Sorrow

What you must realize is that her entrance into the world was neither planned, nor wanted. This made it difficult for her to accept when good things happened because her beginning with not good.

But good things did come from her bad beginning. She had an impeccable ability to read people. She could practically see a person’s story written across their body, their face, and up and down their arms.

Her mother had given her a name, but she has since changed it. The old name forgotten like a coat left after a church function. Her friends called her Kate. Before you ask, it is not derived from any form of Catherine.

Each day before bed Kate writes in her notebook. She has filled many, many, MANY of these notebooks. All black in color, she had a mentor in college whose motto was, “never a day without a line.” Her mentor’s mentor was the late great Donald Murray.

On this night, the subject was Jack.

She had asked him an amazingly simple question, “Why?” Why might sound like a simple question; it rarely is. To which he answered, “It needed to be done.” She stormed off.

She deliberated on which pen to use to recount today’s happenings. It was an important decision that could change the tone of what will be written. Carefully chose a black felt-tipped pen with a slight slant. The slant of the pen made her words and writing seem like an illuminated manuscript about knights and princesses. There were no knights in this writing, it was scathing; she knew why he acted the way he did. She had an incredible ability to read people and was usually correct.

She wrote, and wrote, and wrote. The words fell out of her pen. She dictated the words in her head before transcribing them in the little black book.

He thought I did not know. He thought I wouldn’t find out. A tear fell from her left eye, splashed on the page, running the ink, and slid down the page taking ink and her sorrow with it.

The source of her sorrow was not altruistic, though Jack believed it to be so. She would not keep the money; she would donate it, every dime of the twenty thousand dollars. It was blood money anyway… right?

She wrote until her brain was numb. A tapping came at the door. Kate strode over the floorboards of her loft apartment and looked out the peephole into a void. Someone was holding their hand over the viewer. She backed away. The door burst open as it does in the movies. The door frame didn’t have a chance; the lock screamed in protest.

The last thing she heard was a cannon, or a car backfire, or a book falling on the floor. Fire exploded through her chest and then… nothing. The door breaker calmly looked around the room. The book was lying open on a desk saved from a dumpster. A match took care of the book, the desk, the loft apartment, Kate, and finally the poor, poor door.

Fortunately for the door and ultimately for Kate, that is not what actually happened. Her head had simply slumped baning on the desk, the old worn desk that had been painted bright, happy, hippy teal. Stupid happy teal.

Today’s events had been too much for her; the half bottle of bourbon had been too much for her, Jack had been too much for her. She rubbed the spot on her head that hit the desk and then rubbed the spot on her chest where the dream bullet had ruptured her heart.

The words that she was jotting down about Jack trailed off in a line off the page, much like her botany notes from her earliest morning class in college. The word cancer now had a four-inch tail.