Mind F*ck

by Dawn, Kimber S.

  So that after this kid of hers is born, and even if it doesn’t look like me, when the bastard does something intelligent or worthy of my pride, then I can say he at least got something from me.

  I sigh, frustrated as hell at my current situation.

  I need to make another coke run. I need some more damn Vicodin and Xanax too, but I can’t be too picky right now either.

  Travis called and said the police are watching my building. And Old man Jackson’s been asking questions about my recreational drug use—again.

  Two problems I certainly can’t afford at this juncture in my life. I need more time with Lexy. I need time to convince her that I can make her happy. That I can take care of her. If she’ll let me.

  Apparently Gigi and Mary have finally met the required stipulations before filing a missing person’s report on Lexy after she missed her lunch with Mary and then a following date at Dean’s Estates with Rhett Bennett after. Even though she’s my wife, and I say she’s okay.

  I threw out every speed bump I possibly and legally could to set that report back a few days.

  Trying to buy myself more damn time with my wife.

  But all Lexy did was pass out.

  Again and again.

  And it’s gotten tiring, quick. Real quick.

  I stalk into the door leading to the lower level of the penthouse floor and ride the elevator in silence as a rush of blood surges to my head along with the rails of coke I just inhaled in the master bathroom after my shower.

  I hear the whoosh just behind my ear drums.

  Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh.

  She’s going to fucking stay alert. Somehow, someway, come Hell or high water, she is going to learn to stay awake tonight.

  She will submit.

  She’s trying to give up on us. Or she already has…

  No. No, I can’t think that. Not yet.

  Not yet, dammit.

  I clench my fists and grit my teeth at the same time I breathe in slowly through my nose, then exhale from my mouth. As I grip the bars and slide the lock away from the door, I try to calm myself before walking through it.

  When my eyes are used to the dim light and I can see though the darker room, it doesn’t take me long to spot her.

  She’s pale. And tucked around herself, huddled in a corner of the room sitting on top of an old mattress.

  Don’t blame me. What? I’m not the one responsible!

  She chose these living conditions. I tried to offer her my room. My bed.

  And she won’t fucking eat what I feed her. That isn’t my fault.

  Which is cum, by the way. And yes, cum alone. It has protein, doesn’t it? If she wants to nourish herself, I’m supplying her with the nutrients. All she has to do is swallow. Cold, or lukewarm—it can’t be that bad.

  It’ll keep the kid in her stomach alive, won’t it?

  I don’t know if it will or not, actually.

  Which is the reason I did start feeding her saltine crackers and chicken broth on Friday.

  She has a figure to maintain. Least she forget. And this pregnancy can be damned until it can’t be helped or hidden any longer—when, and I do mean when, because it is happening, when she accepts her place at my side, she’s going to need to still be able to wear a damn cocktail dress and turn heads.

  Facts are facts.

  I’m just stating them.

  It isn’t my fault she didn’t heed my rules and instructions when I spelled them out for her in my room at Dean Estate the night of Rhett’s birthday celebration.

  I fucking spelled them out. I told her, word for word:

  “I don’t know what’s going on, but I will. Soon enough. And when I do, I’m coming back for what’s rightfully mine. It’s going to be hard to follow my lead, I know. And I’ll grant you that when you fuck up. And you will fuck up at some point before this is all over. But I can promise you this. If you play by the rules. By my rules. And you make it out of this without making a complete fool, or foolish whore, out of yourself, you’ll get another chance. You will live to see another tomorrow, and so will our new friend Mr. Bennett. Am I making myself perfectly clear, Lexy?”

  And I kept my promises. Well, one of them.

  Did I not?

  As far as I’m concerned, I can’t see where I’m at fault. With any of this.

  Her increasingly saddening future or his already quite dismal one.

  And then I ponder which is worse.

  Death or the knowledge of its upcoming arrival.

  I guess it’s all in the eye of the beholder, though.

  In hindsight.

  In the end and when it was all said and done, I couldn’t sell a large portion of the Dean Estates when most of our combined assets were finally liquidated.

  I sold everything from my old life, except the pool house and the part of land it sat on, after my husband was found shot. Point blank in the back of the head, execution style.

  And, ironically, it didn’t take long to move on after that. Not long at all, as a matter of fact.

  Not nearly as long as it took for the scars to heal. Both the physical and the emotional ones.

  It’s funny how much they hurt the same, but nothing at all alike at the same time.

  I smile as the warm spring air blows in from the Pepacton reservoir named after a drowned town. It’s the body of water at the foot of Rhett’s property. Our property. Or, well, I guess my property now.

  A sigh escapes my lips as I look out over the water.

  But I can’t allow myself to focus on the past. Not right now. I’m still doing this only one day at a time.

  When I toss some of mine and little Rhett’s bags in the back of the Tahoe, I hear Mary calling out for Mia. I look up at her over the hood of the car and see her looking over her shoulder for her daughter as she carries some luggage to the vehicles.

  “Hey, girl. Have you seen Mia and Rhett?” she asks when she looks back at me.

  “Yeah, they were in the loft overlooking the great room. I think they’re watching movies. Tell them it’s time to potty then hit the road. I don’t want to be driving all day, Mary. Plus, you promised me some grown-up time involving wine, smut novel talk, and hot tubs—and I’m collecting. Tonight.” I cut my eyes at her before smirking.

  To which she politely waves off, with her words, “Yeah, yeah. Promises, promises, honey.” Then she stows her luggage in the back of the car before heading back inside the house.

  I look out over the beautiful trees beginning to bloom. I still love it out here, even though it’s silent.

  I always get quiet around this time of year for some reason. I mean, I know the reason, I just would think with everything else that’s happened, with everything else that I’ve gone through—like, I don’t know, the birth of mine and Rhett’s child. That something, other than the anniversary of his death would remind me of losing him.

  Instead, though, everything else reminds me of his life. Of what he did with his time here, on this earth.

  Not of his death.

  Not of him being gone.

  I see him in our handsome son all the time. Every single day and with every single minute that passes. In each of little Rhett’s gestures. In every one of his smiles. And when he talks, so to the point and direct.

  That wavy dirty blond hair of his, just like his dad’s.

  Of course it’s long. He’s Rhett’s child.

  And he’s handsome. And he’s funny. And charming. And smart.

  And he’s mine.

  He’s mine and Rhett’s and there wasn’t a damn thing Liam could do about it once the police finally got involved and they were able to track down my whereabouts thanks to texts exchanged between Liam and Drake Pennington.

  It took them a solid damn week.

  And the shit I endured in that week—no one should ever have to endure. No one.

  Liam had just walked into the basement room under a hidden floor of the penthouse in LA he was staying in. He was pissed as hell. I could tell
the moment he stormed into the room.

  This wasn’t going to be another rare fight-less night in the Dean household.

  He went to a closet and pulled out a projection screen and grabbed a laptop from the metal briefcase he had stowed in the corner.

  “It’s time to get your attention. I believe. I think it’s time I upped the ante a bit. Showed you who the boss was.” He chuckled, taunting me more.

  I rolled my eyes at him behind closed eyelids. Even as he kept rambling about a video. He slid a DVD into the laptop and hit a few keys on the keyboard.

  And just when my anxiety began kicking into full speed, I said my little prayer. I closed my eyes and thought about the sweet little baby I was carrying, and I prayed—then everything else around me began fading away.

  The longer I held my breath, the more everything seemed to fade away, until just before everything went black.

  The screen on the DVD player flashed red, yellow, then white. But I wasn’t looking at it from my spot on the floor sitting on top of the mattress.

  I watched from above as Rhett came onto the screen and Liam stood next to the projector, as proud as a peacock at his production work.

  I do remember hearing Rhett’s voice just before the world went black, however, telling me he loved me.

  And that makes sense now.

  Having know what I know.

  I know there was a video. One that I’ve only seen the first minute or so of. It’s a video of Rhett dying. Seizing, begging for help, begging for someone in the background to call 911. Then professing his love for me. Telling me to stay strong. And move forward. Urging me to live and love.

  “All the way to the moon and back.” He kept begging me through the camera lense.

  “All the way to the moon and back, Lex.”

  I haven’t made it past that part in the video though. I can’t.

  My therapist says I’ll deal with it when I’m ready.

  But I’m just trying to take it one day at a time.

  I’ve gotta learn to crawl before I can learn to walk. So here I am, learning—just like my sweet son.

  After Mary parks the car, we all hop out and start doing our part, unloading our things from the truck.

  And it doesn’t take long for us to all get settled into the pool house and tucked into our rooms.

  The grounds look nice. The big house is still empty.

  It’s ominous as freaking hell looking now, too.

  I shiver thinking back to what it looked like when we rounded the bend on the long drive from the main road earlier today.

  Five years does a lot when no one is looking.

  A whole lot.

  The official police reports say that Rhett Butler died of a seizure induced by diabetic ketoacidosis related to an error in his insulin administration. Other than the packaging, there was no indication for a reason behind the error. At least not until the police labs tested the insulin in the vials.

  It wasn’t milli-units he was injecting subcutaneously. It was units. Whole units.

  The police found Rhett six hours after he died because a woman named Shelia called reporting some strange activity occurring in a house she happened to be walking her dog by—on a road seven miles from the main house.

  Then seven days after police found Rhett, the same woman named Shelia called into the same police station and informed them that her husband had found a body and the body that man belonged to looked a lot like the man on TV wanted for questioning in an LAPD police investigation involving the kidnapping and rape of the man’s own wife.

  When the police called to inform me of Liam’s death, they apologized, which I found odd at the time, because I was so thankful to hear the news that followed their apology.

  Then they explained to me that my husband had been shot and killed for reasons unknown. It wasn’t a robbery. Nothing was stolen or missing.

  And there was no connection between him the man who found him. None whatsoever.

  At least none that they could see.

  It’s a cold case, one that I’m not in any hurry to warm up. It’s the past. And I decided when I laid my son’s father to rest, that I wouldn’t spend another single day in the past.

  I wanted the rest of my years to be short.

  Someone once told me the short years were the best years.

  My son, Rhett and I are just starting to cross the bridge over a creek on the property behind the old Dean Estates when he spots a fairly new tree swing.

  “Mommy! Look!” His dark muddy brown eyes sparkle when they look back up at mine.

  “Go ahead.” I chuckle at him. “We can play on it.”

  We swing for a little more than thirty minutes, when I start catching him yawn again and again. I collect him from the swing and into my arms fairly easy and we head in the direction of the pool house for an afternoon nap.

  And we’re not far from the bridge when Rhett points his short stubby finger at something under the willow trees. He lifts his head from my shoulder and uses his other hand to move my head in the direction of where he’s pointing. “Mommy. What’s that? One blue basket for me?”

  And I look. Even though I don’t have to look, I look anyway.

  I know what it is.

  I know what it is, and I don’t want it.

  “I don’t know, sweetheart. I’m not sure what it is. Maybe we’ll come investigate it later with Mia? Sound good?” I ask.

  “Sounds good, Ma.” He nods, so seriously before resting his head again on my shoulder.

  My sons legs wrap around my waist as my legs carry us down the old running path Rhett and I used to run.

  I remember when I found the engagement ring in Rhett’s top drawer while I was cleaning out a dresser for little Rhett’s blankets and cloth diapers.

  It’s shit like this—it’s like a stab in the heart while it’s being defibrillated. It’s a breath of air to a drowning woman just as you put a bullet in her head.

  It’s one of the reasons I haven’t watched the entire fucking video yet.

  The one of Rhett telling me goodbye.

  And the other reason I haven’t watched it is because I don’t want to give Liam the satisfaction. Even in death.

  I kiss my son’s sweet cheek before closing his bedroom door to and sliding out onto the balcony overlooking the pool and the back side of Dean’s Estate.

  I pour myself a glass of wine and sigh before looking out over the property.

  My thoughts are being accosted by the what-if’s the video always makes surface.

  What if Mary would’ve called the police when I missed lunch with her? What if Rhett and I were already married? None of this shit would’ve happened. What if Summer would’ve been a decent human being? What if Liam would’ve gotten the help he needed? What if I hadn’t enabled him for so long?

  I can’t win for losing.

  Because I did lose—I think to myself. Dammit, did I lose.

  Then I think of my sweet son. His sweet dimples, and his dirty blond hair, and his muddy brown eyes…

  And I smile. Nah, I didn’t lose.

  A knock sounds at the door to the bedroom and a second later, Mary walks in carrying a slim brown package.

  “Hey, sweets. This package came for you. Did you win a signed paperback or something?” She wags her eyebrows at me.

  “Not that I know of…” My words trail off as my fingers brush over the package before I read the return address.

  I tear open the paper when I see it’s from a Shelia and Cecile Green from New Orleans. “Who’s it from, Lex?”

  I just shake my head. I don’t know. I don’t have a clue.

  “I don’t know.” I tell her.

  When her daughter Mia calls out for her from the kitchen, my friend smiles sadly at me. “I’ll give you a minute, sweetie.” She winks, and then she’s gone.

  And I’m left with the contents of the package. One white letter sized envelope and an unlabeled DVD.

  My hands tremble so hard as I ope
n the letter that it takes my pointer finger three swipes to split the envelope. I’m practically shaking like a leaf when I open the letter and start to read.

  Then, when my eyes scan the opening words of the letter and as it registers what this package is, it dawns on me why.

  Why I didn’t want this. Why I’ve never watched the entire video.

  This is closure.

  And nobody fucking likes closure—nobody.

  It hurts.

  But I face it.

  Today, I fucking face it. Mainly because I know I have to, but also…because I hear him in my head.

  I hear Rhett chuckle, and I hear him calling me a crazy woman. I see him smile at me the way he always smiled at me, and whisper something about it being well with my soul. And then, through the tears streaming down my face, I keep reading…

  Lexy Mayer,

  My name is Cecile Green, I was a celly of a very good friend of yours from Bill Clements. Mr. Rhett Bennett was a very dear friend of mine. And I don’t play well with those who hurt my dear friends and the ones they love. And for that reason, I hope that one day you’ll forgive me for what had to happen.

  But first, I’ll ask you to forgive yourself.

  Watch the video, Ms. Mayer. I’ve edited it. I think it’s appropriate Rhett’s last words be heard by you. As they were for you.

  Seasons change, miss Lexy. Lives change. And it isn’t anything to be afraid of…I’ve lived, so many different lives. Each one different, each special, and each not being lived any longer for good reasons.

  Take your lessons from the seasons of your life, and move forward. But first, you must feel the chill of winter…

  Good luck, miss Lexy. I hope all stays well with your soul…

  C.

  Later that night, after Mary and I had our date with wine, smut novel chat, and hot tubs, and the rest of the house was still and asleep, I slid the DVD into my laptop and plugged in my earbuds. Then, after I snuggled up on the bed…I watched the video of Rhett Bennett professing his love to me, in his dying words, with his dying breath.

  And although I should’ve been pissed, I know I should’ve felt rage as I watched it. But I didn’t…I just felt peace.