The Ex's Confession

by L. C. Davenport

  She still couldn’t believe that she’d been so gullible; Aaron had really taken her for a ride. Her only consolation was that he hadn’t gotten anything more from her than a few kisses, and even those were given unwillingly. Her mind refused to consider what he had planned to do with her after dinner that evening.

  Jen arrived a short time later, driving Rebecca’s car. “I hope you don’t mind,” she said by way of explanation, “but I figured the last thing you needed was to be alone tonight, so you’re coming to my place. Scott already took our car there and is supposed to be making up the bed in the extra room.”

  “Can he do that with only one arm?” Rebecca asked tiredly, sliding into the passenger seat. A suitcase in the back seat caught her eye; she was glad Jen had thought to bring extra clothes. She never wanted to see this dress again.

  Jen shrugged, apparently unconcerned. “He’ll be fine. Now tell me what happened tonight.”

  Sighing, Rebecca opened her phone and dialed her voice mail. “Can you wait a second? I need to listen to Elisa’s message.”

  Jen raised her eyebrows. “Since when does Elisa call you?”

  Rebecca smiled faintly. “This is a night of firsts in so many ways it’s not even funny.”

  Elisa’s voice was shrill and angry. “Rebecca, where are you? We’re in the middle of a family emergency here, and no one knows where you are! Call me as soon as you get this message.”

  Rolling her eyes, Rebecca dialed her sister’s number. Elisa answered at once. “Where have you been?”

  How exactly should I word this? Rebecca wondered. The guy that’s been after me for a month is really married to your roommate, who happens to be trying to seduce our father? “I was out on a date,” she settled on finally. “What’s going on? Is everyone all right?”

  “Well, no one’s hurt, if that’s what you mean. But the most distasteful thing has happened. I needed to ask Adrianna a question before dinner but she wasn’t around. I went upstairs to check her room and I found her…” Elisa paused dramatically, “…having sex with Aaron Sharpe. You know, your boyfriend.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend, “Rebecca snapped. “But I’m not terribly surprised.”

  “What? Why aren’t you mad?”

  “Because I just spent the evening getting Aaron to confess to putting our family into financial ruin and shooting my best friend’s husband. He also said he and Adrianna got married six months ago. I don’t suppose she’s still there.”

  Jen gasped beside her and swerved, nearly hitting a mailbox.

  “No. She took off as soon as Aaron slunk out of the house, his trousers around his knees. She laughed when I told her we couldn’t be friends any more. She seemed mad at him, though. Do you think she knew he was seeing you tonight?”

  Poor, stupid Elisa. “Oh, I’m pretty sure she knew.”

  “Well, Aaron told me not to tell you what I’d seen. He said he could make my life miserable. Can you believe that? A person like Aaron, making my life miserable… Like that could ever happen.”

  Rebecca leaned her head back against the headrest and closed her eyes. “Elisa, I just told you he’s been stealing money from William. He’s the reason why we had to sell the house and the cars and most of our worldly possessions. He’s very capable of ruining your life.”

  “Well, it’s still a very rude thing to say. I should have kicked him while I had the chance. Did you know that he was living here the entire time, holed up in Adrianna’s bedroom?”

  Could this get any worse? “Doesn’t anyone ever go in there?”

  Elisa gave a very indelicate snort. “No, she always kept the door locked. Said she didn’t want to make us uneasy by looking at all of her discount-store clothes.”

  Rebecca looked out the window. Maybe gullibility ran in the family. “Well, if she left anything behind you can probably keep it. William paid for it one way or another.”

  Elisa’s voice suddenly changed. “I may need to go back in there,” she mused. “I didn’t want to go back to the scene of the crime, but there was this pair of shoes...”Her voice trailed off. “I better get going.” Rebecca could hear her run up the stairs before Elisa remembered to hang up the phone.

  Jen stopped in front of her building and turned off the engine. She unbuckled her seat belt, took the phone out of Rebecca’s hand, and pulled her into her arms. Rebecca sobbed on her friend’s shoulder, letting all the tension and fear and anger of the evening drain out of her. She followed Jen into the spare bedroom half an hour later and shrugged out of her dress before falling into bed. If she had any dreams, she didn’t remember them in the morning.

  The next day Jen and Scott went out of their way to be calm and cheerful. They wouldn’t think of letting Rebecca leave, insisting that she stay with them at least until work began on Monday. After a token protest, Rebecca agreed and spent the rest of the day reading and talking with her friends. If they noticed when she lapsed into silence, staring out onto the street, they wisely didn’t say anything.

  Both of them had to leave earlier than she did Monday morning, so Rebecca made them a quick breakfast to thank them for their support. She followed them to the door, promising to lock up before she left, and Scott tossed the day’s newspaper at her when he walked down the steps. “Just leave it on the table,” he called over his shoulder.

  Rebecca took it into the kitchen, wondering if she had the nerve to read Elliot’s column. She didn’t know if she wanted to see what he had to say. Maybe he wouldn’t say anything at all.

  The mid-morning Sun was streaming into the family room when she sank onto the couch an hour later, the paper in her hands. Almost of their own volition her fingers turned the front page. Elliot’s picture smiled innocently up at her.

  Trust

  by Elliot Winters

  Faith is a funny thing. We usually equate the word with religion as a belief in something greater than ourselves, but there’s more to it than that. Take, for instance, the average Cubs fan.

  Each person who cares whether the Cubs win or lose knows the phrase, ‘There’s always next year’, and each of them begins each new season with varying degrees of faith in their team’s performance. Dear old Webster defines faith as ‘a firm belief in something for which there is no proof’, and since the Cubs haven’t won the World Series in over a hundred years, and haven’t been to one in sixty three, this seems a perfectly valid example of faith.

  But what happens when that faith is tested? It seems each year brings about its own set of setbacks and obstacles, and “there’s always next year” can be said with validity at any given point in a season. Some years are dismal, and we say it in April. Sometimes we’re luckier, and it isn’t heard until September. And during still others we bite our tongues and hold our breaths to the very last game of regular season play, only to moan about it over our beers in the playoffs.

  No matter when we say the dreaded words, however, we always come back for spring training with newfound hope in our hearts. I wish I knew why this was; it would certainly save me hours of heartache if I could just accept the fact that the Cubs are, as so many unbelievers say, loveable losers.

  Do we place the same degree of faith in our loved ones as we do in our beloved baseball team? A friend has asked me repeatedly, over the course of the past few days, to sit back, do nothing, and simply trust her. This seems like an easy thing to do; after all, I find most people trustworthy, and the ones I don’t, I tend to avoid like the plague. Although, as I have recently learned, it’s hard to have faith in a person that insists on associating with one of the lowest forms of life on the planet.

  I was at a restaurant this weekend and happened across my friend eating dinner with the creepiest man I’ve ever had the displeasure of knowing. When I questioned her about this, wondering if he’d spiked her drink or hypnotized her or was blackmailing her, the only answer I received was that she couldn’t tell me what she was doing, and that I’d just have to trust her.

  That was easy for her to say.
I stood there and watched as she talked with him, her face alive with curiosity. When I caught her eye, she just shook her head and went back to her discussion, and I left when the scum that was polluting her table leaned over and kissed her. It seems trust and faith can only go so far.

  But now I wonder at my actions. Webster’s defines trust, a word similar in meaning to faith, as “assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something”. I know this girl’s character. I know her abilities and strengths. And I know she would never lie to hurt another. Now I am left wondering if I did the right thing. She placed such importance on my presence there, and I fear I have let her down.

  So as soon as I can find her, I’ll tell her I was sorry, and that I trust her with my life, and that she can trust me with hers. “There’s always next year” only applies in baseball. It doesn’t have anything to do with the heart.

  I should know. It’s been seven years, and next year is finally here. Now all that’s left to do is maintain my present course and persevere.

  It would help if the jerk across the table hadn’t kissed her, though.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Rebecca threw the paper on the couch and stood up, fuming. What right did Elliot think he had to abandon her when she’d told him, on more than one occasion, that she wasn’t dating Aaron? Hadn’t he seen that Aaron had been the one to initiate the kiss? And why hadn’t he trusted her enough to stick around an extra ten seconds? Then he wouldn’t have had to write yet another apology column. She was getting sick of them.

  She paced around Jen’s apartment, gathering her things and trying to shake her annoyance. After showering she stuffed everything in the bag Jen had packed for her and left a note on the kitchen table thanking Jen and Scott for their help and promising to fix them dinner. She wasn’t sure they’d take her up on the offer; she may be a better cook than Cassie was, but Jen could bake her out of the kitchen in her sleep.

  It was when she was searching through her purse for her car keys that she realized her cell phone was missing. She stopped and thought for a moment. She’d had it in the car when Jen picked her up from the police station, and hadn’t used it since. Rebecca groaned and raced through the apartment, looking all over for the thing. She used to laugh at people who’d walk around the city with their ear glued to an electronic device, questioning why they couldn’t just leave it at home, and now she was the one panicking when it had disappeared–at home. She’d laugh at the irony of the situation if she weren’t in such a hurry.

  She was already twenty minutes late when she got into the car, the phone still missing. There was no way she’d make it to her first story hour on time, and if she was late for the first one, she’d be running behind schedule for the rest of the day. Once she was on the freeway, she drove as fast as she dared, praying that any police officers on duty wouldn’t be patrolling her route that morning.

  When she ran, breathless, through the doors of the first branch she’d visit that day, she smiled a greeting at the girl behind the circulation desk and had almost made it into the children’s section when the girl called out to her. “Are you Rebecca Done?”

  Rebecca turned reluctantly around. She could already see ten toddlers in various states of annoyance pulling books randomly off the shelves in an attempt to get some attention. “That’s me,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” the girl apologized. “I should probably know you, but you’re pretty new, aren’t you? A man came by a while ago and asked if you were supposed to be in today.”

  For a split second Rebecca didn’t move. Then she remembered that the only person who wanted to hurt her was safely locked in a jail cell at the other side of the city. “Do you know who it was?”

  The girl rifled through some papers on the table. “Some guy named Elliot Winters. Hey, isn’t he the one that writes those columns? You know, the ones about the girl that dumped him in high school.”

  Rebecca inched toward the now screaming toddlers. “I have no idea.”

  “Wait a minute.” The girl’s eyes narrowed. “He went to story hour just last week. Now he’s running around trying to find our story lady. You wouldn’t happen to be the girl he’s been writing about, would you?”

  Now in full panic mode, Rebecca shook her head. “Nice try,” she said over her shoulder as she hurried to start her first assignment of the day. The girl just stared at her before picking up the phone.

  Two hours and three extra books later, the last child of the group walked out of the room clutching a book and a lollipop that she kept in her work bag for emergencies. She only had time to repack her supplies before she was on the road again, half an hour late for her second round.

  It was like that the rest of the day. She would run into a library, always at least ten minutes behind schedule, and greet the clerk manning the circulation desk. The girl would tell her that Elliot had stopped by and asked for her, and then she’d get the third degree about how she knew him. She’d only been to four branches that day, but by the time she was ready to go home, it was nearly dinnertime and her head was aching and she was reconsidering her ideas of having children. They’d made her four story hours feel more like ten.

  And what had Elliot been doing all day? Had he gone to every single branch of the Chicago Public Library in eight hours? Why hadn’t he just called the main office and asked for her schedule? It would have saved him an awful lot of time.

  After she’d stopped at the grocery store and parked in front of her apartment, she was ready to let her cell phone spend the night in the car. Then she thought about Elliot, and wondered if he’d been trying to reach her all day. It really would be rude to completely ignore him, especially after he’d gone through so much trouble to find her. After digging around in the forbidden recesses of the car, she pulled it from its hiding spot under the front seat, along with sixty cents in loose change. The battery was dead and she stuck it in her pocket to recharge inside, but at least she was halfway to buying a bottle of water for lunch the next day.

  Once she was inside the building, Rebecca let her feet carry her down the hall, not really paying attention to her surroundings. She fished in her pocket for her key, trying not to drop several bags of groceries, when she sensed a movement in the dim light next to her. Startled, she looked up only to be pulled into a bone-crushing embrace.

  “Don’t ever do that to me again.” Elliot’s relieved voice rumbled in her ear.

  She momentarily let herself relax into his chest before pushing away back to look at him. “What are you doing here?” she asked, setting the bags on the ground.

  Elliot looked at her incredulously. “What do you mean? I’ve been searching the city for you for two days. I figured if you were still alive you’d have to come home eventually. Didn’t you get any of my messages?”

  Rebecca stared at him blankly. “Well, I know that every time I walked into a library today, you’d preceded me by an hour or so. And my cell phone is dead,” she added hastily before jamming her key into the doorknob and pushing it open.

  He followed her into the apartment, carrying the bags she had abandoned to the kitchen. “When you get it charged up, you’ll have thirty messages from me over the past two days.” He set them on the table and started to put her things away.

  “You don’t have to do that,” she protested.

  “Yes, I do. I need something to do to keep my mind off the fact that for the past couple of days I’ve been thinking that you were lying in a ditch somewhere,” he said tersely.

  Rebecca grabbed a loaf of bread out of his hands. “What would I be doing in a ditch?”

  Elliot laughed mirthlessly. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe Sharpe killed you before the police got to him, and all of your friends assumed you were with someone else.”

  She turned to face him, her hands planted on her hips. His expression was a mixture of relief and anger. “Well, if you’d stuck around long enough you would have seen him being led away in handcuffs! Why didn’t you j
ust trust me?” she cried, throwing a can into a cabinet with unnecessary force. “I knew what I was doing.”

  “Yeah, sure.” His mutter was almost too quiet to hear.

  Rebecca’s eyes flashed. “I did,” she insisted. “Jen and Scott came over that night to help me get ready, and between the three of us we figured out what he’d been doing. All you had to do was stick around and make sure I didn’t get killed.”

  Elliot’s movements stilled, the refrigerator door halfway open. “You mean you knew all along that he’d tried to kill someone?” His voice was tight and disbelieving.

  “Well, not all along. I had my suspicions, but I didn’t know for sure that he was the one that shot Scott.”

  Elliot turned his head slowly to stare at her. “And you still got in a car with him?”

  “Obviously.” Rebecca was starting to feel annoyed, as well as a little defensive. Couldn’t he see that things had been a little out of her control?

  Elliot’s eyes narrowed and he grabbed her shoulders. “What would you have done if he hadn’t driven to the restaurant? No one would have known where you were. He could have done anything to you!” His voice was getting louder, and his grip tightened painfully around her arms. She winced.

  “I didn’t have time to think that far ahead!” she cried, trying to wriggle free. “Let go! That’s starting to hurt!”

  Elliot let his hands drop so fast, she suspected he’d been burned by the contact. He walked past her into the sitting room and stared out the window. Without turning to look at her, he muttered, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  Rebecca closed the refrigerator and rolled her shoulders to release some of the tension. “I know you didn’t, but you need to be gentler. You’ve become a lot stronger since high school. All that muscle…”

  When he turned around his hand was over his eyes. “That’s still no excuse.”