JUST THE TEARS

'JUST THE TEARS'- CHAPTER ONE

OCTOBER, 2010


16 and a half years later...





Danzig's 'Blood and Tears' poured out of the soundsystem.


Amazing that the same voice which belted out 'Mother', thrilling millions of fans, could produce that hauntingly beautiful song. While the lyrics alone would've made most anyone in pain want to cry harder, it was different for Lee. It was soothing to her. It didn't matter that it took her back to a time in the past it almost broke her to remember. His voice, words, and music helped her not to shatter with the memory. Odd, but true.


Worse than almost any day since I can remember, that one almost killed me!


Lee leaned her head back on the sofa. Closing her eyes, she let the c.d. set on repeat take her back.


Time to deal with it now. Just blood and a few tears, right?





JUNE 22, 1994


I cannot believe this is happening to me...


She sat graveside, staring at the tiny white and gold casket with its etchings of angels. The grief choked her and again, threatened to overwhelm her. It was as if someone had torn open her chest, reached inside, and ripped her heart from its moorings. And the moorings that held that ship had sailed with the boat, never to dock again.


Her mind replayed her own personal slice of Hell. The minister's graveside words barely registered as her mind echoed bits and pieces from the chapel service, "...helps to think of our loved one as being a treasure in a treasure box..." He's wrong! It isn't helping me at all! And he never even knew my son!


And they've taken my babies! Someone made my baby boy disappear forever, And now I'm going to have to fight for the other three BECAUSE he made him disappear! Why am I being punished for HIS crime? Weren't the years of abuse enough?!


And 'disappear' was the only word she would let her mind accept right now. Her friends and family could only hope accepting her three year old son's death would come. Looking at her now, many of them weren't so sure.


Lee bit down on her bottom lip, trying to stifle the scream of anguish rising inside her, and with it, the denial that could not be silenced. Now, her best friend, Mary was there at her elbow, touching her arm, telling her in a quiet undertone it was time to go. The pallbearers, family for the most part, stood silently by, hands folded in front of them.


"No!" She shook her blonde head adamantly when Mary tried gently to lead her away so that the coffin containing a large part of her world could be lowered into that vault in the earth. She wrenched her arm away, near to incoherent but very definite. "No! No, no, no!" She slapped at the helping hands. "I said NO!" The tears that had earlier seemed to disippate were now like a geyser. She moved to touch the coffin. "I...You don't understand! HE'S SCARED OF THE DARK! YOU HAVE TO LEAVE THE LIGHT ON! You can't put him in there; YOU CAN'T PUT MY BABY BOY IN THE GROUND!"


Taylor Halloran, a longtime friend, placed a hand on each of her upper arms to pull her back from the grave, earning him a slap to the chest.


"Don't touch me, T.!"


He backed off but only slightly. Between the two of them, Mary and he finally managed to get her back to the car, tucking her into it for the ride home, though how she'd handle home was anybody's guess. Next, Mary pretty much force-fed her the tranquilizers the doctor had prescribed her. That, in Mary's opinion, was probably a good thing considering the local police department had called her at the funeral home during her son's wake to ask her to meet them at her home to 'look for evidence', at the same time they'd delivered the news that her husband had just confessed to and been arrested for the murder of her child. A child they all thought had died in his sleep. She'd found him dead in his bed Father's Day morning.


Father's Day would never be the same again in this huge, close family. Nothing would ever be the same again in Lee's world.


And the nightmare that followed for years ensured that.