The Bargaining Path

by T. Rudacille

  ***

  Mine and James’s breakup never became old news. People were constantly whispering about it when they saw me. When our relationship was on, we were fascinating because of the age difference and because of the fact that said age difference did not seem to be tearing us apart. When our relationship was off, people were either thinking that they were right in their assumption that a romance between an older man and a younger woman could not work, or that they were very sorry to see us separated, because we both seemed so sad.

  “Must really love each other.” I heard a woman think.

  “As if that was not completely obvious all along!” I snapped at her out loud.

  As for Rene, all our village knew was what Adam told them at the next open forum: Rene had been killed due to an unpaid debt, and that the man responsible had been exiled. Our village was so big that no one knew whether a man had been exiled or not. No one asked, even though everyone cared; the entire village turned out for his funeral and cried for him, and James had been one of the men to carry his closed coffin to the site where it would be burned.

  “Brynn, you’ve got to turn it off.” Rachel whispered to me at the funeral, and when she grasped my hand, her palm was sweating. “You’re going to give yourself away if you don’t stop glaring.”

  I tried, but my rage could not be quieted as I watched so many men and women shedding tears over that man. Seeing them all standing about grieving, and hearing the kind words they spoke about him wrung my insides dry. My stomach churned as I suppressed the urge to scream at them all that he truly was.

  I knew what I had done, but so did Rachel, who had guessed, and so did Violet, Nick, and Adam. But as I stood beside Rene’s coffin that day, glaring in merciless anticipation as the men walked forward with their torches raised, I felt another’s suspecting eyes on me, but I did not care. It was James, looking across at me from the other side of the coffin. Our eyes met, and though I immediately wanted to darken my scowl and look away, I forced myself to hold his gaze. After my eyes were held fast to his for a second or two, I was able to bore into his mind relentlessly.

  “She did it.”

  It repeated over and over again after that in overlapping whispers. Pushing further past the words in his mind, I saw into his heart, and he truly was sickened. His heart and mind were stricken with the question of “why?” Rene had been drunk, and there was no way that he had egged them on. He loved Violet. He more than likely was passed out, too, and Violet just was not remembering it accurately because she was so traumatized. So why had I killed him and not the others? It had to have been my way of exacting revenge on him, meaning James, for his affair; because he slept with Janna, I had murdered his best friend.

  Because that is just so logical. I might be a killer, but I am not illogical, nor am I utterly merciless, even now.

  Our eyes stayed locked, blue piercing into brown, and brown piercing into blue, and I smiled, raised one eyebrow, and shrugged one shoulder. His expression remained set in stone, unchanging. My lips parted, and I mouthed two words, suspecting that they would violently hammer the final nail in the proverbial coffin of our dead relationship, but still, I mouthed them.

  “Not sorry.”

  And he had understood, because for the first time in the several days since I had made him leave, he spoke long sentences to me. After the funeral was over, and everyone was enjoying a somber feast in Rene’s memory, he came up behind me while I was talking to Rachel, grabbed my arm, and pulled me away.

  “You really have lost your mind, haven’t you?” He hissed at me once we were safely hidden behind the Town Hall building. “You really have snapped. Finally. God, I should have seen it coming, but I didn’t. How you can be capable of...” He stopped talking but began to pace. When he resumed his diatribe, his voice was trembling even worse. “He was my best friend, and you were so pissed at me that you…”

  “James.” I said, “Two things.”

  “No!” He snapped loudly, and I turned my head on the side, raised my eyebrow, and smirked again in disbelief at his childish show of emotion. “You will not pull this shit now!”

  “I will pull whatever ‘shit’ I wish to pull. The first thing is that if you ever forcibly remove me from a public setting like that ever again, I will snap your wrist the way I snapped your disgusting best friend’s neck and jaw. The second thing is a reminder to you to please keep in mind that I am rarely motivated in my actions to please or displease you.”

  “So, why did you do it then?! How could you have done it?! How, Brynna?! He was our friend! He loved you! God, he held you in the highest regard. And you murdered him brutally.”

  “Yes. I did.” I turned and began to walk away.

  “I should turn you in.”

  I sighed heavily and said over my shoulder, “But you won’t. Goodbye, James.”

  “What was that about?” Rachel asked me, stringing her cross necklace along the chain compulsively as she looked nervously between James, who had come storming back to the party, and me.

  “He knows.”

  “Oh, God…” She groaned, and she grasped my arm to steady herself. “And I take it you didn’t talk him down and explain why you did it.”

  “No. Because he would not believe it even if I did say it.”

  “So you’re just going to let him think you murder people for your own amusement? Or that you killed his best friend to get back at him?”

  “Yes. If he is willing to believe it, then I will let him believe it, Rachel.”