The Things We Don't See

by Jessi Brazzell

  “I filed for divorce today,” he said as he sat back down beside me.

  I looked over to him, searching for any emotion on his face, but again I couldn’t read what he was feeling. “You did?”

  “Yeah, should be pretty cut and dry.”

  “So, Mila knows you have filed?”

  “She does. She agreed to sign whatever agreement I have written.”

  I debated offering some sarcastic retort but realized that I should tread lightly with something so life-altering.

  “What happens to the firm?” I asked instead.

  “I take sole ownership.”

  He had said he had nothing to gain but that would seem pretty beneficial assuming someone wanted the extra responsibilities. Regardless, I didn’t press the issue, he deserved something good from this. He had lost his wife and best friend, gaining the other half of his company didn’t exactly seem like an adequate compensation for his heartache. Although, the news of the pregnancy could be clouding my rational thought. Either way, the extra work load could be good for him. Idle hands and all.

  We didn’t bother with discussing whether or not he would stay the night, instead we just drank to the point of passing out and he found his way to the guest room again. I don’t know if he stayed to look after me or if he was just as lonely as I was. But the reason wasn’t important to me. I wanted and needed him here.

  The following afternoon, my phone rang with my own benefits being brought to light. Carson carried a whopping 1.5-million-dollar life insurance policy. Granted my opinion on the financial gain was equal to the one I had of Brian’s ownership of the firm, I was still surprised to hear that figure come through the line. Between that and our bank account, not to mention the equity on this house, financially supporting myself would not be an issue, ever. But I wasn’t interested. I didn’t want his life insurance policy, I didn’t want anything that he had most likely intended for Mila. So, I decided to deposit the money in a trust for his unborn child whenever the check came. The baby shouldn’t be penalized for the circumstances that created it and with Mila being in prison and Carson being dead, I don’t foresee the child gaining much support.

  Instead of talking about my plans to inadvertently will out over a million dollars to Brian’s wife’s unborn child, I ordered pizza. A pizza that was delivered by some young girl who had a look on her face like she had just knocked on the door of The White House. The dancing lady on the counter wasn’t kidding when she said everyone knew what happened. I tipped her as much as the pizza cost hoping to comfort her but she nearly fell down trying to get off the porch so quickly; like she thought death was contagious.

  I shamelessly inhaled the scent of the melted cheese and peperoni and all thoughts of the delivery girl’s reaction vanished. The last five years I had eaten a diet that would be better suited for a small rabbit than a human. Carson was not shy in pointing out areas that looked too soft for his approval and for unknown reasons, I gave a damn. But now, I haven’t gone to the gym and am eating greasy pizza that is nothing less than heavenly because my passive starvation clearly wasn’t enough to keep him from straying anyway.

  Eating pizza was trickier than I remembered from college and I let my head fall back laughing while the cheese strung from my mouth down the front of my shirt. Brian reached across the sofa to wipe the sauce from my face when we both stopped to look at the door. I rolled over the option of not answering but the knocking continued, leaving me no choice but to welcome whatever unwanted guest was here. Unfortunately, that guest was Detective Burns. She walked in focusing her eyes on Brian and I took in a deep breath, silently praying that her not so gruff personality would be present for this visit.

  “You two have been spending a lot of time together,” she said, an obvious accusation.

  “Yes, is that a problem?” I asked. Not that I really cared what she thought of our friendship. Could she really think that he and I being friends was inappropriate after what our spouses had done? Not like we are having an affair.

  “I actually am here because I saw your car in the drive way,” she said to Brian. “I would like it if you could come to the station for some more questioning.”

  I looked between the two of them, trying to figure out the nature of the request.

  “Well can I answer any of your questions here?” he asked with a quick gesture to the pizza.

  I quietly thanked Brian for my curiosity being satisfied and watched Detective Burns pull out a small voice recorder. “Mila claims complete innocence in any involvement in Carson’s murder,” she began.

  “But you found the knife in our house?” Brian asked.

  Her eyes held his and I sat down to wait for her response.

  “Exactly.”

  Exactly? My forehead wrinkled in confusion and I slowly pieced together where she was going with this. My understanding came about the same time as Brian’s and I watched his posture tighten.

  “I didn’t put it there!”

  “Put it where, exactly?” she asked, attempting to set a trap.

  “In our house…”

  We were there watching her bring it out of the house. Him knowing it was there didn’t mean he put it there.

  “Brian, can you describe Mila’s behavior when she came home that night?”

  “Normal. She acted completely normal.”

  “Did you see Mila’s clothes?” she asked and I had to force myself to breathe when I realized she was asking if Brian had seen my husband’s blood on her clothes.

  Brian’s head fell to look at the floor, “No.”

  Detective Burns was either liking how this was going or she was enjoying the smell of the pizza. Either way, her face was decorated with a sly smile. “But you did see Mila that night?”

  “Yes. I was in the living room going over a case when she came in. She yelled at me from the stairs that she was getting in the shower. I didn’t look up to see her.”

  “She was getting in the shower?” she asked, taking her notepad out quickly like he had just given a key piece of information.

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you find that odd?”

  “No, not at all. She had just gotten back from a run.”

  “Mhmm…” she mumbled, her hand scribbling frantically on the notepad.

  Brian looked at me and started to mouth something but he was interrupted before he could get it out.

  “You were with Carson just minutes before his death. What was the last thing you remember about seeing him?” she asked, double checking her voice recorder.

  Brian was nervously rubbing his hands together and even though I fully believed he was innocent, he was not doing a very good job of convincing the detective. “Nothing specific. We got in our cars and left like every other night,” he stuttered.

  “You actually saw Mr. Damichi get in his vehicle and leave?” she asked, eyebrows raised and I felt my own doing the same.

  “Yeah,” he said, shaking his head. “No, wait. Maybe I didn’t. I could have left before him, I don’t fully recall.”

  Her smile quickly subsided and she leaned in closer to him, “Allow me to refresh your memory. Your original statement was that you left paperwork on his desk and left the office alone while Carson was still inside.”

  “Yes, that is right. I am sorry. I just didn’t know that night would be important so I wasn’t taking note of every small detail, or even the big ones. And to be honest, there has been a lot happen since that night.” he said. An argument that I completely understood.

  “Brian, did you know that Carson’s body had been moved?” Detective Burns asked.

  Moved. Moved from where? That was the first I had heard of this and I could feel my heart beating faster while I desperately waited to hear the rest.

  “Of course I didn’t know that,” he shot back.

  “Are you also aware that Carson Damichi outweighs your wife by over a hundred pounds? And that moving his body would be an extremely difficult if not impossible task for her?�
�

  “What are you getting at?”

  “The shoe print at the scene could very well be there from a man who helped move the body.”

  “Now I have been patient and understanding through all of this Detective. But there comes a time when you have to say enough. And this is that time. My wife, my wife, was just charged with the murder of my best friend. That is unimaginable, Detective. And now, not only have I continued to listen to false accusations of my own guilt, been detained for being suspected of killing him myself, but now you are actually insinuating that I helped my wife murder her lover?”

  “Yes, inconvenient I can imagine. I need your fingerprints to fully clear you as a suspect. We will run them against the knife and also check fingerprint samples taken from the body. Would you be able to stop by the station tomorrow afternoon so we can continue this?” she asked.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Detective?” I interrupted, giving Brian a break from the ridiculous bad cop routine. “Are you saying that Carson was murdered somewhere else and moved to the park?”

  “I am not saying one way or the other at this time.”

  She shot me a warning glance before walking out. Brian fell back into the sofa and I watched him rubbing sweat from his forehead.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Yeah, that woman just makes me so nervous,” he exhaled.

  I could relate but there are still a couple obvious questions that no one has been able to answer. The one that particularly eats at me is the phone call. Who made that call and reported Carson’s body by name? The shoe print could be a number of possibilities, many of which actually have nothing to do with the murder at all. But that phone call, that is directly related. There is a man out there somewhere that reported the murder. Could Mila have another lover? Could Brian really have known about this? And what if he did?

  But as far as this visit’s specific agenda, what worth can be put on the word of a woman carrying her husband’s best friend’s child?

  Chapter Ten

  “Mila has entered into a non-guilty plea,” Brian said as he walked through the door. The tone in his voice was almost hopeful, like he might really believe that she was innocent.

  “Is that unusual?” I asked.

  “Depends. Detective Burns told me today that they had a positive fingerprint match to Mila on the murder weapon.”

  “So why would she plead not guilty?” I asked, trying to understand the legal aspects.

  “Being a woman, a pregnant woman, it is more likely for a jury to view her as unstable rather than vicious and violent. And if that happens, her sentence will be less severe.”

  That was probably true and it was infuriating but also comforting to know that plea or not, it was Mila’s fingerprints on the knife. “Did they say anything about any other fingerprints on the knife?” I asked. I thought phrasing it differently would make my curiosity in his fingerprints less insulting because I did trust his innocence, but anyone would wonder.

  “Detective Burns isn’t exactly my biggest fan so she wasn’t very generous with any information.”

  It was a vague answer, but it was also a clear answer to what I needed to know. I know enough about human behavior to know that if Brian was guilty, he would feel it important to emphasize his innocence and him not even considering talking about him being finger printed just let me know that he had nothing to hide.

  “Do you want to spend the day cleaning any memory of Mila from my house?” he asked with a painted yet painful smile across his face.

  It actually sounded like the last thing in the world I wanted to do but something about Brian’s face, I couldn’t say no. “You bet,” I said, painting my own smile. For as much as he has been a support system for me, I owed him at least this. He shouldn’t have to do it alone.

  “Brian?” I said, looking to a car parked across the street. “Is that a detective?”

  I couldn’t make out a face, but there was definitely a person in the car and their stare was zeroed in on us.

  “Let’s go,” he said casually opening the door for me to get in his car.

  When we drove passed the car, they didn’t waste any time in cutting a sharp U-turn to take route behind us. This was a detective, had to be, and they were either following me or Brian, or both of us. Granted, I appreciated the thorough surveillance if it meant ensuring justice for Carson, but I couldn’t help but wonder why Brian was so calm about them following us because something in my gut told me they were interested in him.

  I watched the car until we pulled into Brian and Mila’s driveway and studied Brian’s face one last time when the car pulled to a stop across the street. But he didn’t seem to mind, of course, when you have nothing to hide you don’t really get paranoid of exposure.

  “What are you going to do with everything?” I asked.

  “I figured I would pack it first and worry about that after.” He sighed heavily and disappeared into the laundry room.

  Standing in their home her home, made me uneasy and I felt like the walls were closing in on me. I turned and looked back through the entrance glass to see the car still parked and I tried to see if I could make out any distinction of which detective it was.

  “Ready,” Brian chirped, throwing me a roll of trash bags.

  “Okay. Everything goes then?”

  “Everything.”

  Throwing all of Mila’s things messily into garbage bags was surprisingly the best therapy I think I could have. It was cleansing even to me and I know that it had to be for Brian as well.

  “Do you think she will ever have the chance to ask you what happened to her things?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  He is a lawyer, so he could actually give a professional opinion but he was keeping himself completely distanced. I, on the other hand, couldn’t figure out how to distance myself. It was all I could think about. I wanted to know sentencing terms and the statistics of the process because thinking about her walking free, even if it was in twenty years, was unbearable.

  “That’s the last of it,” he said, shoving her pillow into an already overflowing trash bag.

  “Now what?” I asked.

  “How about a bonfire?”

  I laughed but cut it short when I realized he was completely serious. “Oh…”

  “It will be fun. I have a great back yard and neighbors who need more to talk about.”

  I stood, hoping he would talk himself out of it but he had his hands loaded with four trash bags on each side and I gave in and grabbed the other three. “After you,” I said, still giving him an out that he wasn’t taking.

  “You know the detective out front is probably going to come running when he sees the smoke rolling,” I said, staring at all Mila’s belongings being engulfed in flames. But Brian was mesmerized by the fire and didn’t even acknowledge my warning of the detective out front.

  We stood in silence while the bags slowly dwindled into piles of ash and the only thing I could think about was how much I wished Mila could be standing here to witness it. Right or wrong, I wanted her to see her life literally going up in flames the way she had lit the match to my hell.

  Chapter Eleven

  Each day that passed, mine and Brian’s friendship grew stronger. We went from leaning on each other because we had no one else, to leaning on each other because we didn’t need anyone else. And although the scars were still there on each of our hearts, we were slowly mending them, together.

  I went to Carson’s grave several times a week. The guilt of being so angry with him was consuming me but I couldn’t let go of the betrayal no matter how hard I tried. I wanted to forgive him and in my own way I did. But even with that forced forgiveness, the sting of pain still lingered with me even after all these weeks.

  His headstone was set a month after his burial. It was taller than all those around him so I knew he would take pride in that. The marble was white and beautiful, but it just made the whole situation seem so much m
ore permanent. Hundreds of years from now that stone will be the only monument to his memory. The people who knew and loved him will all be gone and no one will even know who he was. His name etched in that marble will be the only evidence of his existence.

  The man at the funeral home had routinely sold me side-by-side plots, and in my shocked state, I obliged without fully considering. They really are nice plots, peacefully tucked under a luscious red maple tree, if that really matters for a grave. But I know that I will not lie next to him for eternity. It doesn’t feel right when he had built a new life with Mila, or planned to anyway. If he had wanted Mila by his side, I couldn’t bring myself to just assume rights to that. But if I am being completely honest with myself, I didn’t want that right anyway.

  My life was slowly finding its way back on track and the chaos of everything had started to settle as much as could be expected. I hadn’t seen or heard from Detective Burns for weeks. I also hadn’t seen any more shadows running passed my windows but I still sometimes got the feeling that there was something or someone behind me, watching me. I had checked over my shoulder more in these past weeks than I had my entire life. But that is probably not all that strange for someone who had to see her husband’s murdered body lying in the middle of a park.

  Grief is a terrible thing and I know that it is for everyone. I think a lot about how differently everyone grieves and worry that I am not doing it right, if there is a right way. One thing I can be certain of is that most likely, a universal side effect of grief is that it undoubtedly makes you question things about your own life. Will I be missed when I am gone? What will people say about me when words are the only thing left of me? Have I done everything that I wanted to do and even more so, why haven’t I done everything I wanted? I realize now that things I had thought were so important before seem so minuscule and pointless as they will all be left behind eventually. I hope that feeling goes away, that lack of ambition.