That darkest night

Michelle took a glass of water from the kitchen top and sat on a stool. She gazed through the kitchen window at the clear blue summer sky. Her garden in the yard was blooming, nature was coming alive, and everyone was glad that it was already summer, after the cold winter fueled with winter storms. She was happy that she would be able to groom her garden flowers, and then sell them at auction sales coming up in a few weeks' time. Sitting on a stool in the small, cramped kitchen and holding a glass of water that was off her mind while she admired the full beauty of summer.

She didn't even know how she felt. Coming home from work as a beauty expert at a modeling house reminded her of her failures. She was feeling stupid and out of place- just like all she had been striving and doing for years was already coming down to ground zero.

Life as a single mother wasn't really easy.

Her husband, Tim, had left her and the children ten years ago- just because of business failures that weighed down on him and had turned him into a shadow of himself. She had been a full-time house wife at that time, taking care of two kids under age six, and pregnant with the last child. There was little she could do about that and...

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"You don't have to do this to yourself, Tim." Michelle said, snatching the bottle of alcohol from her husband. She had been all around the house, searching for him, and she had found him on the back porch, drinking alcohol. "Michelle, leave me!" Tim yelled at her. He stood from the chair and came close to her with blood shot eyes. Michelle perceived the strong odor of alcohol emanating from him, and she felt like throwing up.

"No. I'm not going to let you drink yourself to death." she said fiercely as she backed away from him, her hand still tight around the alcohol bottle.

"Bring that to me. Whatever I do doesn't concern you!" Tim shouted again, collapsing in his chair.

"It does, Tim. It does. What are you expecting me to become, if you're downcast like this." Michelle put in as she stood akimbo opposite him. Tim looked at her and laughed. Michelle knew that wasn't his laugh; that it was just a hollow, dry sound that didn't sound like the husband she had married seven years ago.

"You're not doing yourself any good, Tim. You're damaging your system- your kidneys, your liver, and your everything!" she added as she watched Tim stay motionless in the chair.

"Michelle." he sounded normal,

"You don't understand me. I'm out of business, out of the money- you sure can't expect me to be happy." he said, clasping his hands together on his lap. Michelle sighed, feeling her baby inside her moving.

"I understand you're frustrated, but...you don't have to treat yourself this way." she said calmly. "Michelle, I've lost everything. Completely everything I've been working for, in the blink of an eye." Tim replied soberly.

"But there's still hope! Things can be fine once again!" Michelle pointed out, trying to keep her voice low in order to wake her children she had just put to bed few minutes ago.

"What hope? Hope for me? You must be out of your mind." Tim looked angry now. Michelle decided that she wouldn't watch her husband's problems compound. Instead, she would help him out.

"Tim, hear me out. You have to be positive. Get a job and start life over again." she said with a frown, to emphasize her point.

"Where do I start from?" Tim asked her.

"Anywhere! You're not an old man yet. You're just thirty-two years old, Tim." Michelle gave an answer, tapping her foot. Tim laughed again.

"My mates are achieving great things, while I'm just a failure." he said, half-laughing. Michelle folded her arms.

"You're not them." she put in as she stared at him. "Michelle, I'm tired of all this. It wouldn't help at all. You just go in and let me be." Tim says, relaxing in the chair.

"Look, Tim. You've not smiled at me or the kids in many days. Your life and thoughts are a mystery because you don't talk. Laughing is out of your life. You've kicked drinking, melancholic moods and worrying into your life. Stop acting and talking empty. You have to change your mindset, so that things will be okay." Michelle said.

"You can talk, but give me that bottle." Tim seemed not to hear all that she had been saying.

"No." Michelle replied and took the bottle with her. She put it in the wastebasket and brooded on how things were going.

A few days later, Michelle was preparing dinner when she heard the doorbell ring. She hurried out to the sitting room and opened the door. "How has your day been, Tim?" she asked her husband as he entered the house.

"Bad." Tim spat out, sitting on a sofa. Michelle frowned slightly. Her husband was always saying negative things.

"What went wrong?" she decided to ask.

"Don't worry. How are the children?" Tim refused to answer her question.

"The kids are fine. They're in their room." Michelle replied with a sigh.

"Alright." her husband simply said. Michelle knew he was sinking into bad moods again.

"Well, I've prepared salmon salad. I hope you'd like that." she said, instead of prodding him.

"I don't really have an appetite, Michelle." Tim put in immediately. Michelle let her shoulders drop. "You have to-" she was still trying to talk to him when he interrupted.

"Don't bother me." he said sharply. Michelle returned to the kitchen without saying a word.

She served the children and came to sit on the sofa, beside him.

"Tim, we have to pay our utility bills. They're long overdue. The washing machine is damaged too. The property managers came today and threatened to take over our house in three weeks' time if we don't pay the mortgage. The food in the house is running low and I need some money to buy the remaining items for the baby, because I'm having the child next month." Michelle said, staring straight at the TV, fearing her husband's facial expression.

"Go to hell, young woman! How does all that concern me?" Tim said angrily, gesticulating wildly with his arms. "How doesn't that concern you? Our house is nearly taken over, we have to pay our bills and attend to other needs!" Michelle returned, feeling angry with herself.

"Let the management take it over! Let things fall! I want you to know that I don't care a bit!" Tim yelled at the top of his lungs and Michelle had to block her ears.

"Stop it! I'm not the one to blame, Tim. You told me to stay at home while the other women of my age worked. Can you see where it has landed you? Your ego, your pride! You don't have any financial backup because you refused it!" Michelle blinked angrily. Tim stared at her, gritting his teeth.

"You're stupid, Michelle!" he shouted again. "I'm not..maybe you are." Michelle answered fiercely. She was tired of the animal Tim had become. Tim rose from the sofa, put on his coat and headed for the door. "Where are you going, Tim?" she asked calmly, afraid that she had offended her husband. She watched him put his hands into his coat pockets and leave the house. She immediately rose from the sofa and rushed to the door. "Tim! I'm sorry! Please come back!" Michelle shouted after him. He didn't even look back.

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And he never looked back, she thought. Michelle still remembered that night - the worst night she ever had. She had phoned all his relatives and friends, and had gotten no positive reply. She had been worried until she had found a note on the sofa near the door. He wrote that he was tired of life, and he wanted to leave her to start another life, and that she shouldn't bother to look for him. She had cried so much, because he had left her to deal with all the problems- the mortgage, the bills and all. She didn't have a job, so she couldn't do anything.

Michelle huffed and took a sip from the glass of water. She remembered moving to her parents' house and having her baby there. She stayed there for only three months when a serious drama happened.

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Michelle and her mother were in the sitting room, discussing while they watched a movie on the television.

"I think you'll have to rest for four months more before getting yourself a job, Michelle." Jane, her mother said. Michelle shifted uncomfortably in her chair. She had already been in her parents' home for three or four months now, and she had been getting worried that she was becoming a burden to them.

"No, Mom. I just need two months. By then, I'll be okay." she countered, after thinking about it. Jane shot her daughter a questioning look. "Why? You can't ever be strong by then!" Mom said as she stared at Michelle.

"I have to get a job and make a living. I can't continue to get a burden to you and Dad." Michelle answered with a smile, patting her mother's arm.

"But -" Jane was still talking when the doorbell rang. Michelle rose from the sofa to see who was there. It was her older brother who had left home for years. "Christopher!" she said, her voice ringing with excitement as she threw her hands around her brother. Christopher patted her back. "It's good to see you again, Michelle." he put in with a broad smile. "Look who we have here!" Mom had also walked up to the door. Christopher extended one of his arms and brought his mother close in a warm embrace. "I'm going to phone Dad, Brenda and Loretta!" Michelle said as she went upstairs to her room to get her phone.

They had a big celebration of friends and relatives. And it was a week after that bombshell landed.

Michelle had been ready to visit her older sister, Brenda, and was putting her baby into the baby carrier when she heard the doorbell ring. "Yes?" she answered as she heard the doorbell ring. She quickly strapped her child and went up to the door to open it. She met a man in his fifties staring at her, and there were two other men behind him.

Michelle wondered what they were here for, since the men didn't look like policemen. "Good afternoon, sir." she addressed the man standing directly in front of her. "Good afternoon, ma'am. We're the owners of this house." the stoutly built man said and flashed some documents in front of her. Michelle was really taken aback. "No. I guess you're in the wrong place, sir. This house belongs to my parents- Mr and Mrs Carney." she answered with a frown. She didn't understand what the man was really talking about. "It has been sold already. Can I meet with your parents?" the man looked like he was running out of patience. "Just a minute, please." Michelle answered and quickly went up the stairs to call Dad and Mom from the balcony. "Mom! Dad!" she just called out just as she got to where they were sitting. "What is it, Michelle?" Dad asked immediately. "Some men are here... they're claiming ownership of this house. They request to see you both!" Michelle said in an alarming tone. "What?" Mom was shocked.

Michelle hurried downstairs with Mom and Dad following her from behind. "It was one Mr Carney that sold it to us." One of the men said, after a lot of questions. Michelle, Mom and Dad were amazed. There was only one Mr Carney apart from Dad - Christopher. How did he do this?, Michelle asked herself, dumbfounded. "Let me go and check, please." Dad said and went up the stairs in a flash. Michelle guessed that Dad had gone to check where he had kept his documents in the study. Even she herself was trying to get a grasp of how issues were twisting. Twisting very complicated.

The fact came out: Christopher had come home to steal Dad's documents. And he had sold all of them in it. Michelle watched Mom and Dad cry the day the company came to take over their house. It was the only thing that the grey-headed fellows could call an achievement. They had all moved to sister Brenda's apartment, but it wasn't big enough for all of them. So, Michelle had to get a job and...

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Michelle laughed to herself. That time seemed like a film trick when it happened. She was caught up in the midst of it all because she had been dependant. All because of the husband that left her struggling, not caring about whatever became of them. It had been ten years already, and she hadn't seen a sight of him at all.

Ten years later, she thought, as she felt a kind of anger rise in her. Ten years of struggling to pay the mortgage, ten years of having life toss her around uselessly, and ten years of living with the terrors that she called children- Melinda, Andrew and Jason. Those her children were making life a living hell for her. They were always around her neck, and she was always concerned about them. Especially her fifteen year old daughter, Melinda. The girl was going too wild for her to be curtailed, and she was even tired of her. Andrew has his own problems also - he was forever chasing girls. He was a handsome thirteen year old, tall and hefty, so the girls kept after him too. Jason kept on complaining. Her ten year old boy wasn't a good factor to deal with at all. She felt her good wasn't yet her best, although she had been trying.

Her kids saw her as the worst ever. She drank a little from the glass of water. No mother could tell her that she understood what she was going through. She had been seeing stubborn kids all her life, but her own children? Oh God! They were naughty, stubborn, stupid and always defensive. She was trying to cope with them, but the more she tried, the worse they became. She didn't know what had happened to all of her kids! She had raised innocent kids; not the ones that were goats, and weren't ready to listen to whatever she said.

"Mom." Melinda walked into the kitchen. Michelle rolled her eyes, knowing what was coming next.

"Yes, Melinda." she answered dryly, still facing the kitchen window.

"You keep pissing me off, Mom. All the time!" Melinda put in.

"What do you mean?" Michelle wanted to know. She had been doing everything within her power to make life good for her children, but...they were never satisfied.

"Aren't we going for a vacation this summer? You are not planning anything, Mom." Melinda moved closer, and stood in front of Michelle.

"I don't know if we would have a vacation this summer, Mel." Michelle replied indifferently. "Just like last year? Are we going to sit at home all through the summer?" Melinda chipped in with a concentrated frown.

Michelle stared blankly at her daughter.

"I don't have the money to do all that, Melinda." she says as she returned her gaze to the blue sky outside.

"You're not always having the money. All the time!" she heard Andrew's voice in the kitchen. "I've told you what I mean. You guys should have your summer inside the house! I'm not ready to pay any extra costs!" Michelle turned to face them. She wanted to get them her point- she didn't ever want them to go on a vacation. "Just hear yourself, Mom. Every good parent takes their children on vacation every summer." Melinda says, raising her voice.

"Don't dare talk to me in this manner, Melinda Benson. Don't you ever!" Michelle blinked furious eyes at her daughter. Melinda and Andrew stood there, unshaken.

"Are you annoyed because we said you should let us have a vacation? I don't understand you, Mom." Andrew was the first to talk. Michelle pouted her lips and narrowed her eyes- a sign to show that they were passing their boundaries.

"I work as a beauty expert, and my salary isn't usually enough after paying the mortgage, bills, and other things. I don't have the money to do all those vacation stuff. It's as simple as that." She looked straight at both of them.

"Then, get another job! You're always saying that you're doing this, doing that. I'm sorry to say that you're not doing anything." Melinda said.

Michelle had the hold back tears. So, my children don't even see anything, she thought, caught in her head by those sharp words.

"I have you a place to sleep and call home, I get you guys three square meals, I buy you clothes...and you say you don't see it?" she said, trying to contain her anger. She felt like slapping both of them into the wall, but she wouldn't do that. Like it or not, they weren't going to cajole her to blow her money on some profitless summer vacation.

"I don't see it!" Melinda yelled angrily.

"I don't care if you see it or not. I'm doing my best." Michelle put in with a grimace on her face.

"You're not, Mom." Jason came in, holding his basketball, probably ready to play basketball with his friends with friends around the corner. Michelle stared at them and didn't say anything as her children poured down angry words.

After they left, she felt a hot tear coming down her cheek. Her kids made her feel like a total failure, and she couldn't take everything in. She looked down and stared at her wedding ring still on her finger. She wished Tim could be at home with her to train the goats that her children were turning into.

Since he wasn't, she realized that she had to take things the way they were...