You Whom I Could Not Save

A sample of a short story I wrote about a woman dealing with emotional backlash after her abusive husband is killed.

~*~

You expect everything bad to happen on the dreariest of days. When someone dies, the skies cloud over and the heavens begin to weep. Everyone walks around wearing black with their umbrellas close to them and their heads down. No one laughs. No one even cracks a smile. Everyone and everything around you can feel pain, as raw and severely as you can.

            It was a bright sunny day when Theo died. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the birds were singing rapturously, flitting around in their infinite joy. People took their children to the park where they ran and jumped and laughed. Everyone was happy to be alive; just blissfully happy.

            I loved Theo with all my heart. I seemed to be the only one who could see through his surface, the only one who knew he wasn’t a bad person at all. All he ever did was raise a hand to me if I disrespected him, and I know he only did it because he loved me and I needed to be taught. He loved me, my Theo.

            He had the most beautiful eyes, so green and deep I could almost believe sometimes that he had hidden fields in there. Theo didn’t like me staring at him. He’d push me away and hit my shoulder, telling me to stop being so weird. I would after a while. When Theo got angry, his eyes turned dark and shallow. That was when I knew I’d made him angry, when I knew I had made a mistake. I’d make sure his attention was elsewhere before I stared at him most of the time. He really was beautiful.

            When it happened, I had just got home. I’d been to the hospital for an ultrasound. Our baby might have been knocked the night before, I had told the nurse, because I had fallen down the stairs. I could tell she didn’t believe me, but I didn’t care, it was none of her business. Just as I thought we were finishing, she managed to say something that shocked me.

            “Helena, congratulations, you’re having a girl.”

            A girl? A girl? No, that can’t be right. I told her to check again. Theo wanted a boy. He specifically told me that we were having a boy. We had bought blue paint for the nursery and blue stripey baby suits.

            She pushed and prodded the probe until I thought my bladder would burst. She could sense my panic, I could tell. With a voice full of uncertainty and regret, she confirmed, “you’re having a girl, Helena.”

            I shook all the way home. He would forgive me eventually, but until then, my darling Theo would be so angry that I had failed him.

            I made a mental note to stop by the off licence and pick up his favourite friend Mr Daniels, thinking it’ll soften the blow. The owner smiled his big welcoming smile at me when I walked in. I offered a shy one back. Theo says not to trust men, that their minds are on one thing and one thing alone. He tells me that he’s the only one I will ever need.

            “You alright there, Helena?”

            I nodded, handed over the last of the change in my purse and waddled to the door with my purchase, my bump seeming to weigh me down with its guilt.

            I stepped out into the radiant sun shining much more brightly than before. It was rather hot for April, I’m sure on purpose. Even the weather was against me since I let Theo down. By the time I made it past the estate, onto our street and up our overgrown front path, I was sweating hard and breathing harder. I wanted to get through the door and collapse onto the bed, but there was too much to be done before Theo got home.

            Our quaint little council house was spotless to the naked eye. However I knew that there was something the matter with it. Theo would find something wrong. I’m not exactly the brightest bulb in the box, Theo often reminded me, so I missed stupid things that I should have seen.

            I was rescrubbing the kitchen floor (the skin on the top of my fingers was peeling off so I knew I was nearly finished) when the front doorbell went.

            My hand flew to my stomach, just as my heart leapt into my mouth and tears sprung to my eyes. If that was Theo, home early, he would be so angry that I wasn’t finished yet. I would have to put off telling him about the baby. Except he would ask about the scan, then I couldn’t lie.

            By the time I reached the front door, I was shaking. Tears were freely rolling down my cheeks and the excuses were escaping my mouth before I’d even touched the handle. I didn’t want to disappoint my Theo. I hated to see him disappointed.

            I opened the door, slowly, eyes downcast, beginning to mumble and stutter apologies.

            “Miss Baxter?”

            Looking up, I saw two official looking men in matching rigid black suits staring at me sombrely. I nodded slowly.

            “Miss Baxter, my name is Detective Inspector Rupert Fields. May we step inside for a minute?”

            I stared at him blindly and didn’t move.

            Something had happened. Something had happened to my Theo. Please, God, tell me he’s alright. Please…

            The shorter, balding one looked at my protruding stomach then the sparkling ring adorning the third finger on my left hand. He shook his head sadly.

            “Miss Baxter,” he said, “we’ve been following your fiancé for some time now. We suspected he’d been involved in some…illegal activities. Unfortunately…”

            He looked to his partner for support.

            “Unfortunately,” DI Fields continued, “the men he was dealing with weren’t happy with him and they got to him before we could.” He paused. “I’m so sorry.”

            They continued to talk for a while, explaining something about investigations and prosecutions, but I couldn’t hear them.

My Theo was gone. My beautiful vengeful angel. Gone.