Second Chance Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright © 2017 Articulate Expression

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  -1-

  -2-

  -3-

  -4-

  -5-

  -6-

  -7-

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Second Chance

  J. R. Nichols

  Copyright © 2017 Articulate Expression

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-13: 978-1545446317

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events is purely coincidental.

  For Mom and Dad

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you to Rhonda Hagerman for the excellent cover design. Many thanks also to the members of The Fellowship for Ladies and Accountability in Writing Society, who know how to make accountability fun. Finally, thank you to my husband, Stash, and to my three wonderful children, for your continuing support and encouragement.

  -1-

  I brush away the dry leaves and detritus from the gravestone.

  There they are, the letters that make up the name of my son. I remove my glove so that I can trace them with my fingers.

  The marble is cold, but the friction I make as I move my finger along the grooves warms it. I imagine that if I trace the letters enough times, create enough friction, enough perhaps to set the letters aglow in the marble face, that it will be enough to bring rosy life back to the cheeks buried six feet below, cheeks as white as this marble the last time I kissed them.

  Foolish thinking, I know.

  J-O-S-H-U-A

  His first name, also my Father’s.

  J-E-B-E-D-I-A-H

  His Father’s choice. Some distant relative’s name. A “strong” name, according to the weak man who’d abandoned us when Joshua received his diagnosis.

  W-A-L-K-E-R

  My Father’s other name. Also my own name, now. Again.

  Because tracing the letters will not bring him back, I stop, the way I want to stop doing everything that will not bring Joshua back. I am on my knees in my good dress and this is the only occasion that I have for wearing it. Most of the time, I wear scrubs, all the same color – green, Joshua’s favorite.

  Typically, I put on scrubs, work as many hours as it takes to exhaust me, and then collapse into bed, still wearing them. In the morning, I shower and change into a new set. I do this for five days and then on the sixth day I change into my good dress and my nice cardigan sweater and I go to see Joshua.

  Not Joshua. Joshua’s grave.

  I leave Joshua’s grave and I go home and I cry for an entire day. And then, I start all over again.

  I close my eyes. I try to remember Joshua’s voice. The wind blows my hair into my face and it is a distraction. The birds chirp in the nearby trees and it is a distraction. I squeeze my eyes tighter in an attempt to close out the sounds and sensations of my surroundings and my eyes produce frustrated tears. They leave cold, wet rivulets on my face as they fall. A sob wracks my chest.

  The breeze relents, and in the space of that moment of nature’s pause, a sound splits the air, a high, tremulous, woot, like an out of tune harp string. It wavers in the air, and then all is silent again.

  I open my eyes and scan the graveyard for the source of the sound, but see nothing unusual, except the sudden appearance of a man, sitting on a bench under a nearby tree. He is dressed like a caricature of an English gentleman – vest, overcoat, tie, pocket square, and bowler hat. His hands are perched atop a cane.I look to the road and see my Jeep still parked alone there. My eyes flick back over to the gentleman on the bench. He smiles and lifts a hand. I do not react. His hand turns and he uses it to beckon to me. I understand he wants me to come sit next to him on the bench.

  The breeze has returned and I squint into it but do not lose sight of the stranger on the bench. Our eyes are locked together, now. I do not detect malice in his. In fact, I see something familiar in them. I realize now that they are the color and shape of my own Father’s eyes. Looking into them is comforting, like finding a security blanket in an attic box.

  I am suddenly aware of my cold knees – the damp earth beneath the grass soaking through my dress. I tell myself that is why I am suddenly rising to my feet. I begin walking toward the bench. He is a stranger, I remind myself, as my steps take me closer to where the gentleman sits.

  My hand slips into my pocket and finds my car keys. Keeping my hand in my pocket, I hold them so that one key sticks out from between my knuckles, a make-shift concealed weapon my Mother taught me for warding off parking lot rapists.

  I sit down next to the man. He says nothing, and that is fine with me; I find it pleasant enough to sit there with him and stare in the direction of Joshua’s grave.

  “You are grieving,” the stranger says.

  “Yes,” is my simple reply.

  “Grief abounds in such places,” the stranger says.

  I turn to look at him. His eyes are scanning the plots in the large memorial park. His accent is not local. It is difficult to place. I wonder if he comes from Louisiana, or somewhere else the dead are not buried as my Joshua is. He turns to look at me. His eyes scan my tired face.

  “You took the passing very badly.”

  “Of course I did. He was my son.”

  “Your son.” The stranger repeats. He turns to look straight ahead for a moment, before returning his gaze to mine.

  “You haven’t been the same since he left.”

  I shake my head. The truth of what he says seems to burst something inside of me, as though I had been keeping my grief sealed up in a balloon. I begin to cry in big, ugly, heaving sobs.

  “I would like to offer you something,” the stranger says.

  I look up, expecting to see his hand extended, holding a tissue or a handkerchief. I am poised to decline because I have my own stash of tissues. But the stranger’s hands remain on his cane.

  I use one of my own tissues to wipe my eyes and blow my nose. Doing so means abandoning the make-shift weapon in my pocket, but I am no longer convinced of its necessity, despite the fact that I am sitting alone with a stranger who is offering me something. Was this not the epitome of a “stranger danger” scenario?

  “I would like to offer you a second chance at raising your son.”

  A second chance? Raising my son? Nonsense, of course, some kind of sick joke.

  Who is this man to toy with my emotions? I think. I jump up from the bench.

  “Screw you,” I say, and turn to leave.

  “Please, Moriah, don’t go,” the man says.

  I turn and meet those steel-gray eyes again.

  “How do you know my name?”

  The man faces forward again, his expression blank. He begins to speak in a way reminiscent of a computerized voice – no inflection.

  “Joshua Jebediah Walker was the son of Moriah Marie Walker and Jeffrey Peter Fuller. Birth weight – five and a half pounds. Development – as expected until the development of leukemia at age 7. Died at age eight years, seven months.”

  I feel something form in my stomach, heavy, like a rock. I tremble.

  “How do you know all of this?”

  The man turns to face me.

  “This information was collected by the ISV Aludra under article 43 of the Intergalactic Information Collection Act.”

  “Intergalactic,” I repeat. “You mean, you’re like, an alien?”

  “Not exactly,” the man replied. “I do not exist. Not in this form, anyway. What you see is a hologram, projected to this location from the Aludra."


  He pauses, appearing to evaluate my reaction to this information.

  “I sense you doubt what I say is true," he says. "Go ahead – try to touch me. You will see that I am, indeed, a hologram.” He turns away again, the same far-away look on his face as he stares straight ahead.

  I reach to touch him on his shoulder. My hand moves through the space he appears to occupy, meeting no resistance. I try again, this time reaching for his bowler hat as if to remove it. My fingers close on air.

  I turn away from the man. My body is shaking violently now, as I am overcome with certainty that I have gone completely insane. My heartbeat seems to be the only constant thing in the world, and I focus on it. The steady rhythm comforts me and seems to provide an anchor upon which to secure my breathing. The breeze and the sound of birds, once an annoyance, now bring a peaceful reassurance of normalcy and I focus on them.

  He isn’t there, I tell myself. I have created him with my mind. I am deciding, right now, to make him go away. I will open my eyes, and he will be gone.

  I take a deep breath and open my eyes. I turn and see that the gentleman is still there.

  My lips turn in on themselves and I look down at my hands.

  Okay, I tell myself. He isn’t going away. He is still there. He says he’s an alien. Aliens are not a thing, for real. Aliens are in movies and books. So, then, it’s happened – I’ve gone crazy. I’m stark-raving crackers, or loony, or whatever.

  I look up at the man again. I laugh as I consider what my mind conceived when it decided to produce an alien. An English gentleman in a bowler hat? What does that say about me?

  I contemplate what the hallucination is offering to me. A second chance. That’s what he’d offered. A chance to raise my son, Joshua.

  “Let’s say I agree to take you up on your offer,” I say to my hallucination. “What, exactly, is involved?”

  “It’s quite simple, actually,” the figure says. “The technicians on the Aludra would create a child based on the genetic blueprint of Joshua Walker. You would raise a child to adulthood, at which point the grown Joshua would return to the Aludra.”

  “And, after that?” I ask.

  “After that?”

  “Yes. Would I see Joshua again after that?”

  The man shakes his head.

  “No. Upon boarding the Aludra, your son would rejoin our people, the Ichthod.”

  I look away and consider. My psyche is offering me what I apparently need more than anything, but I remember how close Joshua and I were. I think about the talks we had when he was small. I remember him throwing his chubby arms around my neck and speaking close into my ear about how he was going to care for me when I was old.

  “What if he doesn’t want to leave me,” I ask. “I mean, what if he grows up and doesn’t want to be an Ichthod?”

  “Impossible,” the man says.

  “Maybe not,” I reply. “What do you know about the human Mother/Son bond?”

  His head tilts rapidly from side to side, as though computing information.

  “It is most assuredly true that the grown Joshua will desire to return to the Aludra.”

  “After spending eighteen years with the boy, you think he will just cast me aside for a family of strangers?”

  There was another series of rapid head-tilts before the answer came. “The process would not take eighteen years. Ichthod development is rapid. For you, it would seem that the boy grew one year for each week on Earth.”

  “I’d have him for Eighteen weeks, then lose him again?”

  He nods. "This is true. However, you would have your wish to get to see him reach adulthood and to know him as a full-grown man. Also, the timeline is actually nineteen weeks, if you include gestation."

  “Whoa. Another pregnancy? You didn’t mention that part before.”

  The man shrugs. “Gestation would be rapid, as I have said. Merely a week in Earth’s time. It is recommended that you take that week off from your job.”

  “Can’t,” I say, shaking my head. “Burned most of my sick time dealing with losing Josh. The first time,” I add, by way of unnecessary clarity.

  “As you wish, but the last three days of gestation, in particular, would be quite awkward, as you would appear to your co-workers to be very pregnant.”

  I start to laugh, imagine myself ballooning up to gestational proportions in the course of four days.

  “This is ridiculous,” I say, still laughing. I shake my head and slap my thighs with both hands. “I am not sure what my brain is trying to work out by conjuring you up, but whatever it is, it sure is good for a laugh.”

  “I don’t understand,” the gentleman says.

  “Can I call you Ichabod?” I ask my hallucination, giggling. “Ichabod the Ichthod. Has a nice ring to it.”

  “You may address me as you wish, it matters very little to me,” the man says. “I am irrelevant. In fact, I must take my leave now.” He stands, then turns to address me.

  “Within one week’s time, a package will arrive at your home. It will contain delicate genetic material which must be implanted within 48 hours. That will be when you must decide, once and for all, whether you would like to have your second chance.”

  I say nothing.

  Ichabod tips his hat at me and then turns to walk the narrow path between the rows of tombstones. I watch him until he disappears around a curve. I hear the high-pitched warbling whoop again, and my hands fly reflexively to my ears. Curious, I rise and run as fast as I can down the path. I round the corner, and stop, breathing heavy.

  The path stretches out in front of me. There is no one on it.

  -2-

  The next day is my day off from work. It is strange to not lay in bed and cry. Instead, my mind is consumed with the encounter from the day before. I spend that day doing household chores and trying to convince myself that I’d imagined the entire event.

  As the days pass, I do not talk about my hallucination with anyone. This is easy because people don't seem to have much to say to me. No one wants to ask "how are you" to an actively grieving person – the answer requires too much emotional investment. In fact, I realize that I rarely speak to anyone anymore.

  Even the trio of silly women I sit with on my lunch break at work do more talking than listening. I couldn't blame them, though – the last time they'd tried asking me something, it hadn't gone well.

  “Oh, Moriah, you’re looking so good,” Nadine had chirped.

  “I have noticed the same thing,” Charlene had chimed in.

  “Are you doing something, you know, to lose weight?” Lisa had asked.

  “Well,” I’d replied, “I haven’t had much of an appetite since I lost Joshua.”

  It had gone quiet at the table after that. I could tell my presence was making things feel awkward, so I pretended to finish my lunch in a hurry.

  From that day forward, I sat silently while at lunch with the girls. Though they did not speak to me, they were too polite to ask me to sit elsewhere, and I appreciated the distraction of their mindless prattle about celebrities and diets.

  So it is that the first six days after the encounter with Ichabod pass uneventfully. Internally, things also calm rather quickly. I spend two days convincing myself that the hallucination had been a necessary manifestation of my grief – a sort of coping mechanism.

  By day four, the meeting has lost its place of prominence in my conscious mind. It helps that I have work to keep my mind distracted. By day six, I am not thinking about the meeting at all.

  So, when I come home to find a large package waiting for me on the front porch, I don't think much of it, except to wonder what I had ordered and how I had forgotten that I'd done so.

  The box is roughly 4x6’, and is much lighter than it appears. I have no trouble getting it into the house.

  Only then do I examine the package for a shipping label or a return address. I find no markings on the box, which is strange. It is then that it occurs to me – Ichabod’s parting wo
rds:

  “In one week’s time, a package will arrive at your home. It will contain delicate genetic material which must be implanted within 48 hours. That will be when you must decide, once and for all, whether you would like to have your second chance.”

  Was this a package from Ichabod the Ichthod?

  My heart beats fast. My mouth is dry. I stare at the box for several minutes, replaying my encounter with Ichabod in my mind. I had chalked that entire interaction up to grief-induced hallucination. Was this a hallucination, also? Did my neighbors just witness me load an imaginary box onto my hand truck and wrestle it into my house?

  I close my eyes and give my head a little shake. This box could contain any number of things. A gift, for example, from someone who knew Joshua. Or maybe I had placed an order somewhere online, after all.

  Despite my reassurances to myself, my hands tremble as I use a razor knife to slice down the long side of the cardboard box, and then cut along the bottom edge. As I slice through the box on the other long side, the cardboard falls away to reveal a yellow plastic vessel. The vessel is oval-shaped, and is flat on the bottom of its widest end, making it possible for it to stand, on-end, unsupported.

  On the front of one side is a clear plastic panel, like a sort of window. Through the panel, I can see there is something inside. It looks every bit like a tiny picnic cooler, though the material is semi-translucent.

  The contents of the cooler emit a green light that pulsates rhythmically, making it appear that the egg-shaped container has a heartbeat. I can see an envelope taped to the top of the glowing container.

  I step back and stare at the gigantic yellow contraption. There is no doubt in my mind now that this is the package Ichabod had said would be sent to my home. I am sure that what I see in the cooler is the promised “genetic material”.

  My second chance.

  I investigate and discover that the clear panel is actually on a hinge. I open the panel and pick up the envelope with trembling fingers. I read the note inside.