The Diary

by Julia Derek

  Not now that I know that what he has written in his diary is most likely true.

  Chapter 9

  I spend several minutes staring into the glaring computer screen, no longer seeing the words in Jason’s story. I’m trying to compose myself, find a way to make myself go out into the living room and not only act normal, but also like I was really into Jason’s story. I wasn’t. How could I be when I’m slowly but surely having to accept the fact that my husband must be a killer? A killer and a sociopath. Only a sociopath would have been able to act this calmly and caring around me all this time, right? A regular person would have shown some form of guilt, especially if the murder was not planned but an accident somehow. I’m nauseous now, my armpits and the skin below drenched with cold sweat as I consider how fucked up Jason must be. My heart is pounding frenetically against my ribcage and I take deep breaths through my nostrils, hoping that this will help me regain my bearings. But it doesn’t, of course; instead it only seems to make me feel worse.

  I bury my face in my hands. Oh, God, what am I going to do?

  I lift my head and run my hands down over my face, not caring that I’m probably smearing my eye makeup and foundation. Could there be another explanation to why Jason wrote all those words? There must be… But what could that be?

  I search my mind for something, anything, but no matter how hard I try, I draw a complete blank. Oh, God, please, I need there to be some other explanation… I begin to hyperventilate. There has to be some other explanation! My husband cannot be capable of killing another human being.

  Is it possible that he’s working on another novel?

  I calm down a little as I tell myself that that could actually be it, even though it sounds like a weak, farfetched explanation even to my own mind. But it still sounds more plausible to me than the fact that my husband is an adulterer and a killer. A sociopath. A monster.

  I shudder as I consider this again and the beating of my heart picks up renewed speed.

  Well, I tell myself quickly, steeling myself. There is no other way to find out the truth than for me to ask him straight out about it. Surely I’ll be able to tell if he is lying to me. Maybe he will break down and confess that it was all an accident if I confront him. It strikes me that maybe he wrote about it in the diary because he wants me to find out about it, wants me to confront him about it.

  That would mean he’s not a sociopath after all and, I suppose, not quite as bad.

  But it doesn’t take long before I start to I feel as though I’m grasping for straws again. All those pages leading up to his confession don’t support the idea of him wanting me to confront him. It seems like too much of an effort writing all those details of his affair, what they did and how they met. And wouldn’t he then have left the diary out in the open somewhere I could easily have found it and not hide it deep in a drawer beneath all his clothes? He used to keep the diary in places where I could instantly spot it, knowing that I wasn’t the kind of woman who pried through her husband’s things.

  But that was many months ago. I don’t know when he started hiding his diary. I was too depressed, too caught up in my own misery to pay any attention to this.

  I shake my head and sigh heavily. I really have no other choice but to ask him about it. The sooner I do it, the sooner I’ll know for sure. I won’t ask him about it tonight, though. I need to think about the best way to do it. It’s not a question you just blurt out after all. And I shouldn’t do it when we’re alone at home either. As terrible as it is to admit this to myself, I have to at least consider the possibility that my husband is simply crazy and a very dangerous man. If he is a murderer and realizes that I know, he might try to kill me too.

  It’s safer for me to ask him about it when we’re in a public place somewhere. Not that I can ever imagine that my husband who loves me so much would ever kill me. But then again, I could never imagine that I would ever read those words in his diary, either. I need to be practical here, not take any chances.

  Finally, I stand up and walk toward the closed office door. I don’t know where I’ve found the strength to move, but it has suddenly come to me, so I use it. I have decided that I will go out into the living room and talk about Jason’s five chapters, tell him that I really enjoyed them but that I need to think about them a little before I can tell him what I think should come next in the story. Sleep on it. It’s the best solution I can come up with and that I think I’ll be able to pull off.

  I open the door and walk through the hallway into the living room where I find my husband sitting on the couch and watching some news show on CNN. He lights up at the sight of me and I make myself smile big, hoping I come across as convincing.

  “It was really good, Jason!”

  He takes me in for a long moment, then his eyes narrow slightly. Damn. He didn’t buy it.

  “You hated it,” he says matter-of-factly and there is a hurt look on his face. He lowers his gaze to the floor and crosses his arms over his chest. I don’t know what it is, but I can’t stand seeing that look on him, a look that makes him seem like a sad little boy. Suddenly, the fact that I’m dealing with a man who’s probably a murderer doesn’t feel very important. He is also a man I love and no matter what he has done can change that. He still has my heart, no matter how horrible a person he is. I know that feeling this way might make me a horrible person, too, but I don’t care right then. I can’t stand to watch the heavy disappointment on my beloved husband’s face. Especially since it’s not true that I hated what he had written. It was a good story and good writing. I just happened to have read it at a time when I wasn’t at my best, unable to focus on it. I burn with a need to make him understand this.

  So I run up to him and grab his face so that he has to meet my gaze.

  “That’s not true at all, Jason,” I say with passion. “I really, really liked it. But I’m going to need some time to think about ways you can go with it.”

  I take a deep breath. “I think the reason you think I didn’t like it is because I was so surprised by it. I honestly had expected something else, but that doesn’t mean what I got is bad. Now I just need to sleep on it. It is after all a pretty complex story you’ve written here.”

  He blinks a couple of times and it seems my second attempt is more successful, because he does look a little happier now. I feel my shoulders relax.

  “What did you think it was going to be about?” he asks.

  “Dead people,” I say without thinking, instantly regretting it.

  He frowns slightly. “Dead people? Like a murder mystery? Or are you talking about zombies?”

  “Yeah, zombies.” I nod eagerly. “I know they’re all the rage right now.”

  “Oh.” Jason gives me a funny look. “Yeah, I don’t think there’ll be any dead people in this story, at least no dead people who turn into zombies.”

  “That makes sense. Adding zombies would be totally weird, not to mention unnecessary. I don’t know why I even thought of that.” I roll my eyes and shake my head like I’m so nutty.

  Jason sighs and looks into the distance. “If only I could figure out what happens after he speaks to the man in the hut. Something else needs to happen before he goes into the jungle or it’ll become a really short book. But the second I get to the end of that last chapter, my brain shuts down.”

  Even though I don’t really feel like smiling, I still do and say, while squeezing his arms, “Don’t beat yourself up about it, sweetie. I think I can help you come up with some ideas that’ll make you get through this block. Let me just read it again first, more carefully this time. I want to make sure I don’t miss any nuances or details of your writing. Can you email it to me so I can read it during lunch tomorrow and then we can talk about it over dinner later?”

  Of course I have no intention of reading his story again, not tomorrow at least, and I doubt we will discuss it over dinner then or that we will even have dinner together. Not after I have confronted him about the diary. Even if it turns out tha
t he has some kind of plausible explanation why he wrote all those words, I can’t imagine I’ll feel safe enough to be in the same house with him again. I’m going to need to be apart from Jason for a few days to be sure I can believe whatever he’ll be telling me. Most likely I’ll spend the night at my parents’ or sister’s house instead. I’ll stay there until we have sorted this out.

  “Sure, that sounds good.” He smiles and hugs me. “Thanks for being so supportive.”

  “How could I not be after everything you’ve done for me,” I say and stare out the window over his shoulder. “Our marriage has been all about me for much too long. It’s your time now. I’ve made you suffer enough.”

  I feel him go stiff and then he grabs my shoulders so hard it hurts and glares at me. He doesn’t seem to notice that he is hurting me. Right as I’m about to let him know, his gaze softens and he loosens his grip. “Don’t talk like that, Lexi. We all have a dark side to us and it’s not healthy to keep it buried deep in our psyches. Sometimes you have no choice but to let it all out to move forward, to become whole again. Don’t ever forget that. I haven’t.”

  I have never before seen his eyes glow with such passion, not even when we make love. He clearly feels strongly about what he just said. I can only hope this means he has a way of explaining what’s in his diary that doesn’t involve it having actually happened.

  I hold his gaze and nod slowly. “I will never forget that, Jason.”

  He leans in and places a light kiss on my lips. “Good.”

  He puts his hands behind his neck and stretches his chest. “I’m tired. I’m going to bed. You coming?” There’s a glint of excitement in his face that I know exactly what it means. He’s in the mood to make love. Too bad for him that I’m not. Even if the strong conviction that spread within me earlier has eased up considerably, no longer making me sure that my husband is in fact a killer, I’m not exactly relaxed still. The lust that surged through me earlier is completely gone. The last thing I can imagine doing right now is have sex with Jason, and I don’t think I’ll be able to fake it. But I don’t want him to realize this, or he might think it has something to do with his book.

  “Yeah, but I’ll take a bath first,” I say. “My body is feeling kind of stiff.”

  “Okay.” He walks toward the hallway and his lips curl into a mischievous little grin. “See you soon then …”

  “Yes.” But it won’t be tonight. I’ll make sure my bath is so long that, by the time I’m done, Jason will have fallen asleep.

  ***

  The following morning we share another cab to work. Before I get off, I ask him if we can have lunch together later.

  “Sure, that should work,” he says. “I think I’m free around one. Would that work for you?”

  I laugh. “Well, since I’m running my own schedule these days, any time works for me.”

  “Ha, yeah, I forgot that. Okay, how about I text you later after I’ve spoken to my assistant to make sure I have nothing in the calendar that I might have forgotten about?”

  “That sounds good.”

  The cab comes to a stop and I give him a quick kiss before I jump out. I don’t immediately start walking, but watch the yellow car as it takes off with a screech and disappears into the rows of morning traffic. Only when I can’t see it any longer do I head into the building that houses the New York office of Ernst & Young.

  By the time I’m in the elevator, the well-being that has filled me from the moment I woke up this morning, even more sure that my lunch with Jason will turn out just fine, has fled and my stomach is in knots again. The conversation we had over dinner the night before I read his story has suddenly entered my mind. I mentioned Celeste twice during that dinner and Jason definitely didn’t mishear me the way I had convinced myself afterward that he must have done.

  How could he have misheard me when he asked me if I could handle waiting till spring until I find out what happened to Celeste. He used her name. That means he knew exactly what and who I was talking about, yet he didn’t ask me how come I knew.

  Why didn’t he ask me how I knew about Celeste?

  It can only mean one thing—he is aware that I’ve read at least some of the notes in his diary. Does he think I only read up until the point when Celeste went to the bathroom and never returned to their table that one night? It’s possible. After that scene he has written pages of stuff going on at the office. Boring, longwinded stuff that would make anyone stop reading. Except I didn’t. I pushed through only to find that, about five pages later, Celeste appears again and the affair between them finally takes off.

  Well, if that’s the case, you’d think he’d at least wonder why I’m not acting more jealous about it. He knows very well how insecure I can be. Yet, he didn’t seem to wonder at all. Why didn’t he? I highly doubt that he thought I just wrote it all off as him free-writing about his dark, upcoming novel. And even if he did, as of yesterday when I actually read what he had written, he must know that I no longer think his diary notes have anything to do with a novel.

  Is it possible that he realizes that I have read all of it and that I’m okay with what happened only because he killed the other woman in the end? Because he chose me?

  As I realize it’s the only thing that makes sense, I want to throw up.

  I stumble out of the elevator and into the office, ignoring anyone who’s saying hi or smiling at me. I’m too upset at the moment.

  What’s in the diary is the truth, all of it, just like I had feared. I’m one hundred percent sure of it now. Oh, my God…

  The door to my small office is open for which I’m grateful since I feel too weak to use the knob to open it. I need to get in there and be alone so I can think.

  Somehow, I manage to get my chair out and sit before my desktop computer. I turn it on with trembling fingers and do a search for Celeste and Queens, New York. I’m not sure why I didn’t think of doing this earlier. Her name is not a common name after all. How many adult Celestes with blonde hair can there be in Queens, New York? Wait, I do know why I haven’t looked for her. It’s because I didn’t want to risk finding out the truth about her and Jason.

  It’s easier than I could ever have dreamed of to find out what happened to this woman. There are only four females named Celeste who live in Queens. One is thirteen, another sixty-three, neither a good choice to be the mistress described in Jason’s diary. Out of the two remaining ones, the first is twenty-three and the other thirty-one. When I do an image search for the twenty-three-year old, I see that she is black, which means she is not the Celeste I want. The Celeste I want had blonde hair and blue eyes. The thirty-one-year-old is named Celeste Hyland and even before her face pops up on my screen, a beautiful, blonde woman who looks just like the gazelle-like girls I used to envy in college, I know this is her. She used to be a cocktail waitress at a bar in Manhattan. According to the three news pieces about her on the internet, she was found dead in her studio apartment in Queens and is believed to have been murdered. Suffocated to death, but not strangled. When I have finished reading them all, I know that the police are still looking for any suspects.

  There is only one more thing I need to do to be fully convinced that my husband is in fact the one who killed her. And that maybe he isn’t a sociopath after all, that it was all just an accident. How can he be after that display of guilt in the car the other day?

  I leave the office and dash out of the firm and into the elevator. Soon I’m back down on the street and in a cab.

  I give the cabdriver a hundred dollars and tell him where I need to go and to take me there as fast as he can.

  The cabdriver doesn’t waste any time getting out of Manhattan and onto the Long Island Expressway. We zigzag between several cars, but soon there are so few vehicles that we can remain in one lane. By the time we pass the yellow house, we have been on the road for less than twenty minutes. This driver is truly amazing, worth every cent I gave him.

  Seven minutes later he drops me off at the
St. Michaels Cemetery and looks at me kindly from the rolled-down cab window.

  “Do you want me to wait for you?” he asks in a thick accent.

  “No, that’s okay,” I say. “I’ll be a while. Thank you.”

  He nods and retracts his head, then takes off away from the cemetery where I stand, right by the entrance. I walk through the tall, wrought iron doors. It’s cool and windy out, a day in the middle of the week, which means there is hardly anyone there today, unlike the other day when Jason and I came. I’m glad because I don’t want to be interrupted as I methodically search through all the graves. I don’t want anyone to ask what I’m doing and if they can help me. No one can help me. It’s too late. What’s done can’t be undone.

  And there it is finally, the gravestone I knew would be there, that I would eventually spot.

  It says In Memory of Celeste Hyland, Beloved Daughter, Sister, and Friend. May 11, 1983—Oct 1, 2014.

  As I stare at the gravestone, I’m not sure how I will ever be able to talk to Jason again. But I know that I must. I need to find out what turned my husband into a killer.

  Chapter 10

  After my visit to the St. Michael’s Cemetery and Jason’s mistress’s grave, I don’t go back to work. Instead, I head to an obscure, small bar at the very east of midtown Manhattan where I know it is very unlikely that I’ll run into anyone I know. Here I can sit alone at the bar counter and get drunk and not worry about what it might look like to the world. Because, at the moment, that is all I want to do—get shitfaced. Really shitfaced. Dull the ever-growing pain in my stomach with lots of alcohol.

  I somehow find the strength to text Angie to let her know that I’m not feeling well, which is why I’m not at work. After all that she has done for me, I don’t want to upset her by just disappearing almost as soon as I arrived this morning. Surely someone saw me come and leave shortly thereafter; I couldn’t have been in my office for more than half an hour.