Casey Fabris - If There Was an Answer, He'd Find it There

If there was an answer, he’d find it there. That’s what he believed when he walked out the door of their house, closing it a little more loudly than he should have. He was certain she’d be angry when he returned home, but then again, her anger might be better than the tears he made run down her face. Despite his frustration, there was absolutely nothing he hated more than seeing her cry. He thought about this as he walked to the place where he hoped, prayed, needed, to find the answers. Though tears are ugly, he couldn’t stop thinking about how beautiful, yet tragic, they looked when running down her perfect, porcelain face and trickling against the jagged little scar that she tried to hide on her left cheek. She was always beautiful, even when she was furious or heart-breakingly sad. An all too common aching sensation in his heart suddenly bloomed as he realized that those faces of fury or heart-wrenching sadness were always saved for him. They replaced the smiles and the joyful light that used to shine upon her face, always when in his presence. With every step he took, he thought about how his steps, much like the past few months of his relationship, only led him further and further away from his life, his world, his wife. The aching that bloomed in his heart soon found its way to his feet, and there was nothing he wanted to do more than stop walking and cry out in defeat. But defeat would mean that he had lost and that the tears that plagued their once perfect relationship, had won. 





So he walked, despite the ache in his heart, the pain in his feet, and the tears threatening to fill his eyes. He knew that if there was an answer to be had he would find it there. It was the one place they had never fought, but always loved one another. Both had shed many tears there, but they had always brought them closer, never driven them apart. The wind made the impending tears even more inescapable as he reached for the creaky, wrought-iron gate he had reached for so many times before. The gate creaked, as many months of visits had told him it would. The leaves crunched under his feet as he walked, reaching the point where any answers that were would be found. He fell to his knees and touched the cold, hard granite of her grave. He ran his fingers over her name, feeling the grooves ofCaroline under his fingers. The granite under his fingers was smooth like the skin of his beautiful daughter’s face used to be. But nothing could give him the feeling that her presence used to; that feeling of indescribable joy that so few people truly experience. As he touched the stone and read his daughter’s name, Caroline Auden, he told his beloved daughter that he missed her, terribly. Though it was smooth like her skin, her headstone felt cold beneath his hands, lifeless just as his poor daughter was. But despite the biting cold and wind and the emptiness that her lacking presence left him with, he finally felt like he wasn’t so alone. Caroline was all he wanted in the world, in fact, she was his world, but he knew his darling daughter would never again be in his arms. He could never again hold her and sing her to sleep as he used to. Since she died, he’d never been able to sing again. Singing to his wife made him only think of how much he wanted to sing to Caroline. And whenever he looked at his wife, he could only think of his daughter, and how lucky she had been to be as beautiful as her mother. He could neither hold Caroline nor his wife, and felt as if in losing Caroline, he had lost them both. He wished he could be with them again, that they could be a family again, be one again. Sometimes he thought about what it would take to hold Caroline again, to be happy again. Actually, he thought about it every day. But as knelt in front of her grave, he knew that wasn’t what she would want. And he knew he could not do that to his wife. So every day he rose from the bed, wished his wife would stop crying, and wished that things could be normal again, though he knew that was impossible. But with every day that passed he knew he was closer to being near her again, to the three of them being happy again, together.