Chapter forty two
With tears running down his face, he took Sarah to their room and laid her gently on the bed. He was almost certain she was dead. Still, he ran to the garage, returned with the ball and pressed it into Sarah’s hand. From somewhere far away he heard some one saying, “Officer down”, and after what seemed only seconds, he heard sirens. The room soon filled with Para-medics trying to get to Sarah. He screamed at them to leave her alone and tried to shield her from them.
Ann came in the room and said, “Rick, there is no more you can do. You have to let them take her.”
She put her hand on his arm to pull him back. Rick was in a total fog of grief. The only thing he knew was that he was losing his wife and now someone was trying to force him away from her. He whirled and lashed out with his fist in uncontrolled fury. The blow caught Ann under her jaw and propelled her into the living room where she lay unconscious. Leo tended to his wife while two uniformed police officers subdued Rick and a Para-medic pressed a hypodermic needle into his arm.
When Rick came to, he was lying on the couch and Don and Dot were sitting across from him. Dot had tears in her eyes. He got shakily to his feet and walked toward the bedroom. Dot said, “Please don’t Rick, it hasn’t been cleaned up yet.” Rick kept going as if he hadn’t heard her.
The blood-covered coverlet was lying on the floor and Rick reached down, picked it up and pressed it to his face. A shiny, no almost luminous ball fell out, bounced on the carpet and rolled across the floor. Rick picked it up and returned to the living room. He said, “Are they sure she’s dead?”
“Yes Rick they’re sure.”
“I tried to save her.”
“We know. It was too late Rick. They said she died almost instantly.”
Rick dropped to his knees, bowed his head and sobbed. He was unaware of his tears mingling with the blood on the floor, he was in fact unaware of everything, save for a horrible, empty feeling of loss. He finally became aware that Dot was on her knees hugging him. He sobbed into her shoulder, “How am I going to live with out her?”
Dot said, “I don’t know Rick. I just don’t know.”
Rick finally got to his feet and started for the lanai. The purpose of his movement caused Don to ask him where he was going, but he didn’t reply and may not have even heard him. Don caught up to him at the dock, and asked again, where he was going. This time he answered, “I have something I have to do.”
Don said, “Let me go with you.”
“No I have to do this by myself.”
He started the boat and motored out toward the gulf. When he arrived at the cabin he remembered nothing of the trip. He tied the boat to the dock and looked into the deep spring. He took the ball from his pocket, with tears running down his face and everything a blur he tossed the ball into the center of the spring. He sat down on the dock and muttered, “I’m sorry Sarah, I should never have allowed this to happen. It’s all my fault. I don’t know how I can live with it. I knew there was a chance that he would come back, but I ignored it. I should have moved and change identities again, but I ignored it because I didn’t want to lose this and now I’ve lost everything.”
He sat on the dock crying for a very long time, occasionally he would sob out, “I’m sorry.”
Rick stayed at the cabin that night. The following day he brought every thing he wanted from the house, and moved in. About all he brought were his clothes, the suitcase from the ranch and Toby. He had Jackie sell the house on the river and he never saw it again. before the house was sold, John put quite a few things in storage.
When Rick moved to the cabin he kept the Lincoln but following the funeral he gave Sara’s car to Henrietta. She protested but Rick insisted she would have wanted her to have it and Henrietta knew that it was true.
Rick expected the funeral service to be small with only John, Molly and their closest friends but once the Citrus County Gazette published the funeral schedule, it seemed like most of the town, if not all of Citrus County, showed up. Rick wrote a eulogy but when he got up to give it, he broke down to the point that he couldn’t speak. The chief of police, in full uniform, got up and led him back to his seat. While Ann tried to comfort him, Leo delivered the eulogy. The funeral procession tied up traffic along SR 19 for a half hour.
Rick asked Jackie to sell the house on Manatee Loop. He told her to dispose of the contents anyway that she wanted to and that he really didn’t need to know what she did. He said that he didn’t want to be involved until the papers needed signing and that he would accept whatever she negotiated as sale price.
After a lengthy and costly battle with the bureaucrats of Citrus County, he had Sarah brought from the cemetery and placed next to the cabin. He had a stone cut of rose granite placed on her grave with the epitaph Etty May Hanson Beloved wife of Matthew Macklin. Down in one corner, in small letters was, I’m sorry Sarah. Love Rick. The only date he had put on the stone was the current year.
For the first month after Sarah died Rick was barely able to function. He rarely ate and spent the majority of his time either sleeping or beating his self up over Sarah’s death. Over time he emerged from his fugue and although the pain remained he began to once again have a life. He had electricity installed along with indoor plumbing and added a large bathroom. He never actually put in a driveway but he did have a path cleared through the jungle so that he could get to the cabin by car. He made sure that the path meandered enough that you couldn’t see the cabin from the cleared portion of the property or vice versa.