The Righteous and The Wicked

by April Emerson

  “Yes. I do.”

  “I’m not giving up. I won’t.” His words don’t match the defeat in his voice.

  The look on his face tugs at Emma’s heart. It’s so hard for her to hurt him. Her best friend. Her love for so long. She shows him some mercy. “Just stay the night. You can sleep in my dad’s room. We’ll talk more tomorrow.”

  Aaron walks out into the now clear and moonlit night. The storm has passed, but the smell of fresh rain lingers in the air. He opens the trunk of the rental car and takes out his luggage. The sound of screeching tires startles him. He notices Emma’s mailbox is open, and he walks toward it. Inside he finds a white envelope. It’s labeled, “Amorcita”.

  He looks at the white house. The lights are off. Emma has gone to sleep. He wavers for a moment, but he cannot resist the temptation. He opens the letter and reads:

  My sweet Emma,

  I know I’ve made promises to you and it may seem like I’m breaking them, but you have to know that I’m doing this because you’re the best thing--the most important thing--in my life. Keeping those promises is all I want to do.

  I want to be better. I want to give you everything you deserve. I want to give you the best parts of me, and I don’t want to have to fight against the darkness inside me any longer. I want our lives to be filled with light, and in order for me to make that dream come true, there are some things I have to do. I must do them now, and I have to do them alone.

  Maybe I’m making a mistake, but I have to try. For you. For us. It may seem like I’m a coward, but leaving is the most courageous thing I’ll ever do. I need you to know that I’m not running away, and I’m not asking you to wait.

  You owe it to yourself to search for happiness, and I owe it to myself to try to get better. If that happens, then and only then will I return. I want to come back to you, but I won’t until I am certain I deserve to have your heart.

  With infinite love, I’m yours always—

  Eric

  Aaron grips the letter in his hands. He knows what he has to do.

  When the sun rises over the mountains, a harsh yellow light greets the deep green of the New England forest. Eric grips the steering wheel, driving faster than he should down the mountain road. The ache is sharp and deep. It consumes him and he knows it will not go away anytime soon. Maybe it never will.

  Emma owns his mind. Her smile, her laugh, her hand in his. It hurts him to know that lovely smile of hers will continue to grace her face long after he has disappeared. He’s not sure where he’s going, but he knows what he hopes to find. The road stretches, vast and empty before him. It’s a brand new day and he’s facing it alone.

  Emma wakes and feels the bed beside her. Eric’s place. There’s no one there, but she feels a presence in the room. She opens her eyes to find her soon-to-be ex-husband standing beside the bed, staring at her.

  “Aaron, what are you—”

  “I need to give you something.” He swallows hard and hands her the letter he found last night.

  Emma opens it and reads.

  She reads about heartbreak. She reads about love. She reads about strength and fear. The words she reads touch her heart, and tears escape from her eyes. She reads words written in a script that she recognizes.

  Aaron’s handwriting.

  . . . I want to come back to you, but I won’t until I am certain I deserve to have your heart.

  With infinite love, I’m yours always—

  Aaron

  Emma believes this is the note Aaron intended to leave for her when he ran away from their life together. She wants to believe it. She has wished for this, and though it’s late, it’s here. The words fill a hole in her heart.

  “Why didn’t you just leave this note when you left? It hurt me so much to have no explanation. I was so broken without you.”

  She wipes the tears from her eyes and embraces Aaron, but in her heart she wishes it were Eric.

  “I wasn’t able to write this until time had passed. I regret leaving the way I did, baby.” Aaron breathes in the sweet scent of her. What he has done is a sin. It’s deceitful—but right now, he doesn’t care.

  With Aaron’s arms around her, Emma feels like she’s betraying not just Eric, but herself. The strides she has taken to become the person she is now shrink and retreat. The spark inside her dies a little at his touch and she nudges him away. She has fought to become strong, and she doesn’t want to go back to who she used to be.

  “Aaron, this letter . . . this was something I needed to hear from you, but you should know that it doesn’t change anything. It’s too late. Everything is different now, and I just can’t go back. I’m in love with Eric. He’s the one I want to be with.”

  He grinds his teeth with frustration. “Fine. I wish you’d give me another chance, but I can’t force you. Let me at least take you out to dinner tonight, before I leave. Let me say goodbye the right way this time.” Aaron knows she’ll soon find that her boyfriend is gone, and this discovery may change her mind.

  Emma concedes to his wish with a nod. A piece of her still belongs to Aaron, and however small it may be, it’s fighting to survive.

  Right now, she needs to see the man who owns her heart and soul.

  Eric.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  She walks through her yard toward the dirt path—the path that Eric made for her. She feels horrible that she wasn’t able to be with him last night, but she knows he’ll understand she needed to sort things out with Aaron.

  The sweet and gritty smell of rain-soaked earth meets her nose, and she looks for the familiar sights of the new house, and the silver of Eric’s trailer peeking through the leaves. The house begins to make itself visible, but something is missing. No flashes of the tin trailer glimmering in the sun. She steps like a skater testing out new ice on a frozen pond, afraid that it will crack and she will be submerged.

  As she enters Eric’s yard, what she sees doesn’t make any sense. Tire tracks and dead grass are all that remain in the place that was once Eric’s temporary home. He’s gone. The world feels heavy. Her shaking hands grasp her cell phone. She struggles to find him in her contacts. She presses send and it rings, but the sound is like a shout into an empty canyon. She wants him to answer but she is so afraid that he won’t.

  “The number you are trying to reach is not in service. Please check the number and dial again. The number you are trying to reach . . .”

  The automated voice reverberates in her head, over and over again.

  He’s gone.

  She looks back up the path toward the old house that holds her husband and her reality. Eric was a dream. She doesn’t cry or drop to her knees. The lump in her throat swells to epic proportions. She lets out a mournful wail. It fills the wilderness with her unspeakable pain, her song of heartbreak.

  “I saw him run out after the fight, and I found this.” Danielle sits down in the kitchen and shows Sean and Abby the damp note and the key.

  Sean shakes his head as he reads and passes the note to Abby. “I got a voice mail from him. He said he needed to take off, but he left Emma a letter. He said he’s sorry about the fight, if that means anything to you.”

  “I’m not angry with him,” Danni says. “I understand why he did what he did. I should never have suggested inviting Ian. I never dreamed it would end with such violence. At this point, I’m just worried for Emma. This is going to kill her.”

  “Are you going to give her the box?” Sean asks.

  “Do you think that would help? I don’t know what I should do.” Danielle shakes her head, almost on the verge of tears.

  “What would you want if you were her? Wouldn’t you want to know?” Sean asks.

  “This key business . . . this is just heartbreaking. We have to give this to her, Danni. Like, yesterday,” Abby says. “Do you think he’s ever going to come back?”

  “Would you? He fucked up. He saw Aaron with Emma. Would you come back?”

  Abby folds her arms across her
chest and looks out the window, pensive. “I would if I was in love.”

  Danielle nods. “So would I.”

  Emma sits in the restaurant opposite Aaron, staring off into space. She doesn’t eat the food placed in front of her. He tries to talk about reconciliation and their future, but Emma’s unresponsive. Seeing her suffer isn’t easy for Aaron, but he knows it’s necessary. He knows she will get past it. She’ll forget about her fling with Eric and move on with her life, and he’ll do anything to be the one beside her when she does.

  He takes her home and helps her out of the car. She stops, staring at the motionless wind chime that hangs on the porch. He watches her corpse-like state melt away at the sight of it. She stomps up the stairs and yanks the object down with a grunt. She looks at it as if it will answer some unspoken question. Then he watches with confusion as she tosses the chime into the dirt behind the lilac bushes that surround the moonlit porch.

  Aaron shrugs off her odd behavior and follows his wife inside, but Emma runs up the stairs to her bedroom and slams the door. She puts her pillow over her head. She never wants to hear the bittersweet sound of the wind chime again.

  Sunday. Emma sits in church with Aaron. The pain over the loss of Eric has crushed her. She has asked Aaron to leave several times, but he refuses. He insists that she needs him, and he will not abandon her again. She’s too tired and too distraught to fight against his will, so she sits beside him in a place that once brought her comfort and peace. Aaron tells her she’ll find answers here. He insists that holding true to her faith will illuminate what is meant to be in her life.

  She listens to Father O’Hara’s words. “From the fullness of His grace we have all received one blessing after another . . .”

  She looks at the devoted parishioners. She sees a mother seated in the pew across the aisle. She holds her baby to her chest, and it dozes with an expression of absolute peace. That woman is blessed.

  Emma is not.

  Every day that passes is the same. Aaron sleeps in her dad’s bed every night. He makes her dinner. He makes her breakfast. He talks to her, but she doesn’t hear a word he says. She goes to work, and she comes home, and he is there.

  He pretends that nothing is wrong, but Emma cannot pretend.

  She is sleepwalking through her days.

  Danielle waits for Emma in the parking lot of St. Simon’s. Knowing that Aaron still lingers, she wants to speak to Emma alone. Emma exits the building burdened by a tote bag stuffed with papers. She looks lost, disheveled. Her shoulders are slumped. Danielle can’t stand to see her in this much agony.

  “Emma!”

  Emma’s head snaps up and a small smile of recognition floats across her face.

  “Hi, Danni. What are you doing here?”

  “I need to talk to you, do you have a minute?”

  Emma gets in the passenger seat of Danni’s car and lets out a heavy sigh. “Eric’s gone.”

  “I know. Sean told me.”

  Her head perks up. “Has Eric called him? I tried to call him a hundred times, but his phone is disconnected.”

  “He called right after he left. He said he needed to leave and that he left you a letter.”

  Emma looks confused. “I didn’t get any letter from him. He just left me, Danni.” Her voice cracks and she sobs. “And Aaron is back. He said one of my friends called him and told him I needed him.”

  “Well, that has to be bullshit. I didn’t call him and you know Abby wouldn’t either. Listen, Emma, I found something on the night of the party. When Eric ran out, I chased after him, and he dropped this.” She hands Emma the beaten box.

  Danielle watches her face as she reads and fondles the key. Emma doesn’t react the way Danni expects. She crumples the note and grips the key.

  “Why? Why would he say these things and then disappear? I feel so empty. So lost.” She begins to cry and covers her face with her hands.

  “I think he left because he was ashamed. I’m sure he’ll come back.”

  Emma unleashes fury on Danielle. “What makes you think that? Just because your life is perfect doesn’t mean everyone else’s will be. It’s fucking over, Danni. He’s gone. And my stubborn, almost ex-husband is my roommate. My life is a joke.”

  “Your life is not a joke. Aren’t you always telling me that things happen for a reason? Even if we don’t see why at first, it will all become clear when the time is right?”

  Emma wipes her tear-streaked cheeks. “I just don’t believe that anymore.” She grips the key until it digs into her palm, until it hurts.

  “I know that you’ve had promises broken and I’m sorry you’re hurt, but you have a choice—you can sit in the bottom of the ditch and wait for someone to throw you a ladder, or you can climb out by yourself. What’s it going to be, Emma?”

  Emma stands beside Aaron, washing dishes after dinner. Her eyes are glued on the path. She runs the dishtowel over each dish Aaron hands her and places it back in the cupboard like a mindless zombie.

  Aaron looks at her out of the corner of his eye. He thought she would snap out of it, but it’s been almost a month, and there’s no change in her. She has lost weight and all she ever wants to do is sleep. He may have mistreated her, but he does love her and it’s killing him to see her this way.

  “Let’s take a walk,” he says.

  Emma doesn’t protest; she just follows him out of the house and down the street. They walk toward the bike trails and she stares at her feet.

  Aaron stops. “Emma, look at me.”

  She lifts her eyes to his. Aaron stares at her gaunt, pale face and the black circles beneath her eyes.

  “I can’t take this anymore, baby. Please just let me in. Things were good with us for so long. Remember when we were just friends? What if we tried to be that way again? Please? Baby, can we at least just try?”

  He reaches his hand out to her. She stares at him, considering what he said. She nods and takes his hand.

  The silver trailer follows Eric’s Jeep like a shadow. Tired and hungry on an endless road, he’s a man without roots, without a home, yet not completely detached. For the first time ever, leaving a place hurt him.

  Voices battle inside his head.

  “Go back to her.”

  “You need to do this alone. You can’t keep living with this burden.”

  An invisible thread is connected to his heart. It pulls and stretches as he gets farther and farther away, but it doesn’t break and he doesn’t turn back.

  When he wakes in his trailer, he has no idea where he is. It feels like a piece of him is missing. He sits up and gets his bearings. It’s better if he stays away, but he’s not sure he can do it. He leaves his tiny cage and walks through the streets of Toronto. He ambles down an alley lined with posters and flyers. One catches his eye.

  Dr. Michelle Daryn, Recovery Specialist.

  He tears it down from the paper-covered wall and he is no longer aimless.

  Weeks later, Eric has done nothing but eat, sleep, and go to his therapy appointments. It feels like bullshit. It felt like bullshit, but now it’s making sense. He sits on the couch and fidgets. His leg bounces from nerves as he waits for her. She’s in a conservative dress and with good reason. She doesn’t tempt his heart, because his heart belongs to Emma. Dr. Daryn tempts his darkness.

  She’s hot, sexy, and smart. Eric has to fight against his impulses at every appointment, but she’s helping him in a way a man never could. His addiction is right there, out in the open, every time he’s here. Every day he is getting stronger.

  He’s learned that he’s in control of his impulses and not the other way around. Whether they are sexual or violent, Eric can choose to indulge them. Dr. Daryn has helped Eric to see he is the master of his behavior. She’s making his life make sense.

  “How have things been?” She sits in her armchair, peering over her glasses, her clipboard placed in her lap.

  Eric leans back, exasperated. “I miss her. That’s how I’ve been.”


  “Then why don’t you go back? You’ve made a lot of progress here. Why don’t you return to her?”

  “You know why I can’t go back. She deserves happiness. She doesn’t need my poison.” Eric drags his hands over his face.

  “Do you think that Emma thinks you’re poisonous?”

  “I don’t know. Probably not . . . she told me she loves me.” Eric remembers her voice, and her smile, and her lips. He gets lost in his thoughts for a minute.

  “And you love her.”

  “Yes. So much. I let her in . . . she let me in . . .” He tries to think of the right words to explain the bond he feels to her.

  He leans forward, his elbows on his knees. “When you show someone a piece of your pain, you share it with them. They take it and keep it with them, and it’s as if a part of you is theirs forever. I’ll never feel whole without her.”

  “Well, part of loving someone is loving all of them—good and bad. You love all of Emma. What makes you think she doesn’t love all of you? You’re trying to protect her, but from what you’ve told me, she doesn’t seem to want protection. She wants you.”

  He wishes this were true. He wants to give in and go back, but his shame won’t let him. “That doesn’t make it right.”

  “Who says love is right? You resisted Deborah and haven’t been with any other women. You haven’t given in to your addiction since you committed to Emma. You haven’t had a violent outburst. You need to try to let yourself be happy, even if you think you don’t deserve it.” She leans forward in her chair, forcing Eric to look her in the eye.

  “Eric, you deserve happiness. You are worthy.”

  Another night without her. Restless, he tosses and turns. Sleep has been a stranger and the empty side of the bed taunts him. His heart wants to fill it with Emma. His demon would fill it with a victim but Eric’s strength and resolve to be better overshadow those impulses. Still, he can’t sleep.