Soon Enough

Robert yelled through the barricaded door of the beach-house. “Don’t come any closer.” He could hear his granddaughter’s plea.

“Grandpa, don’t do this. Gran wouldn’t want this.”

The roar of the surf muffled her tears, but the torment in his head was deafening. Soon enough. The voice echoed like heartbeats in the empty halls of his soul.

Jessica pounded on the door. “Grandpa, you open this door right now!”

Robert wasn’t surprised Jessie had found him. So much like Bess, he thought as he looked around the little hide-a-way they had put together sixty years ago. Every purchase, every chair was hand-picked with the excitement of two young lovers beginning a life-long journey together.

He sat at the old, yellow laminate table, its chrome once shiny now dull from neglect and abandonment. He remembered the fresh azaleas Bess kept here, cut from the little garden out back. Weeds and sea grass had taken over the yard he once tended and manicured. The bird houses he'd built and mounted on the porch stood empty and abandoned. The little martins seemed to sense the grief here, and they had flown away, long ago, in search of happier surroundings.

The pain came suddenly, like a rogue storm over the gulf. He hated the hospitals and doctors who took him and Bess away from their vacation home over the past few years. Now she was gone. His life, his reason for existence was gone.

“We’ll be together again soon enough, Robby. I have to go away now.” She had looked at him with the same love she offered as his bride so many years ago, a love that grew with time. Then her focus slipped past his tears, beyond the hospice unit, and faded into a world only Bess could see.

“ ‘Soon enough’ ain’t soon enough for me, Bess.”

Robert lifted the .38 to his head. He looked at the door and smiled. “I have to go away now.”