Garage Days

“Aren’t you coming, Daddy?” Her voice reached him in the garage, more insistent this time around. Her sing-song refrain drifted down the breezeway; it filled his heart with love and his eyes with tears and, in an attempt to deceive himself that she was not calling to him, he reached for the Bakelite radio on the shelf she had given him for his birthday and turned the volume higher, an act which had been successful many times in the past. She suddenly appeared in the doorway; her face a mirror image of the one he dwelt upon following the car accident that had taken her life more than fifteen years ago. He broke down and shed bitter tears; with his whole heart and soul he sobbed for the mistakes he had made until, finally, he took down the shotgun he kept on cast iron brackets on an otherwise blank wall. Yes dear, he thought, Daddy’s coming.