Crossroads

by Laurel Hightower

The decision brought him relief, but also a wave of guilt and grief. He pushed off from the side of the bed and found his way in the dark, bent on doing what was right, even when it felt so wrong.

He was shirtless and she could tell he was crying from the way his shoulders were shaking. There was a muffled plink as several somethings landed in the sink. Chris couldn’t place the sound, didn’t know what he could be doing until she saw the gun. Her gun, the 9mm semi-auto she’d been taking with her to the cross. He was emptying the magazine bullet by bullet. The slide was back, and she could see the one in the chamber had already been popped.

He told himself it didn’t matter, that he would have time to convince her, and then he was gone, buried in a suffocating, heavy blackness that allowed no breath, and no doubt.

In the end she hadn’t needed the gun. Hadn’t needed her car, either.

It was a grave she’d dug; her own.

she’d have been able to hear it call to her once more, a deep and anguished Mooooommmmmm! No! But she couldn’t; her ears were packed with dirt, and Chris died without hearing her son’s call.

Mike had a minute to take in the face, the mournful, tear-filled eyes, the neck canted at a wrong angle, a mashed in skull and hair sticky and matted with blood.

He wasn’t likely to again, he thought, as darkness edged out his vision.