by Riley Moreno
Amanda cracked the door open again, and Julie took that as her cue as she snatched her purse from the bed.
“Guess I should go,” Julie said. “I’ll see myself---”
“Like hell you will.”
Kim held her arm tight and pushed Julie past Amanda. They exchanged a quick laugh, and Julie hugged her close as soon as they were at the front door.
“Court’s coming soon,” Kim said. “You’re going to be there, right?”
Julie nodded fast, and Kim kissed her cheeks.
“So I’ll see you then,” Kim said. “Now you go home now, Jules. Keep being happy.”
Julie hugged her close one last time and took off with a lighter heart. It would take time, but someday soon, everything would work itself out. Would be nice to share as much with Ethan. As she stepped onto the train and texted him the promise of her return, Julie watched the city start to slip back into view, and she contentedly slipped back into her seat.
10
Kim kept her eyes on the doorway until Julie disappeared from her sight. Not sure if she even wanted to grow old, Kim knew that it would never happen with Julie and her so-called hero riding off into a sunset that they did not deserve. Julie had another place to go; Ethan Graff could play or die. Either way was fine by her.
“Are you okay, Kim?”
She shrugged off her mother’s hands and raked her hands across the back of her head.
“Fuck Sharon Heller,” Kim hissed. “Did you even look for me?”
“I… of course I did!” Amanda cried. “I only wanted you back!”
So she could pretend that she was a good mother? That she was somehow better than Sharon Heller? Maybe she hadn’t picked a losing horse over her own flesh and blood. But that didn’t change that fact that fresh dick was always preferable to her daughter’s touch. How many men had come and gone between the door that Julie so recently passed through? Each and every one was Amanda’s chance at happily ever after. No thought for her child in a corner as the walls moved like flimsy tissues, and Kim heard the groans as she buried her head under the pillows. That was her sin, the first reason why Kim felt that Julie’s blended clan was a better bet.
“Don’t give me that line of shit and ask me to swallow it,” Kim scoffed.
Amanda fell back and shook her hands before her eyes.
“She… that woman forgot what it was to give birth on account of some man!”
Trying to take her daughter back into her arms, Kim absorbed her hold for all of a second before pushing Amanda back and snarling through her teeth.
“You could have given her notes,” Kim said. “You were always ready to find the way out.”
Amada started to protest when Kim slapped her hard. Gripping her cheek, Amanda fell to the floor, sobbing, but Kim made no move to comfort her as she hit her again and spit into her eyes.
“Maybe I wouldn’t have even been her friend if you had done better.”
Lifting her arms, Amanda tried to explain everything away, but Kim would not be put off, and she kept seething.
“Why didn’t you stop it before it started?” Kim demanded. “Did you ever think that it never would have-happened if---?”
“Kim! I am so sorry! I always loved you!”
As Amanda shot up, Kim tried to curl away from her sudden embrace. Unable to fight her mother’s hold, Kim endured her arms as she drew several ragged breaths through her clenched teeth. All roads ended with Julie and the jackass who picked the scrawny little virgin who was not as pure as she still liked to pretend. But there was more than enough blame to go around. What better place to start than her own backyard?
“Get away from me!”
With all of her strength and rage returned, Kim pushed her mother away. Startled and stunned, Amanda tripped over her own feet and hit the ground with a great moan, her elbow slamming into the wall. Seizing her arm as an agonized expression washed over her face, Amanda lifted her teary eyes to her daughter’s simmering face.
“Kim, sweetie, I never liked her,” Amanda insisted. “I… I always said the girl was shifty.”
“She was far from your biggest fan, mother. What I wouldn’t give to see the both of you…?”
Forcing herself to stop before she gave the game away, Kim managed a mirthless laugh and turned on her heel.
“The both of us what, Kim?” Amanda cried after her.
“It’s none of your concern,” Kim whispered. “And if you’re smart, you’ll stop asking so many questions.”
Charging back into her room, barely registering the sound of her mother’s frantic voices as she slapped her desperate palms and futilely tried to get the locked handle to twist in the grooves and give way, Kim held her head in her hands and reached for another cigarette. Exhaling a sea of smoke around the room, she glanced down at the fallen photograph still resting at the edge of her bed. Two sweet girls, one without a scar, one with long, flowing auburn locks.
Does she think she deserves the lion’s share of the pity because everyone can see what they did to her forever? A few fucking months. Small price to pay for getting to play the princess now.
Taking another drag, Kim brought the flaming tip of the butt down on the image of Julie’s tongue. Smiling at the idea of adding to her scars, the photograph started to disintegrate under her hands. Kim held the burning glossy in her palm as the heat scorched her fingers, and even as her flesh started to singe and smoke, she would not release the fading image. She only curled her around the damaged document of a time that never really was, could never be again. But even Kim had her limits, and when the pain finally became too much to bear, she slammed her clenched fist into the mirror and saw her reflection splinter into a thousand pieces, one stray shard digging into her knuckles and drawing a thin stream of fresh blood.
“Kim!” Amanda screamed. “What are you doing in there? Open this door right now!”
Examining the blood as it dripped between her fingers and started to pool on the floor at her feet, Kim’s mouth shifted into a satisfied smirk. She would open the door and test the waters. Give her mother a taste of what it was to feel hopeless. Julie’s turn would come soon enough. But the time seemed right for a sort of preview.
“Thank God!” Amanda screamed as soon as Kim flung the door open wide. “Please don’t shut me out… oh!”
Amanda winced at the sight of her daughter’s bloodied hand as she slapped her palm to her mouth.
“Kim… what are you…?”
“Do you see me crying, Mom?” Kim challenged as she stepped closer to her mother’s side and backed her into the wall. Amanda blubbered as she waved her hands across her face, and Kim continued her pursuit until her mother had no choice but the stare right into her daughter’s dead eyes.
“I… I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Cried for a long time,” she said. “Do you know what it is to feel hopeless? Helpless?”
Amanda tried to answer when Kim seized a lock of her hair and held the broken piece of glass to her mother’s quivering neck.
“None of you have a clue,” she muttered. “All those nights just bleeding and falling into the next. No one was even looking for me.”
“We… Julie said that---?”
“Julie’s fucking man said that!” Kim screamed as she pulled hard on her mother’s hair. Amanda sank to her knees, and Kim kept the glass in place as Amanda whimpered like a bitch on her first night out of the box and pleaded for mercy.
“If you thought she was shifty, Mom, then why no rescue? Why did I have to rely on those pricks to bust me out when they needed something?”
“I… Kim, I don’t know what to---”
“Maybe you sort of liked having the place to yourself,” Kim challenged. “Life’s not so messy for you and your men when you don’t have baggage weighing you down.”
“Kim, please just stop.”
“Thing is, Mom, I was never really coming back. Planned to get as far away from you as I could and stay gone. But you
’re… you’re…”
Amanda trembled as Kim slipped to her knees and glared at her hard.
“But none of you could wait. Not you, not Julie. And now that I’m back… it’s too much for you to take, right?”
“Baby, I… ouch!”
She started as Kim pressed the tip of the shard to her mother’s cheek.
“Should I make you look like, Julie?” Kim asked. “You want everyone to feel sorry for you, too?”
“No, I---”
“Or you want I should slash you to ribbons and say that you tried to send me away again? Better that I never came back?”
Amanda tried to speak when she buried her face in her lap, her body wracked with sobs as she curled onto her side. The sound of her weeping set Kim’s teeth on edge, and she considered making good on her threat when she stretched away with a sly smile and left the glass on the floor.
“I won’t do that,” she said. “But it’s nice to finally see you scared. Even if you’re just worried about your own worthless skin.”
Peering up through her fingers, Amanda looked as if she was suddenly regarding a stranger. In every way that counted, that’s all that Kim was, maybe all that she had ever had been. Examining her injured palm, Kim brushed the blood way on that back of her jeans.
“Relax,” Kim teased. “I wouldn’t waste my time on you. Just wanted to see you frightened.”
She started to turn away when Amanda lurched forward and grabbed hold of her daughter’s ankles.
“Don’t you touch me!”
“What are you really up to?” Amanda choked out. “You… you don’t want to be her friend anymore. So why even have her---?”
“Figure it out, Mom,” Kim said. “It’s a little thing called justice.”
Leaving her crumpled form on the floor, Kim retreated to the bathroom and turned the water on as hot as she could stand it. Stripping fast, she stepped under the scalding stream and let the shower wash over her body. If she pressed her fingers close enough to her ribs, she could barely feel the bones poking through her flesh. She made sure to eat three full meals a day, her body working to return meat to her frame. No pleasure in the sustenance. No pleasure in anything anymore. But she had to keep her strength up for the days ahead. Seeing Greg Heller go down was first on her list. She rather liked the idea of the dickwad that flirted with her incessantly as he sized her body up for his clients rotting in a cell. Maybe he’d get a shiv in the gut when the other inmates knew just what he was in for. As for the others, Julie included, just a matter of time and perfect planning.
But as she worked overtime to scrub her body clean, knowing full well that it never would be, she suddenly dropped the sponge and turned off the flow of the water. In her eagerness to take a taste, had she unwittingly crumbed the play? Kim thought that she could already hear her mother’s voice calling that dumb cop or the family doctor, anyone who might listen and believe that her sweetie was a danger to herself and others. Her mother would think nothing of sentencing her to another kind of confinement if she thought it was in Kim’s best interest.
Shit! I should have waited! Not give her the chance to ruin everything for me now.
Failing to dry her body, Kim grabbed a towel from the back of the door and winded it around her breasts. Racing back to her mother on damp feet, Kim started to call out for her when she stopped in her tracks at an unexpected sight.
“Mom?”
Amanda Beyer still clutched the glass in her hand. A telltale slash, obviously self-inflicted, marked her neck, and the blood puddled around her head like a maroon area rug out of place, Kim stepped closer on ginger toes and noticed a tiny piece of stained paper resting against her mother’s middle. Bending slowly at the waist, Kim picked up the page and slowly unfolded it, recognizing her mother’s cursive swirls at first sight.
I’m sorry. Let this be enough. Let this be justice.
“Huh,” Kim said as she kicked her mother’s limp side. “Well that works, too.”
Moving back to the bathroom, Kim dried herself properly and slipped into a silk robe. The sight of her hand might prove something of a problem, but if she bandaged it properly and kept in her pocket for the next few hours, no one would ever have to be the wiser. Fact of the matter was, her mother might have finally done her a solid favor. Sympathy on top of pity, and with the house to herself, it would be easier to talk with Brian, maybe even raid the liquor cabinet as they toasted to the ultimate success.
Brian? He should be here now.
Calling him quickly and only providing the basic outline, she tided out her room as best she could. The mirror had to go. Stuffing the frame under the mattress, she carefully buried the rest of the shards in the back of her closet and waited with her mother’s stiffening form. Should she be sad? This was her flesh and blood, cooling and draining right under her eyes. But she felt nothing, only the sensation that it was too quick. Too easy. Grateful for the lesson, Kim swore that Julie’s fate would stretch into something far more endless, not so easy to wash way with a note.
There was a knock, and Kim slowly shambled to the door. Upon opening, she found Brian waiting and trembling. Carelessly patting his cheek with her uninjured hand, she beckoned for him to follow her into the house.
“Jesus Christ, Kim!”
He went white at the sight of Amanda’ s lifeless body, and he started to check for a pulse when Kim held him back and shook her head.
“Already gone,” Kim said. “By her own hand.”
His lip quivered as he struggled to speak, but Kim held him in place and peered at him hard.
“That’s the whole story,” she insisted. “Now we’re going to call the cops and tell them that she couldn’t stand the thought of me testifying. Say something like it was going to cause her too much shame. Do you understand me?’
“Kim… what… what really happened here?”
Seeing the doubt that started to brim in his eyes, Kim had to fight the urge to snap his neck. But Brian was harmless. He still might prove useful.
And one body was enough to explain.
“Just do this for me,” she said as she wrapped her arm around his neck.
“What… what happened to your hand?”
“No one but you gets to see that. Or me.”
Stripping the robe away, Brian seemed to sight in spite of himself, and hands trembled as he grabbed her waist and slipped down the length of her lean legs. As he buried his brow in her thighs, Kim cocked her head to the side and met her mother’s glassy gaze. She was sorry. She hoped this would be enough. But the scrawled note was a kind of permission slip, signed in her mother’s own blood. Not that she needed the okay, but this might prove useful when it came to Ethan Graff, and Kim smiled to herself as she pushed Brian’s eyes back to hers.
“We on the same page?” she asked.
“I… tell me what you need, Kim,” Brian swore. “I’m on your side with this.”
Good boy.
Fondling his cheek, she phoned detective Morales and turned on the tears.
11
As she ascended from the subway, Julie’s heart felt lighter than it had in years. Was Kim back, really back? No. Even Julie knew enough to be sure that that was a long way off if ever coming. But traces of her old friend were starting to peek into view. And that was a real start, something of a miracle.
Maybe the rest would come with time.
Hurrying down one block and then another on foot, Julie finally turned to corner for Ethan’s building. Next to seeing Kim start to come out of her captive shell, what Julie wanted most now was to share the good news, and she started to take the steps two at a time when she nearly barreled Nick over with the force of her sprint.
“Hold up!” he cried as he stumbled into the wall. “Where’s the fire?”
Steadying his stance, Julie brushed her fingers down his arms and offered an array of apologies.
“Didn’t mean to knock you off your feet there,” Julie said. “Are you alright?”
; “Guess I’ll live,” he said as he straightened up and gave her a warm smile. “What’s got you all grins?”
Bursting to share the secret, Julie was on the verge of spilling when she suddenly held her tongue. This was news for Ethan’s ears first. Tomorrow, she would tell Danielle, and then Nick could be made privy to the turnaround. Poor guy. Having to hear everything secondhand.
“I… I’m just looking forward to seeing Ethan,” she said. Not entirely a lie, and Nick seemed to buy it as he snorted.
“Lucky guy,” he said. “You two got something special going down?”
Sometimes the glint in his eye was lascivious. And given all that she had endured, it should make her all kinds of uncomfortable. But it was more than knowing that Danielle had him in check that kept her mind at ease. In some strange way, Julie took comfort in his leer. It made her feel normal. Like someone that hadn’t been broken and in need of kids’ gloves treatment.
“Just a quiet night at home,” she said. “You know.”
“Lucky guy,” Nick repeated as he patted her arm and arched his eyebrows. “You crazy kids have fun. I’m… damn.”
Glancing at his watch, Nick quickened his stride as he moved for the door.
“I’m late,” he said. “Danielle gets cross.”
“That she does,” Julie said. “Give her a kiss for me.”
“Lot more than that if I get my wish.”
As Julie watched him leave, she released a deep, contented sigh. No doubt Danielle was in for a good time. And as for Julie…
“Ethan! Ethan, I’m home!”
She scampered up the steps and reached for her keys when she saw that the door was already open a crack. Probably keeping an ear out for her, and Julie eased the door further and gasped when she saw what awaited her.
“Oh…”
The place was awash in flickering flames and moonlight. A variation on his rooftop full of flowers, and as Julie’s heart pounded in her chest, she mentally gave him points for originality. Stepping deeper into the shadows, she closed the door behind her and was about to apply the deadbolt. But maybe there was no need. Maybe there was no danger to keep back. She still turned one lock and dropped her purse to the floor as she searched for some sight of him.