The Good Listener

by B. M. Hardin

  What?

  The stalker patient had been his brother, and he’d had him sent to prison and killed?

  If he would kill his own flesh and blood, surely he wasn’t going to have a problem killing me.

  “What did you say?” Summer spoke up for the first time.

  He looked at her.

  “It was you that had him sent to prison and killed?”

  “Yes. We both knew that he was getting messy, and I needed more time so I had to take care of him. He was messing up the plan.”

  Summer didn’t say anything else, but I could tell that she was bothered by what he had done and that she hadn't known that he had been the force behind her husband’s death.

  “Where was I? Yes, so they both were there to play roles. Take Summer for instance. She’d told you that her family didn’t live here, yet when she went missing, you found out that she lied. That should have been a red flag for you right there that she wasn’t who she’d said that she was. But back to my brother. He was my half-brother to be technical. We had the same mother. And back then younger children, newborns, kids under two, were easier to adopt. They had a higher chance at stability, love, and good life. Even though he grew up as a handful, he’d still had the foundation at a chance for a better life. But I was shipped out and moved all over the world, hell hole to hell hole for the next ten to twelve years of my life.”

  I looked at him

  They didn’t look like him.

  He didn’t look like my previous patient, turned stalker, confirmed his brother, at all.

  But then again he said that they only shared the same mother so maybe they both looked like their fathers.

  He was sick.

  He was twisted.

  I would say ruthless, but even that didn’t describe him.

  He was even more disturbed than I thought that he was.

  And with my life on the line, I wanted to give him a piece of my mind and just tell him to get it over with already.

  “I told you people and papers lie, and so many people are good at pretending. The ones that you love the most are the ones that you can never truly trust.”

  I still wanted to know why he’d chosen me or what made him want to kill me in the first place.

  But he kept avoiding the question.

  He was avoiding the question, but I really wanted to know the answer.

  “It wasn’t hard for me to find him. Once I came back here, I’d set out to find him. Having the position at the company made it easier because it gave me access to background check systems and things like that. All I had to do was narrow a few pieces of information down and then follows a few of the leads. I’d come across four different men until I found him. They’d let him keep his first name, just changed his middle and his last. But anyway, all he had to do was stick to the plan, and he would have still been alive. I couldn’t have anyone messing this up for me. Not even him. My brother.”

  “Why Blake? At least tell me why and then you can do whatever it is that you are going to do with me.”

  “Think about everything that I told you. From my childhood. Fears. Foster parents. Birth parents. Everything.”

  I was trying to think.

  I was trying my hardest.

  But why should I have to when clearly I was in a life or death situation?

  Even if I figured it out, he was a mental case, and I knew that it was probably going to be something extra to it and that he was going to kill me anyway.

  Blake sat the gun beside him.

  He started pulling on his nose.

  I watched him as bit by bit, it came off.

  He took out his contacts.

  And took out glasses from his pocket and put them on.

  He pulled from the neck up and pieces of plaster fell from his neck and cheeks.

  “I told you that my appearance, my real appearance was different from the man that came into your office for months. Or did you miss that too?”

  I actually remembered him mentioning that.

  I now looked to see if he looked like Summer’s deceased husband, but he still didn’t.

  “I told you that I looked like my father.”

  I still looked at him confused.

  Actually, I was trying to get my hands free from the rope behind me, and I seemed to be making some lead way so I kept him talking.

  “Yes, you did. I just don’t get it.”

  “What’s your favorite color, Hannah?”

  “Blue.”

  “What’s your favorite color, Hannah?”

  “Blue.”

  “What’s your favorite color, Hannah?” He repeated, and I screamed.

  “Blue!”

  Wait a minute.

  He watched my face.

  “Yes. Yes. Say it.”

  Blue.

  “Yes.”

  I looked at his face.

  I looked at his real eyes.

  I stared at him.

  Blue.

  “Say it.”

  I thought about everything that he’d said.

  No?

  It couldn’t be.

  “My father was your dad?”

  “Bingo!”

  Wait a minute…what?

  But how could that be?

  I looked at Blake.

  My father was called Big Blue but how would he know that?

  Who would have told him that for him to drop the hints about the color “blue”?

  And then I thought about it.

  Of course, Summer knew my nickname and plenty about my parents from our friendly conversations.

  I couldn’t believe it.

  I could see my father in him.

  I was biracial, which is why they called me Little Yellow.

  My father had been white, and my mother had been black.

  This was crazy!

  This was insane!

  “So if you are my brother, didn’t that make Summer’s husband my brother too?”

  “No. Just me. I told you, he and I had different fathers. His father doesn’t even know that he was ever born. My mother never told him, my father or anyone for that matter who his dad was. When I found him, he was in some trouble. He needed a little money and owed a few people here and there. I told him my plans and as my brother, he agreed to help me. With his mental history, once he was booked on an assault charge, he requested anger management or therapy. He chose you, and we moved forward with the plan. Summer had already been working for you for a while by then. Timing was everything.”

  I shook my head.

  Blake was my brother?

  He was my father’s son?

  Why hadn't anyone ever mentioned it before?

  There was no way that my mother’s side of the family had known because though most of them were gone now, none of them would have been able to keep it to themselves; especially my grandmother.

  But no one had mentioned it on my father’s side either; though his side of the family had always been really small.

  Someone should have at least mentioned it.

  “I told you that I was the oldest, but you never asked how many siblings I had. You never even asked their sex. I repeatedly mentioned blue, every single session I asked you about your favorite color. I told you my dad abandoned me and that he left my mother, but you never asked why he left her. You never asked about their marriage or what she did. Or what he did. You wondered about their mental mind states, but that was it. You never asked the right questions, but yet I always gave you the right answers…sister.”

  I couldn’t believe it.

  But why kill me?

  “My mother and father went to your beloved mother for marriage counseling. They were happy once, and then money became more important than family. Lonely, my mother, had an affair on him, but it was his fault. He made her do it. He was always working, just like you. He was always busy, just like you were. I remember that he’d missed my very first soccer game, and he’d promised me that he would be there. But he never ke
pt his promises. He was never there when it mattered. Sometime or another, my mother stepped out on him and had an affair; which is why I despise adultery as I mentioned. But you never asked me why. Anyway, she got pregnant with my brother. But she still loved our father. She wanted her marriage, and he told her that he was willing to work it all out. He took responsibility for his actions and agreed to counseling.”

  I listened to him.

  And I mean I really listened to him.

  I was in somewhat of a state of shock, but my hands still moved trying to get the knot out of the rope.

  “She suggested that they go to counseling, and guess who their therapist was? It was your lonely, adulterous, whore of a mother. Instead of saving their marriage, she ruined it. She wanted a few sessions one on one but what she was really doing was plotting to take my father away from my mother. They started sleeping together and made my mother look like a fool. I still remember the day that he left. He told my mother that he was sorry, but he didn’t love her anymore. He told her that he was in love with your mother and that he wanted a divorce. They were high school sweethearts, and after only a few months of counseling, your mother ruined what had taken them years to build.”

  My father never so much as mentioned having a son or even being previously married.

  He and my mother had kept their dirty little secret away from me.

  And somehow had convinced everyone else to keep it away from me too.

  “She cried. She begged him. She told him that she couldn’t do it on her own, be he hadn't cared. She threatened to kill herself, but none of her threats made him stay. He divorced her and left her with nothing. Since she had always been a housewife, she had to figure out how to survive. He got everything, proving that she was the one that had ruined their marriage by stepping out first and having a baby. His lawyer friend, Calvin, the one that helped you is also who had represented your father back then. That day in your office when I accidentally said him; that’s who I was referring to. Calvin. I plan to kill him too. I just had to wait for things to cool off after your big case and all. He’s next. Anyway, my mother took us and moved to this shack that was left to her by her grandfather. She tried. She tried to get a job. She tried to make ends meet, but every day, she slipped further and further away from reality. Every time she called him for money, he didn’t answer. Every time he promised to come see me and didn’t show. She turned slowly into someone else. I watched her break down, piece by piece until finally the mother I’d once known was gone.”

  Summer stood up, and I held on to the rope that I had managed to break free from.

  I didn’t want to make any sudden moves.

  I didn’t have a plan.

  But with free hands, maybe I could try something.

  But what?

  My father should have been ashamed of himself.

  And so should my mother.

  I looked up to them my whole life, more than anyone in the world and everything that they were and everything that they’d taught me had been a lie.

  They were liars.

  They were cheaters.

  What they had done to me, their infidelity and secrecy had been the biggest betrayal of all and it hurt to have their perfect memories shattered.

  It hurt to know that they were capable of such horrible things when they had been so good to me.

  I guess that’s what Blake had been trying to get me to see.

  I understood how he came to most of his conclusions and sayings, even though he was still crazy.

  He actually made more sense than I’d wanted him to.

  “One day, he called her. It wasn’t long after the split. Maybe two or three months. He told her that it was the last time that she would hear from him again. He told her that he didn’t want anything to do with me and that it was best if he just forgot about me because his new wife didn’t want me in her perfect new life. He told her that she was pregnant and that that was the main reason he’d chosen her in the first place. He changed his number, and he was gone. I listened to her pray. She asked why. How? How could the man she loved more than anything in the world abandon her and his son as though we’d never existed? She told me that people that love you hurt you the most. She was the first to tell me that. And she was one of the first, other than our father, to actually show me what that meant. She got sicker. She turned to drugs. She turned on me. She started beating me when she was angry. She started beating me when she was sad. There were days that she kicked me around the floor because she saw our father every time that she looked at my face. After a while, not only was my love for my father gone, but my love for her faded away too. And then there was that overdose story I told you about.”

  I couldn’t even imagine the built up hurt and pain that he must have felt.

  I felt it too, and I didn’t have anything to do with it.

  “I’m so sorry that my parents did that to you and that they did that to your mom and to your family but don’t blame me.”

  “Then who else can I blame? They are both dead, and it was your mother that did this and because she’d gotten pregnant with you, so your birth is at fault too. Had she never have gotten pregnant with you, he wouldn’t have left my mother for her. I’m sure of it. Sure, he probably would have continued with the affair until either she broke it off or until he had gotten tired, but he wouldn’t have left her. He only left her because of you. Even when she’d had my brother, he was still there. If he was going to walk, he would have walked then. But he didn’t. He was going to work it out, but he didn’t because of you Hannah. He gave you the life that belonged to me. He gave you the love that rightfully belonged to me; the love that I was supposed to have. I was his only son. What about me? I was innocent. I was just a little boy who needed his father, and he left me. He abandoned me for you, Hannah. He chose you. You see the pattern? Just like my victims chose me.”

  I saw that crazy look in his eyes, and I knew that time was about to run out.

  I knew that he was growing tired of talking, and I knew that things were about to get ugly and that my death was probably right around the corner.

  “But Blake your mother wasn’t innocent in all of this. She played her part. Whether my mother had come into the picture or not, our father could have decided to walk away from her one day. He could have changed his mind about accepted her infidelity and her other child and walked away with the results coming out just the same. She cheated too. She cheated first.”

  Blake jumped up and startled both Summer and me.

  “He made her. He left her alone, and he made her. Just like you made Joel. You were just like him. I watched you all the time. You were always at work Hannah and always leaving Joel unattended. Summer would leave from working all day alongside you and go to your house and screw your husband, and you didn’t have a clue you would be right there, at work, giving other people all of your time and attention, instead of giving it to the people who mattered the most. You are just like him.”

  Maybe he had a point.

  But I knew that now.

  I knew that part that I’d played in ruining my marriage.

  Had our marriage been solid like it was in the years before, Summer would have never had a chance at seducing or approaching Joel and Blake’s plan would have failed.

  Or, well, he would have had to find another one.

  “That one evening, you worked really late, and someone came from behind the building…that was me. I was in a very bad mood that day, and I was just going to kill you then. It was the same day that I’d hired Joel. I knew he had news to tell you but yet you were there working, and it made me angry because it reminded me of how dad used to do my mother. How she would cook for him, and he wouldn’t come home to almost midnight, or she would make his favorite dish, and he would come in and say that he already ate. I hated him. And you are so much like him. The only reason I didn’t kill you was because I wanted to teach you a few lessons first. You needed to feel how one minute you can have it all and t
hen the next you could have nothing.”

  For some reason, I was crying.

  It was as though my heart sympathized for him.

  I genuinely felt horrible that my father and mother had caused him to be this way and had ruined his life since he was only a small boy.

  I would have liked to have a brother, and it sucked that they didn’t allow me to have that.

  I scanned the room, hoping to find something close by that I could defend myself with.

  “Your whore of a mother ruined my life, and now you have to pay for her sins with yours. Remember what I told you?”

  “Wait, Blake, don’t do this.”

  He smiled at me.

  “Oh, but I have to.”

  Without warning, he turned and shot Summer in the back of the head.

  I hadn't even noticed that she had turned around to walk off.

  I screamed as her lifeless body fell to the floor.

  “She had done her part, and I could feel that she was upset about my little confession of killing my brother. She was about to do something stupid to avenge her husband’s death. I’m sure of it. Besides, I don’t like loose ends anyway. Her job was done. Hey, how did you get your hands free?” Blake said to me as he noticed that I was covering my mouth with my hands.

  I was crying.

  I was shaking.

  “You killed her. She helped you.”

  “What’s your point? She played her part. There was no point in leaving her alive. People and papers lie, and no one can be trusted. Who knows what she would have wanted out of all of this on down the line. And I’m positive that she was sneaking off to get her gun so that she could shoot me before I could shoot her. I just beat her to the punch. But now, the real party is about to begin.”

  He looked at me.

  “Please, Blake. Please don’t do this.”

  “This is what I’ve been waiting for. This very moment. I’ve dreamed about it so many times.”

  He put the gun down on the edge of the couch.