Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: FAMILY (01/21/16)
-
TITLE: From Ashes Rising | Previous Challenge Entry
By Hannah Gaudette
01/28/16 -
LEAVE COMMENT ON ARTICLE
SEND A PRIVATE COMMENT
ADD TO MY FAVORITES
“Mr. Sullivan, who is this?”
I glanced up from our camping gear to survey the framed photo Parker held up. My heart gave a sluggish beat. Her beautiful blue eyes, unchanging blonde hair, heavenly smile . . . How could it be that a single picture – the only one not lost in the fire – was the last thing of hers I had left?
I cleared my constricting throat and looked away. “Uh, that was my daughter, Bree.”
Parker, the shy, redheaded boy who often accompanied me on camping trips when I picked him up for weekends from the foster home, gave the picture a good long look. “What happened to her?”
The image of three hiking packs before me morphed into a memory. I hadn't been home. Why hadn't I been home? Was managing a failing construction company more important than my wife and daughter? The first sight of our house as I drove up the road that day showed me our whole lives – our past, present, and future – in flames. Mary and Bree were trapped inside.
“Mr. Sullivan?”
Parker's voice erased the memory, but not the rising tide of rage I had spent the last three years trying to bury. I grabbed the half-filled backpack and pelted it across the little clearing in the forest. With a strangled cry, I collapsed to my knees, my clenched fists upraised in unchanneled rage.
But this time, it wasn't further exploding anger that consumed my crumbling wall of emotional management – it was a deluge of unshed tears. I was engulfed by my contained grief as deep sobs racked my body. It didn't even come to mind that five-year-old Parker was sitting all of ten feet away.
“They're gone,” I wept, my voice slack. “They're gone.”
A tiny, child's hand touched my trembling shoulder. I looked up at Parker, his pale face engraved with concern.
“It's okay, Mr. Sullivan,” he assured me. “I lost mine too.”
His statement caught me off guard. “Lost who?”
A trace of sadness washed his usually bright eyes in a quiet sorrow. “My mommy and daddy died when I was a baby.”
His words stuck me like a physical blow to the chest. I often spent time with Parker after meeting him at the foster home run by my sister-in-law. Actually, she had asked me on several occasions to help this lonely boy named Parker Craven. But I had never inquired – never wondered, even – what his past concealed.
He knelt down beside me. “You and I have a lot in common.”
I sniffed. “Yeah, it looks like it.”
“Do you miss your family?”
I nodding, drawing in an unsteady breath as tears continued to ebb down my cheeks.
Parker leaned into me, and I tentatively put an arm around him, the innocent child who had lived only five years and desperately needed someone. For a long moment, neither of us said a word as pictures of my wife and our daughter swam in my head. They were gone. They. Were. Gone. I closed my eyes. It was the first time I could bring myself to accept those words.
I'll see them again. I will see them again.
Parker stirred in my arms and looked up at me, his continence having returned to its normal glowing interest. “Mr. Sullivan, can I call you 'Dad?'”
His words, his face, impaled my soul, drawing from it sincere compassion and a fatherly love untapped since Mary and Bree's deaths. I stroked Parker's hair and smiled.
“I think that can be arranged.” I kissed his forehead. “You're a special little boy, Parker Craven.”
He grinned. “Thanks . . . Dad.”
And there we sat together, in the quiet of the mountain forests, as the man who'd lost his family, and the boy who never had one.
Fiction
The opinions expressed by authors may not necessarily reflect the opinion of FaithWriters.com.
Accept Jesus as Your Lord and Savior Right Now - CLICK HERE
JOIN US at FaithWriters for Free. Grow as a Writer and Spread the Gospel.
Well done.
God bless~
I think we have a lot more in common than we really think.
Well written story.
God bless~