Leah

She walked briskly with no purpose but an escape.  Her blonde hair whipped into her face. Eyes dry but jaws clenched, her fingers working in her pockets to sort out an anxiety otherwise senseless.

There was a lie here that had been repeated so many times as to become the truth, the only truth. 

The desolate neighborhood began to open up as she moved through the more populated areas of downtown. Across the bridge, past the pizza shop towards the train tracks. She kept her face down and her pace up as happy joggers passed by, a woman with a fussing infant stopped on the other side of the street. The child began to scream.

Leah couldn’t take the sound and ducked through a backyard she knew would lead to familiarity. The paths of Chester were well trodden and easy to navigate. She walked along the fence until it gave way to the small spruce tress that followed. Leaf strewn paths and high empty branches greeted her as her feet found their way automatically.

After walking for a while she fell into that reverie that can come from repetitive motion and thought. Her feet hit the ground with a rhythm, each step bringing into focus another distant memory. There was their first date; A clumsy awkward affair but endearing in its simplicity. The day at the Bronx zoo when they sat laughing at seals for twenty minutes, doubled over in laughter, cause the seals were just dogs with no legs.

Leah paused; there was a fork in the path, with an old car seat sitting between the two paths. She’d been walking a long time and decided to stop for a minute to catch her breath. Once again reverie took her by the hand and held hard.

Her mind slipped back to the day when she told him of the pregnancy, the ‘potential life’ she held inside her. His reaction was genuine, his eyes shone with possibility for just a moment, then he furrowed his brow. She was only seventeen then, he was nineteen. Weeks went by of back and forth, the questions of “can we do this?” and “We’re too young” went around and around in their minds. The idea of ending a human life was too much for them, Leah knew there was no way she could live with that kind of guilt. She’d go through with this pregnancy. Johnny knew if they had the child he could never give it up to strangers.

Johnny’s family was supportive, and they all anticipated the day when they found Leah carried a little girl inside of her.

She stood abruptly, wiping her jeans of dirt. Memory lane is no place to play when you’re trying to forget. Her cell phone started to vibrate in her pocket. She took it out and shut it off. Then she stared at the crossroads, and chose the more overgrown and shaded patch. A place it seemed she could get lost.

The dappled light played on her eyes. For a day in December it was strangely warm and very wet outside. She had only a long sleeve shirt on and the sun was making her uncomfortably warm. Her converse were getting soaked, but she barely noticed as she plodded along. The rhythm of her footsteps got the best of her and Leah slipped back into memory.

She remembered the first time her father had taken her out in those woods, lecturing her about awareness. How you always had to listen to the world around you. “Never walk with your hands in your pockets” he had told her “if you trip you’ve no way to save yourself.”

That was how Leah felt now, as if she’d tripped with her hands bound behind her. No way she wouldn’t end up face first in the mud. She pulled her hands out of her pockets and kept walking.

Then the most beautiful memory came to her mind. She was sweating, drenched, her hair plastered to her face. Every muscle in her body screamed with pain and the exhaustion pulled at her so hard she almost fell to it. Then Johnny came up close with a bundle in his arms. “Molly,” he said softly, “I’d like you to meet your mommy. Hey mom….” She looked and saw her squirming child and the love that flowed from Johnny’s eyes as he held her. She sat there holding her child she felt the indescribable. For one moment Leahs world stopped completely, and the only thing that existed was her little Molly.

The tears finally began to fall no matter how she tried to hold them off. The path she thought she knew so well had started to change. Leah pulled the hood of her shirt up and crossed her arms around her middle to keep this flood from falling out. For a moment she stopped, her shoelaces needed tying. Thought the clouds had come to obscure the December sun she was still warm, and felt she had a ways yet to go.

The crunchy leftovers of fall foliage gave way to hard, uneven stones. The click clack of the stones brought her back to one of Molly’s more recent outings. She was four then, and it was almost Halloween.

The air was brisk that day as they drove out to visit their friends farm; Leah sat back with a friend as she watched Johnny get little Molly on the families Shetland pony. Everything was secure, but Molly wanted Daddy to ride with her. He jumped on it’s back and you could hear the pony’s hooves against the gravel drive mixed with Molly’s high pitched laughter and insistence of “faster daddy faster!”

Leah’s remembrances were cut short when she heard footsteps crunching behind her.

For a moment she thought to run, just leave it all behind her. The impulse was strong, but her reason overruled instinct.

Leah stopped and waited, staring straight ahead as the footsteps drew closer to her.

“Leah,” she heard from behind her, spoken like a plea “please, just stop.”.

Her heart wretched in her chest, and she spun on her heel. “Don’t, you can’t! Not you, just anyone but you. God, you just didn’t listen.”.

Leah’s father stepped closer, putting his hand on her shoulder as she crumpled into him. This pain as pure and raw, unlike anything she’d ever felt.

“Sweetheart, we tried everything that we could, there’s only so much we could do.” he said softly, trying to console her.

Leah gathered herself and looked him right in the eyes. “No pain? Really? Like when Johnny was curled up in the bathtub, vomiting bile, begging me to go out and get him something? Like the last overdose, when they had to pump his stomach as he gagged on the tube, and called out to me for help? Or what about Molly in the background, asking where’s Daddy and screaming as he falls down drunk and high unable to control himself? Our little girl, his everything, but not enough to make him stop.” She hurled the words like shards, trying to remove herself from the pain.

“Leah,” he started again.

“No!” she screamed, stepping closer to him. “No more excuses, he was selfish, unfair, how could he? How? I can’t do this alone, and through everything the lies, I knew he wasn’t clean, I knew it! Still, I did nothing…and neither did you. No one did.” She began to choke on her sobs. “Daddy, I still need him.”

Leah fell to the ground, collapsing in hysterics as her father tried to grasp the situation.

His daughter now a widow.

His Granddaughter without a father.

His family another casualty to Heroin Chic.