, dispatch, we have a deceased minor,” he said softly into his mike, the mother’s keening growing softer as he turned away. ~

~Then he turned to the red Chevy Malibu, its front end smashed against the blue car, the passenger end of the hood a flattened, tangled mess, also having been caught under the flipped car. ~

~It was clear that the Malibu had scraped the coupe and veered into the blue car. ~

~It had rammed into the SUV, which resulted in it flipping onto the joined vehicles and ending up on the shoulder of the highway. The laughter was coming from the Chevy. ~

~“Dispatch, we have another minor, she seems to be unconscious in the back of the Malibu.” ~

~His hand reached into the smashed window and felt for a pulse. Ranya’s face was angelic as she sat in her car seat, the seat belt anchoring the seat not tied. ~

~“Correction, dispatch. The minor is deceased.~

~“Ma’am, are you okay?” Tereza’s face appeared, and her head was thrown back as she laughed, tears running down her face. ~

~She had a bleeding gash on her forehead and her right hand was bent at the wrist. ~

~“Dispatch, we have a situation here. This woman still has a needle in her arm and there are bottles littering the passenger side of the vehicle. It seems she was injecting while driving…” ~

***

The funeral for Ranya was held two days after Christmas.

It was a quiet event, but Seth was surprised and happy to see Gunnery Sergeant Burnsley in attendance.

Nonnawas admitted to the hospital later that evening, and never returned home. She passed away the month after Seth returned to Afghanistan.

He barely spoke from that moment on. A month after his return, he was sent on an assignment where his only means of communication was with his immediate unit.

His actions in the field became clinical, and he was asked to assist a specialized unit that was sent to remove resilient insurgents, a job at which he excelled.

He was sent on more specialized assignments.

What scared Seth the most about them was that he was enjoying them too much, and not just because they gave him an outlet for the flurry of emotions that wouldn’t let him rest.

He went deep for five years, barely reaching out to Sarah, never going home. Until he went on an assignment that changed his life again.