“I tried to take you away,” Angie blurted out with difficulty. I immediately stopped and sank back on the edge of the bed. “I filed a complaint with CPS for child neglect the day after your mother and father left you alone at just ten years old to fend for yourself. It was a holiday weekend that they didn’t want to take off. Christmas, actually. While your mother was doing a seminar in Dubai, and your father was vacationing in the Isles of Palms, I came to check up on you after no one answered the phone. It’s not that you weren’t doing well for yourself. You were just far too young to be alone as much as you were. You were placed in foster care for a few weeks. I’m sure you remember staying with an Aunt Leslie, don’t you?”
“My mother said it was her best friend.”
“She lied to you, Nikki. She took the next flight out, pulled some strings, and got you back home. I don’t know how she did it. Whatever she did, it made me out to look like a liar. She told me if I ever pulled something like that again, she would make my life hell as only she could. She said quite a few other things, things that I’m going to attribute to her anger. If I told you what they were, you might look at your mother a little differently.”
Working through the little hints that I thought nothing of before, the truth rang stranger than I wanted to admit. She was right about one thing; my mother was scheming. “What does it mean when someone is being paid to love you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I think she gave someone shares in her company in exchange for something.”
“Like?”
“Her peace and to solve her worries about me.”
“Eric,” she sighed. She sat next to me and placed her hand over mine. “She never stopped conniving and planning out other people’s lives. She could be ruthless to the point of dangerous at times. She claimed she had to be that way to get as far as she had. It was the bane of our relationship for quite some time.” Angie tossed her head and made a sour face.
“That wasn’t the only boon.”
“I’m sorry, Nikki. I could excuse it away with how young and naive I was, but I can’t. I can, however, show you how much I’ve changed. Why don’t you come with me? We can sell this house and build the relationship that we never had.”
“I don’t want to,” I replied flippantly.
“What kind of man would do something like this to someone who was losing—who just lost her mother? He’s a man obsessed with money. A man like that has no integrity. Frankly, I’m worried about your safety around him.”
“It would be perfect. Daughters marry their fathers, right?”
“Nikki,” she said gently and smoothed down my hair.
I leaned forward and rested my chin in my hands with my elbows propped on my knees. “I think his master plan is working. I think I’m starting to feel something.”
“Now would be the perfect time to get out the mess your mother created while you still can.”
“You’re not listening.” I held her strongly in my gaze. “I don’t want to.”
“You likely think you’re in love with this man. Self-preservation is very important, Nikki.”
“What can he take from me that hasn’t already been taken?” I looked at my thigh and rubbed my scars. “I haven’t been on my meds in a few days—”
“Nikki, that doesn’t make any sense. Have you…changed your prescription?”
“How did you know I was on medication?”
“I—just knew.”
“He changed my prescription.”
She stood with urgency. Her eyes erratically searched around the room. “Where are they? Let me have a look at them. Perhaps, I should get them tested.”
“Why? You think he’s poisoning me?”
“No. I think he’s giving you placebos.”
“That…wouldn’t be possible.”
“Wouldn’t it be? Nikki. Don’t you see that makes him even more of a danger to you? He doesn’t mean you well if he’s done what I’ve suspected he has. This isn’t the best environment for you to be in. Come with me to Chicago when I leave.”
“You can’t make me leave with you. You couldn’t do it way back when, and you can’t do it now.”
“Are you upset with me for trying to help you?”
“You weren’t trying to help me. You were trying to help yourself.”
“How can you assume that? Nikki, my mistake was years ago. You can’t hold it against me forever.”
“I think you wanted me out of the way so that you could get your hands on my mother’s husband,” I deadpanned.
Her eyes cast to the floor as they watered. “That’s very hurtful, Nikki.”
“I can say more, if it makes you leave.”
“You don’t have to.” She stood. “You know once I leave…that’s it.”
“Sorry,” I remarked insincerely. “You’ll never have a relationship with me. You don’t deserve to have one.”
“You know…there are many things I have knowledge of. Things I shouldn’t know, but do. I never once shared those things with anyone—“
“I remember differently. My father’s funeral? You made what you thought happened very fucking clear.”
“Fine.” She pressed her hands out as if pushing an invisible wall. “Then you should know that I know full well who murdered him. Knowing that, you should think very closely about who’s truly on your side.”
I glared at her as I stood. I couldn’t believe she dared to think she was in a position to threaten me. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
She raised her hands in defeat and disappeared down the hall.
When I got up, the rug slipped and revealed the corner of her laptop from underneath the end table. I opened it and took it to my room.
I tried to crack the password, using keywords that I knew rang as important to her. It took me two hours before I got it right. The password was my father’s first name: S@mue1.
I checked her backdated history, and found a few sites in her memory cache. One was a dating site. The more recent ones, two years ago, contained cached pages for a site I used to frequent. The site from which I met Trent: Suicide Angels. She posed as someone else, seeking information on anyone who talked to me. She sent private messages to people I used to talk to with plans to stage an intervention. No one would comply. Not even the elusive Dr. C.
When the server changed and reset all information, she made a new account. While pretending to be a manic depressive, she sought out information from other users on how to get in touch with Dr. C.
He direct messaged her one day:
Dr. C: Why are you asking about me?
LeNoirDe90: Because I need your help.
Dr. C: With what?
LeNoirDe90: Redemption.
Dr. C: Interesting answer. You have my attention.
LeNoirDe90: I need help with my mother. She’s just been diagnosed with cancer and they want to cut her leg off. She doesn’t want it. But if she doesn’t get it done, there’s a good chance the cancer will spread, and she will die. She doesn’t want to go through the pain. Can you help her?
Dr. C: I might. I might not. Might not have any idea what you’re talking about.
The conversation ended. She knew about her sickness for two years and saw fit to tell me only seven months before she died? She could’ve…lived. Why would she have done that? Why would she seek out anything with Suicide Angels?
The cached pages ended; I suspect, because Suicide Angels changed servers again, and she was unable to find the new IP address. Two months after her first correspondence with Dr. C., he sent her an IM:
Dr. C: I got your e-mail to serve as proof. I’m sorry about your mother.
LeNoirDe90: It’s spread. She’s going to die. Maybe a year. Maybe two years. Will you help her?
Dr. C: I might.
During months of communication between her and the doctor, things moved into a flirtation. She lamented about how lonely she was. Said she never found anyone who understood her. Said tha
t most people couldn’t relate to her. She said she was a cutter with constant suicidal thoughts—that she was on anti-depressants and had a social anxiety disorder.
It was clear whom my mother impersonated. Me. She revealed things about me that I never knew she had knowledge of. Revealed the one thing I never really knew about, because I’d never thought about it that way. She said, while impersonating me, that I craved pain to escape my reality. Dr. C. said he understood. Said he had sorted issues of his own, but never revealed what those issues were.
Eventually, he requested a picture. She put him off for a while. He grew despondent in her attempts to contact him. Finally, she relented and sent him a picture. A picture of Trent and me, from four years ago, just before we went to a rave in Seattle during one of his visits.
His words in response: I can’t believe how beautiful you are, my twisted angel.
My heart sank, because I just didn’t want to believe it. Eric was Dr. C.
They made plans to meet—that was a little over a year ago. Communication stopped…or maybe moved to a different medium.
I needed her phone.
I marched back to her room and started tearing through it as I hoped that when I was given her belongings in the hospital, I might’ve had the forethought to turn it off.
I used the ‘search a phone’ function through our shared calling plan to locate her phone. It worked successfully, allowing me to retrieve her phone from inside one of her clutches in the back of her closet.
I hooked up the charger and waited patiently. After two minutes, the phone booted up and vibrated. I went through her texts, but found nothing. I looked through her contact list and noticed she had two different numbers for me. I called the second number that had no attachment to me whatsoever. It didn’t ring. Instead, it went to the generic recorded voicemail message.
I searched around the room, touching upon the many places she could’ve hidden the other phone, but found nothing.
Glancing around, my eyes froze at the one place I didn’t check; her makeup vanity. I pulled out one of the drawers and alongside the blush and lip products by Nars and Chanel, I found a burner phone.
Seconds seemed like hours as I waited for the archaic phone to charge. I flipped it open, trying to navigate through a phone that lacked the touch screen features I was accustomed to. It was easy to find what I was looking for, because it was clear the phone was purchased with one thought in mind; to talk to Dr. C.
They made plans to meet, but my mother consistently backed out. Eric became suspicious. Almost eleven months ago, she requested he visit her at Harvest Investments.
The correspondence ended after that.
“Nik?”
I jumped and bumped my head on bed frame.
Eric moved to help me to stand. “What are you doing sleeping on the floor? Why did you leave without a goodbye? I could’ve come back with you.” He suddenly smiled as he tried to neaten up my hair with his fingers. “I’m so use to sleeping with you, it’s hard to sleep without you.”
“Where’s Maisha? Why didn’t she bark?”
He glanced at the door. Maisha wagged her tail and licked her chops. “I think she likes me now. I gave her a steak for breakfast.” He looked around my mother’s room, seemingly dismayed by the mess. “Why are you in here? Something you want to talk to me about?” He gazed over my body, looking for something. I knew what he was looking for, just as I knew why he didn’t seem fazed by the scars on my arms and thighs when he first saw them.
I brushed past him.
“Hey.” He stepped in front of me, stopping me in the hallway. “What’s up with you?”
“Why Dr. C.? What does that stand for?”
His eyes darkened a tad, but his expression remained devoid of any discernible emotion. “What are you talking about?”
“I don’t know how I feel about this.” I shook my head as I felt a throb at the back of my skull. I maniacally rubbed at it. The throb continued, making me feel sick to my stomach. “Don’t know how I should feel. It doesn’t matter now, because I don’t love you yet. What happens when I do? Game over?”
He rolled his eyes to the ceiling and rubbed his forehead. “I’m trying to follow you here, but I can’t.”
I held up my finger and marched around my mother’s bedroom. The phone, nor the laptop were where I left them. I started throwing things around as I searched for the items. Her laptop was moved to the top of the closet. In an effort to pull up the sites, I opened it. Instead of what I was looking for, I was faced with the blue screen of death.
“No. NO! I know what you’re doing.” My hands throbbed with a burning itch. An itch I had to scratch. “Trying to make me go crazy. Trying to make me look crazy. Then, maybe marry me and have conservatorship over my money. Then, you’ll have everything you want. Is that the end game? Is that what you want?”
Looking perplexed, he folded his arms across his chest.
“I’m not crazy,” I said dimly. “It makes sense.”
He abruptly grabbed my hand and held them out to me, forcing me to take notice. I’d scratched the flesh off the back of one of my hands. “Does it? Does it really make sense to you? —whatever it is you’re thinking?”
“You know what I’m thinking.”
“As much as I’d love to know everything that goes on in your mind, I don’t have that super power.”
“Suicide Angels. Ring a bell? I used to go to the site all the time and troll. My mother took it the wrong way. She thought I was seeking assistance to kill myself, but I wasn’t. It was for shits and giggles. She found you and posed as me. What happened when you two met?”
His expression was dead. Like he didn’t know where I was going with any of it. Like he was concerned for my health. Like I was crazy and making up this fantastical story up on the fly. “I’m not fucking crazy!”
“Shh. Calm down.” He pulled me down the hall and sat me down on the edge of my bed while he remained standing. “I’m not saying you’re crazy.”
“I’m not crazy,” I pressed wetly. “I don’t know how you did it. How you made me feel like I was still on medication, but I know. Those pills you gave me, they were sugar pills, weren’t they?”
“Nikki, you lost your mother, and I have yet to see you really take that in. It can...affect your judgment, sleep patterns...many things. Just get some rest. I’ll be here when you wake up.” I hated the way he spoke to me. It was liken to a therapist trying to subdue an unruly patient.
“I know what’s going on.” I stood body to body with him. “I know she met with you and said she’d give you her company if you did her two favors. I know I was one and she was the other. I’m onto you.”
“You’re being irrational.”
“No. I’m not crazy!” I yelled. “You took a payout to sleep with me. I knew your plan all along. Make me fall in love with you, then marry me. Just when I think things are good, you’re going to kill me, so you can get my money. If that won’t work, you’ll try to trap me with a baby or worse. You’re no different than my father—both greedy men who don’t know what love is. How could you do this to me? How could you be him? He tried it with my mother and failed, and you won’t get past me.” I shoved him. “I fucking hate you for doing this to me. Get out. GET OUT!” I slapped him, hard.
When his head snapped back, he gripped my hands in one of his and thrust me back on the bed. He straddled me in a way that pinned my arms down at my side underneath his knees, painfully. He pressed his palm across my mouth to stifle my screams as he reached around and pulled something from his back pocket. A syringe. He stuck the tip in his mouth, pulling off the cap. “If you can’t keep still this will hurt, Nikki.”
He’s going to kill you, Nikki. This was his plan all along. I screamed louder, but it came across as a muffled din through his hand.
“So be it.” He painfully jabbed me in the neck with the needle. I felt the cool rush fill my veins. My muscles began to relax and fall heavy.
He slipped b
ack to straddle my waist and pulled me to sit up. Clutching the back of my head, he brought me forward and kissed me softly. “It’s a sedative. A very strong one.”
“You’re a horrible man,” I mumbled.
“Yeah,” he sneered, “I tried to tell you. It only gets worse from here on out, baby. I want you to see me for the monster that I really am. Too many people see it and pretend it isn’t there. But, not you, Nik. Because I know when you find out everything…it’ll only bring us closer. It has to sit on the shelf until the perfect time. Not yet. You’re not fully invested in this yet. But when you are, you will know everything.”
I wasn’t sure if I understood him correctly. I wasn’t sure if I understood him at all, but with my body falling to the control of the drug, I convinced myself that I hallucinated it.
I jumped out of bed a little too fast and had to take a moment find my bearings. The room spun as if it was on an axis. I felt...hung over.
Eric stood by me while performing a balancing act to hold a serving tray.
I visibly relaxed. “You can’t scare me like that while I’m sleeping.”
He lightly smiled. “I noticed. Never again will I greet you with breakfast in bed while you’re sleeping.” He gave me a smile, kissing my forehead as I got back into bed.
I studied his face. “I was—I had a bad dream.”
He set the tray over my lap. “How do you feel?”
“Better,” I deadpanned.
“I’ve been thinking about taking a full leave of absence from work.”
“Why would you do that?”
He searched my eyes and I studied his face. “It’s no secret that I’m worried about you. Don't take that as an invitation to talk about last night. I never want to go through that with you again. It drives me to the fucking edge when you don’t believe in me.”
I clasped my hand to his jaw and gave him a reassuring smile. “I believe in you, Eric. It’s just…you don’t know the extent of what’s wrong me. Sometimes my mind goes wild with ideas that make me paranoid. Things that make me fly off the handle about the littlest things. For that problem…I need my medication.”
The Sordid Promise Page 15