Yesterday's Gone: Season One

his son tighter and kissing the back of his head.
    Usually, Ben would ask “how much” and they’d play a game where Brent would hold his hands apart in ever increasing amounts, saying, “this much.”
    Ben fell asleep without response. It never failed to amaze Brent how quickly his son could go from fully alert to fast asleep. Or in the mornings, when he rose at the crack of dawn, from comatose to running around the house at warp speed.
    As Brent lay beside his son, listening to his breathing slow and deep, he was tempted to get up and go back to working on his laptop. That was what he usually did after his son fell asleep, went right back to work.
    But this time, something compelled him to stay.
    As he stared at the back of his son’s head, and his soft round cheeks, he was suddenly overwhelmed with tears. How Ben must feel never seeing his daddy, or being brushed aside when Brent had work to finish? He wondered how much damage he’d already done to his child’s psyche, self-esteem, and overall level of happiness by being such an absent father.
    In that moment, his arm around his son, listening to him sleep, Brent started to see things with a clarity he’d never had.
    Time was flying faster by the day, month, and year. Soon, his son would be older and wouldn’t want hugs from Daddy, and certainly wouldn’t want to snuggle with him in bed. And they’d probably wind up battling in the teen years, if Brent’s relationship with his own father was the normal trajectory for father/son relationships.
    Moments like this, where Brent was everything in his son’s eyes, where Daddy could make everything alright with a hug, would soon be gone and lost forever.
    This was it, now or never.
    He decided to change, to make more of an effort to be home for his family. To live his life to the fullest.
    Of course, that’s not what happened. The next day was the first of several staff meetings announcing deep newsroom cuts. Reporters would need to work harder, better, and more hours per week than ever before. Or they’d find themselves next on the list.
    So Brent kept running on the hamster wheel while another year flew by.

    **

    Brent woke with regret drowning his eyes.
    As he wiped his tears, he looked at the recliner and saw that Luis had fallen asleep, a shotgun in his lap.
    What time is it?
    He glanced at his watch, an old fashioned pocket watch Gina had given him when Ben was born. It was nearing midnight.
    He was wondering if maybe Gina had already tried to get in the apartment, but was unable to.
    As Brent rose from his seat, someone knocked on the door.
    Luis snapped awake, gun ready.

    * * * *

MARY OLSON

    October 16
    Just after dawn
    Belle Springs, Missouri

    Mary screamed.  
    Desmond, John and Jimmy were all awake and by her side in seconds. “What happened to her, do you know?” Desmond asked.
    Mary shook her head, hysterical. She opened her mouth but her tongue was trapped. She tried to push a few words out, but the only things to leave were three long strings of guttural moans, followed by a soul-stripped bellow.
    Desmond tried to calm her, but didn’t have the first clue how. Jimmy stared, his verbal cascade uncharacteristically still. Nothing in his upper-class adolescence had prepared him for an unannounced end of the world, or the bottomless torment of a grieving, panicked mother. John’s three miscarriages in six years of marriage gave him the sharpest tools in the room, but he was still too hazy from liquid poison to pull anyone from the abyss.
    Desmond turned to Jimmy and John.
    “John, I need you to sweep the lobby, everywhere across the common area on the first floor. Jimmy, go outside and look for anything unusual. Check the pool and trash areas. I’ll stay with Mary.” Jimmy nodded and turned toward the door. John was already on his way.  
    Mary tried to catch her breath, fighting against the 900-pound weight that sat in her stomach and plugged her throat.  
    She’d been in the wooly midst of a wonderful dream, where everything was okay — before her fate collided with an unimaginable future where her life’s work went from giving the country’s lovers the right words to say when they didn’t have their own, to keeping her daughter from the edge of oblivion. Life’s work that lasted all of a day before driving Mary to failure.  
    No. She couldn't, wouldn’t allow that to happen.  
    “She’s gone...” Two words, but the ending of the second was swallowed by a wave of