First-Look | Collateral Damage
Excerpt | Prologue, Collateral Damage
Reader advisory: possible disturbing images.
“With the windows wide open for the umpteenth time in an uncharacteristically warm spring, she could hear the birds chirping in the early morning hours.
March had set aside all thoughts of the lamb-like or leonine. Commencing with a rather abrupt fifty-six degrees on the first day of the month, after what seemed a long and often sub-zero winter, the temperatures were steadily hitting seventy by the time April rolled around, swiftly peeling off the layers of snow and ice like so many parkas and sweaters. Human and daffodil, alike, were coaxed out of winter hibernation, donning lighter apparel in the longer days. Robins were back to announce the start of spring with musical flourishes that accompanied their pairings up like so many Broadway dancers. Each couple was eager to build a nest and start a family.
Not to be out done by her older sister, the month of April fooled everyone that first full week with a late storm that blanketed the upper Midwest from Fargo to Detroit, and as far south as Peoria with anywhere from ten to nineteen inches of the heavy, wet, white stuff. Then she turned on the heat like a sixteen year old stepping on the gas, not stopping until she hit eighty.
Two young robins, frantic for a place to settle down and raise a family in the heavy snows, had decided that the eaves of the front porch of her Victorian revival home in Colcahnon would have to do. Every one of the scant, and more appropriate, housing options had been under ice and snow just as the irresistible nesting instinct decided it was time. By the end of April there were three freckled, aquamarine blue eggs in a picture perfect nest.
These random observations crowded into the end of a busy line of thoughts in her head, that had stretched all the way around the corner of her brain, and seemed to grow longer as the night wore on. Her tired mind had tiptoed along the edge of slumber, even wading in a few times, but never taking the plunge into deep, restful sleep.
They had argued again the night before. It was about the robins’ nest of all things. He wanted to move the nest or just get rid of it. She was adamant that it could stay. He went on and on about the house, citing damage and droppings. She let slip that it was in fact actually her house. At that point the argument became an all-out fight, another in an increasingly more frequent and ferocious succession.
Yes, she thought, so much was worse, so much had changed.
She was relieved for the interruption that let her train of thought go no farther down a tunnel that led to what she dreaded: that which she could not control and did not understand. Birdsong had been overridden by the mechanical chirping of the alarm clock.
She gave up her night-long pretense of sleeping which had been nothing more than willing rest to come merely by keeping her eyes shut tight, and swung her legs over the side of the bed. Sitting up she sighed; she felt exhausted. The clock silently advised that she needed to be up for work.
With a furtive backward glance at the other side of the bed, she could see he had not slept there. The last thing she recalled hearing from him the night before was the slamming of the front door on the smoldering remains of their shared bitterness. She guessed he had slept in the media room in the basement again, but did not venture further speculation. It would only get in the way of all that awaited her today, so much like nearly every other day.
Even her weekends were filled with all she was committed to do. It was true that fact had never bothered her before; she was downright proud of all she packed into a day, a life. Somehow, now, all of her busyness crowded in on her instead, the expansive comfort of her own accomplished superiority having deserted her, leaving only a mirage.
Or maybe a mirage was all it had ever been, she thought with a wan smile.
Shaking off the risky temptations of self-awareness, of which she’d been wary most of her life, she headed to the kitchen to grab a cup of the coffee she had programmed the night before to be ready for her in the morning. On her way to the kitchen, she called out in the direction of two bedroom doors.
“Get up. Time to get ready for school.”
Stopping at the basement door, she called downstairs but only silence answered.
Turning on the tablet at the family office center just off the main entrance to the kitchen, she checked email as he emerged from the basement, never touching her or offering any word of greeting. He just stood there uncomfortably staring at her. For her part she would not meet his gaze, keeping hers fixed on the screen.
“I thought I’d get in the shower first,” he declared abruptly.
“Fine, but hurry. I have a meeting at eight sharp. I can’t be late. I’m leading it.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. You’ve got the job that matters. I’ll hurry.”
She almost rose to the bait, but she knew she could not afford a repeat of the night before with so much on her agenda. She let the remark wither in the air between them. Moments later she could hear water running elsewhere in the house, and she settled in to check her overflowing inbox for any late breaking news she needed before her meeting.
After a perfunctory breakfast of oatmeal, topped with precisely twelve blueberries, and followed by a large glass of water, she poured a second cup of coffee and headed back upstairs.
She fully expected to hear the shower running in the bathroom across from her children’s rooms. The absence of any sign of stirring caused an uncomfortable mix of anxiety and ire to rise in her voice sufficient to leave her words more strident than she intended.
“Kitten, I told you it was time to get up. You’ll be late! Your attendance is perfect. You don’t want to spoil that record, do you?”
Hearing nothing, she knocked at the door again. Silence.
“Honestly!” Her growing frustration at being unduly delayed was being jostled out of the way by something else.
Turning the knob, she found the door unlocked.
Her child was curled up in her four poster bed in the fetal position facing away from the door. Warm sunlight glinted off of her shining, amber hair.
“Honey are you sick? At least answer me!”
All at once her eyes took in all that her mind would run from again and again in the weeks and months to come.
Her daughter was not moving. She was not breathing.
Next to her bed on the nightstand was an envelope bearing one word: MOM. It was propped up by an empty bottle—the one that had contained the remains of the prescription she had gotten from the doctor to help her sleep on the flight to Belgium for work three months ago, right before…
The bottle was clearly empty.
Her husband came running at the sound of her scream; he was barefoot, his hair still dripping wet.
“Jesus! What the…Oh My God! Oh no! Oh no!” He saw what was pulling a long unearthly sob from a place deep within his wife.
He reached out to catch her as she collapsed, the last of her irrevocable, inconsolable cry guttering out like a flame in the whirlwind of grief. Though in indescribable pain, she crumpled into a wad the envelope she clutched in her fist shoving it into her pocket.
Though the following hours passed almost too quickly, time had lost meaning. All but forgotten were the meetings, the agenda. She felt too guilty at the thought of leaving her daughter’s side even for a minute to call her administrative assistant. She had demanded he make the call.
The questions from police and coroner, engendered by the necessary but humiliating inspection of private details of her home and life, left her feeling like she had just lived through her own autopsy. It was all she could do during the interrogation to keep from fingering the crushed envelope hiding in the pocket of her robe.
Now, they were wheeling her child, what remained of her in the still, stiff form, curled as if in the womb, from her home. She was gone.
With nothing left of her calendar she did not know what she was supposed to do. She followed the lead officer out onto her front porch. His efforts at kindness and gentle comfort missed the mark; she felt violated in every way.
Her husband had remained in the house.
As she looked toward the eaves under the high-ceiling porch, she found that the nest was missing. Sure enough there it lay in the far corner of the porch, the three eggs smashed, their potential for flight and song extinguished. She heard mournful sounds from the nearby red maple. She remembered the slammed door of the night before and wondered.
She noticed him standing then, framed in the open front door, following her gaze.
“It must have been raccoons,” was all he managed to say.”
For more information about M. M. Kiehn’s forthcoming follow-up to The Throw Away, click on the link below:
