The drive had been a long one – Mallory and I fought most of the way – luckily
her anger subsided a few state lines back. I glanced in the rear view mirror at
my young daughter, Ana, her chubby face scrunched by her safety restraints, and
then to my wife asleep in the seat beside me. My grip on the steering wheel
tightened. If it weren’t for our child, she probably would have left me for
even trying to move her away from the West Coast.
When we drove by the sign that signaled we were exiting New Hampshire, I knew we
were close to our new home; a better home for our daughter in the small, port
town of South Hill, Maine. The sound of Ana sucking hungrily on her sippy cup
jolted me from my day dreams, and the rest of the ride flew by as I flipped
through tracks on a Disney CD trying to entertain her.
Mallory awoke just as we were pulling into the new neighborhood. All of the
houses were small, but rustic and shore side. As her eyes landed on the thick
morning fog over the ocean, I heard a small gasp escape her lips and for once
in the entire trip she looked enthusiastic about the change. I smiled too, as I
prayed for my family to thrive here.
A few days went by, and as we got settled into our home the community embraced
us with whole hearts. Mallory befriended a younger woman in the neighborhood
who agreed to watch Ana during the day. I got a job at the shipment docks. It
was brute labor, but the guys I worked with made the time fly by. The three of
us had never been this functional in California. It was a 180 change for the
better.
Once autumn turned the corner, my wife and my roles switched for a while.
Mallory taught first grade; so she was busy setting up things for her
classroom. This meant that I was the one who would get Ana ready in the morning
for the sitters.
I remember that it was a foggy morning – much like when we’d first moved-and as
I looked to Ana in the rear view mirror I had a small case of déjà vu of that
day. Her purple coat hood was pulled up over her head, and she was playing with
a matching plastic pail in her lap. Her sitter had told me the day before that
she was planning on taking the kids for a walk on the beach. Ana loved
collecting shells, so I made sure to send her with a bucket.
The rest of the day went by as normal. I said goodbye to my daughter at
daycare, went to work, met my wife for my lunch break, and then went back to
work. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary until I went to pick up Ana that
afternoon.
There were police cars lined up and down the block, and officers were searching
everywhere. Ana's sitter was shaking hysterically on her
porch. I ran up to her, frantic about the safety of my daughter. When she told me what had happened, I don’t remember how I responded. Things went black. By the time I
came too, I was restrained on the ground by two officers. I didn’t mean to lash
out. I just didn’t understand how someone could lose a three year old at the
beach.
A full scale investigation was launched. Witnesses and known child offenders
were drawn from hundreds of miles away for questioning, but as the days ticked
by nothing was giving us any leads.
Mallory lost her mind when we lost Ana. I should have known that moving wasn’t
going to save our marriage. That little girl was the only thing that kept that
woman in my life, and without her I was as worthless in her eyes.
When Mallory moved out, the scotch and Jack moved in.
Drinking helped me forget my pain; drinking helped me sleep. Sometimes when I
slept I dreamed about Ana. Her wonderful curiosity and glowing personality. I
remember the first week that we’d lived there, Ana made me take her to the
beach every morning to pluck shells out of the sand.
I don’t remember what compelled me to do it, but one morning I left our back
patio and wandered down to the beach in nothing but my bathrobe and a
bottle of liquor in my hand. I didn't care that it was storming. Maybe I felt that being there would
help me relive that dream and feel close to my daughter, but I ended up just screaming at the violently crashing waves until my
throat burned instead.
I started to cry sometime during my stumbled walk, I’d like
to say the tears were provoked by loss, but it could have just as easily been the salty
winds off the ocean assaulting my eyes; maybe a mix of the two. I’m not sure. I had too much fire
in my stomach to distinguish between physical pain and emotion.
As I went to take another drink, my foot caught on a piece of drift wood buried in
the sand. I tripped and cursed sharply, as I watched my liquor spill in front of me. As I turned to flip off the log in a drunken
rage, my eyes spotted something else in the sand a few meters away.
My eyes narrowed in on the object – half buried, it was hard to distinguish at
first- then the color settled with me… Bright purple. I crawled shakily to the
object, and god the smell was rancid, but I needed to see it; I needed to see
her. I rolled my daughter’s small, bloated body over to look at her face. It
was pale from the cold, and her lips were a deep blue. As I sobbed, I pulled
her close to me and watched as a single shell fell from her small, lifeless
grip.
