When Darkness Falls

C
opyright
© 2015 by Jennifer Youngblood

All rights reserved.

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T
he wedding was destined
to be the event of the season, maybe even the event of the year. At least that was according to the society page of the Beaufort Gazette, the authoritative social voice of the region. Of course, anything involving her fiancé’s parents, the Thurmans, was big news in the small antebellum town of Beaufort, South Carolina. The Thurmans were akin to royalty with their long line of blood ancestry that ran bluer than the Atlantic.

Chloe looked disdainfully at her reflection in the full-length mirror. Too bad the Thurman’s social standing didn’t equate to good taste in clothing. Why had she agreed to wear this horrible wedding dress? The once white silk had aged or “mellowed to a warm vanilla,” as her mother-in-law described it. “This dress is gross! I look like a lump of old mozzarella cheese,” she moaned.

Her mother stepped up behind her and began fluffing the sleeves. “Oh, it’s not that bad,” she cooed, but the tone in her voice said otherwise. Her eyes met Chloe’s in the mirror. “You could always tell Jane that you changed your mind and want to wear your own dress. Every girl deserves to wear the dress of her choice on her wedding day. I’m sure she’ll understand.”

“I seriously doubt that!” Chloe muttered, rolling her eyes.

“It has certainly seen better days,” her mother quipped.

Better days?
She looked like she was wearing a funeral dress! Not to mention the fact that it was squeezing her in two! They could barely get the thing zipped.
If only she didn’t have to breathe.
She gulped in a shallow breath at the thought and felt the fabric stretch in protest.

“What am I gonna do? Dan’s gonna take one look at me and want to run back to Afghanistan.”

“He’ll think you’re beautiful, honey. No matter what you’re wearing.”

Chloe ran her hands through her hair. “This thing is hideous! I hate it!”

“Well … it’s not the most attractive dress … it’s just so … old.”

“And ugly!”

“Why don’t you let me talk to Jane? Surely she’ll understand.” She pointed. “Look, the waist is a little snug.”

“Yeah, Mom. You do that. You talk to Dan’s mom and explain to her why I can’t walk down the aisle in the dress that has been in the Thurman family for generations. She made a such a big deal about giving it to me and told me this long story about how she wore it and how her mother-in-law wore it and so on.”

Her mother started chewing on her bottom lip. “And all of these women were the same size? What is this thing anyway? A size six?”

“I haven’t the foggiest, but it feels more like a size four to me. It’s so tight I can hardly breathe.” Chloe turned sideways and pressed in her stomach with her hands and looked at her reflection critically. “I guess I could not eat for a month.”

Her mother laughed. “I think it’ll take more than a dress to separate you from those chocolate chip cookies you’re always making.”

“MOM! That’s rude!”

“I’m just saying …”

She did have a point. A warm cookie with a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream was sounding good right about now. Chloe turned and faced herself in the mirror. “Maybe I should just wear the stupid thing to make everyone happy.”

Her mother put her hands on Chloe’s shoulders. “This is your wedding day, not Jane’s. This day belongs to you and Dan, and I can assure you—the last thing in the world Dan will be worried about is which dress you’re wearing. I’ll talk to Jane; she’s a reasonable woman…” she frowned “ … I think.” She scratched her head. “Now let’s get this horrid thing off you.”

“Gladly.”

Her mother went to unzip it. The zipper came halfway down and then stopped.

“Uh, oh.”

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s stuck.”

Chloe contorted herself in an attempt to look at her back. “You’re kidding, right?”

“No, unfortunately, I’m not.”

Chloe threw her hands in the air. “Great! What now?” She could feel the blood pumping into her cheeks, and she was starting to sweat.

“Calm down. Let’s try moving it up to see if we can start it all over again.”

She felt the dress tug, but the zipper wouldn’t budge. Tears sprang to her eyes. “I should’ve never tried to put this stupid thing on,” she growled. “I hate this dress!”

“Chloe, calm down. You’re not helping the situation.”

“What am I supposed to do, Mom?”

“Can you try and shimmy it off? If we could just get your arms out of these sleeves.”

They tried to wedge her arms out, but it was like trying to push a hot dog through a pinhole.

“I’ll get this thing off if I have to—” The sound of fabric tearing stopped her cold. “Oh my gosh.” She looked down. The right sleeve was ripped at the seam. “Oh no. Oh no!”

“Stop, don’t move a muscle. I’ll be right back.” Her mom left the room.

Chloe looked at herself in the mirror. She looked so ridiculous with the dress half on and half off that she would’ve laughed were it not for the crying. What a mess! How was she going to explain this to Dan’s mom?
So much for scoring brownie points with the mother-in-law.
At least Dan was coming home next week. If she could just focus on him instead of all of these stupid wedding details that were consuming her life. There was a time when she’d looked forward to planning her wedding, but now she just wanted to get it over with. It had been a long nine months without Dan. They were fortunate in that they were able to Skype a couple of times a week. The rest of the time, they corresponded through email. Dan had seemed distant and guarded when she talked to him the night before last, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. She knew he was in constant danger and tried not to dwell on it for fear that it would drive her crazy. He wasn’t allowed to divulge anything pertaining to his assigned mission, and she’d learned not to press him about it, but this felt different—
personal
. What was it that he wasn’t telling her? Her imagination had been running wild the way it always did, and she’d begun to fear all sorts of things—like maybe he was having second thoughts about the wedding. Hot prickles covered her and then went cold. What if he didn’t love her anymore?

She felt something soft rub against her leg and heard the familiar hum that sounded like the faint roar of a motor. She looked down to see her cat, Beasty. She’d named him that when he was a kitten because of his loud purring, but now that he was a full-grown cat, the name was even more appropriate. He weighed twenty pounds. She’d tried putting him on a diet, but nothing worked. He wolfed down everything that was put in front of him and then some. With his thick coat of orange and white fur, he was a dead ringer for an overstuffed Garfield. Forcefully, he rubbed his head against her leg, purring so loudly that she swore she could feel the vibration in her chest. “Hey, boy, I see you. I just can’t bend down right now because I’m stuffed in this straight jacket!”

Her mother stepped back into the room. “Okay, here we go.”

Chloe gawked. “What’re you doing with those scissors?”

“Cutting you out of this dress before you rip the thing to shreds.”

“Mom, you can’t cut this dress.”

Her mother’s hand went to her hip. “Have another solution?”

Chloe’s shoulders fell. “No.”

“I’ll cut it down the zipper, and then I’ll take it to the alterations shop and have them replace it. They can fix the sleeve too, and then it’ll be good as new.” She grimaced. “Poor choice of words. It’ll be as good as it was before.”

Chloe felt a rush of love for her feisty mother, Naomi, who always seemed to have a solution for everything. She swallowed hard and asked her the question she’d been pondering for the past month. “Do you think that Dan and I are rushing things? I mean he comes home next week, and then the wedding’s three weeks later.”

“Honey, I can’t answer that. Only you can. Do you love him?”

“With all my heart.”

Naomi smiled. “Then that’s your answer.”

A
fter the dress fiasco
, Chloe decided to take her mother’s advice and take a much-needed nap. She closed her eyes and let her mind drift to her favorite topic—Dan. Her mom was always talking about the miracle of unexpected blessings, and that’s what Dan had been. She still chuckled, remembering how devastated she was when her dad announced at the beginning of her senior year in high school that they would have to move because his company was transferring him to a branch of the corporate office in South Carolina. Then Chloe met Dan. From the moment she stepped out of chemistry class and saw him walking down the hall, she knew that he was the one. After they graduated from high school, Dan went to Georgia Tech to pursue a degree in electrical engineering, and she went to the Art Institute in Atlanta to study interior design. It worked out beautifully. The close proximity of the universities allowed them to spend their weekends and holidays together, and Chloe looked forward to the day when they would both graduate and get married. As far as Chloe was concerned, they had their future all planned out; and then out of the blue, Dan announced a month after his graduation from college that he was joining the marines.

Postponing the wedding had been a big deal to her mother. She and Chloe had been planning it since Chloe was a freshman in college. Her mother had already designed Chloe’s dress on paper, and they had chosen the colors and decided on which types of flowers to use. Of course that was before they realized that Chloe was doomed to wear the handed-down lump of cheese dress that was a size too small.

She walked over and looked out at the giant sycamore tree, shaking and shivering in the wind from the approaching summer storm. The air whipping in through the open window felt good against her hot cheeks. She grabbed her phone off the dresser, put in her ear buds, accessed her music, and plopped down on her bed. A few minutes later when she felt herself drifting off, she welcomed it. She didn’t know how long she slept before she felt him beside her. He was right there, almost as though he’d never left for Afghanistan. She breathed in his familiar scent that was a combination of musky, sandalwood cologne and those soft peppermint sticks he loved.

“Dan?” She opened her eyes, and then rubbed them, not trusting what she was seeing. A smile broke over her face. “Dan,” she breathed. “You’re home.”

Her heart leapt for joy. “I’ve missed you so much.” But wait. Something was wrong. Her mind was playing tricks on her. When did he get home? She reached to touch his sandy hair that was casting gold flecks like it did when the sun hit him, but there was only air where he should’ve been.

“Dan, come back!” she cried. “DAN!”

S
he awoke
to find the pillow wet from her tears, and then she saw the rain splattering in through the open window. She got out of bed, closed the window, and then rubbed down the goose bumps on her arms. Her pulse was still beating rapidly. The dream had seemed so real that she had the uncanny impression that if she turned too quickly, she might catch a glimpse of Dan standing beside her. She caught a trace of sandalwood in the air. Dan’s cologne? A shiver ran up her spine, and she glanced out the window at the ominous sky and to the sycamore tree that was practically turning cartwheels in the wind. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
It was just a dream
, she told herself, all the while trying to understand why she was feeling so unsettled. She went to the dresser, pulled out the middle drawer, and grabbed her nail polish. Then, she sat down in the middle of the bed and began painting her toenails. Doing something normal helped calm her nerves—that is until a crack of thunder made her jump. She gasped when the bottle toppled and liquid spilled across the white comforter. Bright red polish. Bright red blood. Dan’s blood spilling across the hot, white sand.
Get a grip!
Where had that image come from?

She looked up when her mother came into the room. “Hey, Mom. I spilled my nail polish,” she started explaining, then her voice trailed off when she saw the odd expression on her mother’s face. Her heart began to pound. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s Dan,” her mother whispered, slumping down on the bed.

Chloe jumped up. “What happened?”

“They said it was a roadside bomb.” Her mother’s mouth was still moving, but Chloe didn’t hear a word.

Everything went black.

L
ooking back later
, Chloe wasn’t sure how she made it past those first few days, and then when it didn’t seem like things could possibly get any worse, Dan’s mom, Jane, collapsed after the funeral and was rushed to the emergency room. Chloe put off going to visit Jane as long as she possibly could, but eventually the day came that she could no longer postpone the inevitable.

“I’m going with you,” her mother said, and Chloe didn’t argue. She needed all the emotional support she could get. It was hard for her to believe that Dan was gone. The funeral had been closed casket, which made matters worse in some ways because she couldn’t even get one last look at him. It was like he’d vanished into thin air.

“Are you ready to go inside?”

Chloe looked at her mom and then back at the venerable old house with the spacious front porch and ivy trailing up the wide columns. It had always seemed so charming and inviting in the past. Now, the closed gate at the head of the sidewalk looked like a fortress that she could never pass. Dan’s world was closed to her forever.

Julian, Dan’s sister, answered the door and gave Chloe a cold fish hug, involving as little body contact as possible, before quickly releasing her and ushering them into the living room where they found Jane sitting on the couch. She was dressed impeccably in a deep purple pantsuit, but grief had left an indelible mark on the stately woman’s features, making her look much older than Chloe remembered. Tears welled in Chloe’s eyes when they embraced, and she let them flow freely down her cheeks.

“Thanks for coming,” Jane said, her cultured voice heavy with sorrow.

Chloe nodded. They sat and reminisced about Dan, even though they knew that no amount of talk could help ease the pain. Everything in the room screamed Dan and brought back so many memories that she half expected him to walk through the door any minute.
He’s dead!
she told herself fiercely.
He’s never coming back!