JUST WHEN I NEEDED YOU
Chapter Twenty
August 21, 2003
"Rose, mail's here!" Helga
announced, coming into the living room, where Rose was trying to get Josh to
color within the lines.
"Okay, thanks," she replied, taking
the stack from her friend and sitting down on the couch.
"I'm going over to Tommy's to pick up
that table, so that's where I'll be if you need me."
"Ommy!" Josh exclaimed, looking up
at his aunt, marker all over his face.
Helga knelt down and wiped some of the
markings off his face. "You wanna go see Uncle Tommy?" she asked,
glancing up at Rose for approval. Josh jumped up and screamed.
Rose chuckled and nodded. "Go get your
coat and you can go, Josh." The child smiled sweetly at his mother,
kissing her knee before taking off to his room, his dog following him. Rose
shook her head. "He sure does love Tommy."
"Yes, he does. We'll be back by
five," Helga said, picking Josh up.
"All right. I'll see you later,
Joshie."
Josh blew his mother a kiss. "Bye,
Mommy."
*****
Rose leaned tiredly against the kitchen sink.
She'd been so tired lately, ever since her and Jack's anniversary had passed a
week earlier. She firmly believed that was the hardest day of her life. Ruth
had come over and watched the kids and Rose spent the day alone, crying on the
beach. She had returned home after midnight and spent the next four hours
reading and re-reading his letters, torturing herself with their wedding
photos. Finally, she'd fallen into a troubled sleep, awakening two hours later
when the twins started crying. The next few days had been just as difficult as
she replayed each moment of their honeymoon in her head. Helga came home on the
eighteenth, finally snapping her out of her self-imposed torture session,
forcing her to get up and take care of her kids.
*****
Sighing, she went back into the living room,
where Josh's unfinished picture was lying on the table. Smiling, she picked it
up and examined it. Even though he was very young, she could already see signs
that he had inherited his father's drawing abilities. As she put it back on the
table, she noticed the pile of mail she had discarded when Colin had awakened.
She flipped through them, hoping there might be a letter from Jack.
"Phone bill, electric bill, water
bill," she mumbled. "Just great."
Then a solitary white envelope jumped out at
her, no return address, just her name and address stamped on the front.
Curiously, she set the rest of the mail aside and looked it over. She opened it
slowly, having a sudden rush of fear hit her. She unfolded the paper and read
it over carefully. Once, twice, three times. Halfway through the fourth time,
she threw it across the room and burst into tears, throwing herself face down
onto the couch.
*****
Helga opened the garage door with a sleeping
Josh in her arms, not quite ready for the sounds she was greeted with. There
were loud crashes coming from the living room and the cries of the twins could
be heard from down the hall. Josh woke up startled. "Elgie?" he asked
sleepily.
Helga kissed his head. "Shh. You stay
here, okay?"
Josh nodded and she sat him down on a chair
before venturing into the living room. What she came upon was Rose, tearing the
room apart. The furniture was turned over and everything else was strewn about.
As scary as that was, Rose herself scared Helga more. Her hair stuck out every
which way, her eyes were red, she had tears cascading from them, and there were
little droplets of blood on her white shirt.
"Rose?" Helga said cautiously.
Rose whirled around before falling into a
heap on the floor, sobs wracking her body. Helga slid down onto the floor next
to her. "Rose? Hon, what's going on?"
Rose didn't say anything, but thrust a piece
of paper at her, her cries growing louder.
Helga unfolded the paper.
Mrs. Dawson,
We regret to inform you that your husband,
Jack William Dawson, was declared deceased this morning. He was inside one of
our bases when an enemy bomb was dropped. While we haven't found his body yet,
we have every indication he didn't make it out alive. We've been investigating
since the explosion happened on the fourteenth of August and have yet to find
any survivors. We are deeply sorry for your loss. You and your family are in
our prayers.
Helga looked up and gasped. Jack, dead?
"Oh, Rose," she said softly, and hugged her friend. "I'm
sorry."
Rose lifted her gaze to Helga's concerned
look. "He lied to me," she yelled suddenly. "He lied! He said he
was coming home! How am I supposed to live without him?"
Helga embraced Rose again. "I'm so
sorry. It's not going to be easy, but you have to. You have three kids to worry
about."
Rose burst into tears again. "I can't!
How am I supposed to look at them when they look so much like him? It hurts too
much."
"You have to, though."
Rose curled up into a ball on the floor.
"Call my mom. Please, call my mom."
Helga nodded and went to get the still
screaming twins from their room before calling Ruth.
September 1, 2003
Rose stood in the rain, staring down at the
gravestone that bore her husband's name. For the first time since she found out
about his death, she could not cry. Her heart, her mind, her being was empty.
Empty like the ground beneath the headstone. They had been unable to find his
body among the rubble, but it wasn't unusual. They had only found four out of
the twenty men that had been inside. Rose knelt down and softly touched the
stone. The funeral had been three days earlier, a gathering of nearly one
hundred people whose lives Jack had touched in one way or another. The past
three days had been the worse, though. Rose's emotions had been on the edge and
then to see the only man she'd ever love's name engraved on the dark stone had
been the final straw, pushing her over the edge. Losing him before had been hard,
but now he was gone forever. Forever.
"Oh, Jack...how could you? You promised.
Every time we talked, you promised and you broke that promise. I miss you so
much...I don't know if I'm every going to get through this. I can barely look
at the kids, as awful as it sounds. They look so much like you and it just...it
breaks my heart. Especially since I can't be there to comfort Josh. He doesn't
understand. He just knows his daddy isn't coming home." Rose paused,
closing her eyes, willing her tears to stay back. "I pray for the day I
leave this world, Jack. So I can be with you again. I know you'll be waiting
for me. I'm not going to do anything drastic. I just want to be with you."
She sighed and kissed the cool stone. "I have to go now. I'll be back. I
love you."
And with that, she turned and left the
graveyard.