CRUX: A Dark Romantic Suspense

by Stella Noir

  “Where exactly am I?” I ask the doctor, my head already pounding along with my heart in anticipation of his answer.

  As per usual, the nurse is faster to answer, taking my sore hands in hers as she looks at me sympathetically.

  “You’re in the psychiatric unit, honey,” she tells me softly, and I let the reality of those words sink in, gulping the lump in my throat. I just nod my head, trying to come to terms with what she just told me.

  “Is he … is he really gone?” I whisper, and the nurse nods, confirming my worst fears, even though I knew it to be true all along. I nod along with her, trying to make myself believe this is my reality now, not some sick and twisted dream I’ll wake out of.

  “Where is Dylan?” is my next question, my eyes pleading the nurse to provide me with an answer.

  She opens her mouth to speak, but before a word can leave her mouth, the doctor stops her with a stern look on his face. “I believe that’s enough questions for now,” he says, sounding a little angry, as I look at him, feeling surprised.

  “How about you answer some now?”

  I furrow my brows, feeling confused, but he motions for everyone to leave. The nurse looks at me with regret and worry, and I want her to stay so badly, but I don’t dare say a word. Everyone files out of the room until it’s just the unpleasant doctor and me left.

  “As you know, you’ve been out for a week, and several people have been eager to see you,” the doctor explains, and I offer an eager nod, thinking about Dylan out there in the waiting room.

  He must be absolutely beat, as I’m sure he didn’t leave my side for one second.

  “I’ll let them in now,” the doctor says hurriedly, and I can’t nod fast enough. He leaves slowly, and I want to rush him, but manage to keep my mouth shut. He’s just at the door, when he hesitantly turns around to look at me, his hand already on the handle.

  “Be careful,” he says softly, just loud enough for me to hear.

  “Why?” I ask softly, feeling confused.

  But he doesn’t answer my question, instead leaving my room and closing it softly. I don’t hear the lock turning, and that makes me feel hopeful for a second. The feeling is gone in moments as the door opens again almost after the doctor’s departure.

  The man who walks in is tall, broad, and muscular. He’s also incredibly handsome in a strange way – he has natural red hair and stubble on his cheeks, but his coloring is not the usual pale color, peppered with freckles.

  I don’t think anyone ever dared calling him a ginger.

  But he isn’t Dylan, and I sit up in my bed, glancing around worriedly.

  “Where is Dylan?” I ask, my eyes shooting towards the door, and then dancing around his figure. It is only then that I realize he’s wearing a uniform.

  A police uniform.

  My throat constricts as I look at the man – who must be in his mid twenties, so only a few years older than me. I feel scared, like I have something to hide, but I know all has been said, for better or for worse.

  “Why are you here?” I ask, the panic seeping in my voice, as much as I try to stop it from showing. I know my voice is shaking and I clear my throat to hide that fact.

  The man, who I now realize is an officer, sighs and stands in front of the window, looking outside. His hands touch the bars, shaking them, as if testing how hard it would be to break out of here.

  Finally, he turns towards me as if he just remembered I was also in the room. “I hope you understand we must ask you some questions,” he says, his voice deep and booming. It sends chills down my spine.

  I look at him accusingly and questioningly at the same time. “I’m the one with questions,” I say, loud and clear this time.

  “And you will have your answers in time,” he reassures me, but it does nothing for the nervousness I’m feeling in that exact moment.

  “I need to know what happened first,” he says, almost sounding a little apologetic. “Begin by telling me about your wedding day.”

  I swallow another lump in my throat, because I don’t know what to tell him.

  Is it safe to say I was scared? Hesitant? Unsure? Or will that make me seem like a suspect?

  “I got married, and my husband died a few hours later. You could at least have the decency to let me take this in my own time,” I spit out.

  “You had a week,” he says angrily. “Do you not want to know what happened to your husband?”

  That shuts me up and I look away from his imploring gaze, feeling shameful, like I did something wrong. And that reminds of my mother-in-law.

  “Did she send you here?” I ask tentatively, but the anger is already boiling under my skin. I had thought I’d reached a truce with that wretched woman, but now she’s out to hurt me again – and when I’m at my most vulnerable, no less.

  “I’m just doing my job,” he says tiredly. “Are you willing to answer my questions or not?”

  “Didn’t realize I had a choice,” I say bitterly.

  He just stares at me pointedly, waiting for an answer.

  “No,” I say, turning away from him, away from the light coming in through the window. “Let me grieve. Let me have my time.”

  I expect him to put up a fight, but instead, in a few seconds’ time, I hear the door to my room closing softly.

  And this time, the key does turn in the lock.

  Chapter 25

  I let myself have a couple of moments to grieve. I need months, years, but I make do with what I have.

  I think about Matthew, think about the happiness, our life together, what it could have been. It hurts, but at least I’m coming to terms with it.

  Longingly, I let myself think about the last few weeks, the blissful moments with my fiancé and our puppy, Love.

  I’m worried when I think of her, and at the same time, embarrassed of only thinking of the dog now. But I had so much on my plate … I can only hope the housekeeper is taking good care of her.

  I lose myself in memories, in things that might have been, events that could have happened, had he not been taken away from me so cruelly.

  I don’t have much peace, though.

  A few hours after the police officer leaves, I hear a commotion outside of my room and sit up in my bed; covering myself with the thin, itchy duvet the hospital provided me with.

  The lock turns again and the nurse from before enters my room. I don’t know why, but her appearance alone makes me calmer. For some reason or another, I feel like I can trust her.

  She approaches my bed hesitantly, smiling softly at me. I return the sentiment.

  “Are you up to another visitor?” she asks, sounding apologetic.

  Immediately, I sit up even straighter. “Is it Dylan?” I ask hopefully, feeling ashamed for my question. Here I am, only a week after my husband’s death, and I’m already asking for another man …

  “No, it’s not your filthy lover,” an icy voice answers me and I whip my head towards the entrance to the room. Of course, my visitor is none other than my mother-in-law, and I wasn’t fooling anyone by expecting someone else.

  But today of all days, I’m not going to take her bitter venom.

  “Watch your mouth,” I warn her.

  “Watch the way you talk to me, girl,” she spits back, walking into the room and ushering the nurse out. I would have expected her to object, fight back like she did with the doctors, but even she seems to be helpless when it comes to Mrs. Roberts, who now shares my name.

  When the door closes, she approaches me like a viper and I take her in.

  She looks worse for wear, but her clothing is still perfect. A Chanel bouclé suit that hangs off her frame, kitten heels which are, I’m sure, causing a world of pain to her calloused feet. She has bags under her eyes that she tried her best to hide with concealer, but you can see them from a mile away.

  “You look awful,” I inform her cheerfully.

  “As do you,” she returns the favor.

  We just stare at each other for a coupl
e of seconds, assessing each other’s strength, seeing who will win in our endless fight. I’m the first one to look away, not because I can’t stand her eyes on mine, but because I’m genuinely exhausted.

  “What do you want, Barbara?” I ask tiredly.

  “Oh, so now I’m Barbara,” she laughs coldly. “I asked you to call me by my name for months, and now that you have no right to do so, you decide to take me up on that offer.” She smirks at me, but I notice she doesn’t ask me to call her by her last name.

  It’s a small victory, but a win nonetheless.

  “Get on with it,” I ask her, gritting my teeth, annoyed with her mere presence in my sick room, if it can be called that. I still have no idea why I’m in the psychiatric unit aside from the doctor’s remark about me trying to hurt myself, which I would find hard to believe had I not seen the markings on the insides of my wrists.

  “I want answers,” she demands.

  “You’re not the only one,” I retort.

  She comes closer to me, but doesn’t sit on the bed like a normal person would. Instead, she hovers above me, looking at every small imperfection on my face and body. I cross my arms protectively, pulling the duvet up as high as I can without actually hiding behind it.

  “I know you’re at fault for this,” she says. “I know you had something to do with it.”

  “Why did he die?” I demand to know.

  “They’re doing the autopsy. It won’t be clear until then. But he was healthy,” she says accusingly. “He was in good health. The only thing …”

  “The only thing was that he was sterile,” I add bitterly. “From a sickness in his childhood.”

  She actually has the decency to blush, but I’m not done yet. I lean in closer, venom spilling out of my mouth. “A fact that you hid both from me and your son, God knows why. You did as much damage as I did, if not more.”

  I lean back, comfortably position myself on the pillows and glare at her, daggers shooting out of my eyes. As much as I try to like this woman, it will always be tense between us. There is no solid ground, and no shared interests now that Matt is gone.

  “Has it been ruled as murder?” I ask hesitantly, and she walks over to the window, turning her back to me, probably to hide her own vulnerability.

  “Not yet,” she says. “But I know someone hurt him. I don’t know who or why.”

  She walks back to the entrance to my room, and she looks genuinely defeated. And I feel sorry for her, but still angry since she accused me of something so awful at my own wedding.

  But then I realize my thought about no mutual interest is wrong.

  We do both want the same thing …

  “Barbara,” I say quietly, but my voice is strong like it hasn’t been in ages, because I’m determined this time around. “We will find out what happened. We will find justice.”

  She looks at me doubtfully, already almost out of the door.

  I gather my fingers into a tight fist, pressing it close to my heart, gritting my teeth.

  “I promise,” I say through the tears that are starting to fall once more.

  But she won’t even let me have this one small moment, won’t admit we have the same goal. Just before she leaves, she turns to face me one more time, and a small smile turns up her lips.

  “Your friend has been arrested,” she informs me cordially, and my heart stops in my chest. “Remember, little Dylan Rawlings? They know all about what he did when you were children.”

  I look at her wide-eyed, feeling more scared than ever in my whole life.

  “Justice will be served,” she promises me, shutting the door as she leaves.

  I fall back on my pillows and let the horrors sink in.

  Chapter 26

  The day comes when I’m allowed to leave the hospital. My days have been long and arduous, the biggest and happiest moment when they stopped unlocking my door. I’m not sure what the doctors were afraid of, and since I wasn’t really a suspect as Dylan’s death had not yet been ruled a murder, I wasn’t a flight risk, I presume.

  I noticed the police officer from the first day I woke up around the hospital several times, and I shot him a few funny looks, but he never so much as returned my gaze. So I chose to ignore him instead, though he was a hard figure to miss.

  No one would answer my questions at first, and when I was desperate after my mother-in-law left my room, I found solace and help with the friendly nurse who became a staple visitor in my room.

  She tried to find out as much as she could and would fill me in with hushed tones about what was actually going on. She turned to gossip websites and claimed the death of Matthew Roberts was the biggest piece of news as of late.

  It was her who told me Dylan was merely taken in for questioning, not arrested. Honestly, the police couldn’t do much to him since the death was not yet ruled a murder. But they did know of his past … of our past.

  Dylan killed a man when he was eighteen.

  He did it to protect me, but not many people are aware of that, or instead, choose to close their eyes, shielding themselves from the truth.

  I was sixteen that summer, and Dylan was eighteen. We were spending the holidays on the seaside, seeing each other after months of absence. Dylan is British, and I’m from the South, so we never saw each other during the year, but nonetheless, our relationship was strong, the love we felt for each other blooming with every day that passed.

  That summer, there was another visitor in Dylan’s house. Usually it was just his parents and his sister, but that year, a strange relative was there, too. He introduced himself as Frank. He looked a lot like Dylan, devilishly handsome and took a special interest in me when we discovered we shared a love of reading.

  Little did I know that interest would soon turn into an obsession.

  Frank soon told me he was Dylan’s brother. He was the result of an affair of his father’s, and he refused to tell anyone the truth, though I’m sure the rest of the family knew.

  Dylan was the only one left in the dark, which is what I told the police after the murder – repeatedly.

  He was accused of killing Frank, afraid for his own inheritance, and sent to juvi. There was nothing I could do, because my parents whisked me away and kept me locked away for years, preventing me from getting involved.

  The real truth is this …

  Frank molested me. He tried to rape me, and if Dylan hadn’t stopped him, I know he would have done what he set out to do.

  For that, I will be forever grateful.

  But through the years, Dylan didn’t contact me once. He kept his distance even after coming out of juvi, despite his promise of loving me forever. I kept that promise, even when I became engaged to another man.

  Dylan would forever hold a piece of my heart, a piece that belongs to the past, though.

  When he arrived to my engagement party, I was shocked, thinking he was a mirage at first. It turned out he wanted to be here for me, though I would be lying if I didn’t admit I had suspected his ulterior motive.

  But that is all said and done.

  Today is the day I leave this place, and from then on, I’m free to make my own decisions.

  I answer to no one now.

  *

  I have no idea what will happen as I walk out of the hospital. I half expect a crowd outside, my mother-in-law leading a small army, ready to fight me to the death.

  And secretly, I expect Dylan to be there. To help me, to support me. Like he promised he would.

  But there is not a single face I know in the crowd that awaits me. And there is indeed a crowd.

  The media, photographers flashing cameras in my face, attacks me; journalists shoving microphones under my nose. Shocked, I gratefully accept a huge pair of sunglasses from the friendly nurse, whom I’ve come to know as Martha.

  She helps me outside and I look around, feeling more lost than ever as the crowd descends on me. My eyes land on a limousine waiting in front of the hospital, and I’ve never in my life been this
happy for my driver.

  Whose name I still don’t know.

  I blush at the thought as he walks over to escort me into the car, opening my door.

  “Thank you, …” I whisper as he sets in inside, looking embarrassed at him.

  “It’s Mr. Denver’s,” he says, a small smile playing on his lips. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  I find myself returning the smile, the first genuine happy emotion I’ve felt in weeks. He closes the door tightly and thankfully, it dulls the sounds from outside. In moments, the car begins to move, though I’m not sure where.

  The surroundings I see from the car window become familiar soon, and for once, I’m sorry there is a glass partition separating me from the driver. A familiar voice would be so soothing right now.

  I realize we’re driving towards mine and Matthew’s house. He had been living there for years when he met me, and I moved in within the year. It’s a family home – a mansion, really.

  Thinking about our dog, Love, there all alone, breaks my heart into pieces. The house is made for a happy family, a loving couple, and children running around barefoot.

  That can never happen now that Matthew is gone.

  We arrive at the house soon enough, and I stand in the driveway as the memories flood my mind. I don’t dwell too much, and Mr. Denvers gently leads me towards the entrance. Ever so slowly, I open the front door with a key he provides and in seconds, I’m attacked.

  There is someone or something licking my face excitedly, and I soon realize it’s Love, who has somehow become twice her size. Laughing, I get her off of me, and then scoop her up in my arms. She’s gotten so big it’s hard to hold her, yet I cannot resist but pretend she’s still a puppy.

  Mr. Denvers says goodbye to me, and I’m left to wander the grounds by myself. I explore the house like it’s my first time here, Love always at my feet.

  Finally, I make my way to the telephone, which is flashing with too many messages to count. I press play and dissolve into the couch as I listen to the sorries, the well wishes, the sad voices.