I glanced at Ryan, who seemed to be focused on her beloved’s face, and wondered what she’d say to me if she knew what I’d done to protect her from her former husband. Now she’d admitted Brandon was an unkind man, would she see I’d risked my own future to save her, or would she resent my intrusion into her life, judge me for the murderer I was, and exile me from her future? It didn’t matter, I reassured myself, because I had done what had to be done in order to protect us both from the possibility that my secret would be revealed.
With the da-da-dada of The Wedding March setting the cadence for our stroll toward the front of the chapel, we were down to the last twenty paces before Ryan would join hands with her soul mate Eddie and pledge to him her undying love and devotion. Once again, my mind raced through scenes I’d experienced since my last fateful walk with her under similar circumstances.
I remembered the horror I’d felt when I realized that Ryan was being abused by Brandon. I remembered the moment when I realized that I must become a killer in order to rid her of the poisonous snake of a man she had married. I recalled the sickening yet satisfying sensation of raking a razor-sharp knife across Brandon’s neck as his limp body lay across the concrete floor of the parking garage stairwell.
My mind’s eye saw my friend Brenda in the hospital break room holding back tears as she described how an innocent father had been taken from his wife and daughter by a murderous duo who seemed hell bent on killing him despite his cooperation with their thievery and, most likely, his pleas to spare his life. I flashed to the hesitancy I felt—and rejected—when I prepared a poisoned meal for Hank and Jodi. I was transported back to Hank’s home and I saw Jodi’s unconscious face before my own as I struggled to crush her windpipe. Lastly, I recalled precisely the pattern of the swirls in the tile of Hank’s great room floor as I ducked my head and pulled the trigger of the shotgun which would remove the greater portion of his brain and cranium from his dying body.
“Who gives this woman to this man?” Pastor Jim repeated.
As the wedding video would subsequently demonstrate, Ryan and I finished our brief journey to the front of the chapel and we’d been standing there for a solid ten seconds, during which time I’d been asked the traditional question. People watching the video would, in the future, ask me, “What were you waiting for? What was going through your mind? Were you having second thoughts about Eddie?”
What could I tell them? I couldn’t explain that I was reliving the events that had made it possible for me and Ryan to arrive at that moment. Usually I lied and blamed it on the trauma of losing my best friend the previous year and worrying about how his own daughter would fare without him on her wedding day. Only my wife would ever know how, as I escorted my wonderful daughter to meet her doting bridegroom at the front of the chapel, that I had been tormented by memories of what had transpired and what I had done. Later that night, while we both lay awake in our bed, Mandy asked me what had distracted me at that moment. My quivering voice betrayed me as I broke down and explained to her that I truly believed I was a victim of fate and that I wondered if I would someday suffer for my sinister actions.
However, as I stood abreast Ryan at the front of the chapel on that day, I acted as if nothing was amiss and looked Pastor Jim in the eye.
“Her mother and I do,” I stated. Although I cannot recall it, the wedding video clearly shows me shaking hands with Eddie, turning toward the crowd with a satisfied look on my face, and taking my seat next to the center of my universe and the mother to my dear children.
Of course, the videographer could not capture the plea that went through my head as I took my seat and looked up to see my beautiful daughter smiling fervently at her soon-to-be husband.
Please, God! I internally cried out to my maker who, admittedly, I did not know. Please let her be happy! You know, as well as I do, how much she deserves it!
Fatal Flaws Page 42