When Luke woke up in his familiar bed, Sharon was not there! He slid his hand where it was once draped over her hips. A familiar void filled the space, like the years they lived together as ghosts. There were times when they acted like they could walk through each other. Times when they talked past each other in third person. Luke thought to himself, as he rubbed his eyes and looked around the bedroom, "She's as good as talking to a headstone."

Luke sprang from bed and listened. His heart leaped with him. The sheets all crumpled, evidence of her lavender fragrance, signs of her recent departure. But it was the smell of her skin after a shower that caught his attention when he stepped inside the stall of their bathroom. He breathed her in, as if she left ghostly evidence of her recent departure.

Luke flipped one of the shades from the bedroom and saw nothing but a backyard, his manicured lawn and the thick trees, once infantile as shrubs when they bought the house newly constructed. Then he realized he needed to check the front, listened for the sounds of her footsteps, the pitter patter of their bulldog. Nothing, nothing but the sounds of an abandoned silence.

Had Sharon left the house? He opened the bedroom door. "Share! You out there?" For Luke it was like calling into a maze of possibilities, more walls, more distance. He almost cried. She couldn't have accepted his ninth inning try to fix things. Just like a man, he wanted to promise he could be a heroic husband. She took his sneaky behavior as a threat, plain and simple. She'd taken his touch as something acidic, soiled. And she could not be penetrated with words, with touch, with second chances. He breathed a painful sigh. "it's really over," He said to the hollow hall.

He walked down the hallway. "Bugsy!" He called for the pet bulldog. No sounds, but when his bare feet slapped the wood floor. On his way to the kitchen, he stuck his head in the family room. Light streamed in from the half-opened curtains. The air conditioner blew over him, cooling his head, massaging his eyes. He walked over and looked through the glass beside the front door, figuring the driveway would be full of police, most of whom he knew on a first name basis. He opened the door to the garage between the front door and the kitchen. The car was gone, she was gone, and his dog was gone. But he should have known that she'd left years ago, and it was just her body catching up with her spirit.

Luke turned back and looked outside, wondering what it would feel like to be shouted down, have the door busted to get to him, make him lay down, while the police cuff him from behind. There could nothing more humiliating than a cop getting busted in his own neighborhood, because he's seen as some abusive jerk. Why, did she think he would harm her? Then he smirked, talked inside of himself. It least she didn't shoot him. He knew she had a gun in the nightstand. He'd made sure she could protect herself. Maybe the fact that she didn't shoot him counted for something.

The silence was too much. It only magnified the goofy wooden clock on the wall, and how the woodpecker looked bored with nothing to peck holes into. When he looked up and back toward the kitchen, he spied a note. It made his heart jump. She left under a crystal paper weight, a gift he once bought her when they had visited the diamond mine with Taylor. He read the note:

I'm sorry, but I needed to leave. I didn't call the police because I realized you promised one night. But I need you to leave, I need us to move on. I need you to move on. There's nothing left, nothing to bridge the divide. Please, please, let me go...

Luke hated himself more, that she'd been reduced into fleeing the house and begging for her space. He crumpled the paper until he realized there was room at the bottom to leave his own note. Like a light in the dank, deserted cellar of his mind, it filled the gloom, the heavy air in his head. It made something want to surface, a way to salvage something. He had this leave of absence, plenty of time to brood. He found the pen on the white marble counter.

"Dear Share: I love you, and will always love you, but I've abandoned this family. I know it's all my fault. I promise to leave you be from now on. But he wasn't sure he could. He breathed a sigh. But he'd damn well try.

Luke rummaged around in the bedroom and found his old sweats and a t-shirt, he showered, then he left out the front door with a duffle bag full of clothes and some of his toiletries. Maybe it was the smell of fresh cut grass or the fact that kids were playing street hockey in the yard a few doors down. But it all came rushing back, like a turn style door that sucks in the air and leaves you're mind in a vortex for a moment where the world waits for you. His mind raced back.

Taylor was only seven, long legs like her mother, brown hair, blue eyes, she loved to play sports. Daddy's little girl. He called her Tay for short. Most of all Taylor loved soccer. Luke kicked the ball around with her that Saturday morning. Mom was in the kitchen looking out the front door, smiling back, Taylor liked to help Mom, she'd make cookies with her.

But the ball got away, it skittered down the slope of the front yard, skinned along on the street, a thoughtless moment when something distracted Luke, he looked toward someone shouting in the neighbor's yard where there was a pool party. It all took a second.

Taylor chased the ball between parked cars across the street. Luke watched her grab the ball hold in her hand like a goalie might. She looked at him smiled, a dimpled look. Ponytail swayed.

Hodges, his neighbor was heading down the street, faster than the posted thirty, his sports car low on the road, wheels spinning toward his house at the end of the cul-de-sac.

Luke shouted. "Hey!" As Taylor darted back between the parked cars. Taylor got caught in the front bumper and thrown several feet forward when the car stopped to a screeching halt.



Lights flashing, siren blaring, Luke made it to the hospital in four minutes although it was twenty-four miles away. He took the child and carried her to the waiting nurses and surgeon at the door, handed her off into a gurney. Twenty-minutes later, she was pronounced dead. Her life was gone at seven. And with-it with it, Luke and the rest of his family died a much slower death.

Luke snapped back and craned his head toward the sloping drive, the two-story home where Hodges daughter grew up, graduated from high school. She lived. He had gotten three-years of probation and eventually became a flag-waving member of AA. Hodges had a good a lawyer and no prior record. He got off easy. And he'd been smug about it. He'd acted, as if nothing, no accident had ever happened near the end of Horseshoe Lane. For him, his life returned to normal, and every day he drove by caused his family pain, internal skids burned to his memory.

Luke dropped his duffle bag full of clothes on the edge of the driveway. As he looked over toward Hodges washing a new red sports car, something inside him dug in his mind, created a channel for more reckless thoughts.

The neighbor hadn't turned to face him, he held his water hose like it was a part of him, an extension of himself. It trickled water out, with little force, as if he feared too much pressure on the new paint. The water ran down by his feet trickling into the drain on the edge of the curve. He was part of the circle. He looked zoned out, living in his own buffered world.

The more Luke watched Hodges and thought about it, the angrier he got. It wasn't like he hadn't fantasied doing things to him, going over there and killing him over the years. But what bothered him the most was how he had no problem continuing to live two doors down, as if killing his daughter was just a speed bump in the road of his life.

Hodges daughter grew up, she went to the prom, had her first date, first kiss, first everything, and all he and his wife got was a broken family. And here he was again, Hodges with his perfect little car and his little life, without fear of what an angrier father might do, a rogue cop maybe too. He needed to be taught a lesson. He needed to feel some of Luke's pain.

Luke walked over toward him, donning his thick sunglasses and making sure his gun was tucked far enough down the back of his sweatpants. Each step liberated him until he stood in the drive within feet of Hodges backside. "How's it going neighbor?"

Hodges spun around and wet himself with the hose before dropping it. Through his glasses, Luke noted how it streaked his vanilla pants like a pee flow. The man was looking older. His black hair thinned toward balding, his stomach looked like a pouch. "Oh hey, Luke, you home, I didn't know you were here."

"You know Hodges, I've always wondered how you lived with what happened. You seem to be doing okay for yourself."

"Well, you know taxes, and all keep going up. But I did lease this beauty. He recovered and reached for the hose where it flooded the driveway, but Luke beat Hodges to it. He held it up and put a kink in the line so the water wouldn't run. "Is there something I can help you with?" He asked, as he tried to collect the hose.

Luke held the hose and dared him to grab it. "You know just once; I'd like you to not be so comfortable with living here. What kind of man kills a kid more than eleven years ago and doesn't mind driving over the same spot everyday where she got plowed down?"

Hodges started backing away, he felt his pants pocket, likely for a cellphone or a pocketknife. His tanned belly jiggled like jelly. He looked up at the house, maybe he hoped his wife was watching. Luke pressed him. Made him do a rude moon walk into his opened garage where he fell into a flimsy yard chair that sagged from his rear.

Luke leaned into him, feeling the small of his back for his weapon. "Looks like your life got back on track, just like nothing ever happened at all."

Hodges protested, put his hands up, as if he might take a punch. "I suffered more than you know. I had to cash in on my 401K. My daughter went to college, and...and she's had issues. She's...she's bipolar."

"She grew up. She lived." Luke grabbed the arms of the chair until it tremored in place.

"Luke, what is it you want? I'm sorry, man. I...there was nothing I could do! she came out of nowhere. I swear, there was nothing I could do!"

Luke could smell the sweat of his fear. "I want you to feel my pain. Empathy is another form of therapy."

"What...I...I don't understand." Hodges raised his voice, as if trying to get his wife's attention through a window.

Luke pulled the handgun from his backside. "How bout we take your car down the road, I need to get my vehicle parked at the end of the street."

Hodges turned snow-white "I'm sorry. I'm not sure what else to do. Just put the gun away and we can talk." He kept his hands up. His eyes darted back forth, maybe hoping someone sees the crazy neighbor.

"No, said Luke. "I don't think so. If I don't point this at you will run like a scared rabbit."

Whatever self-control Luke had left, he'd lost when he pulled the gun from the back of his belt. He looked around to make sure no other neighbors watched him. His career, his home, what was left of his tattered family hung on the end of the barrel of his snub-nosed 45 pistol. Surely a gun control activist would have a field day over the rogue police officer. Nothing more dangerous than a bad man with a badge, he thought, and he smirked inside himself as he kept the gun leveled at Hodges.

"Luke, whatever...whatever you think, I swear, I swear man, there was nothing I could do! I swear, a million times over, if I could bring your daughter back, I would. I've lived with that guilt."

"You know," Luke said, as he circled his face with the gun while Hodges sweated in his flimsy chair. "I almost believe you, but somehow I think this gun tends to bring out the best and brightest in people."

Hodges dipped his head and kept his hands to his face. "Listen man, please, please I'm sorry."

"Okay, look, I'm leaving, anyway. Turns out I'm not wanted around here. You pretty much ruined my family, and now my career. And I just needed to know. You could have spared me this trouble, had you been that way in court. Anyway, like I said, I need a ride to my car parked down the street. I will be going on a long trip."

At first Hodges looked with one eye and his pleading face. "Okay, sure. You...you want me to give you a lift?" He looked on the verge of a heart attack.

"That's what I said." Luke waved the gun. "Now let's go. Get the lead out."

Hodges scooted from his chair in the garage. Luke followed close behind. Then he held the door open for him before he slipped into the passenger side.

Hodges turned over the engine, as it roared to life. Luke looked back and saw Hodges wife finally looking through their picture window. They stopped beneath Luke's driveway where Hodges was forced to get his duffle bag and put it in the back seat of the car. All the while the gun was between them, as they reached the place where Luke had parked his jeep the night before.

"I bet this car can do 0 to sixty in three seconds," Said Luke. "Now get out of the car and don't run. There's one more thing I need you to do for me Mr. Hodges. Get out of the car and lay down in front of it. You can leave the car in park with the engine idling."

Hodges complied, and by now, he was a lather of sweat. It dripped down his face like rain. Luke kept the gun trained on him while Hodges walked around to the front of the car and laid down in front of it. Then Luke revved the car. It startled him, as he jumped up and looked at Luke, as he rolled from the car.

"What's it like, Hodges, knowing you can be crushed like a bug? Feel my pain yet?"

Luke watched him reduced to tears, reduced to a slug on the road. And he'd be a liar if it didn't make him feel better. "Now I want you to lay down, close your eyes and say twenty-times, 'I'm sorry, and I don't deserve to live. Got that?"

Hodges looked ready to bolt.

"Now, repeat after me. "I'm sorry, and I don't deserve to live." Hodges repeated it with less enthusiasm.

Luke pulled out his duffle bag and put it in the trunk of his car. He used his remote starter, got inside, and revved his engine. Leaving, he watched Hodges in his review mirror scrape himself from the ground.

Slipping onto the freeway, Luke knew he'd likely never see his neighborhood again, least not in the same way. He laughed at himself over how he was bound to get arrested when it was Hodges who should have done the time. But it was liberating.

Clutching the wheel and gliding down the highway, he started singing his favorite song out of key, "Freedoms just another word for nothing left to lose." Then he found the old Kansas song on the radio and turned it up. "Carry on my wayward son. There will be peace enough when you are done...Don't you cry for me..."