Snowfell

Each flake hangs suspended in the air, dotting the starless night sky. I walk, oblivious to the destruction I leave in my wake, carving a path through the winter around me. Wind rushes like a stampede, slamming against my face and chest, making each breath an inferno in my lungs. She's been dead for less than an hour. I have to tell her mother.

In the too quiet, too still emergency room a doctor tells me in brutal detail just how my daughter died. An inventory of injuries too numerous to take in. I stop breathing, only I don't. I just wish I do.

He's going to kill us, I think, as the screaming ambulance takes the corner much too fast. The roads are slick with snow and I feel the back of the vehicle fishtail for a moment. I steal a glimpse of my daughter, her tiny broken body strapped to the stretcher, the pretty young EMT trying to stop the bleeding. Too young for me, I think, as a fantasy that contradicts that thought flashes in my head.

Flashing red lights dance across the spider-web cracks of the windshield. My shoulder aches from where it slammed against the seatbelt. Beth isn't crying, which is a relief. Finally, the airbag deflates and I feel a rush of cold air that I think is from the bag. It's not. There's a hole in the windshield, and wind and snow rush in through it. It takes me a moment to notice my daughter's tiny foot sticking through it from the outside.

"Leave the radio alone," I snap. For an instant I feel guilty, but she's been playing with it for the last ten minutes and I've already told her to knock it off twice. Kid needs to learn. Great, I think, looking over at her. She's sulking, arms folded across her chest and her foot kicking the dashboard. Any second now she'll start crying. At six years old she's already figured out the best way to get me to do what she wants. A horn jolts my attention back to the road just as I feel the car slipping out of my control. As it starts to spin I have enough time to see the cluster of trees. Then I hear my daughter scream.

"Any kind you want, baby. Chocolate, cookie dough, spinach." Beth laughs as she tries to put her coat on. Kelly kneels down to help her with the buttons.

"They don't make spinach ice cream, daddy." Kelly stands up and kisses me lightly on the cheek.

"Be careful out there, we're supposed to get hit pretty badly tonight," Kelly says.

"It's Michigan," I say, "they always say we'll get a lot of snow and we always get less. Besides, it just started, so the roads shouldn't be too bad." I step outside, holding my daughter's hand. She walks looking up, her tongue out to catch the snowflakes that hang suspended in the cold night sky.


The End.