“What are you doing?” I demand as I pick up. “Don’t hurt my wife.”
“Tell your wife how you wanted to fuck me,” Zoe instructs, her voice icy but a bit hysterical. “Tell her how you always wished she was me.”
“That’s not true,” I tell her slowly. “You know that. You pursued me, Zoe. You pursued me all along.”
“I didn’t force your dick from your pants and into my mouth. I didn’t force you to fuck me.”
I hear Corinne gasp, and I realize that I’m on speakerphone.
“Corinne, don’t listen to her. I’m so so sorry. I didn’t have sex with her. I never wanted her. I got sucked in and...”
Zoe laughs. “Don’t you mean, sucked on?”
I flinch. “It didn’t get that far and you know it.”
Corinne is silent.
“Corinne, she baited me. I swear to God. I wanted to hurt her. I... She blackmailed me, and I...” I don’t know what to say. I can hear Zoe laughing at my helplessness and at Corinne’s pain, and my blood threatens to boil right out of my veins.
Their car swerves sharply, and then Zoe overcorrects, bringing it back too hard over the center line.
“Zoe, pull over,” I implore her. “Please. It’s raining too hard to go this fast.”
The road flashes beneath us, wet and slick. Her tires swerve again and then swerve back. She’s driving like a crazy person.
“Don’t tell me what to do.” And her voice is so spiteful. “You don’t get to anymore.”
“I never did,” I insist. “I never wanted anything from you.”
“I wanted everything from you,” she finally says. “And I’m finally going to get it.”
57
Corinne
Zoe’s mascara is smeared, and her eyes pierce into mine. She has her phone to her ear, and she’s talking to my husband.
“He’s mine.” She turns to me, and her voice is so odd. It’s almost like she’s suspended from reality. “I’m carrying his child, you whore. I’m the one he wants. He doesn’t think so right now, but it’s true. When I touch him, he comes to life. I’m everything he’ll ever need. You’re old, Corinne. You’re old and used up, and he doesn’t want you.”
“Don’t listen to her,” Jude tells me urgently over the speaker. “We never had sex. She’s not pregnant, Corinne. I never wanted her. Not really.”
Pain jabs me in the heart, and our car weaves to and fro in the rain.
“You’re lying, Jude,” Zoe interrupts. “You did want me. Remember all of those texts you sent me? How you sent me your pictures and wanted me to see you naked? You did want me. You wanted to be inside of me. Admit it.”
“You pulled all the strings, Zoe,” Jude says, and his voice is so strange. Like he’s not the person I knew, and I guess he never was. “You pulled my strings, you played Corinne. You pulled off whatever you were trying to do. And you’re a crazy bitch.”
“Oh, I haven’t finished yet,” Zoe says, and her voice makes a chill run down my spine, and it freezes the blood in my veins.
“What do you still want to do?” I ask her, and my voice is too quiet. It’s hard to hear in the rain. “Slow down,” I speak louder, more firmly.
For a minute, I see her as the little girl she used to be, with the long pigtails, the one who always wanted to have tea parties with me and asked me to braid her doll’s hair. I almost almost almost soften. But then her eyes glint in the moonlight, and it’s clear how crazy she’s become.
She’s a monster now, and I have no idea how much I am to blame for that.
I’m living in a cage of lies, and that’s all I can see in front of me.
“She’s crazy,” Jude tells me. “She’s crazy, Corinne. She put the abortion pill in your soup.”
My head snaps back and I stare at her, and she laughs, a grotesque sound that ricochets through the car.
“What?” she demands. “You’re surprised? I’m going to take everything from you, Corinne. Just like you took from me.”
In the background, from somewhere, I can hear sirens. But all I can focus on is Zoe and what she’s done, and what she still has planned.
“Zoe, pull over,” I tell her, trying to be firm.
But she laughs again. She knows full well that I can’t make her do anything. I eye the door handle. I could maybe jump out. But we’re going too fast. I’d die. The baby could die.
We’re so close to town. If I can just hold on...
We curve around the next bend, and I feel the tires hydroplane a bit. But then they catch and I exhale in relief.
But my relief is short-lived.
It happens in a blur...fragments.
Our car is in control, and then it isn’t.
It spins and tumbles, and the water engulfs it in the ditch. The tires spin and spin in the air, the water flecking off them, as the roof of the car sinks into the mud.
Steam rises.
Zoe gasps.
I scream, I think.
We skid and skid.
I’m half in and half out of the car, and I’m conscious and I’m wet.
The rain is pelting me.
I pull myself out and I stand, and I’m wobbly. I slip and slide down the soaked grass and through the ditch and the smell. The smell of burned oil and wet rubber, and hot water is in my eyes and I can’t see.
I hear Jude calling for help, and then I hear her. A gurgle. A whimper.
I drop to my knees and she’s halfway out of the car, the glass is shattered and blood runs down her arms, streaming into the ground, and her eyes are open.
They cut me, into my heart.
“You.” Her voice is raspy. “You did this.”
Blood bubbles from her nose and her words are so short, so jagged, like broken bits of glass.
“I didn’t,” I tell her. “You did this. Breathe deep, Zoe. Hang on. Help is coming.”
“You don’t care,” she whispers, “if I live or die. It’s nothing to you.” Her bottom half is crumpled in the car seat, and she wasn’t wearing a seat belt. Her pelvis is smashed to bits, and I know, that if she’d actually been pregnant, that there’s no way her child could still be living. There’s no way it could’ve survived. Jude’s child.
Anger swells in me, and I see red, and the pain the pain the pain grows bigger than my logic, bigger than my compassion, and that’s all I see. White-hot pain and it’s mine and I own it.
“It’s nothing to him,” I tell her coldly, steeling my heart. “You’re nothing to him.”
She smiles, and her teeth are red and grotesque and broken.
“But I’m a nothing who took your husband. Just like you took everything that mattered to me.”
My heart pounds and twists, because she did take my husband.
She was young and lovely, and I thought she held so much power over me, and I thought she was my friend, but here she is on the ground, and she’s bleeding and broken and she’s nothing to me.
“You’re dying,” I tell her.
“You’re a bitch,” she manages to say, her last words with her last breaths. All of my instincts and experiences feel it. She gurgles now, and she can’t talk anymore, and her chest heaves up and down raggedly.
“It didn’t have to be this way,” I say quietly, and the wind steals my words and carries them away. Zoe watches me, her eyes already beginning to cloud.
I hear the sirens, I see the red lights flashing around us in circles, and when the EMTs shove their way through the rain, I step to the side, and her eyes still follow me, dark as night.
They pull her out, sliding her easily onto the wet ground. I can see her weaken, and her breathing slow. She’s going. She’s slipping away and I don’t feel anything.
And then Jude is here, wet in the rain.
And he’s all I’ve ever wanted, and he’s bro
ken my heart.
58
Jude
“Corinne!” I yell through the rain. I’m desperate and terrified, and if something has happened to her, I’ll never forgive myself.
I scramble down the wet hill to the crumpled car, and she is standing, and I can’t believe it. She’s soaking wet, her blond hair plastered to her head, but she doesn’t appear to have a scratch on her.
Her eyes meet mine, and there is so much pain in hers that I can’t stand it.
“Corinne,” I whisper. Red and blue lights flash against everything eerily in the night, and chaos is everywhere.
And then I hear the EMTs.
“Her pulse is thready. We’re gonna need epinephrine,” one calls out, talking about Zoe, and I startle because I know they shouldn’t.
I’m allergic to epinephrine and bee stings, she’d told me once, and it seems like so long ago.
She’s allergic.
She’s allergic.
Zoe hears him, too, and her eyes widen and she tries to say something, she tries to call out, but she can’t because her lungs are collapsing, and blood is streaming from her mouth. Her eyes connect with mine, and she knows that I remember.
She wants me to help, I can see it, I can see it. But I don’t. My heart is cold and steel and in shock, and I don’t say a word. Because if I say nothing, this all ends. It will end now.
She killed my brother.
She tried to kill my wife.
She tried to kill my baby.
She’s insane. She’ll never stop. I know it. I know it.
Our gaze is still connected when her eyelids freeze. She can no longer move and her heart is slowing slowing slowing. I see it, and deep down, in the hidden part of my heart, in the place where I feel such dark things, I know she’s still there. Her eyes still have life, and she still sees me.
I bend next to her head. “I know you killed my brother.”
Blood bubbles from her nose. “Had to,” she manages to say, her mouth filling with blood.
“And I have to do this. For my brother.”
Her eyes widen.
“Good night,” I whisper.
I step away and I don’t stop them as they jam a needle of epi into her chest and the plunger goes down and it’s done.
Years ago, when my wife took her Hippocratic oath, I vowed to do the same, to never do harm, but in this case...in this case...it was necessary, wasn’t it? I could’ve stopped them. I could’ve.
But I didn’t.
I see the moment the life drains from her, the moment her eyes go empty.
She’s gone and she can never hurt me or my wife again.
A human being is dead, and I didn’t intervene, and I don’t care.
I stand limply in the dark, and then...out of the chaos, I hear Corinne’s voice, calling for me, pushing through the bodies standing in the rain.
She reaches me, and she doesn’t look at Zoe, not even for a second.
It doesn’t matter what comes next. In this horrific moment, we’re together. I’m all she has, and she’s mine and I’m hers. My arms fold around her, and her head rests against my chest.
“God, Corinne, are you all right?” My voice is cracked and terrified, and she nods against my shirt.
I don’t speak the unspeakable. I don’t tell her that I could’ve helped Zoe and I didn’t. I don’t say any of those words, and I never will.
I close my eyes.
59
Jude
I wait for hours in the ER waiting room as Corinne is checked out.
The fluorescent lights shine on me, turning my skin a pale green, and I’m numb.
I’m numb.
My brother is dead and my wife is traumatized and I’m alone.
When she finally emerges from the swinging double doors, Brock walks her out and hands her off to me.
“She’s okay,” he tells me, his voice low. “She’s in shock, and obviously, she’s upset. But physically, she’s okay. And the baby is okay.”
I feel like hugging him, but I shake his hand instead.
“Thanks, man,” I tell him, and my voice cracks. He nods, sympathy in his eyes, compassion in his voice.
“No problem. Take care of her.”
Corinne won’t even look at me, and the ride home is quiet as she sobs in the passenger seat, her forehead pressed to the glass.
I’ve never seen her so broken, not even after mass deaths in the ER, and I don’t know what to do. So I stay silent.
Everything is broken. My marriage, my wife. My brother is dead. I don’t even know which way is up anymore.
I help Corinne into the house, and she yanks away from me and stalks to the shower. She’s in there a long time, and when I finally feel like it’s safe to check on her, she’s curled up in bed on her side.
“Corinne?”
She blinks but doesn’t answer.
I sit on the end of the bed, hesitant to speak, hesitant to breathe. I know I’ve wronged her, I’ve devastated her. What I don’t know...is how to fix it.
“How could you do this to me?” she finally asks, her voice so quiet in the dark. I have to strain to hear her.
“I don’t know,” I answer simply. “It didn’t start out this way. It evolved into more than I could handle. It honestly started out at the diner.”
Corinne looks away. “I thought you were just hungry. I guess you were hungry. For something. Just not for me.”
“Christ,” I mutter. “Corinne, I’m so sorry. I love you. I’ve always loved you. I felt alone and neglected, and she paid me so much attention. I...guess I got carried away. It’s no excuse. I have no excuse.”
“No, you don’t,” Corinne says icily, her back still to me. “She may have been targeting you to get to me, but our marriage should’ve been rock solid. You should have said no, Jude.”
“She meant nothing!” I’m exasperated now. “I swear to God, Corinne. You’re all that matters. She was nothing... She was a mistake!”
“Jesus, Jude,” she snaps. “A mistake is tripping and falling into her with your dick. You didn’t do that. You purposely created a relationship with her. You gave her bits of you, and that kills me, Jude. It kills me. Out of everything that’s happened, this is the worst.”
Her voice cracks, and tears fill her eyes and tumble over, hot and wet.
“God, Co,” I croak, and I rush to put my arms around her. She doesn’t resist. “I didn’t give her anything. She was an incident. She was a fucking incident. An error in judgment born out of desperation and a bad situation. I put myself in that situation and I know it and I’m so fucking sorry. If I could change it, I would. I swear to God I would.”
She cries into my shoulder and her fists flail against my back and I let her. I let her hit me hit me hit me until she doesn’t have any strength left. I deserve it.
Finally, she falls into me, and her tears are gone, and her eyes are a void, a void free of her love.
“She wasn’t a relationship,” I tell her again. “I gave her just enough to carry out the charade, to keep her giving me what I wanted. All I wanted was the fantasy of it, Co. I wanted the thrill, the dopamine. She filled that need.”
“She was a girl, damaged by a terrible event,” Corinne tells me, like I don’t already know. I’m a therapist, for God’s sake. “She was molested as a child, and Lord only knows what else. She targeted her rage on me because I’m still alive. When I think of you...with her... I...I just can’t right now, Jude.”
She closes her eyes, and her sobbing racks her body. I want to hold her, but I know she’d push me away. I sit helplessly next to her instead.
“You’re my life,” I tell her when her sobs finally lighten. “I’ll do anything you want me to do to prove it to you. If you let me stay with you, I swear to God, I’ll never hurt you agai
n. I swear it.”
She’s silent and her hand shakes as it curls around the edge of the sheet.
I place my own over it, stilling it, and she closes her eyes.
“God, I wish I could hate you.”
“But you don’t.”
I don’t know if I’m hopeful or if it’s a fact, and it’s a couple of minutes before she answers.
“I don’t know what I feel. I’m overwhelmed...by everything.” Her voice cuts off and she swallows hard.
“I don’t want to live without you,” I answer, and I’m resolute. “I’ll do anything you want. Can I sleep here? I’ll even sleep on the floor. I just want to watch over you and make sure you’re safe. Please, Corinne.”
She nods and hides her face and then cries herself to sleep.
True to my word, I stay on the floor with a pillow and blanket. I watch her sleep, listen to her even breaths and replay the events of the past month in my head. I don’t know how we even got here, how it got so far.
My brother is dead, and I can’t tell her yet. It would devastate her.
Like it’s devastated me.
Corinne is on a precarious ledge, and one more thing would push her off, and she might break.
I grieve alone, in the night, the darkness concealing my pain.
Corinne wakes in the night once and calls my name.
I’m up in a second, holding her hand as I kneel next to the bed.
“Was it a nightmare, Jude?” Her voice is small and hopeful. “It wasn’t, was it?”
“No,” I answer regretfully. “It wasn’t. But it’s going to be all right, Co.”
She pulls her hand away and turns over.
“Is it?” Her words are painful and hopeless.
I return to the floor.
I stay there until morning, finally falling asleep, and when I wake, Corinne is watching me, perched on the side of the bed.
I sit up and rub the sleep out of my eyes.
“It happened,” she says darkly, her words heavy. “It was real.”
I nod.
“Can we ever get past it?”
“I don’t know,” I answer. “I can. Can you?”
Such Dark Things Page 25