Heart in a Box

by Ally Sky

  "Explain to me, please." I cross my hands and keep my burning eyes from him. "And don't waste my precious time."

  The past few weeks have turned me into a monster. There is no better way to define this character that has taken over me. A monster that threatens to swallow me in waves of hatred.

  "Do you remember our wedding day?" He shifts nervously. "We agreed that I would meet you in the church. You didn't want me to see your wedding dress, you said it was bad luck."

  Of course I remember that day, I remember every second of it.

  "I spent the day in our house, and right before noon someone knocked on the door. I opened it without thinking twice, and the two morons, who you met a few minutes ago, burst in and caught me off guard."

  "What did you do?" I manage to ask almost in a whisper, in terror.

  "Nothing," he replies scornfully, "their problem wasn't with me, it was with my father. That didn't stop them from holding me against the wall."

  "Your dad?" My legs begin to tremble first, and then the tremor climbs into my stomach and chest, until I think I'll collapse in another second.

  "He owed them money, a lot of money, and they came to collect his debt. I asked how was I supposed to come up with the money, and the answer I got was a punch to the face. Jimmy made it clear that he didn't really care where the money came from. That they weren’t playing around . . ."

  The muscles in my body harden and stretch, my guts begins to turn over in a growing nausea, as Colin continues. The loathing in his voice mixes with a note of pain he can't hide.

  "All I could think to myself was how lucky my mother was for being dead, for not seeing where I'd ended up."

  We didn't use to talk about his mom. The one subject we avoided, that we tiptoed around, was his mother. Colin's father knew and took full advantage of it. Took advantage of the young boy, full of longing, who lost his mother at the age of five and was left with a dad who drank himself to death.

  "Why didn't you call me?" I don't know if I could've helped, but I was his girlfriend, his fiancé, hours from becoming his wife. I should have known.

  "I wanted to, but your father showed up."

  My dad? I give Colin a dismissive look. His story changes direction unexpectedly, and it's hard not to wonder if he's looking for someone else to blame. What is he up to now?

  "You're lying, my father was with me in the bridal salon."

  "You forgot your veil, you sent him to fetch it," he reminds me. My father did bring me my veil and then took me and my mother to the church.

  "What are you accusing him of?" My father hated Colin, and he's the perfect scapegoat.

  "Your father came into our house and found me bleeding and bruised on the living room floor, Jimmy kicking my ribs. You love him, and for the last few years he took care of you and was there when I wasn't . . . I thought I could hide it from you and not break your heart again, but your father isn't the innocent man he's trying to portray."

  "Stop lying!" I raise my hand in front of him to shut his mouth.

  "He offered to pay the debt if I left!" I can feel the earth trembling, swaying under my feet, and the room spins for a moment and carries with it every bright thought.

  You are a liar without limits. Is that what you were taught in the army?

  "I don't believe a word that comes out of your mouth," I shoot him a look that could kill.

  "You hate me anyway, Daddy's little girl, I was bleeding on the floor, I wanted to call you, but Jimmy wouldn't let me go anywhere without getting his money, and I had no choice. Your dad threatened me that if I ever came back, I'd end up like Thomas Brooke. Do you know who that is?"

  "Please . . ." My voice brakes. I cover my ears with my hands.

  "Do you know who that is?" He raises his voice, moves a step closer, and holds my hands, pulling them down.

  "No." I can't stop the tears.

  "He was the guy who hated Morgan more than anyone. He was the one who tied your brother to the pole and brought the eggs."

  "Stop!"

  "He's dead!" His voice resounds. "Thomas Brooke died and your father said I'd end up like him!"

  "What happened to him?" I whimper uncontrollably.

  "Car accident. Your father laughed when he told me that, when he said there was nothing that couldn't be arranged with a little help."

  "Are you accusing my father of murder?" I'm going crazy.

  "How do I know what he is capable of? He threatened my life, and so did Jimmy."

  "He wouldn't do that to me, he was standing beside me in the church waiting for you."

  "He told me never to come back and that is the truth. I wanted to take you with me, I wanted us to run away together, but your father said there was no chance in hell he'd let that happen. You were pregnant, what was I supposed to do, marry you and leave you a widow?"

  "Why are you back now, and why are they still chasing you?"

  "I needed time to make enough money and stand on my own two feet."

  "Money?" I bark.

  "Money is power! The confidence that no one will mess with us. Do I look like someone you wanna mess with?"

  He’s a filthy liar, I have to get the truth out of him. If I just ask the right questions, his lies will crumble and the holes in his story will pop up. I can do it, I'll prove to him that I'm not stupid, that I'm not blind.

  "They're still looking for you."

  "My father's debts piled up again. He went on gambling. Only thing he owned was that shit of a house. I sold it and I needed a few days for the money to come in." He finds another logical explanation.

  "How easy it is to blame others," I don't give up.

  "Do you think it was easy not being here for so many years?" He fires at me and makes me jump in panic.

  "I have no idea." All I can do is mutter in response to the growing rage coming from his direction. "As far as I'm concerned, you invented this story on the way here."

  "Ask your father about the money I sent him." He takes his cell phone out of his back pocket and hands it to me defiantly. "Call him now, ask him."

  "What money?" I stare at the phone confused.

  "The money I sent him every month for you." Colin waves his cell phone, his tone full of disgust. "I guess he never told you."

  "There is no limit to your imagination, is there Colin?" I refuse to take the phone from him. Unable to free my hands from my chest, I just hug myself harder.

  "I sent him money every month from the time I enlisted, for you and Vivian. He knew where the money came from."

  "Not a chance." I laugh in his face through my tears. "I can understand why you're trying to blame my father, you two never hid the resentment between you, but he would never lie to me."

  "He would lie if he believed you would look for me, and we both know that's what you would do. You can ask him or continue not to believe me, but my father got in trouble, and his trouble was about to become ours. I couldn't let that happen, I couldn't risk anyone hurting you."

  "So you lied to me?" I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

  "I wasn't the only one who hid things," he says angrily, "you had your secrets. You wanna tell me you did everything you could to find me? The earth didn't swallow me, Elizabeth, I enlisted."

  "You don't know what you're saying." I shake my head.

  "Did you file a missing persons report?" He doesn't stop the charge.

  "No one wanted to find you!" I glare back. "You left a note, I didn't think anything happened to you, what do you think the cops would have said about it?" My thoughts are running around, spinning in my head in circles. I didn't file a complaint with the police because my father said there was no point. Colin chose to leave, he wasn't missing. My heart is crashing in my chest. I listened to my dad because what he said made sense and, because of my situation, I let him make the decisions.

  "You didn't look for me and your father's plan worked, until I came back." He gives up trying to push his cell phone my direction and returns it to his pocket. "Now
he can't threaten me anymore, what can he possibly do to me, Elizabeth, kill me?"

  "Don't talk like that!"

  "I'm already dead!" Pain echoes in every word. "The only thing that kept me alive was the thought that someday you would let me be Vivian's father, and now you want to take her from me. You don't believe a word I say, so what else can I lose?"

  "My father loves me." I forcefully push at the thoughts running through my head.

  "Your father saw an opportunity to get rid of me and took advantage of it. He took advantage of my need to protect you at all costs."

  "No," I refuse to believe him, "you are the one who left."

  "That's why you went out with the doctor, to pay me back?" Now he remembers to bring up the subject?

  "I went out with the doctor because I'm twenty six," I reply scornfully. "He asked me out and looked like a guy who wouldn’t run away, one who doesn't make up miserable lies." I can't stop and the words are just there, on the tip of my tongue and then out, "You promised you would never be like—”

  "Like my father." His face turns pale with indignation. "Thank you, Elizabeth, I see I'm not the only one who breaks their promises."

  He stares at me one last time, then walks past me, his shoulder rubbing mine, slamming the door behind him. Silence takes over the room. My heart thumps wildly and floods me with guilt again. I took the knife out of the saddle and stuck it deep into Colin's heart, and now we're both wounded, bleeding. We are dragging the ugly past into our frail present and now it's threatening to shatter on us with a deafening crash.

  Chapter 15

  The terrible traffic on the road forces me to sit behind the wheel, my thoughts running around, tossed from side to side irrationally, like a tennis ball from one racket to another. My father will put things right, I know that. Colin was so desperate that he decided to invent nasty lies about the man who was there for me, my own father, who saved me time after time when I felt the ground dropping from under my feet. Horrendous lies. He never sent money, because I would have received it. I remember our wedding day, every second of it. My father came back with the veil, and together we all went to the church and waited for Colin. Our eyes were fixed on the door expecting it to open, and my mom glanced at her wristwatch again and again. The minutes passed, and my smile changed into growing anxiety.

  I dialed Colin and got his voicemail.

  I kept telling myself he must have forgotten to charge it.

  I left him a message and kept waiting. My father left first. Without bothering to ask, I assumed he had gone looking for my groom. After all, where else could he have gone?

  The traffic light turns green and I hurry up on the road, my leg trembling with the panic attack climbing from my knees to my belly. Lies and more lies, that's what my ex-boyfriend excels at. The masked champion who returned to hurt anyone he could.

  I stop with a squeal of brakes in front of the office building, lock the car and walk through the glass doors with quick steps to the elevator that leads me to the seventh floor, straight to Baringes Export.

  The sign on the door welcomes me. My father has been working here since I was little. How many times did he wait for the promotion that never came? How many times was he passed on, the job given to someone younger than him?

  I push away the thought and go in, the receptionist smiling at me from behind the shiny marble counter.

  "May I help you?" She doesn't know me, I have not been here for years.

  "I'm looking for Frank Heart." I can't smile back at her.

  "Is he expecting you?"

  "I'm his daughter." I'm sorry I didn't call from the road to tell him I was coming. He would wait and spare me the embarrassment.

  The receptionist picks up the phone and dials, waiting quietly for a response from the other side

  "Mr. Heart," she says eventually, "your daughter is at the reception desk." After a few more seconds she hangs up and smiles again.

  "The last door on the left," she gestures toward the hallway.

  "Thank you," I reply, my legs managing to cooperate as I walk down the long hallway and knock on the office door.

  "Come in!" My father's voice booms from the other side. I open the door and a sense of shame overwhelms me. Am I really going to ask him after everything he did for me?

  "Elizabeth?"

  "Can we talk?" I close the door behind me and walk into the little gray office. Behind my father's desk stands a picture of Vivian smiling broadly, and on the walls hang work boards full of plans.

  I have to concentrate on my plan, unveil the lies that Colin told me.

  "What's going on?" My father gets up from his chair and moves toward me, worry rising over his wrinkled face.

  "I feel like an idiot for even asking," I'm looking for the right words, "an idiot for even considering, but Colin was in the store, and he told me this crazy story."

  "Do you want to sit down?" He gestures to the empty chair in front of his desk.

  "No," I shake my head, not taking my eyes off him, looking for signs that will reveal the truth. "Just tell me he's lying, that's all I really need, tell me he didn't send you money every month, that you didn't know why he left."

  "Elizabeth," he pulls the chair out without answering me, my heart pounding. "You better sit down . . ."

  "I don't want to sit!" I step back, my eyes darting between his. "Tell me he's lying and we'll get it over with, okay?"

  "It's not that simple." He keeps his cool, doesn't raise his voice even a little.

  "Not simple?" I open my eyes wide. "It's very simple, did you meet Colin at our house on my wedding day and make him leave?"

  He has to answer this question. He cannot get away from it.

  "I was in your house when I picked up something you forgot." He's trying to evade, damn it!

  "My veil, what did you tell him?" I curl my fingers so tight I'm afraid I'll cut my own flesh.

  "What I did was meant to protect you." He takes a step toward me, but I pull back from him.

  "What did you tell him?"

  "That he ruined your life the day you met!" he snaps, "And that he'd continue to destroy you and endanger you and your baby, and that I wasn’t going to stand by and see my only daughter hurt because of him!"

  And just like that, in one moment, the truth is revealed and it shatters the lies, along with everything I believed. My world, as I knew it. The truth is unveiled in all its ugliness, and I'm surrounded by traitors. Everyone lied to me, deceived me, let me believe the false stories.

  "Didn't you consider going to the police or telling me what happened? What were you thinking?" I scream, ignoring the possibility that someone will appear at the door and ask me to calm down. "Who gave you the right to play with my life like that, lie to me all these years, let me believe he just didn’t love me?"

  The realization descends upon me, without my being prepared for it, and floods a thousand new questions—my father forced Colin to write the letter. Colin never meant those words. Has he stopped loving me over the years?

  "You would have looked for him," my father continues, refusing to apologize, "and you would have found him easily. What if he came back earlier? What danger would he have put you in?"

  "I don't know, you took away my right to choose, you deprived Vivian of her father, we could have solved it."

  "You didn't see him," my father raises his hand in the air, "wounded, bleeding, you didn't see the criminals that entered your house. Do you think I would let him stay, let them chase you?"

  "Both of you are liars, and I won't be surprised if Mom was also involved."

  "Your mom doesn't know anything." My father turns pale in a moment. If my mom doesn't know, she's about to find out, and he'll pay the price.

  "You've had more than five years to fix this," I point to my father accusingly, "but you let my heart bleed."

  "I had no choice." He seems much less sure of himself now.

  "Bullshit!" I shout at him scornfully. "It was your choice to lie to me,
to deceive me, to persuade me to move on and find someone else. He was meant to be my husband!"

  I can't look at him anymore, am unable to be with him in the same room.

  "I'll never trust you again," I take another step back toward the door, "neither you nor him, I don't want to ever see you again."

  "Lizzie!"

  "How does it feel to lose the only child you have left?" My fingers close on the door handle and when I turn to open it I strain out, "Do you still think you made the right choice?"

  "Don't turn your back on me!" he calls out.

  "You turned your back on me when you stood in the church and pretended you didn't know where Colin was, when you lied that you were going to look for him." I slam the door behind me, fury in my veins.

  Wait till I tell Mom. Wait for her to hear what you did, how you ruined my life.

  The descent in the elevator continues for an eternity. The doors open and I burst out of the building, barely managing to get the car keys out of my bag. With trembling fingers I put them in the door, sit behind the wheel and start the engine.

  Colin didn't trust me to deal with the problem. He listened to my father, the man who hated him and waited for him to disappear, instead of coming to me and thinking together what to do. I'd have run away with him. If he had asked, I would have left everything behind just to be with him. The truth is, I will never know what danger I would have put Vivian in or what the consequences might have been. The decision was taken away from me.

  I dial my mom and put the phone on speaker, tears streaming down my cheeks and washing my face. If she knew, I don't know what I'll do. If she lied to me too, I’ll be all alone.

  "Lizzie?" My mom's sure voice is unaware of the bomb I'm about to throw.

  "I know why Colin left." I pull my nose, my voice shivering in tears. "I know everything."

  "Everything?"

  "Please tell me you had no idea." A miserable sob comes out of my mouth.

  "Elizabeth, what are you talking about?"

  "About his father debts, that your husband paid and in return forced Colin to leave, and the money he sent dad every month."