I wait. I answer questions. I make small talk.
I wait longer. Answer. Chat.
Brynn never comes.
26
Brynn
A hot stream of air assaults my cheek.
Immediately I understand, like a shark can smell blood from miles away. I haven’t seen Eric Prince in a year, I was never close enough to smell him, and yet somehow I know his scent. Sharp anger, acidic desire for justice.
My worst nightmare. Except, this isn’t a nightmare at all. I’m wide awake.
Terror seizes my limbs. A burning heat assails my thighs as my muscles tighten and bunch. I’m lying on my side on the couch, facing away from him. I don’t know if he knows I’m awake. Surprise is my only friend right now, but I, too, am shocked. I have no way of knowing if my limbs will do as I say when I tell them to.
“Finally,” he breathes the word into my ear. “You fucking bitch.” His voice is too soft for such harsh words. He could be crooning a lullaby to an infant.
I have two options. I could open my eyes and try to talk some sense into him. Maybe if I could make him understand that I didn’t hit them on purpose, that his wife was sick, then maybe—
Silly me.
Sense can only be talked into someone who’s sensible. Eric lost his mind when he lost his family.
Second option, then.
I sit up suddenly, swinging my feet to the edge of the couch and bolting upright. Behind me is the small stone fireplace, the back of the living room. The only way out is past Eric. I lean left, prepared to skirt the coffee table and run when Eric lifts his hand. Extends it between us. My limbs freeze, my breath comes in pants. My brain screams words, so many words, and they are all the same word.
Gun.
Black. Matte. Metal. Capable of ending me before I get the chance to atone for my sins.
I really want that chance.
Eric’s lips curl into a smile. It’s dark and menacing, oozing like a poisonous sludge. He trains the gun on me. I don’t know if it’s cocked, can’t remember if I heard the click. The seconds aren’t passing the same way they were before. They’ve slowed, each one more crucial. My breath feels unnatural, thick and barbed.
And then, in a moment that feels wrong but is actually perfect, I see Amy Prince. Her gaze. Eyes that saw my car, chose it. In my imagination I hear her voice, something I never heard in real life. Do it, she instructs herself. Three… Two… One…
“Go ahead and sit down.” Eric’s voice grates out into the present, snapping my thoughts away from the terrible mess of that morning. He inclines his head to the chair in the corner.
“I’m not going to shoot you,” he says after I’m settled in the chair. My body is ramrod. Left leg bouncing as if a jackhammer is inside it. Placing my hand on my thigh doesn’t make it stop.
From his pocket, he produces two zip-ties.
I shake my head. “No no no no no.” My voice cracks on each word.
He points the gun at my head. “Maybe I’ll change my mind.”
My whole body is rigid. I’ve been numbed to the sight of guns by movies and TV shows, but the reality of it is more terrifying, more paralyzing, than I ever could’ve guessed.
I do as he asks. I think of kicking him in the face when he bends to zip my ankles. I imagine elbowing his back when he tightens the tie on my wrists, but by the time I’ve gathered enough courage to do anything, it’s too late.
He steps back from me. “I prefer not to shoot you right away. Too easy. It’s important you understand suffering.”
Bending at the waist, he sits back on the couch and keeps the gun trained on me. He is more than disheveled. The scruff on his face has grown in patchy, and on his left forearm is the bloody crust of a picked-apart scab. Holding the gun in his right hand, he lifts two fingers from his left hand and rubs them across his lower lip.
“There’s comfort in imagining all the ways I can make you pay. You outsmarted the boys in blue, playing the victim like you did. Lying,” he snarls when he says the word. One finger taps his temple. “But not me. I knew my Amy. She would’ve never done what you said. She loved Samuel. She loved me.”
I force my breath to slow, and will my heartbeat to moderate. “She was sick, Eric.” Despite the quaking of my voice, it’s buttery soft. Easy does it. Eric doesn’t need provocation. He’s far past that point.
“She was not sick,” he nearly screams. Flecks of saliva fly from his mouth.
Nothing I say will mollify this man. He is out for pain. My pain. He won’t stop until it has been wrung from me.
The room is almost dark. The last of the day’s sunlight has disappeared, running to hide behind the tall pines. Standing, Eric walks to a light switch and flips it. The floor lamp in the corner sends out a soft glow, and he hurries back to the window and pulls the curtains closed.
He’s not doing a good job keeping the gun pointed at me as he moves around the room. A shred of hope lodges itself in my chest. He sits back down. Gets up. Sits down again. He seems at a loss.
“Eric,” I whisper. Hate-filled eyes meet mine. “It wasn’t a lie. They have footage from the traffic camera. You can see it for yourself. I know it’s terrible, but—”
“Shut up,” he shrieks, launching himself over the coffee table.
I shrink back and close my eyes. Cool metal grazes my forehead, slips down my temple, traces my jaw.
Dampness spreads between my legs. It’s warm. Is that…? If I wasn’t so terrified, I might feel embarrassed.
His lips are at my ear. My stomach twists at the feeling of his flesh on mine. “Don’t say one more word.”
He backs up, looks at me. A sick pleasure ripples over his features. He goes back to the couch and sits.
“I know you’re wondering. Your mind is racing, thinking How did he know,” he barks a dry laugh. “You make a habit of getting yourself into the paper, don’t you?”
I shake my head. No. I declined the photo requested by the journalist.
“Oh, yes. You stupid girl. That’s the thing about girls like you. You love your image so much you can’t help but share it. I was buying cigarettes yesterday when the guy at the register was reading the paper. There you were, in the background of a photo, standing near some trailer. I bought the paper, almost forgot my cigarettes, and ran home.”
He turns his head slowly from side to side, exhaling a short breath of disbelieving laughter.
“I watched you for so long. Almost every day. You liked brown sugar latte’s from Lappert’s and sushi from that place on the corner. You never went far, especially since you were usually on foot. Always alone, too.”
He clucks his tongue, as though my solitude was a travesty.
“And then one day you stopped leaving. I realized it was because you weren’t there. I looked for you, but that was one thing you did well. You left zero breadcrumbs.” He pauses. Sighs. Continues. “I lost my temper a bit last weekend. I knew you hadn’t sold your place. That was easy enough to check. I paid a homeless woman twenty dollars to write a note for me.” He grins maniacally, proud of his subterfuge. “I didn’t mean to kick a hole in your door. My anger got the best of me.”
I want to scream, to run, to hurl myself at him and take away his gun. I want to save myself, but there’s no way I can. I’ve been in danger since the day Amy Prince used me to take two lives, but this is the first time my death feels imminent.
“Your passport is on your bed. You don’t have plans, do you? I wouldn’t be surprised. Running away is your thing.” He sits casually on the couch, crossing and uncrossing his ankles. Menacing words should be accompanied by a sneer and a growl, not spoken indifferently like we’re discussing dinner options. “In case you’re wondering how I got in, I punched a hole in your kitchen window and unlocked it. Your door alarms are cute though.”
He sighs deeply and looks at his watch. His lips twist as he watches me.
“Detective Wilkes will know it was you.” I blink twice, the sound of my own voice ta
king me by surprise. “I called him after you kicked in my door,” I tell him.
“Detective Wilkes and I settled that. He knows it wasn’t me. It was a female’s handwriting, right?”
“He’ll know and—”
“That’s enough,” Eric barks, pushing the gun into the air, closer to my head. “You sit there, shut up, and we’ll wait for one of your friends to come by. Will it be the girl from the parade? Or the asshole you cried to on the street today? Connor Vale, is it?”
He watches my face twist in horror and looks pleased. “That’s right. I was there, and your boyfriend had all his info plastered on his truck for the whole world to see.”
Please, Connor, don’t come for your goodbye. Please hate me. Go home and plan to never see me again.
Eric removes a tablet from a black bag on the floor and sets it up on the coffee table. His hold on the gun is sloppy and I’m terrified he’ll misfire.
“This is something I’ve been wanting to show you since you hit and killed my wife and child.”
Bending over, he presses the little arrow at the bottom of the screen. Amy’s image springs to life. She’s in a hospital bed, lying on white sheets. She wears a light blue nightgown printed with tiny flowers. Her eyes are tired but radiant. In her arms is a tiny baby, barely visible in the wrapped blankets.
“My lovely wife.” Eric’s loving and devoted voice charges from the screen and into the room, bouncing around me. “Tell us what just happened.”
Amy beams. Perhaps the sun was living somewhere in her chest at the moment. She looks blissful. “This is Samuel Bennett Prince,” she says, her sweet voice floating from the screen, wrapping around me, making her more real than ever before.
“Oh,” I cry involuntarily. I don’t look up at Eric. The screen has captured me.
“He is seven pounds, four ounces of perfect.” Amy keeps talking, looking directly at the screen, maybe even right into my soul. “I didn’t know perfect had a weight.” She grins, pulling the blanket away from the baby’s face. “But it does.”
Eric presses the pause button. “This is what you and I will do until someone you care about arrives.” He stops to consider something for a moment. “Actually, let’s make sure someone comes by tonight. What do you say?” Keeping the gun on me, he walks to the kitchen and grabs my phone off the counter.
“Let’s see…” Eric presses a few buttons, swipes, and talks into the phone’s microphone. “Come over. We need to talk.” He presses one more button and tosses the phone back onto the counter.
“Who was that?” Fear drips into my voice.
Eric walks back over to the table where the tablet sits. “It’ll be more fun if it’s a surprise.” He bends down, his finger hovering over the play button.
“Now we wait, and watch.”
An infant’s wail fills the room.
27
Connor
My high is gone.
Not completely, because I’m pretty damn proud of myself. As an indicator of a good night, I’m out of business cards. I sold three paintings, and I have more eyes on my work than ever before. I’m ready to paint until my hands go numb. Ideas bounce around my head but stay in bubble form. I can’t make any of them into a solid when I have Brynn penetrating my thoughts.
She never promised to say goodbye.
The thought saddens me, but it also makes me angry.
I fasten a smile on my face and wave to Candace as I leave the gallery. My parents left a while ago, after my mom made sure to tell everyone within earshot that I was her son. It was embarrassing, but I loved it. My dad’s couldn’t show his pride with his expressions, but his eyes are like windows. Through them, I saw his joy.
I hate that life took that turn for him. Capable hands turned impotent. His confident, assertive stride replaced by short, stiff steps.
Life doesn’t discriminate. It took happiness away from Brynn. One second she was driving, and the next she was driving over two people.
How can one second, two seconds, three seconds, be that consequential? A blip, a blink, and somehow they carry the weight of forever. How can one second differ so completely from the next? Does my dad ever think of the moments before he noticed his symptoms, before he asked my mom to make an appointment for him? How often does Brynn remember what her life was like when she was climbing into her car that morning, and compare it to what it was when she got out of the driver’s seat?
I step out of the makeshift gallery into a day that is nearly night. The sun hangs low behind the trees, it’s darkening light filtering through the branches and casting shadows on the road. The heat of the day has tapered off, and the humidity retreats with the sun. I don’t usually pay close attention to the weather, but tonight I’m raw. I’m inside out, my heart exposed, and everything feels sharper.
I settle into my truck but can’t manage to point it toward my house. It’s stupid. So stupid. Brynn doesn’t want to say goodbye. She told me this would happen. She said it would be easier if one day I realized she was gone.
My thumb traces my lower lip, back and forth, thinking too hard about what to do.
“Fuck it,” I mutter, and turn on the truck. I didn’t fight when Desiree left. I didn’t even try, but Brynn is not Desiree.
Brynn is like ivy. She grew around me, slipping into crevices and wrapping around limbs. She infiltrated my body, permeated my insides, devoured my heart.
I didn’t fight for Desiree because I didn’t need her to breathe.
Brynn is my breath.
Her house is dark inside. Has she already left?
Now that I’m on Brynn’s street, I can’t make myself park and get out. My truck rolls on and I wipe a palm on my jeans. There’s only one other place where she could be right now. One other person getting the farewell she didn’t give to me.
“What do you want?” Walt grimaces at me when he opens his front door.
I don’t have time or patience for the old man tonight. “Where’s Brynn?” I bark. If I had the capacity for humor right now, I’d laugh about how I sound like Walt.
“She’s not here,” he says unwillingly, as if telling me she’s not there is a betrayal.
“Fuck,” I yell, slamming my hand against the doorframe. I look at Walt, open my mouth to apologize but stop when I see the look on his face. For one, he doesn’t look offended. For two, he looks proud.
“She hasn’t left yet.”
“How do you know that?”
“She promised me she’d say bye.”
I stare at him. I cannot tolerate his bullshit right now.
He chuckles. “I take it you didn’t get such a promise.”
“Don’t rub it in.”
He waves his hand. “Don’t take it personally. You’re the one she can’t stand to say goodbye to.”
This makes me happy. Actually, it makes me really fucking ecstatic.
“Have you tried her house?” He steps out and I move aside for him. He walks farther out onto his porch and peers down the street.
My hand skims over my hair. “It’s dark inside.”
“So?”
“She likes light.”
Walt doesn’t speak. He juts out his chin and squints, scrutinizing the dark. “Damned old eyes.” He bats the air in frustration.
I join him where he stands a few feet away, searching the dark alongside him. “What are you looking for?”
He points, and I gaze out in the direction of his finger. As far as I can tell, there is nothing to see.
“What’s the make of that car over there?”
I squint too. I can’t tell from here. It’s across the street and one house down from Brynn’s. Quickly, I walk down the steps and out to the sidewalk. “Mercedes.” I tell him, raising my voice as I turn back.
The old man’s eyes widen.
“What?” I ask.
“Nobody in this neighborhood drives a Mercedes.”
“So?”
“It’s out of place.”
My eyes str
ain with the effort it takes me not to roll them. “Walt,” I say calmly, like I’m talking to a child. “What aren’t you saying?”
Walt keeps his eyes in the direction of the car, even though he can’t see much of it. “I don’t like it. I keep tabs on this neighborhood and I can promise you”—he jabs a finger in the direction of the car—“that car has never been on this street.”
My heart begins to race, but I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s Walt’s serious tone, or his ominous implication. Maybe it’s my knowledge of Brynn’s tenuous situation.
“What do you think is happening?” I ask.
He ignores me and hurries inside as quickly as he can.
28
Walt
All the love in the world couldn’t have saved Daisy. Not even mine, and I’m certain a man has never loved a woman with such ferocity.
Daisy, with her staunch belief in right versus wrong, and her disdain for housework, but love of lists. She waited patiently for me to return from Vietnam. We had a good life, me and Daisy. A few hiccups along the way, but I suppose that’s to be expected.
When the cancer came, it barreled down on us like an avalanche. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and it happened so fast we hardly knew what hit us.
I couldn’t save Daisy, but I’ll try my damnedest to save Brynn.
I knew something was wrong with her from the beginning. For starters, she was jumpy. I’d take a step and she’d respond by moving her own body, even though she wasn’t near me. Like she was always poised to make a break for it. Whatever hurt Brynn, she still fears it. Her eyes betrayed her fear even when her mouth spoke kind or cheeky words, or her shirt was printed with something that would’ve made my grandmother faint. There were times when I thought she’d collapse under the weight of her shoulders. Whatever she holds on them, it’s burdensome. Too much for a girl her age. Ahead of her should be a lifetime of happiness and heartbreak, good fortune and failure, laughter and tears.
The Lifetime of A Second Page 19