My Darling Husband

by Kimberly Belle

  “The only one who calls me Bas is my mother, God rest her soul.”

  “Do you even have a wife?”

  He shrugs. “I guess, though I haven’t seen or heard from her in years. She could be dead for all I know.”

  I don’t respond, mostly because I still don’t know what to believe. There have been so many lies, and if she’s been gone that long, I don’t see how their estrangement could possibly be Cam’s fault. The stories flicker through my head like a disjointed dream, random bits of information he hurled at me over the course of a couple hours. That he grew up in New Orleans, that he moved here after Katrina, that he married his high school sweetheart. The one thing I haven’t forgotten is that this guy was a talker.

  Only one detail matches up to the bits and pieces I’ve heard from him today: “You told me about your daughter. You didn’t tell me what was wrong with her, but you said she was sick. That she was dying.”

  My words hit him like a slap. He winces, then nods.

  A rising high school junior and budding artist, a genius with charcoal and pastels. A sensitive girl with a pretty name.

  “Gigi.”

  “That’s right.” He looks impressed. “She was named after my grandmother.”

  And then, another memory, one that arrives with a sickening spasm. “I promised to help, didn’t I?”

  Actually, it’s worse than that. I made a promise to connect him with one of Cam’s regular clients, a board member at Piedmont Hospital. I wrote down Sebastian’s number and asked for a couple of days to connect the two.

  And then?

  And then I got busy. Running errands and picking up school uniforms at the mall. Meeting friends for lunches and coffees. Carting the kids to violin and soccer and the movies, cooking healthy dinners for my family. I went back to my busy, cushy life, and I didn’t even think about Sebastian and his poor, sweet, sick daughter until many weeks later, when I pulled a wad of lint from the pocket of freshly laundered jeans and connected it to my broken promise.

  But it wasn’t too late. I could have tracked Sebastian down. I could have picked up the phone and called that board member. I could have done something.

  And yet, I didn’t.

  I swallow down a surge of self-loathing. “Jesus... No wonder you hate me and Cam so much.”

  Sebastian barks a laugh. “You think?”

  “I’m so sorry, Sebastian. I wish I had an excuse, but the truth is, I don’t. All those things I told myself at the time, all the reasons I justified not following through...of course they’re all bullshit. I mean, of course I could have followed through. I should have. But the more time passed, the more I just figured...” I look up at him and I search for the right thing to say, even though I know there’s not a word that exists to make this right.

  “You figured what? Spit it out. What did you figure?”

  I wince, closing my eyes. “I figured it wouldn’t matter, since our paths would probably never cross again anyway.”

  “Even though they’d already crossed a handful of times.” He grimaces, shakes his head. “But of course, you didn’t remember that, either, did you? I was just a stranger with a sorry face and a sad story.”

  “I know. And I hate myself for it. If I could go back and change things, I would in a second. The board member’s name is Gordon Howard. He’s in my phone. Let’s call him together, right now.”

  “And say what, exactly?”

  “That your daughter is sick. That you need help navigating her options. You didn’t tell me what she had, but tonight I heard you mention cystic fibrosis. You said she needed a lung transplant.”

  He nods. “Her doctors say they have four, maybe five months left in them, and that’s assuming she doesn’t pick up B. cepacia, which for someone with CF is pretty much a death sentence. She needs that transplant.”

  If I wasn’t convinced before that Gigi is Tanya’s niece, I am now. How many sixteen-year-old girls in Atlanta are facing this exact situation? We must be talking about the same person. We must be.

  “And the most screwed-up part is that the insurance will cover the lungs. But only if I can guarantee I have the money for all the therapy and antirejection drugs she’ll need to have after.”

  I say to Sebastian what I told Tanya when she told me the same story. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

  Beatrix sucks in a breath at the curse word, but she’s heard worse, a lot worse from her father, and if there was ever a situation that warranted the f-bomb, this is it. A girl’s life cut short before it’s really begun, on the verge of womanhood, because her father can’t afford the medication to make her lungs stick.

  “Tell me about it,” Sebastian says. “And those drugs are just the beginning. There’s testing and rehab, and do you know they even want to charge me for flying the lungs in to the hospital? Why is that something I should have to pay for? If you can’t afford to live in this country, they’re more than happy to just let you die.”

  “But Cam’s right, though. This is not the way to go about getting money for her operation.”

  My comment seems to anger him. He puffs up his chest and balls his fists, glaring across the coffee table at me. “You think I wouldn’t give her my lungs if I could? You think I wouldn’t rip open my own chest and yank them out myself if I thought it would save her from wasting away? Knowing I’m a match is the worst kind of torture because it doesn’t do either of us any good. I still can’t help her. She’s still going to die without that operation.”

  Despite everything, the gun, and the threats, and my son in the enemy’s house across the street, and my daughter strapped to the chair, sympathy rises in my chest for this man. For a sick girl I’ve never met.

  “I’m sorry. That must be so hard.”

  I mean every word, too, just like I meant them the first time I said them—in this very same room even, after I brought him coffee and a muffin so he could take a break from installing the nanny cams. Sebastian—Bas—came highly recommended by none other than Tanya across the street. The neighbor who’s always picking up our mail. Bills, junk, bank account statements. What we’ve always assumed was a friendly gesture was her way of keeping tabs.

  But the more pressing point is, Sebastian knows about the cameras. He’s known it all along.

  Not only that.

  He spent an entire day up here, banging around the playroom, drilling holes in the ceiling and walls, pointing out the best placement for maximum visibility, upselling me on products that were top-of-the-line, quizzing me on my security system because “maybe it’s time for an upgrade.” He even installed the nanny cam app on my phone, then dragged it onto the third page, so it would be with all the other house stuff.

  And today, he chose this room. He brought us here on purpose. Strapping the kids to the couch, questioning me about Cam, ordering me around. Even where he’s standing now, one foot planted on the corner of the rug, his body pointed into the room, puts his uncovered face in all three shots. Everything about this seems intentional.

  He wants Cam to see. He wants him to watch what’s about to happen on his little screen while he’s rushing to get here with the ransom.

  “But that won’t help you with your hospital bill. A pile of cash that big will be a red flag. You’ll get caught. What happens when the police show up at your door? They’ll confiscate the money, and then where will you be? Who will help Gigi then?”

  “She’ll be fine. At home with a new set of lungs.”

  “But how? You just told me her insurance won’t pay for the transplant unless you can pay for the antirejection drugs.”

  “It’s taken care of. I’ve taken care of it. And we’re getting off track. Let’s not forget that I wouldn’t be standing here if Cam had kept up his end of the deal. He owes me this money.”

  Frustration rises, hot and choking in my chest. “You’ll get arrested! There�
�s got to be a better way.”

  Sebastian’s brows shift into a sharp V. “You don’t think I’ve tried everything? I’ve written letters, I’ve filed a million appeals, I even showed up at Channel 7 and begged that reporter Juanita Moore to do one of those investigative deep dives. She said the story wasn’t ‘fresh’ enough to be interesting to the public. I’m out of options. This right here is the very last one, and I’m prepared to see it to the end in order to save my baby girl. You’d do the same if you were in my position.”

  I look at Beatrix, then think of Baxter across the street, and my eyes water. I’d tear my lungs out for them, rip out my still-beating heart. “You’re right. I would. In a heartbeat.”

  “So get in the chair.”

  I shake my head, planting myself deeper into the one next to Beatrix. “Let me help. Let me call Gordon. Maybe he can help you and Gigi.”

  My offer straightens his spine with anger, with indignation. “It’s too late! This isn’t some silly story where you can slap on a happy ending. This is my life, and you can’t even imagine the shit I have to go through. Have you ever stuck your card in an ATM and have it not spit out cash?”

  Not since college, I think dully, but it seems like an answer I shouldn’t admit out loud.

  I think about where he left the gun, on the table to my right, but there’s no way I could get there first. Not with Beatrix in the way, with Sebastian’s body parked a good three feet closer. Better to keep quiet and wait.

  Sebastian’s scowl says he knows the answer. “That’s what I thought. So you keep on living your American dream up here in country club fairy-tale land, but enjoy it while it lasts because life can turn on a dime. Believe me when I say there’s no safety net to catch you when you fall. For people like me, life is not something to enjoy but to survive. Your American dream is my nightmare.”

  “It’s true, I can’t possibly understand what you’re going through, and I can’t be your safety net, but I can help you get one. Think what you want about Cam and me, but we have influence. People listen to us. If we call up the news stations and make a stink about what is happening to you and your daughter, we can change your situation. We can start a GoFundMe and make sure everyone who comes through the restaurants knows about it. We can help.”

  “A GoFundMe, like we haven’t tried that,” he scoffs, rolling his eyes. “Last time I looked there were six of those things, and maybe we scrounged up enough money to pay for three months of treatment, and then what? On the fourth month her body rejects the lungs, and it’s a death worse than what she’s going through now.”

  “There has to be something I can do.”

  Sebastian shakes his head, gestures to the empty chairs on either side of me. “You can stop acting like you give a shit and get in the damn chair. Cam will be here any minute.”

  The panicky feeling returns, a vibration in my bones, a hot itch just under my skin. “Sebastian, please. Please let me help you.”

  I stare up at him, and it’s so obvious to me now, the violent loathing in his eyes. The ugly anger, a hatred that all afternoon I thought was meant for me, but it’s not really. It’s for Cam. And the second he gets here, the instant he barrels up those stairs and into this room, the bullets will start flying.

  And Sebastian won’t be aiming for Cam.

  He’ll aim at me. At Beatrix.

  An eye for an eye. Our daughter for his.

  Today—all of it—it’s about getting even.

  C A M

  6:54 p.m.

  “Where’d your colleagues go?” I squint into the rearview mirror, hoping to pick out the two big bouncers in the car on my bumper, but the rain is really coming down now. There’s nothing but glare in the glass. “Is that them behind us? I can’t tell.”

  Nick twists around on the passenger’s seat, checking the back window. “Not unless they suddenly turned eighty and white. They passed us ages ago.” He wriggles his cell from a pocket on his leather jacket. “Lemme see where they’re at.”

  While he makes the call, I stare into the line of traffic snaking up Peachtree Dunwoody and my heartbeat goes berserk. Two lanes of bumper-to-bumper traffic going well under the speed limit, with nothing on either side but bushes and ditches. I’m stuck, nowhere to go but forward.

  Come on, come on...

  Nick pulls his cell away from his ear. “Darius says they’re almost there. He also says we’ve got a problem. That video footage you’re watching? He’s watching it, too. Apparently, those nanny cams of yours are streaming on YouTube, maybe some other places, too.”

  I think about what this means—that someone hacked into the video feed, that others might be watching as well—but my mind moves like sludge. I can’t do the math, can’t ferret out if this is a good thing or bad. What I know for sure is that I need to get to the house and fast.

  “Darius wants to know our ETA.”

  I glance at the clock. I have six minutes left, when I’m more like seven or eight from home. I shouldn’t have pulled over to check my phone. I should have handed it to Nick, let him do it, but I was too stubborn, too much of a damn control freak. George and the others are right; I really am my own worst enemy.

  “Tell them we’re going to be cutting it close, that they should wait for us in the backyard. He’s in the media room, so tell them to watch the window above the patio. And for God’s sake, no bullets. My wife and daughter are in there, too, and I can’t risk it, not even if it looks like a clean shot.”

  I check the footage on my phone, balanced in a palm at the top of the steering wheel. I’ve been flipping between the three cameras, watching Jade park herself on the chair next to Beatrix and coax a conversation out of an unmasked Sebastian. Stalling.

  “Let me help,” she says. “I want to help you and Gigi.”

  Nick hangs up, shoves the phone back in a pocket. “This traffic is really jacking with our plan.”

  I stare at the sea of brake lights and try not to puke because he’s right. This traffic is a problem, and so is the fact that Darius and Vance are about to beat us there. They need me to go in first, to turn off the alarm and unlock the back door, then flush Sebastian out of the playroom with the promise of money in the truck. As soon as I’ve lured him away from Jade and Beatrix, the bouncers and Nick will take Sebastian down, right before they disappear into the night.

  But the timing is tight. I drift to the right, nudging the truck into the nonexistent shoulder, then jerk the tires back onto the road just in time. The bumper misses a stone mailbox by a hair.

  “Isn’t there a shortcut?” Nick says. “Try a side street or something. There’s got to be another way in.”

  “Shut up and let me drive.”

  I ride a Buick’s bumper and swipe between cameras on my phone, checking in on every angle. I stop on the bird’s-eye view of the room and see Beatrix is getting restless in her chair. Her right hand is tugging at the bindings.

  Nick grunts. “Maybe the others should go ahead and—”

  “No. Not unless I give them the sign. Not until things go south.”

  “Pretty sure things went south hours ago.”

  I don’t respond, even though Nick is right. Again.

  I white-knuckle the wheel and look past the Buick to a turnoff up ahead, marked with a stone pillar and a bright green street sign. Fifty yards. Only fifty yards of this deadlock to go.

  I flick my lights and press forward until I’m flush to the Buick’s bumper, keeping one eye on the camera feed. Sebastian is getting worked up, his whole body becoming energized. His face gleams, and he starts moving about the room, bouncing between the three cameras, giving them full-on shots of his face.

  He says my name, and my lungs go hard as concrete.

  “He told me it was a no-brainer. He said his other shops were spitting out profits in the first year. He guaranteed we’d have our money back, that we�
�d double it in no time. He knew I was counting on my investment to pay for Gigi’s medical costs, and he swore he wouldn’t let this project fail. And then you know what happened? He let it fail. He walked away and left me holding the bill.”

  I glance over at Nick. “I never said any of that. He knew about the risks. He’s lying.”

  Nick grunts, a detached sound that says he couldn’t care less either way.

  “Seriously, man. That’s not how it happened.”

  I don’t know why I’m being so defensive, why I care that this man-bunned, leather-clad arsonist who’s been following my wife believes me, but there it is. I am ashamed of my behavior. I don’t want anybody to know what I did.

  “What, a kidnapper lie?” Nick swings an ankle over a knee. “Shocking.”

  When Sebastian floated the idea of us becoming partners, offering up the building he’d inherited from his grandmother in return for a stake in the restaurant, I warned him there were risks. But in the same breath, I also told him not to worry.

  Oakhurst was to be my sixth shop in a city that couldn’t get enough of me. All we had to do was fix the place up, fire up the grill and open the doors, and people would come running. I didn’t use the words no-brainer, but I might as well have. I certainly gave him that impression.

  And then Fred couldn’t fill the tables in the West Side shop—first on weekdays, then weekends. Staff was walking out, abandoning ship for restaurants that could keep them flush with tips. I had no other choice but to fire Fred and step in, but it took a few months to get back up to speed. No way I had the bandwidth for a sixth shop.

  George’s parting word whispers in my ear: karma.

  Of course I knew when Sebastian offered to front the renovation costs before either of us had signed on the dotted line, I should have told him to hold off. Every time he’d call with an excited update on the latest investment, new windows and a new roof and floors, a new layer of asphalt on the lot or the top-of-the-line appliances he paid for out of his own pocket, I knew I should have put on the brakes. I watched it all happen, and I never once told him to stop.