by BM Hardin
But when they questioned me I told them that I was going to check the mail and that I had no idea who she was or why she had been running in the first place.
They’d found a car that had belonged to her a little ways up the street from my house and due to her fake identity information, she was identified as Savannah.
So now, they were both dead.
Silas had arrived home to get me that day just as they were cleaning up and I told him what happened.
Unfortunately I had forgotten to pick up the box from the front porch, and Silas took it without letting me see what was inside.
At first I made a big deal about it, but he pointed out that whatever was inside was pointless.
He set the box on fire right in front of me.
So, whatever it was, it was gone.
And so was she.
I guess now we would never know her reason for coming back.
But at least we knew that she had been up to no good.
I tried to feel bad about it all, but I didn’t.
I’d just become so unattached somehow after the realization that she’d been telling the truth the whole time, when she would say that she didn’t give a damn about anyone but herself.
And her words to me at the park that day and then finding out what she knew from Silas, was just the icing on the cake.
I guess it kind of really was hate that I felt for her.
I did make sure that she was buried though.
It was the least that I could do.
After no one had claimed her for a few days, Silas had some stings pulled and had someone fake to be her sister and identify her body.
I wasn’t proud of the way that I’d handled things or the way that I felt but at the time, it’s just how it was.
Maybe this feeling would eventually pass and I knew that probably down the line it would hit me like a tidal wave and I would probably never be able to forgive myself for my actions.
Maybe one day, I could go pay my respects to her, genuinely.
But I didn’t see that happening anytime soon.
After all, it’s not like I was the one that killed her.
I was just trying to talk to her.
She was the one running away from me as though I was going to attack her.
She acted as though she couldn’t even give me a decent conversation.
So it wasn’t my fault.
It was hers.
They still hadn’t been able to find the car or the driver but according to the news, they were looking for them.
The news only had the picture from Sonni’s fake license as Savannah, and in my opinion, it didn’t really look like her.
I mean it was her, but maybe she’d intentionally taken such a horrible picture.
Anyway, when they showed her on the news, I’d waited to see if Josephine or any estranged family reached out to ask or talk about the similarities that the “dead woman” had with Sonni, but no one ever called.
So, nothing was said and there were no worries.
Taking a deep breath, I entered the first store, ready for some so much needed retail therapy.
I dismissed all thoughts of Carmen and Sonni and I realized that my happily ever after might not be too far away.
That’s if Carmen actually kept her word.
***
“Silas where is Nolan?” I asked him hesitantly.
“Do you really want to know?”
Did I?
I guess I did.
“He’s in prison in Mexico. For the next 40 years, but I doubt that he will make it even a year. Last I checked he wasn’t doing so well. Seems that the inmates have a way of making rapists pay for their crimes in their own special way,” Silas said.
I didn’t say anything.
I could only imagine how bad prison was in Mexico.
No, I didn’t feel sorry for him at this point, but did Silas really have to have him locked up all the way down there?
So what, did he know the prison warden or something?
There was no telling.
I couldn’t even begin to imagine how Silas had pulled something like that off and I wasn’t about to ask him.
A thing like this was why his power scared the crap out of me.
Next time I’ll just keep my questions to myself.
But at least he hadn’t killed him.
“Can I ask you a question Envy?” Silas asked.
I shook my head yes.
“When were you going to tell me that you were pregnant again?” Silas smiled.
I smiled back.
Silas was assuming but he was on to something.
I hadn’t had a period in over two months now.
I’d been so consumed with other things and opening my boutique that I hadn’t really paid much attention to it.
“I made you a doctor’s appointment for tomorrow,” he smiled and started to kiss my stomach.
I giggled.
“I could’ve made my own appointment. Stop using your power or whatever you want to call it and just be a regular husband,” I said to him.
“That’s what I want more than anything in the world. To just be regular,” Silas replied and I could tell that he was serious.
“Would you love me if I didn’t have money and power? Would you still want me? Would you still want to be with me if I was just a regular man, with a regular job and regular money?”
I nodded.
“Yes I would. Having money and all of these nice things, isn’t what I thought that it would be. I almost wish I could just go back to being broke at times. Before I had gone to the thirteenth floor. Life wasn’t easy. But in a way it was a lot better,” I said.
“Well let’s give it up. Let’s give it all up. Take just enough and give all of this up and let this life go. Let’s be regular, together. We can go somewhere, anywhere. Take enough money to get settled. I’ll become a regular man and find a regular job. We can become the perfect, little, regular family,” Silas said.
I looked at him.
Was he serious?
“Are you serious?” I asked him.
“Yes. Dead serious.”
I was shocked that he said it and though I wanted to say yes, I really did, but I knew that we couldn’t; at least not at the moment.
The store was still in the process of getting built and not to mention that we might have a baby on the way.
Now might not be the best time.
“Maybe we could---,” I started to say but Silas cut me off.
“Never mind Envy,” he said with an attitude.
What?
What did I say wrong?
He’s the one that mentioned the whole maybe baby thing, and then turned around and asked if we could go back to being broke.
We could.
Just after the store was finished and if I wasn’t pregnant.
Then we could do whatever he wanted to do.
But Silas headed to the kitchen in a sudden bad mood, and I headed to the bedroom to get the extra pregnancy test that I had stashed away.
Waiting for the results to pop up took forever!
Finally the two lines showed up and confirmed that I was indeed pregnant.
I smiled and ran out of the bathroom to see that Silas was now sitting on the bed.
Before I could say anything, he spoke.
“Told you,” was all he said.
***
Time was flying and I cried as I dropped Horizon off at school for the first day.
I knew that this day would come, and I’d tried to prepare for it, but I was an emotional wreck.
She was getting so big, so fast.
And to think that I was about to do it all over again.
I was around eleven weeks pregnant and I didn’t like it one bit.
Since I’d had the abortion so fast, I’d barely experienced any symptoms, but this pregnancy definitely had me feeling all kinds of ways.
I was sick.
I was emotional.
>
I was sick.
I was hungry.
I was sick.
I was horny.
And did I mention that I was sick?
It was really that bad.
And I hated it!
I hated everything about it and I couldn’t wait for it all to be over.
But Silas was enjoying every minute of it.
He was so loving and attentive and I couldn’t have asked for a better husband and father for my child.
He was always there and he tried to do anything that he could to make sure that I was comfortable and to make sure that I was okay.
He was amazing!
But the pregnancy…oh, it was of the devil!
I drove away from the charter school, still in tears, and decided that I would stop and get breakfast.
Silas was at home asleep, and was going to be bummed that I didn’t wake him so that he could see Horizon off on her first day of school, but I’d ran him around so much the day before, that I knew that he was tired.
And I decided to let him get his rest.
Hopefully he would forgive me if I came back with breakfast.
Finally making up my mind as to where I wanted to go, I parked in the last parking space on the curb and prepared to get out.
Unable to reach my purse on the floor on the passenger’s side, I opened the door to give me a little more room to stretch for it.
I grabbed my purse and just as I was about to get out I noticed that my wallet had fallen out of it and had been laying under it so I leaned back over to get it and…
It happened so fast that it was almost a blur, but looking at the driver’s side door lying in the middle of the street, my vision became extremely clear.
At the screeching of tires, I glanced at the red Charger as it turned the corner.
Say it aint so!
Was that the same car that had hit Sonni?
Huh?
I stared at the door as I sat back in my seat.
They’d knocked the door clean off of my Toyota.
I’d chosen to drive it instead of the Escalade, since it hadn’t been driven in so long, and I figured that it was time to take it for a spin.
Had I have gotten out of the car with my purse, without catching sight of my wallet on the floor, I would have been lying in the street right beside of the banged up door.
Someone had just tried to kill me.
This was no accident and remembering the speeding red Charger with the dark tinted windows.
It sure as hell looked like the same car that had hit Sonni, so, that meant that whoever had killed her, was trying to kill me.
But who?
Why?
Who in the hell wanted me dead?
This wasn’t my first brush with death.
But this time, and maybe because I was pregnant, or because I’d identified that it might have been the same person that had killed my sister, I felt as though my heart had been broken.
A weird way of feeling, but that’s how bad my heart started to ache.
I started to cry uncontrollably as people rushed over to make sure that I was okay.
I couldn’t speak.
I couldn’t do anything.
They asked for my phone to contact a family member, and I unlocked it and pressed Silas’s number.
Some random man tried to explain to Silas what had happened, but after only a few seconds, he was talking to himself.
Silas must have hung up.
Well of course he was on his way.
I heard the sirens and through my tears, I saw the lights.
As far as I knew, physically, I was fine.
I couldn’t have been more thankfully for being too lazy to get out of the car to walk around to the other side.
I was supposed to be dead.
I was supposed to be gone.
While I was being checked out in the back of the ambulance, there was a knock at the door.
I just knew that it was Silas, but I was wrong.
It was Detective Wiley.
I was surprised to see him at first, but then I had to remember that he was an officer, if he could still be called that considering his title.
“Envy are you okay?”
I looked at him.
His voice was different.
He didn’t seem so rude or arrogant.
His face was less tensed and he just didn’t seem like the same man.
Oh no, he was a man in love.
And with Carmen?
Eww!
“What happened Envy?”
I told him everything that I knew.
I even told him that the car was the same one that was described on the news for the hit and run a little while ago.
I didn’t mention that the hit and run involved my sister, but who was to say that he didn’t already know that.
He was with Carmen now, so he couldn’t be trusted.
Period.
And there was no telling what Carmen knew or if she was up to something but I couldn’t worry about that at the moment.
I was just concerned about my life and the life of my unborn child.
And where the hell was Silas!
“Well let me know if there is anything that I can do,” Detective Wiley said and he went on his merry little way.
A minute or two later, I finally saw him.
My Silas.
“Baby are you okay? Are you hurt? How is the baby? Is the baby okay?” Silas asked a thousand questions all at once and all I could do was cry and shake my head.
He joined me in the back of the ambulance and hugged and kissed me.
He wasn’t crying but I could surely tell that he wanted to.
I wasn’t sure if it was because he was emotional or frightened.
Or if it was because he was angry.
I could see so many things in him all at the same time, and I thought that he was going to explode.
But he kept his cool.
Of course they wanted to take me to the hospital, just to make sure and to check on the baby, so the workers asked Silas if he was going with me and at his answer, they closed the door and pulled off.
I was still crying but my mind was all over the place.
Now that I knew that whoever was responsible for hitting and killing Sonni, was now out to kill me too, the sympathy and remorse that I hadn’t felt for my sister, was starting to kick in.
Someone had killed her on purpose.
It wasn’t an accident.
They had to have known that she was there, at that exact time, and they took that opportunity as soon as it presented itself.
She’d been murdered.
Someone had murdered my sister and now they were out to get me too
But who?
Whoever it was had to have a reason. Whoever it was obviously had something against Sonni and me, but I couldn’t imagine who it could be.
But whoever it was also knew where I lived and now my home was no longer safe.
Nolan was in prison.
It couldn’t be him.
Carmen seemed to be happy in a new relationship.
So why would it be her?
Silas and I were on the best of terms.
So who?
Who wanted to kill me?
Who’d want to kill me and Sonni for that matter?
It just didn’t make sense.
Silas called Josephine to tell her what happened and she asked to speak to me, but I didn’t feel like talking.
I just wanted to know what was going on.
My life was in such a good place, for all of two seconds, and then here comes something else.
I just needed a freaking break!
When was all of this going to end?
When could I have a normal life, be a normal mother, and have a normal marriage?
When damn it, when!
I told Silas my thoughts and that it was the same car that had hit Sonni, or at least it looked identical to it if it wasn’t.<
br />
The more I talked about it, it was as though a light bulb went off or something because I started to think about something.
I started to search my thoughts.
I tried to remember every word.
I had been in complete shock at the beginning, but I was almost positive about something.
I looked at Silas who was now doing something on his phone.
I wasn’t sure if the question that I was about to ask him was going to cause a problem, but I just had to ask.
“Silas?”
He looked at me concerned.
“How did you know where I was?” I asked him.
“What?”
“How did you know where I was? I didn’t hear the man on the phone tell you where I was. He told you what happened, but he didn’t tell you where I was. How did you know?” I asked him suspiciously.
I replayed the conversation over and over and I was positive that Silas had hung up before the stranger had disclosed the location.
He’d told Silas what had happened to me but he hadn’t told him where I was.
So how in the hell had Silas known where to come to?
“I headed towards Horizon’s school and figured that I was bound to run into you and the accident along the way. I hung up out of anger and by the time I realized that I didn’t know where I was going, I called your phone over and over but no answer. So I just drove until I came up on the scene. I knew it had to be somewhere along the way. I was actually on the phone with a connection at the police station, just in case I couldn’t find it. He was looking into it, but I found you before he was able to tell me anything.”
I listened to Silas and found my purse that the police had placed in the ambulance with me.
“Check it,” Silas said.
I guess he knew that I just had to be sure.
Our history and pasts, told me that I always had to check…twice.
I found my phone and saw that Silas had called more times than I could even count.
I let out a deep breath.
He was telling the truth.
Silas stared at me.
I couldn’t exactly make out what he was thinking or what was on his mind, but when he touched my stomach, I figured that maybe his thoughts were on something else and not so much as the trust issues concerning me.
I laid my head on his shoulder and allowed a few more tears to flow.
“Who did this to me Silas? Who wants me dead?”
Silas took a long, sorrowful, deep breath.
“I don’t know. But on my life, I’m going to find out.”