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The Chasity’s aren't night owls by any sense of the word, but for some reason on this particular night they were still awake long after their usual routine bed time. Something kept both of them awake and unable to even begin their nightly routine, Karen called it nerves, Mark blamed it on the wind. Both just tried their best to ignore it and tire themselves out with mundane tasks.
Karen bakes some cookies, the bake sale is tomorrow and they can never have too much. She sets some aside for Grace, chocolate chip with her special icing was always her favorite. She thinks it'll be a nice surprise for her daughter when she gets home.
Mark thrusts himself into some work projects, choosing to get some done early. Turning his insomnia into productivity.
After a few hours of this, there's a loud knock at the door - if they had been asleep it would've surely woken them up.
“Who could that be at this hour?” Karen asks, it's the first word that's been spoken in hours, she glances at the clock which reads 10:30, “It's quite late.”
“Maybe it's just Grace,” Marks suggests, “She's always misplacing her keys.” He chuckles.
But when he opens the door Mark is met with Detective Shapiro flanked by Officer Bailey. “Are Mark and Karen Chasity?”
“Yes, that's us,” Mark answers. Karen appears at his side and holds onto her arm, her brow furrowed with confusion and a hint of concern. “What seems to be the problem?”
Shapiro and Bailey share a look, “We need you to come down to the Old Waylon Place. There's been an accident.”
“Well I hope it's not termites,” Mark chuckles in an attempt to lighten the mood. The officers aren't amused. His smile fades and Karen’s hold on his arm tightens “We'll tail you I guess?”
***
The drive to the Waylon place is tense and uneasy. It's nothing, Mark keeps telling himself that, just termites. Another side of his brain says that, the police wouldn't be escorting them if it was just termites.
When they get to the house the night sky is lit up with red and blue lights, police cars clogged up the driveway along with an ambulance. Mark spots a couple of teenagers being questioned and others being checked out by paramedics, thankfully he doesn't see Grace among them.
“What on earth could've happened to warrant all these policemen?” Karen asks.
“Probably just those delinquent kids messing around,” Mark says.
“But why would they need us?”
“It is my company's property, probably just a legal thing, it shouldn't take too long,” Mark assures.
“But why would they want both of us?”
Mark doesn't have an answer to that.
It's nothing.
Once they get there Mark takes Karen's hand, tenderly rubbing the knuckles to comfort her. The police meet them at their car, the grave looks still present on their faces. Without a word they gesture to the front door and lead the couple through the mess of police and paramedics. He catches some of the conversation between the kids and police.
“It was just supposed to be a prank!” a kid in glasses and for some reason dressed like Lin Manuel Miranda says, he's shaking like a leaf.
“Yeah, these nerds have video evidence of it too,” A boy Mark recognizes as Max Jagerman adds, “Show them Shitlips,” he slaps a boy with brown hair on the back. The boy fumbles with a camera.
“Hurry up Richie!” A girl with headgear yells, “I'm too sexy to go to jail!”
“Shut up Ruth, you baka!” the boy yells back.
There's another girl with the group, she doesn't look as panicked as the others but more like she's in shock. She's standing hunched into herself and staring at the ground with a blank gaze. The paramedics try to talk to her but she was them away. It takes him a second but he soon recognizes her as Stephanie Lauter, the mayor's daughter. He's seen her on TV with her father a couple of times - looking like she hates life - and he's heard stories of her being somewhat of a rebel but the girl that he spots now isn't anything like the stories.
They're at the front door of the house before he can think about it anymore. The cops have stopped, Detective Shapiro turns around and clears her throat before addressing the Chasitys, Mark holds Karen's hand tighter.
“At about nine o'clock tonight a group of teens decided to hang around the property. Apparently they were just using it to prank each other. The group consisted of Stephanie Lauter, Richie Lipshitz, Peter Spankoffski, Ruth Fleming, Max Jagerman,” she takes a breath, “and Grace Chasity.”
Grace? But Mark had seen all the kids, Grace wasn't among them and she would've called them if anything bad enough that the police had to show up had happened. She would've called. A sudden horrible thought creeps into Mark's brain, the police escort, the ambulance, the both of them being called in.
Karen's hand grips his hand even tighter, it doesn't hurt. It feels grounding.
Shapiro continues, “unfortunately there was an accident…. I'm sorry for your loss.”
The words hit like a truck. Loss? No, it couldn't be.
Grace couldn't be…
She would've called if she…
The detective leads them inside the house and to the living area, “Paramedics pronounced her D.O.A after they got here,” Shapiro says, “I'll leave you two alone for a minute.” She exits the room with a sympathetic sigh and rejoins Officer Bailey.
Mark Chasity has lost close people in his life before, he's always handled it well and has never let his emotions get the better of him. But the sight of his daughter lying dead before him makes him want to fall to his knees and pray that the earth will swallow him whole.
Grace is lying on a pile of rubble and wooden planks that once were the ceiling and upper floor. Cherry red blood spills from a gaping wound in her chest like an erupting volcano's lava, jagged wooden planks at the center of it. Her clothes are ripped, torn and stained red. But what really gets to Mark is her face: her eyes half opened but gaze distant, cold, and dull, and crimson tricking out the corner of her mouth.
Karen is silent as well as she takes in the gruesome sight in front of her until a look passes over her face and suddenly starts laughing. Mark whips his head to the side to look at her because she's laughing. Their daughter is dead in front of them and she's laughing.
“Oh Mark, those silly police had me worried that something terrible had happened,” she says. Mark just blankly stares at her. “She's just passed out, that's all.” Mark’s heart breaks as Karen lets go of his hand and walks over closer to their daughter, “Grace, it's Mom and your father. We're here to take you home.”
She turns back to where Mark is still standing, he wants to move but he can't. “Silly Grace, passing out like that and scaring us half to death,” she's smiling but he sees behind the facade, he sees the grief hiding just behind it threatening to break out any moment. Karen shakily turns back to Grace.
“I saved you some cookies,” Karen says, “they're your favorite. Chocolate chip with pumpkin spice icing.” She takes Grace's hand in her own, her cold, lifeless hand. “Just wake up and we can go home and have some.”
Mark finally moves.
Tears have started to build up in his wife's eyes but her smile remains, “Silly Grace, she's always been a hard sleeper. A bomb could go off and she'd sleep through it.” Karen chuckles.
Mark puts a hand on her shoulder, “She's gone mother.”
“But I made her cookies.” Karen says as she turns to Mark, he places his hand over her’s and the dam breaks. She all but collapses into Mark's chest and he wraps his arms around her. He can feel his own tears threatening to fall, but he holds strong for Karen.
They stay like that for a while until voice alerts them. “Mr and Mrs. Chasity.” They look up to see Stephanie Lauter standing in the doorway. “I uh… just wanted you to know that it's my fault she's dead.” Karen unwraps herself from Mark to stare at the girl. She continues, “I wasn't looking where I was going and the floor gave out and Grace saved me but then the floor below her gave out but… I wasn't fast enough.”
She took a step towards the two, “But I tried to save her I swear. I tried to stop the blood and keep her awake and talking, and moved some of the wood out of the way.” Mark takes notice of the girl's hands. They're scratched up, bloody and full of splinters. The flannel wrapped around her waist is also stained red. “But I couldn't stop it and…I killed her.” The Lauter girl's hands go up to her arms as she hugs them around herself and starts crying.
Mark wants to yell at this girl, scream at her for not trying harder. But when he looks at her he only sees a kid, a kid who had tried her hardest to try and keep his daughter alive.
Karen quickly stands up and walks over to Stephanie putting her hands on her shoulders, “You didn't kill her honey, you tried to save her.”
“But-”
“No buts,” Mark says, “You did your best and we are grateful for that.”
Stephanie looks like she wants to say something more but she just nods, spares one last glance at Grace, mutters a ‘sorry’ and leaves the room.
Shapiro walks in after she leaves, “I know it's soon but we need you to sign some paperwork, when you're ready.”
Karen and Mark nod. “Of course.” Karen walks over to Grace for the last time once again taking her daughter's hand in her own. She tearfully smiles, brushes some of Grace's hair out of her face, and presses a gentle kiss to her cheek. “I love you Gracie.” Karen closes Grace's eyes for her and uses the sleeve of her sweater to wipe the blood from her face.
Mark takes it all in, now her face really did look like she was sleeping. Karen stands up and walks over to join her husband and Shapiro, once more interlocking hands with Mark as they all walk out of the room.
Part of him wants to get out of this terrible house, another part doesn't want to leave his daughter alone knowing that he'll never see her again. He spares one final look at Grace, one tear slips out, he wipes it and continues on.
***
“Daddy? What happens when you die?”
Mark turns to face his very inquisitive six, almost seven, year old daughter. She looks up at him with that face that reminds him so much of himself with a dead serious look in her eye.
“Well you go heaven of course,” Mark says lightly, he turns back to fixing his lunch after just fixing Grace's peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He hopes that Grace will drop the subject, but Grace is her mother's daughter and doesn't let it go.
“But like, does it hurt when you die?” Grace asks as she pokes at her food.
Mark chuckles, “What's with all the questions? Eat your food.”
“Well there's this girl in my class who said her brother died and I wanted to know if dying hurt,” she answers, ignoring his comment about the food.
Mark sighs, a smile tugging at his lips, why was he blessed with such a curious daughter? He briefly abandons his sandwich and turns back to Grace “Dying does hurt sometimes but not all the time. Other times it's peaceful and the people don't feel anything at all. Like going to sleep kind of.”
Grace finally takes a bite of her sandwich, “I don't want it to hurt when I die.” He can see her expression sadden and a tear drip down and splash on her plate. Mark is quick to pick her up in a comforting embrace as more tears fall and she buries her head in his shoulder.
“Aww Gracie don't cry,” he wipes the tears from her face, “You won't die anytime soon, you've got a long life ahead of you and when you do die you'll be surrounded by people who love you and it won't hurt at all.”
Grace lifts her head, to look at him, brown eyes shimmering with tears “You promise?”
Mark smiles, “I promise.”
Looking back at that conversation, Mark thinks that he might've sealed his daughter's fate then and there. He hates himself for it. He's a liar. A dirty rotten lair.
***
After all is said and done the Chasitys head home. It's one in the morning and neither of them even think about going to sleep after the night they had. Mark's work papers are still scattered around the dining room table, the cookies are still on the baking tray on the counter. Karen looks at the ones that she had set aside for a long moment, but she doesn't move them. Mark doubts that she ever will.
His wife goes back to her task of icing the cookies and placing them in Tupperware for the bake sale - they can never have too much. Mark looks at his work papers and thinks about going back to them but he can't, he shouldn't be doing anything.They shouldn't be doing anything. The repeating sound of Karen working is like a hammer beating a nail in his skull.
“Karen can you stop please,” Mark asks. Karen keeps going as if she didn't hear him. “Karen please.” She pauses for a second but doesn't look up, then continues. Mark takes off his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Karen!” She looks up, “Please.”
“What is it Mark? The church bake sale is at eleven and I need to get these cookies done,” Karen says.
“The bake sale can wait,” he says, “Our daughter is dead.”
Karen bites her bottom lip, “Well when God calls you home you have to go. It was her time I gue-”
“No!” Mark explodes. The anger and sadness that has been slowly building up in him all night and that he's been keeping down finally erupts. “It wasn't her time Karen! She was barely eighteen years old!” He chokes on a sob. “I promised her it wouldn't hurt, I promised. But she died in that stupid house and she died alone.”
He collapses into himself and crashes to his knees. She died alone. Karen rushes over to Mark and wraps her arms around him, soon joining him with her own tears.
“How're we supposed to do this?” Mark cries, “Live without her.”
Karen answers, “One day at a time.”
Mark has no choice but to believe her.