by Lily Zante
In this moment, Jamie’s warnings don’t seem so out of place. Fearing for my life, I back away, because now I’m starting to get really scared. “I only read the first few pages, Ward. I’m sorry.”
He’s staring into the fire. I try to turn my phone back on but it is lifeless. I press the on/off switch frantically but I can’t get to turn it back on. “You broke my phone,” I cry, all the sympathy I felt for him suddenly vanishing.
“You broke my trust.”
“It’s only a story,” I say, staring at him evenly. Does he understand that? “It’s only a story, and I only read a few pages. I’m sorry I did.”
“I told you not to.”
“I … didn’t mean to. I … I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry. I made a mistake.”
“So did I.”
I stare at him in disbelief. He has a backup of his manuscript, but I don’t have a backup phone.
My mom.
The nursing home.
I need to have constant contact with them. He can print his manuscript out again. He can make it so that this isn’t a big deal. He can man up. I have to get my phone fixed. Right now, there is no way for anyone to contact me. My anger inflames. “You’re making such a big deal of this,” I hiss under my breath. “You can print off another copy.”
“You’ve seen it now. It’s no good.”
“What?” I shriek. Maybe Jamie was right. Maybe Ward is more messed up than I thought. He’s messed up in the head. He killed his girlfriend. “It’s only a book. It’s not the end of the world.”
“Only a book?” he hollers, striding towards me. I flinch as I stumble back. He hasn’t apologized once for my phone, and I’ve said sorry numerous times. He’s only concerned about his lousy manuscript. He doesn’t care about anything or anyone else.
I was naïve to think he had changed.
“Leave!” he roars.
I intend to. He can die in hell. “Don’t worry. I quit,” I yell back. “I quit right now.”
He doesn’t seem the least bit shocked by my announcement. “Then get the fuck out.”
In that moment, I no longer want to be here. “You never speak about Lisa,” I manage to say. How I dredged something like that up from the past I don’t know. Maybe the desire to hurt him made me brave.
His eyes widen with shock. He looks as if he’s been hit by a baseball. The color drains from his face.
“What did you do to her?” I back away. I sense him wavering, sense him weakening, sense that I’ve hurt him.
He shakes his head, his eyes narrowing to slits as he creeps closer. “What? How do you know about her?”
“Lisa Dooley.” I lift my head up high. I’m getting something from him, even if it’s a truth I don’t want to face. “How did she die?”
“What are you asking?” His voice is barely audible.
“I want to know.”
“What do you want to know?”
“How you killed her.” My fear turns into foolish courage, and my body starts to shiver, but it’s not from the cold. He puts his hands on my shoulders. “What makes you think I killed her?” he asks softly. His whispered voice freaks me out.
“You never talk about her.”
His fingers dig into my flesh. I hear the blood pounding through my ears. I shrug, but he doesn’t move his hands away. “She’s someone you don’t need to worry about.”
The tremor begins in my knees and crawls upwards, every cell in my body quaking with terror. I wish Jamie were here.
“Why do you want to know?”
“I … I… I’m curious.” I swallow. His questions ring alarms bells in my head. I try to move back but the corner of the mantelpiece digs into my back. I shrug, trying to shift his hands off but his grip is pincer sharp.
I’m so very afraid.
“That’s the problem with you, Mari. You want to know everything. You snoop, and dig, and sneak.” He bares his teeth.
“You’re hurting me,” I cry as his fingers dig in some more. He doesn’t seem to take notice. I shrug again, but his grip is tight, so I try to yank one of his hands away but I twist awkwardly and slip, still clutching my cell phone. I hit my head against the mantelpiece then stumble back in pain. A sharp pain slices through me. He grabs me and pulls me away with such force, I’m thrown onto the couch.
Shocked, and terrified, I jump up and run out. Out of the study, out of the hall, out of hell.
My heart beats so fast, and adrenaline surges through my blood. I sprint across the street as if my life depends on it. I’m now convinced it does. And then I run and run and run until I flag down a taxi and beg the driver to take me to my friend’s house. I lift a hand to my head and see blood on my fingers.
“Get in,” he says.
Chapter Forty-Five
WARD
* * *
His laughter cackles in my ears and I’m sixteen years old all over again.
My stepfather roars with laughter as he reads my story. It’s something I’ve never been able to forget. I labored over this piece, spent hours perfecting it and rewriting it, and making it the best I could make it. Then I gave it to Mrs. Fennelly, my high school teacher who always encouraged me. In fact, all of my teachers did. I got more love and acceptance from them than I did my own mother. Mrs. Fennelly said it was perfect. She had high hopes, she was excited. I took it home to copy it out neatly before submitting it.
But the bastard found it, and read it, and laughed about it. He made more fun of it because it was my work, and he took joy in making me feel small. Then he read it out loud to my mom, making fun of me, saying nasty things. She took his side. Laughed as well. Asked me what I was thinking when I wrote this. She said she didn’t understand it.
He was a stupid man, and when he didn’t understand something, he made fun of it. I expected more from her, even after all those years when she had let me down, I still held out hope that she might have taken my side. That she might one day come to her senses and see that man for the loser he really was.
She never did.
I’ll never forget his jeering voice saying my words out loud, making my story sound like a piece of trashy overblown prose.
He laughed and said I was a stupid, soft, gay boy. My mom didn’t say anything. But when he ripped it up and said it was pile of horseshit, I lost it. I went for him. Lunged at him and socked him once in the eye, then smashed into his face.
This wasn’t the first time. Ever since I’d turned thirteen, when I started to be as tall as him, he turned physical, slapping me around when locking me in the attic wouldn’t scare me. We’d come to fist fights before, but that day, when he laughed at my competition entry and then ripped it up into shreds, that was the worst. It went beyond a simple scuffle. I went for blood. I wanted to kill him and I almost did.
Those shreds of paper were a metaphor for my life with this man. He made me feel useless and discarded.
But I’d never hit him as hard as I did that day. I’d spent my life taking his crap, being locked up, watching my mom sit around and do nothing. This was the final straw, the thing that pushed me over the edge. I smashed into him, his face and ribs, and he didn’t hesitate to hit me back.
Social services got involved. My mom called the police, and I was sent to Grampton House for a while.
That’s why I never let anyone read my manuscripts. Only Rob and the editor. Professional people. Catching Mari betraying me so sneakily took me back to that moment when my stepdad ripped up my work.
She won’t ever understand. I can’t ever make her see. She brought it all back, those buried, painful memories I’ve always strived to push out of my life.
I stare at the flickering fire. It crackles as my hard work turns to ash. Something dies inside me.
It might not have been so bad if I’d only caught her reading, but to find her taking pictures. The sight of her snapping away, doing that, going behind my back, did something to me. It was sneaky, and I had finally come to trust her. Who was she taking pictures for?
She never explained why and my anger stopped me from asking.
And worst of all, she talked about Lisa.
Lisa.
Lisa.
She dredged it all back up again, the unwanted past with all its grime.
I wasn’t prepared for her questions. Wasn’t prepared to hear that name again. Wasn’t prepared for Mari to make those types of accusations.
Chapter Forty-Six
MARI
* * *
I take the cab straight to Jamie’s place. I have nowhere else to go. I have no one else to turn to.
I haven’t warned him, or asked him, or prepared him and I turn up on his doorstep, feeling as if my whole world just caved in, because it has. The cab driver must have taken pity on me because he left without taking payment.
Jamie stares at me in shock, and then his gaze goes to the cut on my forehead.
“What happened?” Concern creeps into his expression and he takes my arm, leading me inside. “Mari?” His tone is sterner now. “What the hell happened?”
The cut isn’t deep because it’s stopped bleeding now, but it looks bad. I managed to get a look at it in the cab’s rearview mirror.
It’s then that I notice he’s dressed up, as if he’s going out for the evening. “I banged my head.” I press a tissue to it and am relieved that there’s only a small blotch of blood that comes off. “Can I stay the night, please? There’s no place else for me to go.” If I could have gone elsewhere, I would have.
“Sure, you can. You can stay anytime you want.”
“But you look like you were on your way out.”
He ignores my questions and leads me over to the couch and sits down beside me, his face hardening as he surveys my wound again. “He did that?”
“What? No. It doesn’t matter.” I’m not in the mood for talking about it. I don’t want to tell him what happened, even though he was right about Ward.
I’m not ready to deal with it myself. I need the night to process everything that happened today, everything Ward said and did. I’ve put a Band-Aid over it for now, but the wound is still deep and sharp.
I’ve messed up again, spectacularly fallen flat on my face with a guy again. I blindsided Ward when I poked around about Lisa. I touched a raw nerve and wandered into dangerous territory I should never had stumbled into. He was holding me, and I got scared. He had me pinned in place and I couldn’t shake him off.
“I’m sorry to drop in on you like this.”
“It’s okay.”
“You look like you were going somewhere. I would have called, but he smashed my phone.”
“Who?”
I don’t give him an answer, but he seems to know. Who else could it be? Jumping up, he puts a fist to his mouth as if to stop himself from smacking it through the wall. “Ward smashed your phone?” His voice drips with rage. I stare at my hands, then at my knees.
“What the fuck?” he growls. “Tell me what happened.”
I shake my head because I don’t want to talk about it, but it’s not fair for me to expect Jamie to take me in like this when he must have a million questions.
“Are you going to tell me what happened, Mari, or should I march over there and smash his face?” He grabs his keys and heads towards the door.
“No. Don’t!” The last thing I need is for him to go to Ward’s place and confront him. I look at my phone, pressing the buttons, willing it to start working again but it’s dead. “I’ll tell you if you come back here.”
“Stay put.” He returns seconds later with a wet washcloth and a jug of water and begins to clean my wound. I wince as he wipes the dry blood away.
“I’m trying to be gentle,” he says, his voice softer.
“Thank you.”
He doesn’t say anything at first, then “How do you explain this?” he asks, pointing to my gash.
I don’t know where to start.
“I swear to god, Mari, if you’re still going to defend him, I will have no choice but to kick the crap out of him. I don’t give a shit who he is. He’s a fucked-up guy, and you really picked a bad one this time.” Anger flashes across his eyes. I wish I hadn’t come here. I wish I’d gone to someone else, but the number of people I can rely on these days I can count on three fingers.
I start to tell him what happened, about how I started reading Ward’s manuscript even though he’d warned me plenty of times not to. I tell him that I only did so because I saw my name scribbled on a sheet of paper.
“Your name?” Jamie asks with disdain. I tell him how I read one page, and hadn’t intended to read any more, but I got sucked into the story, and then I had the bright idea to take a picture for him.
“For me?” Jamie puts away the damp washcloth and jug on the coffee table.
“You and I haven’t been getting along and I thought you might like it. You asked me to once. Do you remember? I never thought he’d catch me. I was hoping to take the pics for you, because you asked me before—”
“Don’t go blaming me for this,” he says, getting up, his face turning red.
“I’m not.” I rush to reassure him. “I’m trying to explain why I did it. I thought I could make it up to you.” I stare up at him sheepishly. “Anyway, I didn’t do it. I didn’t. I stopped because I knew it was wrong but he walked in just then and I guess he got mad and then he must have thought I was taking photos.”
“You took a stupid crazy risk, even for someone like you.”
I stare at the floor.
“He hit you because you read his manuscript?”
“He didn’t hit me. I banged my head.”
He laughs, a cruel, disbelieving laugh.
“He didn’t hit me,” I insist. “We … I …” I don’t want to think about that moment because it scares me. He held me in place and I tried to get away but he shoved me, and I can’t bear to think about that. What it means is too horrific for me to deal with. I also decide it’s better not to tell Jamie this. “I slipped and my head hit the mantelpiece.”
“You just slipped? Next you’ll be telling me that his floor is an ice rink.”
“I swear, I slipped.”
“I don’t know what to believe. You’re hiding something, defending him because you can’t face up to what he is. Just like you took a risk getting involved with him.” Jamie glares at me, and it’s the first time he’s addressed it, that Ward and I were together.
I can’t look at him. I can’t meet his eyes. He’s judging me worse than ever. He won’t understand how I found a part of Ward that I could tame, a part that was hurting and that I could kiss better. He won’t understand that I found him attractive and sexy and I needed him. “He went crazy when he saw me.”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” he says, scrubbing his hand over his face as if he’s trying to make sense out of it. “How stupid can you be?”
The way he says it makes me want to leave. Aside from Jamie, I have no one. My mom is in no position to help me.
My mom. I need to find a way to contact her and the nursing home and to give them a new contact number, probably Jamie’s number. I tell Jamie about Ward throwing my phone against the wall and breaking it, and then how he burned his manuscript.
“He set fire to it?” he asks, shocked.
“He scooped up all the papers and threw them into the fire. He’s been working on that for months.”
Jamie mutters something under his breath, something that sounds like a swear word. “The guy is a nutcase.”
I bite my lip. Examining Ward’s behavior, I see that Jamie isn’t far wrong. “I quit,” I tell him.
“You what?”
“He told me to get out. He was so angry, Jamie. You should have seen him.”
He is quiet, then looks away. I feel uncomfortable. I’ve imposed myself on him, and I’ve messed things up. He is dressed up and he definitely looks like he had other plans. “I shouldn’t have come here,” I say, getting up. I should have checked into a hotel.
“What? No.” He rise
s with me. My mind is in disarray. He’s not exactly distant or cold, though I can sense his rage. He’s never really liked Ward, I don’t think, even though he’s been in awe about his books.
These last few weeks, I’ve sensed a hardness in Jamie. It might even have been around the time Ward and I got together.
But I’ve also done wrong by Jamie. He’s always been there to pick up the pieces, he was there for me when Dale cheated on me, and when I didn’t have a place to stay, and he’s here for me now. I’ve come to rely on him when I have no right to.
His phone rings and he turns his back to me. I try not to listen in, but I can’t close my ears, and he’s being overly sneaky, which makes me even more suspicious. “I promise I’ll make it up to you,” is the only thing I hear him say clearly.
“You did have plans.” I feel guiltier than ever.
He doesn’t look at me. “It’s only Raleigh. It can wait.”
“Raleigh?” I sound even more surprised than I should. The possibilities flood my mind. “You were going to see her? Then you should go,” I tell him. “I should go. I shouldn’t have come here. I’m sorry.” I mean it this time. I feel like an extra leg on a four-legged table—unnecessary and out of place.
Clutching my phone, I head towards the door, determined to leave and to let Jamie get on with his life. I have much to think about, not least of all getting back to Ward’s place to get my bag, my purse, my money, and my belongings.
I didn’t think.
I just fled.
I need solitude. I’ve suppressed what happened between me and Ward earlier, but I need to process it properly. I’m so messed up and broken that I can’t think straight, but I’ve done the wrong thing by coming to Jamie and expecting him to put me back together again.
“I asked him about Lisa Dooley.”
He looks alarmed. “Why the heck would you go and do a stupid thing like that?”
“I wanted to know the truth.”