The girl in the Window

Jake stood in the entrance to the once grand and opulent but now empty room that served as his office in the long since abandon estate.  Drawing in a lung full of smoke he pulled the half burned cigarette away from his lips and exhaled in an exasperated and defeatist manner.

He gazed at the hole in the roof where the imported, antique, Austrian crystal chandelier once hung in the middle of a huge carved medallion hand painted in 24 Karat gold leaf that was violently ripped down and now stood a reminder of how desperate he had become. 

The handmade desk, a replica of the president’s desk in the oval office, mahogany filing cabinets, and marbled top assistants desks torn open, and broken into with the papers strewn about still reflected in his mind, fresh and clear as if it were still like that. 

In the bottom right corner the lawn chair slowly appeared, a thought he had so desperately tried to suppress, the reason for what was now.  His hand trembled as he drew off his cigarette in the same way but this time tensing his face into a grimace his thought tightened and a tear came to his eye.

This was the spot they had found him.  He laid there unconscious and near death, the needle still hanging out of his arm, yet to him a state of ecstasy, comfortable, euphoric in a beautiful wonderful world of chemical delight.  Things couldn’t have been better, he had finally escaped the harsh reality of the cruel world and found his eternal bliss, this was the high that would never end, or so he had thought again, as he had done an immeasurable amount of times before.

 He had fallen so hard, wondering where he had lost control and why he hadn’t noticed before he reached the bottom.  He fought for years to pull himself back up and had finally done it, not to the point he was before, but to a clean respectable level.

There, standing in the window, as she was as a child, his precious reason for living, and the reason for his recovery. The beautiful and strong woman she became, and yet the remembrance of her childhood innocence and wonderment that kept her staring out the window hours on end that snapped him back into a reality that wasn’t as bad as he had perceived after Lorraine had left.

He was grateful that he had protected her from himself by setting up a fund that he couldn’t touch when she was born. She was at school abroad when he collapsed and would never know what had really happened, and that was for the better.  He was a success after all.  She never lost that curious and innocent child in the window.