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Chapter Twenty-nine

Saturday September 19, 2009

7:59am

"Ew!"

Nose pinched between two fingers and a load of recyclables in her other paw, Anessa looked 'round the garage for the source to a thick, foul stench. Her eyes wandered over her sister's Jeep, her father's arsenal of hardware and the workbench at the back of the garage. Nothing out of the ordinary but the stench.

"It stinks so bad," Anessa whined to herself, dumping papers, plastics and glass into a recycling bin stood beside the wide sectional door. She turned from the bin, looked 'round the dim garage again and--from her new point of view--noticed a shape which she hadn't seen before. It lay plashed on the concrete floor alongside her sister's Jeep and before her father's workbench--a crumpled mass of black fur and red polyester.

* * *

8:00am

"Goddamn it, Bell!"

Roger scowled and shook his head. His box of beer at the bottom shelf of the refrigerator had been ransacked overnight. He closed the refrigerator, wondering just what to do about his troublesome daughter whilst buttering a bagel at the kitchen counter.

A loud, chilling scream disrupted his mild disgruntlement.

"Nessa?" he called, ears tall. Paws paused over his bagel.

"Dad!" Hysteria backing the distant response--and again: "Dad!"

Roger rushed down the narrow stairway to the garage, considering what he was about to face with mild unease. Perhaps a large spider, a feral bat slipped into the garage--Anessa had always been the most easily frightened of the kids. The door to the garage was open, and through it came an over-powering stench. Roger swore when it hit his nose.

"What is it?" he called through a paw.

He spotted Anessa on the other side of Bella's Jeep, saw her staring at the floor. He edged around the Grand Cherokee.

"What is it?" he repeated.

Then, beyond his youngest daughter, he saw limp, tangled legs.

Anessa flung herself at him, howling in terror.

That same terror blossomed within Roger, but instinct spurred him into action, and he ordered his daughter to retrieve a phone before gently prying her away.

He went to the shepherd on the floor.

"Bell."

The father knelt on the concrete, searching for a pulse that wasn't there.

* * *

10:10am

Tyson awoke to the sound of his phone and shouting sensations from his body--heavy pain suspended in muscle and bone, worst within head and paw. The pain of a long night. And as the young shepherd sat up in his bed, his phone continued its sharp chant, and sunlight, proof of an unwanted, unforeseen day, bled through the bedroom curtains of his Elliotsville apartment.

With one mightily-aching paw and no intention of answering it, Tyson drew the ringing phone from a jean pocket.

"Home," he read from the phone screen.

He left the call to fill a neglected voicemail, set his head to his pillow and the phone beside it. The shepherd lay looking at the dark pads of a tired paw and considered the day suddenly upon him, and while he considered the new day, his phone sang again.

"Home." Again.

Bella to brandish some good news? Insult him? Blackmail? Anessa for a little howdy-do? His father about some practical matter--aware that he hadn't been to class in two weeks? The phone stopped. Started back up.

"Fuck," sighed Tyson. The weight of fatigue seemed heavier as he rose again.

"Hello?"

"What are you doing?" His father's plodding tone.

"Waking up," grunted Tyson.

"Look, Son, I've got some really bad news."

Tyson noted serrations of tone and volume in his father's voice. "What is it?" he blandly asked.

"Bella--" A pause. "Bella took her own life last night."

Misheard. He must have misheard. Tyson's brow creased. "What did you say?"

He had to have misheard.

"You said_Bella?"_

"She's gone, Tyson."

She's gone.

Those small words pierced the layers of disconnect Tyson had clad himself in. The cruel reality behind those words would soon pierce the far more temporary fabric of disbelief which the shepherd wrapped 'round himself whilst he sat in bed.

* * *

Thursday September 24, 2009

11:51am

Set to a somber autumn morning, the funeral was awash with guilt. Teachers, classmates of Bella shook Tyson's paw. Some looked on him sympathetically while they passed. Many gave tearful embraces. Family, relatives whom Tyson had not seen in years, were there. His mother wasn't. There were friends of his sister--among them a gorgeous, speechless feline and a particularly-grief-stricken rabbit who apologized and wept that she should have done something different. That she should have said something. One of many apologies given. Tyson knew that none present were as guilty as he.

Tyson stood silent through the funeral. He was silent before the open casket where Bella lay pretty and placid as he had never seen her, and he said nothing as he marched from the funeral home in Bella's wake. What was left of the family walked with him--the father he had betrayed, Anessa, who shook with endless tears.

A white hearse led Bella's procession through the town, through the cemetery gates on Sandy's northern edge, and at the end of a weaving, melancholic path, everyone gathered to watch the pallbearers set the casket upon its site. After that, Tyson lingered under one of his father's arms, staring down at freshly-turned earth.

"I love you both so much," his father whispered. There were quiet, slick streaks underneath his eyes.

Anessa sobbed harder, clung to their father's other arm.

Tyson stood silent. The guilt, like two paws 'round his throat, made it rather difficult to breath.