days,” Phillip was in shock. “We did a background check.”
“It never would have shown our connection on the background check,” Frank smiled as if he had just won a debate. “We come from different walks of life and your father was never tied to my mother’s death. There is no connection. I have been planning this since the day I put it all together and found out the mighty Paul Edwards was dead. I have been patiently waiting for the opportune time, and that time found me. Tonight is the night I ease my mind and my pain.”
“What about your wife, Claire, and your daughters, Jenny and Lisa?” Phillip tried to reason. “Imagine what this will do to them.”
“There is no other way,” Frank’s eyes were streaming now. “I wish there was, but I am sorry.”
“We understand,” Jacob nodded as he exchanged a confirming glance with his brother and self. “We are ready to accept responsibilities for the actions of our blood.”
Upon hearing the concede, Frank Paddock felt a wave of anxiety and pressure rise off of him as he slide his father’s knife into the most well respected men in America. Frank breathed heavily as the men slumped over onto the carpeted floor. His original plan was to clean up the mess so that at least the President was found in a respectable position, but after futilely trying to mop of more pints that imaginable, Frank simply ran out of the office covered in blood.
Frank slammed the door behind him and discarded the soaked and saturated mop along with his blade next to his unconscious partner and he started to run. Knowing that he had little time left, Frank followed the escape plan that he had practiced practically every day so that it was now second nature. He was on his way home to say goodbye to his wife, and his two girls, who were luckily home on college break.
Frank screeched into his driveway, but Claire’s car was not there. Did she run to the store, he asked himself, but then he noticed the white corner of a piece of paper protruding from the front door. Frank ran to the paper, knowing that he had little time left before he was caught, and he pulled the paper out of the door and opened it up to reveal that it was a letter.
Frank immediately started to read the words on the note which he recognized as his wife’s handwriting. “Dear Frank, the girls and I have tried to endure, but we simply cannot any longer. We love you and that is why this is so painful. We know that you have some demon inside of you that is taking you away from us, but the fact that you will not let us help you or explain what it is you are going through and you just pushed us aside. We tried and we tried, but you grew distant. We cannot sit by while you ruin yourself. I am afraid you are going to do something dangerous and we cannot be a part of that; we love you too much. If you find our being around such a distraction then perhaps you will be better off without us. The girls and I have left until you are ready to let us be part of your life again. Please don’t make us wait. Please stop whatever it is you are obsessing over. Please, I want my Frank back. Love Claire.”
Frank fell to his knees in tears, defeated. It was all over, he knew he would never see his family again, and it truly was all his fault. At the same time but different locations, Claire looked out the window of the train traveling west deeper into Virginia. For some reason she could not fully understand, she started to cry uncontrollably, and she felt as if it had something to do with Frank. He was acting so strange lately, she thought as she wiped away a stream. She took in a deep breath and thought of her daughters and how she had just put them each on trains headed back to their respective colleges, cutting their breaks short. It was what is best for them she knew. They could not stand to see their father like that, at his worst.
Claire then let her mind drift from Frank to the only other man that was in her life, Manny Perkins, whom was technically no longer in her life. Manny was her longtime boyfriend through high school and college and the man she swore that she would one day marry. Things did not turn out quite as she had planned however as Manny turned to drugs and alcohol which ultimately lead to his demise, a fate she was certain her husband Frank would see sooner rather than later as well. The similarities between Manny and Frank were actually the driving force behind Claire deciding to walk out of her home upon hearing of Manny’s death; poor Frank, he had so many demons.
She reached her stop and Claire looked down at the watch clinging to her shaking wrist; she had no time to get the coffee she desperately needed. Running twenty minutes behind schedule, the train put Claire in the position to sprint towards the cemetery rather than waiting for a cab; luckily she was familiar with the area due to the fact that this was where she was born and raised.
Sweating and winded, Claire bounded through the iron gates and composed herself before nearing the ongoing service in the sacred place. Upon entering Claire locked eyes with Manny’s widow, Jessica Perkins, almost as if she were waiting for her to arrive. “Nice to see that you finally showed up. Had better plans?”
“Can’t we just get through this civilly Jessica?” Claire asked.
“You have no right being here,” Jessica snapped. “You walked out on him when he needed you most.”
“If I had not walked out on him as you so eloquently put it, he never would have married you, so I guess you are welcome,” Claire fell right into the trap Jessica had played.
“You knew he had addictions and he reached out to you,” Jessica screamed and pointed an accusing finger. “He never got the help he needed or the support he wanted, and now all these years later he fell victim to his own vices. I found him with his head in a urinal at the bar. He needed your help.”
“Don’t you dare put this on me,” Claire gave it right back, many eyes now relocating from the preacher to the two women. “I wanted Manny clean, and he was not bending. Then he found you, who partied just as hard as he did. So no, it was your responsibility to control him and all you wanted was a good time. So no, this is on you. This is on Manny. I am just here to pay my respect to a man I once loved.”
“You mean a man you once screwed,” Jessica unleashed and with no warning slapped Claire across the face.
After the unexpected assault, Claire went on the offensive and thrust her shoulder into the midsection of Jessica, knocking the two of them backwards into the crowd. Claire got to her feet quickly and gripped Jessica’s hair and with a tug swung her with all her might. The momentum, coupled with the pain, caused Jessica to stumble forward into Claire, who consequently lost her footing and toppled along with Jessica into the open grave where Manny’s casket resided.
“Father Malloy,” Manny’s Aunt Ruth ran up to where the short bald man nervously watched the chaos unfold. “Do something.”
Father Malloy did just that; something. Perhaps it was not the something that dear Aunt Ruth had in mind, but it was nonetheless something; leave. As Father Malloy watched the two, when they were still above ground, he tried to fight out the thoughts which were surfacing, but two women fighting were one of his weaknesses. “Calm yourself William,” Father Malloy whispered under his breath. “Lead us not into temptation.”
Father Malloy turned his back on those attending the funeral of a junkie and he silently got in his car and sped away. “You did the right thing,” he kept repeating to himself over and over as the funeral grew distant, but deep down inside he knew this was not the truth; he should have been able to control his compulsions better than that.
Starting to change his tone from reassurance to reprimanding in his inner monologue, Father Malloy caught the glint of something in the street on his way back to the rectory. Peculiar, he thought as he pulled over to the side of the road to investigate. Why he stopped he will never know for certain as it was out of character, but in times afterwards he credited it to a sign from God to stop punishing himself for the being simply a mere mortal.
Leaving his car running, Father Malloy scurried over to the pile of refuse along the gutter and plunged his hand in to retrieve what could have easily been the tab to a soda can, or something equally as shiny. But this was no soda tab, Father Malloy stood with obje
ct in hand astonished.
“A black pearl?” The man of God questioned aloud, blinking feverishly as if trying to test whether or not he was stuck in a dream. Father Malloy was uncertain as to why a pearl of this size and quality would just be discarded; it was as beautiful as the heavens and larger than the tip of his thumb.
Father Malloy drove back to his home with the pearl clutched tightly in his hand the whole way, and upon entering his domicile he immediately ran to his bathroom to wash away the filth of the street that it was unjustly subjected to. This was no way to treat such a precious pearl, Father Malloy thought to himself as he obsessively scrubbed it spotless.
Over the next few days the pearl was all Father Malloy could think of, and then when the days of obsession transformed into weeks, and those weeks into months the Father knew he had a problem. “And lead us not into temptation,” he said to himself with tears of shame in his eyes as he wrapped the pearl in a handkerchief and ran out of his home.
Father Malloy hastily made his way through the halls of the convent, with the one person whom he could trust to free him. He gently knocked on the door of the older nun he had known for nearly three decades.
“Just a moment,” sounded a sweet voice