Previous installment: The Wheel: Part 4, An Empty Home
Start at the beginning: The Wheel: Part 1, Jack Colby
Where we left off: Jack and Justin returned home after the accident. Jack avoided his daughter’s bedroom and the one he shared with his wife. The Colby boys slept together in Justin’s bed.
Voiceover narration: Andrew Thomas
Art: Jenelle Thomas https://alovelygiraffe.com
What Comes Next?
The next morning, Jack woke first, a little before seven. The lack of AC and the blanket over him had caused him to sweat, which was annoying at first until he realized that meant he actually did fall asleep at some point. He rolled over carefully to find Justin still asleep on his back with his mouth open and arms above his head on the pillow. Jack smiled and stroked Justin’s messy bedhead hair. His smile faded as a thought sprang unbidden into his mind.
What would I have done if all three of them had ridden together?
It was too dark a thought to entertain. He tried to remind himself that even Sheila, who loved the Ferris Wheel so, wouldn’t have let him ride by himself (or bail on it altogether), and that seemed like enough to drive the thought away. Justin was all he had left, but at least he had that.
This brought a new thought to his mind, something that had completely escaped him while he was in bare-bones survival mode.
Nobody knows this happened. Not Steve, not Sheila’s parents, not the bank.
This jerked him awake further. He rolled over in bed again and reached for his phone on the ground. It was now ten after seven, and they would be expecting him at work within an hour. There were no missed calls or text messages, which meant that the identity of the victims hadn’t made their way into the news yet. Jack winced at how effortlessly his brain jumped to the phrase “victims,” but realized he had better get up and start making calls before Justin woke. He got out of bed, pulled a shirt on, and walked out into the hall.
It was even warmer in the other half of the house, where the open windows were, and Jack was surprised to find the slider door still open from the night before. He stepped out onto the back porch again and pulled up Steve’s contact. He felt this would be the easiest first call to make.
Steve picked up quickly. “Hey Jack,” he said with cautious curiosity in his voice. Jack knew why: they almost never talked on the phone and certainly not first thing in the morning.
“Hey Steve, how are you?” Jack had no idea how to start this conversation.
“I’m good. What’s up?”
“Um,” was all Jack managed before the reality of what he was about to say sank in. He choked back his tears instead.
“You’re freaking me out, man. Is everything ok?”
Jack felt he could at least answer this. Maybe the rest would come from there.
“No, it’s not. Did you see what happened at the Midway last night?” Jack asked.
“Yeah, you can’t miss it. Just awful…” Steve trailed off, likely realizing the truth but too afraid to ask.
Jack sobbed, and this time he couldn’t even attempt to hide it. “That was us,” Jack cried, “Sheila and Megan. They’re…” but he couldn’t say it. It didn’t matter how true it was.
“Holy shit! Oh my God!” Steve exclaimed, and the line went silent other than Jack’s crying. “You’re…Justin’s ok?”
“Yeah, he’s sleeping.”
“I don’t even know what to…I’m so sorry, Jack. I…” Steve trailed off again, and Jack couldn’t blame him. He wasn’t sure how he would react if the tables were turned.
“What do you need? I can be there in twenty minutes.”
“No, don’t come. I have no idea what to expect when Justin wakes up, and I’ll need to focus on him. Just tell Ryan I won’t be in today.”
“Today? You won’t be in for a while, man.”
Jack sniffed and wiped a tear away. “Yeah, I guess. Can you just tell him and everyone else what happened? I…I can’t.”
“Yeah, do you need me to bring lunch or anything?”
“No, I don’t think so. Maybe dinner, though? I don’t even know what we have.”
“For sure. I’ll text you later.” Steve paused. “My God,” he muttered under his breath. “Are you sure you are good for now?”
“Yes, thanks, Steve. This is a huge help, believe me. If Ryan needs anything from me, tell him he can—”
Steve cut him off. “What? Call you? Ask you to come in? Come on, Jack. Just focus on yourselves, ok? We will be fine.”
They wrapped up the call a moment later, and Jack set his phone down. He massaged his brow and got up to make coffee while he thought about the next call he had to make and how it was the last thing he wanted to do. He loved Thad and Marcia Johnson, he really did, but he knew that in telling them, their grief would be as great as his own. Being smack dab in the middle of it himself, he did not wish it upon anyone else. The call he really wanted to make was to his own parents, particularly his dad, but that was impossible. Jack’s parents had died when he was in his late twenties—a result of both his later conception and their lower-than-average intelligence.
His mother went first, days after he and Sheila got married in a ceremony that was fast-tracked so she could be there. She had ignored the signs of breast cancer, no matter what anybody told her, and by the time she did act, it was too late. Jack was 27.
The newest Colby couple didn’t waste any time working on pregnancy and were much more successful than Jack’s parents. Justin was born two weeks before Jack’s thirtieth birthday, and his grandfather died smack dab between the two events, also of cancer, this time of the lung. Fred had been a smoker since the seventies. He vowed to give it up at the turn of the century and doubled down ten years later when smoking was banned in the restaurants and bars of Michigan. He was still smoking when Jack and Sheila stopped by the house on their way home from the hospital with Justin. They refused to bring the baby into the smoky house and instead forced codgy old Fred onto the back porch and made him change his shirt before he was allowed to hold his new grandson. Conditions met, Fred rocked Justin for thirty minutes and cried on and off for most of it.
As it was, the first smudges Sheila washed out of that tiny jumper a week later were from Fred’s nicotine-stained tears. Jack interrupted her as she worked them out, tears streaming down his own face. His phone was in his hand, and all he could say at first was that he was so glad they had stopped by his dad’s place that day on the way home. She had fought against the idea at the time, using the excuse that Justin needed to rest, but he had insisted. Sheila had intended to hold onto that lost debate as her first parenting grudge, but as she listened to Jack in the laundry room, the moisture pooling at the corners of her eyes proved the grudge to be short-lived.
Fred had passed away in his kitchen the night before.
Jack returned to his chair on the porch and set his fresh cup of coffee on the small table next to it. He pulled up Thad and Marcia’s contact in his phone, which was simply Mom and Dad. He remembered when he had first called them that. It had started with Thad, for some reason, even though Jack was still close with his own father at the time. The bride and groom-to-be had been going over final wedding details around Thad and Marcia’s kitchen island weeks before the wedding when Thad walked toward the fridge to grab another PBR, and Jack said, “Grab me one too, Dad.” All three Johnsons turned to look at him in mild surprise, and all he had to say was, “What? I’ve been working on my speech impediment!” The four of them had howled with laughter, and Marcia and Thad had been Mom and Dad since that day.
Jack reluctantly made the call and held his breath as the phone began to ring. After what felt like ages, Marcia picked up.
“Jack, what has you calling at this hour?”
“Hey, Mom.” Jack did his very best to keep his voice level. “Is Dad nearby?”
“He’s in the garage, I think. Should I fetch him?”
“Yes, if you could.”
“Ok, just a moment.”
Jack heard the phone hit the counter. They shared a cellphone and clearly still treated it like a hard-wired landline.
Moments later, Thad picked up.
“Hey Jack, what’s up?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, are you guys able to talk on speakerphone or something for a minute?”
Jack heard Thad say, “Marcia, he wants to talk to both of us,” and she replied, “Oh, he didn’t say.” Suddenly, the sound changed—speakerphone—and Marcia was saying loudly, “What is it, Jack? Is everything ok?”
Jack steeled himself.
“So, something happened last night,” he said and swallowed, his voice becoming thick. “I don’t know how else to say this, but Sheila and Megan, um, passed away.”
Jack heard Marcia gasp, and then there was silence on the other end of the line. He began to say something, but was cut off.
“What?!”
He wasn’t sure if they both had said it or just Marcia.
“We went down to the carnival rides last night, and” Jack began to get choked up again, “there was a terrible accident.”
Marcia screamed. It was Thad who spoke next, and Jack could tell he wasn’t sure if he understood what he had just heard.
“Accident? Are they hurt badly or?”
“Dad, they are dead. I’m sorry.”
Marcia said, “Jack, this can’t be…oh my God…” before devolving into sobs.
No amount of preparation could help him here. Jack began to cry—loudly—and it seemed this was what sank the message home for his in-laws.
“Can you come here? Soon?” It was all he could think to say. He wanted to wait for them to offer it themselves, but found he needed them more than he realized.
Justin’s tentative voice came from behind him. “Hey Dad? Where’s Mom and Megan?”
Jack, who was already crying, took a ragged breath. “Mom and Dad, I’m so sorry, but Justin just woke up and I have to go.”
Thad interjected, “We can be there tonight.” By the sounds of it, the reality hadn’t hit him yet; he was in problem-solving mode. Marcia was still crying in the background.
“No, you guys are going to need the time today. Tomorrow would be great, though.”
“Ok, you hang in there, Jack.” Thad’s voice was starting to break. “We’ll be in touch.”
Jack ended the call, pulled Justin onto his lap, and kissed the top of his head.
“Morning, bud. How did you sleep?” Jack wiped his eyes.
“Good,” Justin said.
“I’m surprised. You woke up quite a few times.”
“I did?”
“Yeah, you must not have been fully awake.”
Normally, Justin would have laughed at this. Instead, he just said, “Where’s Mom?”
Jack sniffed and wiped away new tears that tried to join the ones already on his face. He had been hoping Justin wouldn’t need to ask this question.
“They’re gone, bud. Remember?”
“Oh yeah,” Justin said matter-of-factly.
They sat quietly, and a few minutes passed.
“Hey Dad?”
Jack closed his eyes but let it go. It seemed like “Hey Dad” wasn’t going anywhere soon.
“Yeah?”
“When will they come back?”
“Buddy,” Jack sighed, partially in frustration, but then he remembered that Justin didn’t have anything other than assumptions to go on as far as what happened last night, and, at just over seven years old, his assumptions probably weren’t anywhere close to correct.
“Here, get up.”
He helped Justin off his lap, turned him around so they were facing each other, and placed his hands on his son’s shoulders. Justin’s greyish-blue eyes stared back into his own. His light brown hair was messy and stuck up in the back.
“Mom and Megan died last night.”
“They died?”
Jack fought to keep his emotions under some level of control.
“Yeah, they did. We won’t be seeing them anymore; I’m so sorry.”
“Oh,” was all Justin said. He dropped his eyes and looked vaguely at Jack’s chest.
“You remember how I talk about Grandma and Grandpa Colby? How they were my parents, but they aren’t here anymore? It’s like that.”
Justin looked back up at him. “Where are they?”
Jack tried to dodge the question. “They’re at the cemetery, remember? Where we take flowers to their grave?”
“Are Mom and Megan there too?”
Jack gulped down his emotions again. “No, not yet. I think they are at the hospital.”
“Can we go see them?”
Jack closed his eyes and took a deep breath. There was no point in trying to avoid the tears anymore. “No, bud, we can’t.”
“Why—”
Jack cut him off. “Justin, we just can’t.” He could tell another question was brewing, so he changed the subject. “Are you hungry?”
Justin nodded.
“Ok, let’s go get some cereal and see if we can do a better job of watching TV today, sound good?”
"Nobody knows this happened. Not Steve, not Sheila’s parents, not the bank."
What a moment. Damn.
This is so heartbreaking 😭