After Her

by Amber Kay

  “Be careful what you say, Cassandra,” she replies halfheartedly. “There are some things you can’t take back.”

  “Fuck you,” I say. “You’re an evil, pathetic woman. Cancer isn’t what’s going to kill you. You’re already dead inside.”

  An array of gasps and horrified expressions weave through the crowd. I can’t imagine what they must be thinking, but I don’t care. We face off and I wait, wondering how she’ll respond. Vivian doesn’t say a word. I accept this bittersweet victory and storm away, shouldering back through the crowd, toward the exit.

  29

  Neither of us speak for the duration of the drive.

  I don’t even look at him, choosing only to observe the passing scenery. Wolfgang plays some moody piano ballad on the radio, reminding me of the obvious. I quickly turn the dial to off, wanting only silence right now.

  “Does the music bother you?” Adrian asks.

  “Sasha wanted to play a Wolfgang piece for the University Summer Concerti,” I say.

  He says nothing to counter my response, seeing no reason to argue with my reasoning. The usual silence ensues, bringing an axiomatic curtain down between us. Several miles from the banquet hall, I manage to relax, breathing through my nostrils to ease the apprehension in my chest.

  I turn away to shed a mask of tears, recoiling the moment Adrian’s hand touches mine. The cool of his skin makes waves in my flesh, sending my stomach into a tumultuous tailspin. I close my eyes momentarily and see Sasha in the garden, staggering around in a daze, clumps of her hair soaked with blood. It’s enough to eject me back to reality, enough to shake me away from his hand.

  “I'm sorry,” he says to mollify me. “I forgot about your number one rule. No more prohibited touching.

  I sense humor in that statement and I want to laugh, but the circumstances restrict it. What kind of person would I be to laugh at anything right now? Sasha won’t laugh again. She’ll never get to stay up late and binge on ice cream or marathon watch old reruns of Gossip Girl.

  She’s no longer around to scold me for my shortcomings or make vulgar jokes about my love life. She will never hog the bathroom in the mornings anymore and leave me no hot water in the shower. She won’t be at the apartment when I return home.

  “What if I am giving you permission now?” I say.

  Adrian briefly looks away from the road to look at me.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What if I said that you could touch me now?” I ask. “Would you take advantage of it?”

  “Only if you let me,” he replies. “And if you’re really sure that you can handle it.”

  I almost laugh at his patronizing tone then at myself for tolerating it.

  “I already forced myself on you, Adrian. Wouldn’t it be hypocritical for me to forbid you from touching me?” I reply.

  “What are you permitting me to do?” he asks in a wary tone, undoubtedly questioning my abrupt interest in intimacy. I’d question it too if I didn’t already know the reasoning behind it. I have seen myself through many episodes of shock and felt grief so strong that I swear I’d die from the pain of it.

  Whatever the pain, I always felt better in my mother’s arms. That woman held every promise in those arms. She shielded my warmth from the world and protected me from the worst of it anytime I needed to feel safe. That’s my default routine when coping with death.

  I usually need to be held by someone—anyone—to soothe the ache of grief. This isn’t some meticulous decision. I didn’t deliberately seek him out in particular for some random rendezvous. Adrian isn’t the sanctuary I want. He’s just the closest warm body and the only thing I have to substitute for Sasha.

  “You can…hold my hand,” I reply. “I advise you to take full advantage of this opportunity before I change my mind.”

  He glances at me intently, waiting for something, wanting to find some reason to reject my request.

  “Please?” I plead. “I just lost my best friend. The least you can do is have pity on me.”

  He sighs and swallows hard as if every word he’d wanted to say has now fled his thoughts.

  “If it’s simply a coping method, then I’ll happily humor you,” he says before taking my hand and holding it firm atop his lap. All of the warmth I lacked before returns through his palm. I grasp it tighter, wishing I could weld his grip around mine.

  From here, we drive in silence, fingers entwined until arrival at my apartment sometime after midnight. The lot is full with the usual student cars including Sasha’s mini coop sitting next to my Honda. Adrian pulls into the parking space beside mine and removes his hand from mine so abruptly that I resist releasing him.

  “Let’s get you inside,” he says. “You need to sleep.”

  “I don’t know if I can go in there,” I say. “Or stay in that apartment without her.”

  “Cassandra, I don’t mean to sound insensitive, but you’ll have to begin resuming your life at some point,” he says. “You can’t linger on what happened to Sasha and forget about taking care of yourself. I’d like to help, if you’ll let me.”

  “For what in return?” I ask. “Are you asking to stay the night? Finish what I started at the fountain when I kissed you? Because I was high and stupid. I didn’t mean to come on to you like that. I couldn’t—”

  “I don’t want anything in return,” he interjects. “This is a freebie. No strings attached.

  I won’t try anything inappropriate…no matter how much I’d like to. You have my word. If you need me to stay then I’ll make the sofa my bed.”

  “Why?” I ask, staring at him incredulously.

  “Why what?”

  “Why are you being so nice?”

  He chuckles at my question, possibly a little offended by my disbelief.

  “Vivian and I have caused enough chaos in your life. I'm trying to repair some of the damage,” he says. “I can’t bring Sasha back. I'm sorry for that, but I know what it’s like to go a little crazy with grief.”

  I vaguely remember his admission about his mother and cringe at the memory of those words.

  “How’d you mother die?” I ask.

  “My parents never really loved each other,” he says. “They were good at appearing happy. The perfect trophy husband and wife—kind of like Vivian and me. The only problem was that my father couldn’t get through a day without his booze. My mother became a casualty because of it. He would often beat her until into unconsciousness then drink himself to sleep. One night, he got a little too drunk and wrapped his belt around her neck. I remember the sounds she made, the gurgling gasp. She was choking on her own blood. Then I heard the bone snap and I knew for certain that he had killed her.”

  “How do you know all of this?” I say.

  He chuckles, offhandedly, as if this misplaced amusement is unintentional, more or less a defense mechanism to mask some other reaction. Perhaps he’d like to cry, but I can’t imagine Adrian Lynch shedding a tear. Maybe he’s already shed those tears and now all that remains is this hardened shell of a man, no longer the sad little boy crying and reaching for his mother in the middle of the night.

  “I was there and my father made me corroborate his story of her suicide to the police.

  I was only seven years old. I knew then that I could never bring myself to hurt any woman the way my father did my mother. He never even served a day of jail. My mother’s remains were cremated and there wasn’t a funeral. From that day forth, my father never spoke of her again. Neither had I…until now.”

  His hand rests on my cheek, thumb stroking the curve, following it to my hairline. I pressed my skin into his palm, once more craving his familiar warmth. Being this close to another person has never hurt this much. Sasha’s death has seared a festering hole in the center of my chest, making any kind of intimacy feel painful.

  I feel a vulnerable ghost return. This apparition lingers in the air between us, bringing me back to the moment we shared at the fountain. I could kiss him again. Last tim
e was just a drunken mistake. Now that I'm officially sober, there’d be no way to blame drugs or alcohol on my behavior. It’d be all me.

  I bite my lip, wanting to restrain the urge to do something inappropriate. I look him in the eye. I have either two choices: to resist or yield. By the time I decide, my attention shifts elsewhere. I glimpse a flicker of light in the rearview before noticing an unfamiliar car pulling into the lot from behind us.

  “Who is that?” Adrian asks after pulling away from me. I give the car a brief glance before assuming the worst.

  “It’s a black Sedan.”

  “Is that something significant?” he replies.

  I nod and in a sudden panic, I'm reaching for the car door, trying to escape the car.

  “Cassandra, what’s wrong?”

  “You should go home,” I say. “Vivian might be calling soon.”

  I flee from the car, scuttling up the apartment stairs toward the third floor. Headlights from the Sedan shine a glow into my direction, blinding me as I haste to recover my apartment keys from within my purse.

  Before I can fish them out, Adrian’s behind me, grabbing them for me. I hadn’t seen him ascend the stairs, but somehow, he’s beside me twisting the key into my apartment door and hasting to shuffle me inside. Once inside, he locks the deadbolt behind us then stops to peer out the peephole to assess the scene. I collapse onto the sofa, willing my heart to relax.

  “Whoever it was is still out there,” says Adrian. “You know them, don’t you?”

  “I don’t know if it’s the same guy, but I know that Vivian sent him,” I say. “She has had someone watching my apartment. I don’t know for how long and I wasn’t even aware of it until yesterday. This entire time she’s been monitoring me. The photographer who followed me home and left the note on my car, I think she hired him. She just won’t admit it.”

  He sighs and fishes a cell phone from his pocket. I watch as he dials and proceeds to carry on a conversation.

  “Nathan, this is Adrian,” he says. “I need you to tell me who Vivian has on duty tonight.”

  He nods to the correspondence though I can’t hear a word the other end is saying. I only have his non-verbal cues to go on.

  “Yes well, they’re on my payroll,” he says. “If I want to know who Vivian is hiring with my money you will tell me or you can expect to be unemployed tomorrow morning.”

  There’s another pause and I need to busy myself. I saunter through the apartment, removing my jewelry and shoes after heading into my bedroom. While undressing in front of the dresser mirror, I notice the reflection of my laptop and spot the flashing white light on its motherboard.

  I can’t recall whether I’d shut it off before leaving the apartment. I rub my finger across the mouse pad, waking it from its slumber. After the Windows splash page and the welcome chiming sound, a second ding alerts me to a new email in my inbox.

  It takes no time to log in, type in my password and arrive to my account where a new message waits in my inbox. The email subject line reads: Naughty Girl. My heart palpitates, jumpstarting a sensation of expeditious panic.

  After clicking on the link, I wait until the page loads, suddenly now aware of how cold my blood feels. Gradually, the webpage emerges, revealing a large digital image of Adrian and me, sitting at the fountain in the banquet hall garden. Below the picture reads:

  I tried to warn you.

  Too bad poor Sasha had to accept your punishment instead.

  I release a scream—a gurgling, blubber of a scream that blisters in my throat. It creeps up my esophagus, making me sound like a kicked puppy. Adrian arrives in the doorway with his phone still pressed to his ear, staring in at me.

  “What’s wrong?” he asks.

  I turn the laptop toward him so he can see for himself.

  “He was watching us,” I say. “He was at the banquet hall tonight.”

  30

  I slam the laptop shut, shoving it aside to get it away from me.

  I fear I’ll toss it out the window in a fit of inconsolable anger. Adrian moves cautiously toward me, tucking his phone back into the confines of his pant pocket. I remain atop the bed, trying to make sense of everything.

  “Cassandra, who has your email address?”

  I shrug. “It’s a university address,” I say. “Something the school gave out as a courtesy so the professors can conveniently communicate with the students. No one other than Sasha and my professors know about it.”

  “Your professors,” he ponders.

  “You can’t seriously assume that any of them had to do with this,” I reply. “None of them have a motive.”

  He shakes his head and leaves the room. I follow in his path, grabbing his arm midstride.

  “Adrian, what are you going to do?” I ask.

  “First, I’m going to go home to subdue Vivian. Then I'm going to reach out to some old associates. We’ll get someone to track that IP address back to the computer that delivered that email.”

  “Subdue Vivian? Does that mean you’re gonna drug her again?” I ask.

  “You really want me to answer that question?” he replies. “Because I'm sure you already know the answer.”

  “That woman is certifiable,” I say. “I admit that, but I feel kind of shitty for attacking her now that I know she may have had nothing to do with what happened to Sasha. Just go easy on her, okay?”

  He grips my shoulder, squeezing affectionately before planting a kiss on my forehead.

  “I can handle Vivian. You should rest. Call me if you need anything. You still have my private number.”

  Adrian turns toward the door, leaving me behind. As the door shuts behind him, I'm reminded of the emptiness consuming this apartment the moment I'm alone. I nearly rush out after him to beg him to come back, to stay the night so that I don’t have to feel so idle.

  The rest of the night is like this. I clean the place from head-to-toe, sweeping, mopping then doing the dishes. It’s enough to distract my mind from the ghosts that haunt this place, but I know I have to enter Sasha’s bedroom eventually.

  I stand in her doorway for ten minutes, staring in at the unoccupied room, clutching the doorknob, afraid to let go. My knees buckle; eyes swollen with suppressed tears that clog my ducts. This process repeats itself many times as I retrieve her worn clothes from the floor and snap the top back onto her lip-gloss.

  I eye her violin in the corner, propped up as if she had used it recently. It’s still warm to the touch where her hands once held it. I still hear her music strumming from the strings in a waft of beautiful noise.

  I peel back her bedspread, undressing the mattress, dumping all of her toiletries into a basket. I even spend the wee hours of morning packing her clothes into boxes. Her parents will probably want them shipped back to Montana along with her body. It’ll be all that remains of her as memorabilia.

  One thing I'm keeping of hers that I won’t tell them about is her perfume. I’ll need the smell to remind me of her, to fill the apartment with the stench of her so I can pretend she’s still here, showering or lying in bed, watching television. I smile at these memories, wishing I could forget, but somehow glad I still remember.

  Around four in the morning, I gather the nerve to call her parents. I planned on waiting until later, but this kind of news won’t be easy to hear regardless of what time of day it is. They’ll need to hear it from someone. I don’t want it to be the police. So I dial. With quivering fingers, I dial Helen Hawthorne’s number, listening to the dial tone for several minutes before pressing the call button.

  “Hello?” she answers on the fifth ring, possibly after stumbling from bed in the middle of the night. I don’t speak at first. Initially, I’d planned to blurt it all aloud in one rushed breath of air, but Helen doesn’t deserve that kind of disrespect. Neither does Sasha.

  “Hello? Hello! Who is this?” she answers again. “If this is some stupid prank call, I swear I'm calling—“

  “It’s me Helen,” I say and I
immediately hear the panic in her silence. It’s the same kind of silence I heard from my mom after Sasha told her that I was missing. It must be some sort of extrasensory ability all mothers share. Mothers must have some radar that detects when their kid is in trouble.

  “Cassandra, thank god it’s you,” she sighs. “You scared me.”

  I chuckle, mainly to ease the tension, to prep her for the inevitable.

  “Yeah, it is.”

  “It’s been so long since we spoke,” she says. “I can’t believe Sasha hasn’t given me any updates on how you’ve been.”

  “Well, I'm fine,” I say, which is more than I can say for Sasha. “Listen I know it’s late or early or whatever, but there’s something you should know.”

  I hear her fidgeting and imagine her sitting up in bed, flicking on a lamp light to adjust her eyes to the sight. I imagine her wondering whether to wake Carlson, Sasha’s father, so they can both listen together.

  “Cassandra, has something happened?” Helen asks.

  I grip my phone tighter, fearing it’ll crumble in my palm.

  “Yeah, something happened.”

  “Oh god, what is it? Is it Sasha? Is she sick? In the hospital?”

  “Helen, I'm sorry. I-I…don’t know—”

  Helen releases a cry so loud that it burns in my ear. I pull away from the phone, allowing myself relief. I can’t bare the sound. It drowns my conscience, puncturing it with holes. I want to curl up and roll away from this.

  “Cassandra?” Carlson helms the phone, picking up where Helen left off. “What is it?”

  I bite my tongue, wishing I could take it all back.

  “It’s Sasha. She’s…dead.”

  “What?”

  “She’s gone, Carlson. I'm sorry.”

  In a moment of calm, he relaxes himself though I still hear Helen in the background sobbing.

  “How did this happen? What happened to my girl?”

  “The police haven’t released an official report. It happened yesterday. She was at a party with me and they found her body in the garden. Blunt force trauma to the head. She bled to death.”