There Are Limits Read online

  She pushed the door open, and it bumped against something wooden, one of Michael’s baseball bats on the floor, covered in red. She turned, already braced for what she expected to see, but the reality exceeded the capacity of her imagination, leaving her reeling.

  Daryl lay on top of the bed, head slumped half off the pillows, a shining coat of red across the covers and wall behind him. On that wall, written in foot-tall strokes, were two words that tore the last thread of reason away from her.

  I’m sorry. Red letters of betrayal so much worse than adultery.

  She stumbled and fell backwards, barely catching herself on the wall. She slid down the flat surface to the floor, staring at those words.

  I’m sorry.

  Words that didn’t absolve him of guilt, words that were a declaration she hadn’t expected, because if he was sorry, then that meant he’d done this. He’d killed them all. Her sister and children, her lovely, gorgeous, sweet babies, and then himself.

  Gaze fixed on those two words that meant nothing and everything, she dug into her back pocket for her phone. She brought it out and fumbled for a moment, disoriented fingers finally moving to swipe across to the emergency services button. A brisk woman’s voice came on the line, loud in the silence surrounding Misty. “Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”

  “He’s killed them all. He’s killed them all.” Saying the words aloud made everything real, the pain in her chest crippling and her voice rose to a scream.

  Misty blinked, her eyes scratchy and dry as if they’d been open too long. The man was close, her front plastered against his chest, and he was humming a song. Soothing and slow, it felt primal as it shook through her bones. Relief, sweet ease, followed every note, lessening her pain moment by moment. She tensed to step to the side and away, out of reach of this stranger conjured by her grief, pulled from the ether by that damned desire to have things be different. “I wish,” he said, the sounds scarcely interrupting the melody being birthed deep in his chest. “You wished.”

  She surged forwards then, fingers gripping the fabric of his shirt tightly. “Make it not have happened.” She thumped against his chest while shouting the demand, because he’d just told her that the old adage wasn’t true, and sometimes wishes could be horses, and dammit she’d been a beggar for a year now, and she wanted to ride. Ride and ride, and go back in time and turn things around. Ride straight to Daryl and find out why, then get help so she could keep them all. Ride until her babies were safe and sound, ride until they were eating her out of house and home, ride until their dirty laundry lay strewn around their rooms, toys on the stairs, electronics using every outlet, wads of hair in the sink, empty shampoo containers on the shelves, fingerprints on her windows—ride until they were all of them safe and alive. Ride until Dusty sat up on the couch where she’d been suffocated and complained about not having any coffee in her system. Ride until she got back everything she’d lost. Misty shook her hands, rattling her own bones in the process. “Make it so. Give it to me.”

  “I heard you.” The song he hummed changed, notes stretching until they sounded drawn from a mistuned zither. “We all heard you, but I came.”

  “Can you give them back to me?” She squeezed her eyes shut as brilliance blasted through the room, the light having a weight that staggered her on her feet, only the grip of her fingers in his shirt holding her upright.

  “I cannot.” She keened then, agony racing through her at the scant hope suddenly ripped away. “I’ll do what I can, but there are limits.” He paused, and she angled her head, listening to a faraway hum that seemed to race towards them. There was another bright flash, and her eyes burned and wept until opening them wasn’t an option. “Listen closely. Can you do that? You wished, but there are limits.”

  “Yes, yes. Anything. Please, oh please.” She pleaded through the pain and curled her wrists to pull herself another inch closer to this man, this angel, this dream that held the key to her future. “I just have to talk to Daryl. He can’t have understood what he was doing. If I talk to him, I can change things. I just need to talk to him. Let me talk to him, please. Please, oh please.”

  That was what kept her confused and weeping: why the man she’d adored had destroyed the one thing he’d most loved, the accomplishment he’d held up as life-changing—their family. She’d mentally run through their last conversation a thousand times, searching her memories for any oddness. That call had occurred the day before the disaster, the event, and he’d been in a hurry, heading into a session at a conference where he’d been presenting. After a quick “I love you” and a faster “see you soon,” he’d been gone. There hadn’t been anything off about the exchange. She couldn’t find anything, because there wasn’t anything to find.

  About six months after her family died, Misty had read an article about a woman who had fallen and hit her head, then woke up days later unable to speak the language she’d learned as a child, speaking instead a foreign language no one in her family understood. It was an etymological mystery. That article had led Misty to another about a man whose personality had changed overnight, and he’d done and said terrible things to his family and friends, only to drop dead the next day with a brain aneurysm.

  If only, she’d mourned. If only she’d been home. If only she’d known he was returning early from the conference. If only she’d been able to talk to him. She was convinced that something—an accident, a burgeoning illness—something had changed him irrevocably and taken her family from her in the process.

  Her frenzied research told her most men who killed their families fell into various categories. They’d lost employment and hidden it from their spouse. Or they’d done something that would be horrifying to society and felt taking their family with them was better than leaving them behind to face the repercussions. Or they did it out of revenge when relationships fell apart, but she and Daryl had a lifelong bond, a good, healthy rapport, and loved each other.

  The not knowing had caused a spiral into the deepest part of her grief. If she’d been a better wife, better mother, better sister—she would have heard, seen, or understood that something was terribly wrong and saved them all.

  Her children had been stiff and cold by the time she’d gotten home, Dusty had suffocated on the couch, broken blood vessels spreading crimson from her body’s efforts to take in air—but Daryl had still been warm. If she’d only gotten home earlier, if she’d not worked that night, if she’d stayed with her children—if she’d talked to him, they would have all lived. He would have lived.

  The biggest dichotomy between her emotions and anger was how she felt about Daryl, even now.

  She loved him. Had loved him since their second date and loved him still. She hated what he’d done, but she held tight to the idea that he hadn’t been in his right mind. He’d been sick, but she hadn’t known, hadn’t prevented what had happened. It all rested on her shoulders, and her in-laws shared that point of view. Her parents argued against it, no matter they’d lost their other daughter to her husband’s illness, no matter they’d lost their beloved grandchildren—they remained certain and steadfast in their allegiance with Misty and against Daryl. Her mother had forbidden the mention of his name in her presence, which had left Misty without a trusted sounding board for her ideas about what had been wrong with him.

  “Please.” She looked at the man, this angel who hadn’t existed even fifteen minutes ago, and believed. Clouds appeared in his eyes. An ominous, roiling gray mass of danger covered his corneas, and she winced and turned away, waiting for that stabbing flash again.

  I can stop it

  Instead, Misty experienced a painful stretching. Agony erupted along every nerve as her muscles strained tautly and then shredded. Bones broke into a thousand pieces and were set on fire with burning acid. The torment went on and on until it was all that existed in her world, was the only thing that had ever been. The agony reached into the past, covering all of her history with a patina of anguish. Each breath pulled in pain, a
nd that was acceptable because it was all everything could ever be.

  “Remember, there are limits.”

  Those words resonated through the scorched channels of her mind, each vibration molding into knives that bit into her thoughts, wiping them free of personality and memories of her life. It continued until the ache was everything and nothing. And when it became so commonplace it was unremarkable, just how her existence was, the stretching abruptly stopped.

  She snapped back into herself, every muscle contracting into tight cramps of discomfort, focused, small and local—and so much less than the decades of agony that had come before that she laughed.

  A car horn blared nearby, and she blinked. Hands at ten and two, she stared at headlights that glared at her from over the steering wheel and reacted instinctively. Yanking the car away from the oncoming collision, she clumsily overcorrected. The rear end of the vehicle skidded sideways, and a tire recoiled off the curb and bounced her car straight back into her own lane.

  Both feet on the pedal, she abruptly braked until the nose of the vehicle dipped sharply. Cars honked as they flowed around her on the left, and she realized where she was. This downtown bypass was her normal route to and from work, and thank goodness it wasn’t rush hour, or she’d be dead right now.

  Rush hour.

  Her gaze flicked to the clock on the dashboard and she stared. Just past midnight.

  My babies.

  Misty stomped hard on the accelerator, deftly twisting the wheel when the car threatened to fishtail out of control. Horns sounded in a cacophony of noise, and she sped away from the results of her sudden stop. She raced up the highway and down the next exit, making a loop and getting back on the bypass until she returned to her normal route, then exited again, traveling the city streets at speeds far in excess of anything legal.

  I can stop it.

  She remembered everything from that night, even the pieces she had wished would fade away: her sweet girl’s dead eyes, her son crumpled on the floor like discarded laundry, and her brave baby boy facing his death head on. Her sister killed without waking. Her husband, dead by his own hand, gun flung to rest on her pillow. False comfort from cops and family who soothed her that he’d felt remorse, because why else would he have written those two words in the blood from their children?

  Leaving the car parked crookedly in the drive, door hanging open with the tinny chiming ding of the key reminder ringing in her wake, she raced past Daryl’s car, through the garage and into the house.

  Silent. Quiet as the grave. Dusty on the couch in the too-well-remembered posture. Misty wailed, crying out her heartache even as she sprinted up the stairs. There was a wet patch on the carpet, and she had the odor of disinfectant from where Daryl had cleaned up his own vomit in her nostrils. Too late. She was too late.

  “No, God. No.”

  He wouldn’t have sent her back if she couldn’t change things. She’d asked and asked, begged for it to have not happened. Needed to talk to her husband so she could stop things in their tracks. Change the fate of her family.

  As she turned the corner at the top of the stairs, her gaze landed on Chad’s door. It was shut tight, and she stumbled to a halt, falling to her knees with a palm covering the bottom half of her face to hold back her scream. He’d been the last killed, hiding in his closet from the horror that stalked through their home.

  “No.”

  Movement at the end of the hallway startled her. Daryl stood there, a bloody rag in one hand, his other hidden at his back as if whatever he held was embarrassing.

  “Oh my God. Daryl, you’re okay.” Misty struggled to her feet, listing heavily to one side, breathing so fast the sound of it rushed through her ears, blocking out almost everything else. “You’re okay. God, you’re okay.”

  “You don’t know, Misty.” His face twisted in anger, and Misty watched in shock as his mouth drew up into a sneer. “You never notice anything. I’m glad you’re here. I didn’t think I’d get to see you again. Do you know what I’ve done? Do you know?”

  “What, Daryl? What don’t I know? What’s wrong? Please, tell me.”

  “I’ve hated this.” He swept the air with the rag, leaving a swipe of red on the doorframe. “Everything. I’m just suffocating and suffocating and no one even notices. I could lie down dead and no one would notice.”

  “Daryl?” This wasn’t the confused man she’d expected to find. The remorseful one who’d said “I’m sorry” too late to make reparations. The man in front of her was enraged at something she couldn’t wrap her head around. “What’s going on?”

  “What’s going on is I’ve taken steps.” He threw his shoulders back proudly. “I’ve taken steps, and tonight I finally, finally, made the right move.”

  “What steps? I don’t understand.” She pushed off from the wall and stumbled towards him, stopping in shock when he brought his other hand into view, pistol gripped tightly. “What have you done, Daryl? Why?”

  “My job, this house, the kids…” He shook his head. “You. Nothing’s like what I expected. I wanted to rule the world, and what do I get instead?” He swept the rag out to the side again, painting another swath of red on the doorframe. “I get this, this…shit. This shit, that’s what I get. Well, I’m done. I’m done, done, done.”

  “Daryl?” She took a step towards him. “I don’t understand. Tell me what’s wrong. Tell me what’s happened.”

  “What’s happened is I took my life back. This is me, taking it all back. I take it all back, Misty. You can’t have any of it.” He lifted the gun, and for a moment she prayed he was going to shoot her, kill her here in the hallway, out of sync with what had happened before, but death was far preferable to the tortured existence she’d scraped out for the past year. The swing of the gun continued past a point where it would intersect her, raised in a smooth movement to point at his head. Then there was a roar. The wave of sound knocked her back to her knees as Daryl blew the top of his head off.

  Knees aching as she knelt on the carpet, Misty looked up a hallway with bare walls towards the falling body of her husband and shrieked, screaming until something broke in her throat and all that came out was a whining gust of air. It took forever for his body to land, crumpled into a pile of dark suit fabric and red, so much red. The blood was everywhere. Just beside him she saw a gleaming white piece of skull, upended when his hand flopped to the side.

  There are limits

  The hallway stretched, growing longer and longer until she lost sight of Daryl’s body in the distance, the open doorway to the bedroom she’d never again sleep in looking smaller than a mouse hole. Only moments had passed when the pain began in earnest, her muscles and bones breaking and rearranging, thinning down until she could slowly curve back through the eye of a needle, oozing and flowing into herself as an air-starved pile on the living room floor. Her chest convulsed, trying to pull in enough oxygen to sustain life, and she coughed hard, wrapping her arms around her chest, holding herself together. Curled into the fetal position on the floor, she tasted bright copper.

  “You wished.”

  His voice was an unexpected beauty in this moment of fresh grief and hurt, when she held so much pain, the shock of what she’d seen tearing her apart without any promise of an ending.

  “I couldn’t—” More coughing, every moment filled with these consuming and racking shudders of expelled breath that took up all her attention. They passed, finally, and she tried to recapture her thoughts. “I couldn’t change anything. You didn’t send me back far enough. You didn’t do what you said you would.”

  “You wished to talk to him. Your husband. You talked to him, did you not? Isn’t that what you wished for?” The voice changed, became an unfamiliar reproduction of her own, flat and monotone as an old recording. “I just need to talk to him. Let me talk to him, please. Please, oh please.”

  “But I couldn’t change anything.” She shook her head, eyes clamped shut in rejection of the reality that she was once more in her body,
returned to her empty house, and back in her destroyed life. “You didn’t do it right.”

  His voice took on a resonance, doubling back on itself until the words were hard to understand. “We did what you asked.”

  Anger rolled through her. It was unacceptable that a being with this kind of power wouldn’t take responsibility when things under their direction went south. In Misty’s world, owning the successes meant someone had to also own the messes.

  She pushed to her hands and knees, then her feet, wavering as her eyes opened and flooded with white light. She pressed her palms deep into the sockets, pushing against the hard ridge of bone until the throbbing pain retreated. “You could have told me. I thought you were going to help me stop what happened. You didn’t, you made it worse. Why? Why would you do that?”

  She staggered towards him, fists held up beside her head, ready to pummel him in her anger.

  “You asked.”

  “You had to know what would happen.” Her throat ached as she shouted the accusation.

  Head tipped to the side, he looked at her with a gentle, soft expression filled with sorrow. He nodded once, slowly, a deliberate dip of his chin in response.

  “Why then, why would you do that?” She shook her head violently, dumbfounded. “Why would you make me go through that?”

  “There are limits.”

  “God, stop it. Stop it. That’s what you keep saying, but it’s not enough. That’s not… You didn’t explain what you meant. You didn’t tell me I couldn’t stop it.” She whirled away and screamed, sound bouncing off every flat surface until the room boomed with her pain. She blinked and he was in front of her, in the exact same position, but here instead of there, as if he couldn’t bear to not be the center of her attention. “My children are dead again. They went through that without me there. My husband, my Daryl, he said the most horrible things. Nothing’s changed except now I know he thought it was all my fault. That I didn’t listen, I didn’t see what was happening. And nothing changed. Nothing.” She lost her battle with grief and bent double, folding in on herself with the agony of that fresh discovery. “They’re dead. They’re dead. Don’t you understand? They’re dead.”