* * *
All Jennifer could think when she saw the car on its back against the tree was, “Aw, Ben. I kept telling you to slow down,” because she knew that this was what happened. This was how he was going to end and there he was. She didn’t even have to go and check the car to see if there was a chance because she knew from looking that there wasn’t. People don’t survive that kind of crash. Ben certainly wouldn’t have survived it given that he was probably doing 80 like he always was and she was always giving him a ticket for. She should have had his license taken away, but it never seemed the right thing to do even though now it seemed like it would have been right. But it’s easy to know the right thing to do after the wrong thing happens. This was wrong. Ben was doing something and now it wouldn’t get done and she knew that somehow they would all suffer. She knew that what he was doing was important because it was the reason he stopped being sheriff and now that he was dead he would never be sheriff again. As she got out of her patrol car, the thought escaped her lips. “Aw, Ben, I kept telling you to slow down.”
Now she had to be official. Being official meant a lot of things to her, but in the case of an accidental death on the highway, it just about always meant that she would be the one to notify the next of kin. It was something she did at least three times a year and it never got any easier and she remembered each one vividly. If there was ever a reason that she would leave law enforcement, it was telling someone that a loved one (or, quite often loved ones) had died in a less than peaceful way. It was always a long drive and then a longer walk to the door. The last time, it was Fiona Margoles who had fallen asleep at the wheel and drifted in front of a semi. The trucks always win these disputes. But it wasn’t just Fiona in the car. Fiona had a three year-old daughter in the back. Her daughter’s name was Meaghan. Ken Phipps, who was driving the truck, suffered a broken collarbone and a broken heart. He didn’t know the woman or the child and he knew it wasn’t his fault, that there was nothing he could do. And there was nothing he could do. And yet he felt the weight of their deaths upon his soul to the point that he took his own life, drunk behind the wheel of a smaller vehicle that lost a battle with a tree. Jennifer didn’t catch his death, though. She didn’t have to tell his wife and son that their beloved husband and father, who was already dead on the inside, wouldn’t be home again. That was left to another trooper. Jennifer had to take that long drive to see Doug Margoles. Doug Margoles who didn’t live so far outside of Woodstock that when people asked him where he lived he would answer Woodstock because he liked the sound of living there. Doug Margoles who worked for years and saved for more to move his wife up to Vermont and away from the more dangerous parts of the country, up to Vermont that they both dreamed about for years and had never stopped dreaming about as being something of a paradise for them, where the seasons announced their changes with aplomb and the world seemed like it was made for people to adapt to live in as opposed a place that people adapted. Doug Margoles who watched her make that long walk up the path from the driveway through the screen door and was swallowed up whole by grief even before she said how sorry she was and that his wife and daughter probably didn’t suffer much because they could never suffer as much as he did or as Ken Phipps did. They were done suffering right away, but some kept right on suffering. Some couldn’t handle it and drank themselves into a tree. Doug couldn’t imagine Vermont without Fiona. He couldn’t imagine life without her and Meaghan. And not too long after he saw to their funerals and blankly received the condolences of people who may have suffered their own losses but could never really quite understand his pain and lack of understanding that after everything he had done to make the world beautiful and safe for his family that they could be ripped from his life without so much as a “Goodbye” and “I love you.” And not too long after he watched the food that people brought him to eat rot on the counter because he didn’t care if food rotted because rot was all that was left in the world for him. Not too long after that, he wandered out into this place that he dreamed of that ended up a nightmare and ended his life there.
Jennifer knew Ben’s next of kin all too well and wished that she was not the first there who would have to tell Gil his father was dead. She also knew it would be unfair to ask anyone else to do it because she knew him all too well and he would need something like a friendly face because he would blame himself in that way that he blamed himself for every bad thing that happened to those around him and the world around him. Gil wouldn’t be like Doug Margoles, though. He expected the worst and when it came, it only served to cement his beliefs about himself. Strangely, even in all that darkness, he was still always a bit cheerful in his pained kind of way, as if even all of the bad things that seemed to happen around him and to him were just things that happened and there was no reason to get to down about them. She knew that Gil would blame himself for Ben’s death, but he would also survive it. There were others in town who would take it much worse because they had been so hopeful that Ben would come to his senses and take his rightful place in Sheriff Tom’s overbig shoes. Jennifer was one of those. So was Gil. She was sure that Gil would mourn the work his father did not finish and most likely feel some kind of filial obligation to take up his father’s sword and fight his fight. Or he might just record it as part of the town’s long history of tragic events that he kept in his head or some set of journals some place. Gil would take the death well because it was no less than he expected. Still and all, Jennifer had no desire to deliver the news. But, then again, she never did and did anyway.
She approached Ben’s car. Although she was certain of what she would find there, she had to officially look and make her report. She heard another car approach and hoped it would be Sheriff Tom but knew it would be Deputy Steve and that would make this worse. She tried not to look up and instead looked in the car and saw what she expected to see which confirmed the worst and also that Ben probably didn’t suffer much. She heard the footsteps approaching and knew it was Deputy Steve who could never fail to make a bad day worse.