What Might Have Been

The door fell from the hinges like a rag doll swinging by its last string in the hand of a child. Ghosts of children raced through the house chasing jacks and dodging fists. The man stood at the dark threshold waiting for anything to fuel better feelings than the fear and disgust stirring inside him.

Orson wasn’t the little boy conspiring with his sister to fool daddy to think he finished all his drink last night. The last of daddy’s drink being poured down the sewer in the brightest morning sun before daddy woke, but daddy didn’t need to know that.

He came home looking for something every child born to a man of failed ambition and lapse temper modulation has sought, answers. Not from daddy. No. His father’s chance at redemption died 15 years ago on the bedroom floor of a neighbor woman.

He ran the morning of his father’s passing, well, not quite. The neighbor woman didn’t bother to call anyone until her sister came over two days later. Daddy was on the floor with a red satin sheet draped over him, his work boots jutting out from under the sheet. Orson ran the morning after everyone learned of daddy’s passing.

Fuck. He wasn’t one of these men who blamed everything on his soul crushing childhood. But he jumped from one shit pay job to the next hoping the next city, the next girl, would chase the frightened boy in him away. Orson knew other men with similar lives and not one became anything but a sad fucking country song. Men to mock, men to avoid, men in prison, Orson wasn’t one of these men. He built a life for himself. He found a girl willing to love the darkness when the light wasn’t found.

The problem when you kill a past life to start anew is you kill the good with the hell. Orson killed more than a bad childhood. He hadn’t spoken to his sister since two months after he ran. On that day, he asked Molly to send him all the illegally acquired movies and television shows he burned to discs on his friends computer after school. He hadn’t seen Deep Space 9 in too long.

Molly hadn’t avoided the sad life. She moved in with her aunt after daddy’s passing. But

Molly’s aunt didn’t provide her with any furnishings of a loving home. Molly had a twin mattress in the corner of the basement and on the occasion her aunt remembered, a donut on her birthday. The years passed and Molly became the bitter, the disgusted.

Orson couldn’t stay at his condemned childhood home. He came back to find Molly. He planned to offer her a job working at the daycare his wife owned. He folded his arms and leaned against his black Camaro LS. The ghosts of his past life raced in and out of the darkness beyond the broken front door of his childhood home. The text came with a metal storm ring from his phone. An old friend texted Molly’s address.

Two lost children stood face to face on a dark front lawn. How do you apologize for the sin of abandonment? Siblings will be there when your parents and your significant others are no more. What they don’t tell you is below the surface, when your siblings are all you have left, every scar, sprained ankle, slammed door, broken ego, and shared tear will be there too.

Molly stood with her arms folded, her fortress building new walls every second. Orson opened his arms for a moment and closed them. “I wanted to see. I’ve tried to contact you but you’re not an easy girl to find.”

“The right people know how to find me,” Molly looked away from her brother.

“I wanted to know if you’d like to work for Alison? You could stay with us until you find your own place.”

Molly dropped her arms to the side. “Why are you here?”

“To see you. We’re still family. When dad died I couldn’t hand--”

“When you killed dad,” Molly’s soft voice resounded, funneled around her brother, words heard exclusively by the two lost children standing on a dark front lawn.

Molly knew. The whole town must know.

A better father, a mother who lived, a sister not abandoned, Orson spent every day these past 15 years hoping for what might have been. He stood in the twilight between two lives terrified of both.

Orson hurried to his car. He did what he did another life ago. Orson ran.