From the moment we moved in, I could hear the laughter. Soft and melodic, it was like bells in the distance. I couldn’t place where it was coming from, but it didn’t scare me. It was joyful, like a child’s laughter.
At times, it was comforting. When my dog passed away, the laughter accompanied me as I set his ashes on the mantle. When my daughter and I argued and said horrible things to each other, the laughter relaxed my soul. I searched for it longingly, wishing I could locate the source of the peaceful sound.
My daughter and I decorated our home with soft colors and green plants. It was our fresh start away from her father, who had been horribly abusive to us both. This was our salvation. And that laughter served as a prescription for kindness to myself, although my daughter herself couldn’t hear it.
“You’re making things up.” She joked as I braided her hair one evening. At just thirteen, she was very clever, but somehow couldn’t hear the sound I heard.
I smiled, “Maybe.”
As the days went by, I continued hearing the laughter throughout my day. It became a part of my life, and I grew used to it. When I tried to sleep, it often lingered, and I started to tire of it. When I was trying to watch tv, it grew loud, and I begged it to stop. It was persistent.
Then the changes started happening.
I noticed it slowly - my toothbrush went missing one morning. Then my hairbrush. Then my shoes. A book, a carving knife, the remote. All things I had placed in their spots; all things that went missing.
It gave me shivers to consider where they went. I asked my daughter, but she shrugged it off. I assumed maybe she was fibbing.
It was the evening of her 8th grade dance. I helped her get dressed and did her hair. I helped with her makeup and painted her nails. I told her I loved her and told her to go get in the car so I could drop her off.
When I left my house and got in car, I looked at the passenger seat. Where was my daughter? Nowhere to be found. I looked in the backseat, but she wasn’t there either.
“Ari!” I called, stepping out of the car, “Where are you?” She could not have gone far.
I checked all over the house, hauntingly searching for the signs of Ari. Her room was empty. The bathroom was dark. She was nowhere to be found.
I fell to my knees in the living room, for the first time hearing silence all around me. Where was the laughter? Where was my daughter?
Then I heard it, loudly coming from the office. I followed the laughter in and stared at the desk, wishing the laughter would manifest so I could finally understand. I kept walking closer to the desk, and then my eyes met the bulletin board.
In the center, under a pushpin, was the clipping of a news article. The headline read, “Man Kills 13-Year-Old Daughter on Way to School Dance”. My blood ran cold. What was this? I pulled the newspaper from the board and read aloud.
“40-year-old Keith [REDACTED] accused of murdering his teenage daughter on the way to her school dance.
Wife Lily [REDACTED] claims, “I told him earlier in the day that I would be moving out while Ari, our daughter, was at her dance. I would pick her up so she could live with me. On the way to the dance, he looked at me and said, ‘You’re not taking my kid from me. Watch this.’
Lily reports that Keith then pulled a handgun from beside his seat, turned around and shot their daughter between the eyes. Keith has been arrested and Lily states she will be moving out and working with prosecutors to help ensure Keith is punished to the fullest extent of the law.”
I dropped the newspaper onto the floor and fell down onto my bottom, realizing in that moment how dizzy I was. My eyes began to get fuzzy. I started to black out.
The next morning, I awoke on the office floor, hearing the childish laughter surrounding me. My eyes opened and Ari stood in front of me, impatient expression on her face.
“Mom, it’s time to get ready for the dance. Let’s go.” I walked through the motions, getting her dressed and dolled up for the dance. For a moment I forgot the truth, and I laughed along to her childish giggle.
But when the time came to take her out I again entered an empty car, devoid of any sign of my daughter.
And that’s how it is every day. I wake up, surrounded by Ari’s laughter, and I go through the day-to-day events in her life. And every day, she disappears and I find that clipping, reminding me of what I lost.
So here I am, writing it down; a reminder to myself that the devastating moment is coming soon, but to enjoy what her spirit will let me remember.