Slice

by William Patterson

  Jessie was about to call out to Emil, but something stopped her. Her voice dried up in her throat. That was because she’d suddenly spotted the glint of a blade in the moonlight. She watched in horror as Emil nonchalantly slit the man’s throat. He just reached over and swung the blade as if he’d suddenly gotten bored with their argument and decided to end it. Jessie saw a spurt of blood. She suppressed a scream.

  But it was what she saw next that terrified her most. Emil’s eyes found hers, and the cavalier expression on his face changed. Now fear, confusion, and rage rushed in to fill his black eyes. Jessie turned and ran. She got to her car, fumbled her keys into the ignition, and peeled out of the parking lot.

  That was the last time Jessie saw Emil.

  And that was why she hadn’t wanted to look upon the face of his son.

  After witnessing the murder—the man’s name, Jessie would learn, had been Screech Solek—she’d wanted to end the pregnancy. As the police interrogated her and she learned all the crimes Emil had been involved in—selling drugs, stolen merchandise, even pornography—she became more and more repulsed. What had she seen in him? Monica had been right. She’d been acting out, and had taken up with someone that despicable, that loathsome, just as a way of getting back at the people who had hurt her. Jessie felt used and foolish. How could she bear that man’s child?

  But when the ultrasound came back and showed that she carried both a girl and a boy, Jessie couldn’t bring herself to have an abortion. She wished to God that she wasn’t having twins—that she wasn’t having Emil’s son. But she couldn’t get rid of the boy and not the girl.

  She was terrified. Emil had fled. The police were searching for him. But Jessie knew they’d never find him. Emil knew how to hide. He also knew how to get revenge. She had seen him kill a man. Monica and Todd took her in, saying nothing judgmental, though Jessie could see it in their eyes and hear it in their voices. Jessie didn’t blame them for judging her. She judged herself just as harshly.

  As she lay in bed every night crying, she wished she was carrying only a girl. A girl she might be able to save. But a boy would carry Emil’s black heart. She visualized a little Emil growing inside her. She was certain his son would look just like him, with his black eyes and mean, cruel smile. Jessie had even allowed herself to imagine the very scenario that ultimately occurred: that she would miscarry, but only the boy. The girl would remain safe. She had actually lain in bed wishing for such a thing.

  And it had happened.

  Looking down at Abby now, Jessie surprised herself by crying. A tear rolled down her cheek and plopped softly on her daughter’s pink blanket.

  She hadn’t done anything to cause the miscarriage. It was not her fault. You can’t wish something like that into occurring.

  But she had wanted it.

  There was no denying that.

  She felt as if she had willed it to happen, and sometimes the guilt threatened to overwhelm her.

  Jessie stood at the window again watching the sun set over the city. Shadows filled up the alley between the buildings. Lights popped on in windows across the way and the traffic from the street cast a swaying red and yellow glow against the bricks. Abby awoke then, muttering—never crying—and Jessie held her on the couch as she breast-fed her. The baby cooed happily, then went back to sleep.

  Jessie supposed she should eat something herself, so she fixed herself a sandwich from the cold cuts Monica had put in the fridge, washing it down with the last of the Diet Coke. There was an Entenmann’s coconut custard pie in there, too, but she decided she wasn’t hungry enough for dessert. Besides, she needed to watch her weight.

  The one thing the apartment didn’t have was a television set, which Jessie was glad about. It would only distract her from her work. She had no real job, of course. The money Mom and Dad had left her would carry her along for a bit. But she’d always wanted to write. At school her teachers had all encouraged her, telling her that she had “a way with words.” Jessie wasn’t sure about that, but after everything she’d been through, she thought maybe she might have a story to tell.

  Just what that story was, however, wasn’t exactly clear. She flipped open her laptop and sat on the couch staring at the screen, her fingers poised over the keyboard. How did she begin? The night Mom died? The day she learned Monica had stolen Todd? Or Heather had stolen Bryan? Maybe she should start the night she’d met Emil, but Jessie wasn’t ready to remember all that quite yet.

  Finally she sighed and closed her laptop. It was too soon. She couldn’t write about anything that had happened. Not tonight, anyway.

  She realized she was sitting in the dark. The sun had made its last drop behind the buildings of the city while she had been sitting there staring at her computer screen. But rather than turning on a light, Jessie decided to go to bed. Tomorrow would be a new day. She should have a good night’s sleep before making a fresh start.

  In the small bathroom, she washed her face and brushed her teeth. She looked at her eyes. She’d always been told she had pretty eyes. But now the blue seemed duller than it used to be. She’d once been attractive. She wondered if she ever would be again.

  She checked on Abby one more time. Her daughter slept soundly.

  But her son was dead.

  Sleep. She needed sleep.

  Jessie undressed and slipped into a short pink nightgown. As tired as she felt, when she lay down she simply stared up at the ceiling, unable to sleep. The images were there, playing out like a movie. Closing her eyes did no good; they went right on playing.

  She got out of bed.

  Abby was still sleeping peacefully. The city was pulsing below her. All of those people going on with their lives. People were cutting through the alley, bathed in the amber glow of security lamps. Three teenaged boys sauntered through, their pants sagging so far down their legs that their underwear was entirely exposed. A pretty girl hurried past, jabbering on her cell phone. At the far end of the alley, a man was standing under a NO LOITERING sign.

  Jessie looked again, harder.

  The man under the sign.

  It was hard to tell at this distance and angle, but he appeared to be looking up at her apartment.

  A terrible chill ran through Jessie’s body.

  His hair was shorter, but he wore a leather jacket.

  “No,” she mumbled.

  It couldn’t be Emil! He couldn’t have found her!

  Then a woman approached the man. They embraced and walked away. Jessie let out a long breath of relief.

  “Stop being so nervous,” she scolded herself, and marched straight back to bed.

  This time, she fell almost immediately to sleep.

  She awoke sometime later. Abby was crying. That was unusual. Abby never cried. Jessie threw the sheet off of her and hurried into the living room.

  But Abby was sleeping peacefully.

  Jessie cleared her mind from the fog of sleep to make sure. Yes, Abby was fine. Her soft breathing calmed her mother. Jessie smoothed out her baby’s little pink blanket. She must have only dreamed that Abby was crying.

  Making her way back to bed, Jessie felt as if every step had become an enormous effort. She hadn’t been this tired in a very long time. Once her head hit the pillow, sleep came back quickly, greedily.

  “Mommy,” came a voice.

  She was dreaming.

  “Mommy!”

  And suddenly Abby was crying again. Jessie forced her eyes open, shaking off the heaviness of the dream. She listened again. Yes, there was definitely crying coming from the living room. This time it was no dream. She was awake, and Abby was crying. More intensely this time. The sound of frustration.

  Why aren’t you coming for me, Mommy?

  Jessie hurried out of bed once again and rushed to the baby’s crib.

  “No,” she murmured softly to herself, looking down.

  Abby slept. There were no tears. The little blanket showed no signs of being disturbed.

  So what had she heard? />
  Jessie reached down into the crib and lifted Abby in her arms. The baby cooed against her chest. Carefully she carried Abby back with her into the bedroom, placing her down beside her on the bed. She stroked Abby’s head as the baby, waking only briefly, drifted back to sleep. “There, there, sweetie, Mommy’s here,” Jessie said.

  Soon her own heavy eyelids dropped and she fell back to sleep.

  The clock read 3:15 when her eyes opened again.

  Once more, the sound of crying drifted in from the living room.

  Jessie looked at Abby, slumbering in peace beside her.

  She listened to the frantic sounds from the other room.

  She didn’t move. Cold terror gripped every muscle in her body.

  The crying continued, becoming ever louder, even more frantic. It was more than just frustrated now. It was angry. Filled with rage.

  How dare you not come for me, Mommy?

  Jessie sat up. What was happening?

  She pushed herself off the bed and back into the living room. From here she could see that something was in the crib. Something. She could see it thrashing about.

  Jessie forced herself to look down into the crib.

  She screamed.

  There, looking up at her, was a naked, screaming baby boy.

  He had Emil’s black eyes.

  And he was covered in blood.

  FIVE YEARS LATER

  ONE

  It was one of those perfect late-summer Saturdays in Sayer’s Brook, Connecticut, just over the New York line, when the dragonflies hovered lazily atop black-eyed Susans and the itchy fragrance of goldenrod powdered the air. Monica Bennett stood on the back deck of her house, watching her husband, Todd, swim laps in their pool, his strong tanned arms breaking the water in a rhythmic motion. In the trees, blue jays screeched.

  “Todd, honey?” Monica called.

  Her husband paused in his swim and looked up at her, the sun catching the beads of water in his russet hair.

  “You will help her with her bags when she gets here, won’t you?”

  “How much stuff can she possibly have?” he called back.

  “Not much. But she’ll need help regardless.”

  “She always needs help,” Todd grumbled, and returned to his laps.

  Monica sighed, and went back into the house.

  Aunt Paulette sat at the dining table, laying out her tarot cards in front of her. “Well,” she said, placing one card down in the middle of all the rest. “The Lovers. What an interesting way for this reading to turn out.”

  “Maybe it means you’re finally going to find a man,” Monica said, pouring herself a glass of red wine from the bottle they’d opened last night. It was only eleven in the morning, but she had a feeling she was going to need some help in getting through this day.

  “Oh, no, silly goose, that’s not what the card means,” Aunt Paulette was saying. She held it up so that Monica could see the image on its face from across the room. An angel hovered over a naked man and naked woman. “Now, it’s true that The Lovers can mean romantic love, but as a point of fact, it’s much, much more than just that. It’s about duality.” The chubby woman with the shoulder-length gray hair replaced the card on the table, then turned around in her seat to flash a broad, red-painted smile at Monica. “It’s associated with the star sign Gemini, and in some decks, it’s known as The Twins.”

  “Aunt Paulette,” Monica said, leveling her eyes at her. “You know I don’t believe in any of that crap.”

  The older woman looked offended. “I just think it’s an interesting card to turn up on the day we’re celebrating your sister coming home.”

  “Jessie and I aren’t twins,” Monica said, taking another sip of wine. “There’s eleven months between us. And four days.”

  She wanted to add that “celebrating” was hardly the word she would have chosen to describe Jessie’s homecoming, but she held her tongue. At least for now.

  It had been five years since her sister had scandalized them all by taking up with that filthy thieving murderer. Monica would never forget the spectacle of police cars all along Hickory Dell, their quiet little cul-de-sac. That obnoxious Gert Gorin from next door had had her long nose pressed up against Monica’s windows for days trying to learn what was going on. When the news hit the papers that Emil had killed a man, everyone whispered that Jessie must have known about it, or possibly been in on it. The police tore through Monica’s house and Mom’s old house for any evidence of Jessie being involved in Emil’s drug and porn trade. They found nothing to link her to Emil’s crimes, but Monica was never entirely convinced of her sister’s innocence.

  “She’s done nothing wrong,” Aunt Paulette had insisted, claiming she had read Jessie’s mind and seen no villainy there. “She’s merely an innocent victim in all this.”

  Monica wondered why she had been cursed with such a bizarre family. Jessie was a rebel, and Aunt Paulette was a loon. She read tarot cards and told fortunes, and honestly seemed to believe in all that malarkey. Mom had been similar. She didn’t go so far as Aunt Paulette, her younger sister, and claim to be clairvoyant, but she was always taking about fate and karma and was always burning incense in front of little green jade Buddhas. Monica was definitely her father’s daughter: sensible, rational, business-minded.

  Daddy would be proud of me, Monica thought, sipping her wine.

  Todd might be the real moneymaker in the house, establishing a name for himself on Wall Street as a young up-and-comer for one of the largest multinational bulge bracket investment banking and securities firms, but Monica had shown she could make a penny or two all on her own. Soon after they were married, Monica had dropped out of college and started her own home business, Baskets by Monica. At first she’d just held classes in basketmaking in the room over their garage, teaching the ladies of Hickory Dell—Gert Gorin, Heather Pierce, Millie Manning—how to weave and cut and the difference between wicker and twine. But as word spread among the ladies of Sayer’s Brook—most of whom didn’t work outside the home—one class had led to two and then three and four. Over the last six years, Monica had expanded the business so far that she now had assistants teaching classes in Greenwich and Stamford, and Baskets by Monica® were now sold in shops throughout Connecticut and spreading nationwide—not to mention their catalog sales. In the latest sign of her success, Monica had just gotten a mention in Better Homes and Gardens magazine. Homemakers who knew what was “in” would never think of decorating their houses without a few Baskets by Monica®—New England swamp ash or Southwestern limberbush—strategically placed for all to see,

  Knocking back the last of her wine, Monica dreaded the question that the ladies of her basket classes were sure to ask this coming week: “Who’s that living in your mother’s old house? That isn’t your sister, is it?”

  Monica had thought Jessie was safely hidden away in New York. She still remembered the day she had driven Jessie and Abby into the city, five years ago now, setting them up in their apartment—all paid for by Todd, of course, and Jessie had yet to pay them one thin dime of it back. Monica had thought that Jessie, with her bohemian ways, would have made Manhattan her home. But something had happened to Jessie in that apartment. Monica remembered the sobbing telephone call she’d gotten the morning after her sister’s first night in the city. She’d been blubbering about her miscarriage, about the baby she’d lost. Monica had had no patience and no sympathy. Jessie might have lost one of the babies she’d been carrying, but she’d delivered Abby, hadn’t she? She’d given birth to a fine and healthy girl. Meanwhile, ever since her marriage to Todd seven years earlier, Monica had been trying without success to get pregnant. She didn’t envy Jessie much—why should she, given her sister’s miserable life?—but she did envy her Abby.

  “How is she getting here from the city, by the way?” Aunt Paulette asked, shaking Monica out of her reverie.

  “Todd had one of the drivers from the office bring her up in a company car,” Monica replied, po
uring herself a little more wine—not much, just a splash.

  “Well, she should be here soon, shouldn’t she?”

  Monica glanced at her phone sitting on the counter. She had three text messages. She typed in her pass code and read them. They were all from Jessie. One had come in an hour ago, telling her they were leaving the city. Another had come a half hour later, reporting that they were stuck in traffic. The last text had come fifteen minutes after that, letting Monica know that the traffic had dissipated and they were moving again.

  “Yes,” Monica told her aunt. “I’d say she should be here any minute now.”

  And she filled her wineglass right up to the top.

  If Monica was honest with herself, and sometimes, when she drank enough wine, she could be, she’d admit that she didn’t only envy her sister for having produced a living, breathing, healthy child. She also envied her for something else—something far less tangible. She envied her for her “joie de vivre”—or at least, the exuberance for life she had shown before Emil. Jessie was always the prettier, the more outgoing of the two sisters in high school. She’d been Mom’s favorite, too—at least, Monica had felt she was. The two of them had always been laughing and carrying on, taking off on hikes or bike rides or fishing trips; Monica was definitely not the outdoor type. And the boys had always responded to Jessie in ways they never responded to Monica.

  That was why Monica had taken such pleasure in stealing Todd away from her. She knew it had broken Jessie’s heart—and that did trouble Monica’s conscience, especially because of the underhanded trick she’d used to accomplish her task—but in the end, Monica believed, it had all worked out for the best. Jessie would never have been happy with such a button-down Wall Street kind of guy as Todd, and he sure as hell wouldn’t have been happy with a hippie-chick wife like Jessie. He needed a business-savvy wife like Monica, someone who strove to be part of the one percent, not someone whose sympathies were always inclined toward the ninety-nine percent. So maybe Monica’s means, and her motivation, had been a little shady in stealing Todd away from her sister. But the end really did justify it all. No two people could be happier than Todd and Monica.