Enjoy!
The emotionally shattered assembly of people who came to pay their respects to Daniel’s life and remains trudged along the burnt red ground of Redrock Canyon, surrounded by a sere sagebrush landscape. Dark copper tones draped the rocks in a furious homage to the molten rock that formed them millions of years ago. The mountains were flanked by a partly cloudy sky, sending intermittent flashes of light to flare the colors in the canyon to even brighter hues.
Maggie was chosen to spread Daniel’s ashen remains on top of the sea of rusted crimson dust and sand, surrounded by Daniel’s family and the few friends he had: Maggie, his mother Catherine, Daniel’s boss, John, a few of Daniel’s co-workers, and some friends Daniel had made over the years of being sober.
Daniel, you bastard, Maggie thought to herself as she dabbed a tissue into her face. Why did you do it? You’ve left too many questions behind. So many things I wish I could ask you. She had worked so hard to turn around his life, to make him understand that life was more than just drugs and self-loathing. The realization that a good portion of her life the last three years had been spent working with Daniel increased the aching. The email she received minutes before his death was just as troubling, for reasons she hadn’t had time to look into yet. Walking along the dusty ground, Maggie pondered over her relationship with Daniel. Seeing Daniel’s mother a few steps ahead created waves of memories, nearly flooding Maggie’s senses as she meandered along the trail.
Maggie had grown up with Daniel. When Sharon, Maggie’s mother, packed up her things and left her father’s cheating heart, she took her six year old daughter with her and moved away from the sprawling Hell that was Phoenix and landed in Henderson, an urban hub of Las Vegas. Renting a fairly moderate home, Sharon worked two jobs to support her and her daughter, working at a local burger joint in downtown Henderson, and cashiering at Wal-Mart during the occasional evening and weekends. No matter how hard things were for them, Maggie remembered Sharon never asked for monetary assistance from anyone. Maggie was very proud of her mother, and her independent nature came about from watching her mother survive, adapt and thrive against all odds.
What Sharon did need help with was finding some place for Maggie to stay while she worked. At the time, Henderson had a predominantly Mormon population. Sharon took advantage of this and used her time at church to create social networks with other families who sympathized with her situation and were happy to take care of Maggie while Sharon flipped burgers and took people’s cash for cheap plastic crap. One of those families was the Redcliffe family. Catherine Redcliffe quickly became a second mother for Maggie without any hesitation. Catherine and her husband, James, had one child; Daniel, a shaggy-haired blonde six year old who was happy to share his toys with a girl. Within weeks of first meeting each other, Maggie and Daniel became inseparable, riding their bikes together, skinning their knees together, and snitching pecan sundries from the pantry together.
Maggie remembered when thunderstorms would strike during later summer, causing severe flooding and power outages, she would sit in Daniel’s room with a flashlight, and attempt to land Daniel’s various baseball caps and hats on each other’s heads. Even when the power came back on, they would continue the silly game.
Sharon also improved her financial situation, taking night classes at UNLV in teaching. By the time Maggie and Daniel moved onto B. Mahlon Brown Junior High School together, Sharon was teaching at their previous institution of learning, Robert Taylor Elementary. Maggie and Daniel continued their friendship throughout Junior High and High School. As Maggie neared the age of sixteen, she began to wonder if their friendship could become something more substantial.
Then, like a plot twist one doesn’t see coming in a mystery movie, the unthinkable happened. On Monday, March Twenty-Seven, The Year of our Lord Two Thousand, James Redcliffe was involved in a severe motor vehicle accident. He died on the scene.
Maggie remembered crying for hours with Daniel. After all, James and Catherine played as much a part of raising Maggie as her own mother had. She told herself she would be there for her friend. After the funeral, however, Daniel became increasingly distant from Maggie and Catherine. He would run away for days and then reappear out of the blue, clearly on some sort of drugs. Maggie was heartbroken. She wanted to help him so much, but she couldn’t come to grips with how to control Daniel’s growing anger at nearly everything. Catherine put Daniel in therapy, but he wanted nothing to do with it.
James’ death shattered Daniel’s psyche into unrecognizable shards of glass, each one more disturbing than the next. Maggie felt helpless, and eventually she stopped talking to him on the rare occasions Daniel went to school. Their paths separated completely after graduating.
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