Another bolt of lightning lit the scene, illuminating all.
I screamed.
Barren.
Gone.
The tower. The metal pole.
My father.
Only the smoking ruins remained, sizzling in the rain.
I staggered back inside to my bedroom and collapsed into a crumpled ball on my bed, hands to my chest, anything to hold my broken heart inside. That’s where my mom found me a short while later.
I never told anyone I had witnessed my father’s death. Just that I thought Babbo had been in the tower when it was struck by lightning.
My mother never knew I had seen his suicide note. I never told my brothers what it said. Tennyson, who could feel all my emotions, perhaps suspected. But we were all so upset over Babbo’s death, my horror and pain likely simply blended into everyone else’s.
It had been my burden to bear. No one else needed the mental image.
But, obviously, I still had Daddy issues over it. And probably a little PTSD, as evidenced by my dreams and the plethora of lightning related behavior I had been exhibiting lately.
I cried and cried as I recounted to Jack what had happened. Heavy, messy tears . . . sobbed in that apartment overlooking the sea.
Jack bore it all with his characteristic patience. He listened to my story of Babbo’s death with gentle empathy and allowed me to cry out my grief.
A finger touched my cheek. Gasping, I lurched upright.
Jack sat beside me, a single glistening tear balanced on his corporeal fingertip.
His finger faded away, dropping the tear to the couch. We both looked at the small wet spot on the cushion.
“I wish I could absorb them for you.” He managed a weak smile. “Or at least be more effective in wiping them away.”
The ache in my throat tightened into a choking knot.
I looked at this man.
I had lied to myself the night before. He wasn’t psychotic or unbalanced or even a loser choice.
He was one of the good ones.
It figured when I did decide to get serious about a good guy, he would be a ghost.
Go me.
“Tell me more about your father. Please. I want to know.” Jack’s gaze was sincere and open. “He sounds like a wonderful man.”
Opening up about Babbo’s death released the dam of my thoughts and feelings. Suddenly, I couldn’t say enough about my daddy. Relaxing back into the couch, I told Jack about mybabbo, about the man I had lost.
Hours later, shadows stretched and the sun dipped toward the horizon. My stomach protested its empty state.
And so I carried my story into the kitchen, Jack listening patiently with folded arms.
After a full belly of pesto, I sat on the balcony, watching the last gasp of sun light up the western horizon, twirling my cell phone in my hands. Jack rested behind me, staying in the deep shadows to avoid being seen.
Tourists milled around the lane before the house, holding aloft cell phones to snap photos of the sunset, gathering in tight groups for selfies.
