Betrayal
Page 16
“The police are on the way, asshole! I called them. I’m going to give them this when they come!” She held up a micro-cassette recorder. “You’re going to get life, you son of a bitch! I’ve been recording you from the moment you walked inside! I have you, Zeke! I have you!”
Zeke couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, the tornado sucking away all of the oxygen, leaving his mind in disarray.
Jewell . . . dead.
Sapphire . . . alive.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way.
Above the tumultuous confusion in his head, Zeke heard sirens. Approaching the house. Coming to take him to jail.
But he wasn’t a criminal. Sapphire was. Her betrayal, her deceit—that was the real crime. He wasn’t to blame. He couldn’t be. He couldn’t and wouldn’t do anything to hurt his little girl, his little princess.
He wasn’t to blame.
He shook his head again as the wail of the police sirens grew louder. He looked up at Sapphire. Her crime . . . Her crime.
“You bitch!” he screamed. “I’m going to kill you!”
He charged up the remaining stairs toward Sapphire. He’d imagined doing it many times over, but this time it would be real. He was going to choke her. She was going to die like she was supposed to.
He raced up to the top.
Sapphire screamed and then removed a baseball bat she’d had hidden at her side.
Zeke had kept the bat at his bedside for protection. He had a gun, too, but he’d never told her where he kept it.
Sapphire screamed and swung out.
Zeke never saw the blow coming, but felt it crash against his temple.
The tornado finally managed to pick him up and throw him down.
Zeke tumbled and twisted backward and sideways at forty-five, thirty-six, and fifty-four-degree angles down the steps, until he hit the bottom, his neck and back broken.
He stared up at the ceiling through blurred, spotted vision. He was in pain, feeling himself slowly fading.
He wheezed. His insides burned. He felt blood running from where the bat had connected.
His daughter was dead.
He was lying where she’d taken her last breath.
He would be dead soon.
Sapphire would still be alive.
He wanted to cry, to scream, to laugh, but he could only lay involuntarily still.
Sirens screamed from outside of the door.
Zeke closed his eyes and went to a place where Jewell would never know death, and he and Sapphire would always exist with promises to live faithfully as one.
Epilogue
Zeke hadn’t died. Sapphire thought he had.
As she stood at the top of the staircase staring down at him with the micro-cassette recorder in one hand and the baseball bat in the other, she thought for sure that he’d gone down where the temperature made your flesh blister and pop open, where a man dressed in red tights with horns on his head and a pitchfork in his hand stood with a fanged smile.
But he hadn’t.
The police stormed into the house, found Zeke unmoving at the bottom of the staircase, his eyes closed, and announced that he still had a pulse. Several minutes later, the paramedics were taking Zeke away on a stretcher to the hospital, while police officers listened to the recording on the micro-cassette tape. When the tape was shut off, condolences were given for the events that had taken place, and Sapphire was left alone. She’d defended herself. There wasn’t any more that needed to be said.
Five days later, Sapphire sat with a newspaper in her hand, sitting beside Zeke, who lay in a hospital bed paralyzed from the neck down. Sapphire sighed. She didn’t know why she was there. Zeke wanted her dead, and had tried his best to kill her, but there she was, back for a fourth visit.
“I buried our daughter and son-in-law today,” she said. “Their bodies are lying side by side. They have a beautiful headstone made of granite, with the inscription ‘beloved daughter and beloved son.’”
This was the first time she’d spoken to him. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to speak before this.
She took a breath and flipped through the pages and came to a stop on page three. In the middle, off to the right, there was an article about Tre. He’d been found dead in his apartment with multiple stab wounds to his stomach and chest. The police were calling it a robbery, as his Xbox 360, flat-screen plasma television, iPod, and several other random items had been stolen.
Sapphire thought about Tre and sadness fell over her soul. Collateral damage, that’s what he’d been. Collateral damage in a war between husband and wife. Sapphire wiped a tear away from the corner of her eye. Tre’s death was on her shoulders and no one else’s. It would forever weigh down on her conscience. She looked over at Zeke. “You should be dead,” she said evenly.
She folded the newspaper in half and slid it in her purse, and then rose from her chair and stood over Zeke. She looked him in his eyes intensely as he stared back at her, his eyeballs the only thing able to move.
Her mind went back to the funeral, back to the moment when the caskets had been lowered into the earth. Emotions tugged at her from every possible angle. Sadness, pain, grief, anger, hatred, remorse, fear. Overwhelmed, she’d dropped down to her knees and remained there, refusing to let anyone help her up. The grief extreme, she had stayed on the ground, sobbing heavily. She’d been alone for a half hour before she finally found strength enough to get up.
She stared down at her husband.
She said, “Their child’s empty casket is lying between them, Zeke.”
She paused to let her words sink in. Zeke looked at her, his eyes widening.
“Jewell was six weeks pregnant. They discovered that when they did the autopsy.”
Sapphire stared as Zeke’s breathing quickened. He moaned slightly, unable to speak because of the breathing tube in his throat. His eyes opened more and began to well with tears.
“The inscription on our grandchild’s headstone reads ‘To our beloved Grandchild. Taken far too soon. Watch over us, little angel. Watch over us.’ We’ll never get to be grandparents, Ezekiel. We will never know that joy.”
Zeke moaned again. Sapphire could see in his eyes that he was trying to move. She looked up. The beeping on his heart monitor had increased. She looked down at him.
“Your daughter, your son-in-law, your grandchild . . . all dead, Zeke. Dead because of you. Because of your pride, your ego. You have to live with that. And . . . so do I.” She wrapped herself up in her arms, the admittance of her own hand in what had occurred making her cold.
Heart rate increasing, tears falling down from the corner of his eyes and resting on his pillow, Zeke moaned again.
“Remember what you’ve done when you’re in hell, Zeke. Remember what you’ve done.”
Sapphire looked up at the monitor, and then back down at him. His eyes began to roll into the back of his head. His body began to shake. Sapphire stared and thought about being at the top of the staircase.
“You should be dead, Zeke,” she whispered. She bent forward, gave him a kiss on his forehead, and turned away from him. As she did, nurses and doctors came rushing into the room, frantically trying to stop his seizure.
Sapphire walked out of the room.
She thought he’d died before.
This time, she was sure he would.
One hour later, Sapphire was looking up at the sun through a pair of shades. It had been a while since she’d taken time to appreciate the sun and the light and warmth it provided.
She’d received a call twenty minutes after leaving the hospital.
Zeke was dead.
Sapphire took a breath as the sun’s rays washed over her, and looked toward the house she used to call home. A “sold” sign hung in the front yard. After all that had happened, remaining there had just been impossible. There was too much pain, too much death injected into its walls. Selling it had been a necessity on Sapphire’s long road to recovery.
“They seem like a
really great family.”
Sapphire turned and looked at her realtor, Nancy. She gave a half smile. “Yes, they do.”
She turned and looked back to the family as they walked into the house. Mommy, daddy, and their little girl. Sapphire closed her eyes and prayed for them to be unaffected by the ghosts they’d left behind. She opened her eyes and turned back to Nancy. “So the condo will be ready in two days?”
Nancy nodded. “Yes.”
“Good.”
Nancy got into her BMW and drove off.
Sapphire stood still for a long moment and looked at the house one last time, then got into her car and drove away alone. Something she would forever be.
Book Club Discussion Questions
1. Who do you think was the catalyst for the events that took place in the book?
2. Were you surprised by Zeke’s emotional breakdown?
3. Could you sympathize with Sam’s decision to go along with Zeke?
4. Was Jewell wrong for sending the pictures?
5. If in Jewell’s position, would you have confronted Sapphire?
6. Do you think Zeke was truly hurt by Sapphire’s infidelity, or had his ego/pride just been bruised?
7. How did you feel at the end?
8. Do you think Zeke would have changed his ways had Sapphire communicated with him initially about her feelings?
9. Would Sam and Jewell’s marriage have survived had Sam confessed about his infidelity?
10. Who was the true victim in this tale?
Urban Books, LLC
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Betrayal copyright© 2009 Dwayne S. Joseph
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without prior consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
ISBN: 978-1-6016-2383-6
This is a work of fiction. Any references or similarities to actual events, real people, living, or dead, or to real locales are intended to give the novel a sense of reality. Any similarity in other names, characters, places, and incidents is entirely coincidental.
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