She Wouldn't Change a Thing

by Sarah Adlakha

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  jenny

  “COME IN!” JENNY HOLLERED OVER HER shoulder to her son, who was knocking on the screen door off the kitchen. Dean was home for the weekend and he and his father had spent the morning fishing in the bayou off their pier. Jenny was busy pulling all the Tupperware containers from the cabinet beside the refrigerator. Some she hadn’t seen in years, and she still couldn’t find the lid to the one she’d already filled with the homemade marinara sauce she planned on freezing. He knocked again. “For heaven’s sake, Dean. Why are you knocking?”

  When she spun around, the face that greeted her was not her son’s. The icy blue eyes that stared back at her from the other side of the screen door belonged to a woman who’d been evading police for almost three weeks. Her auburn curls had been shorn and dyed black, and she’d lost at least twenty pounds, but there was no disguising those eyes.

  “Oh my God!” The words came out in a gasp before Jenny covered her mouth with both hands and tried to stop herself from fainting on the kitchen floor. They watched each other through the mesh screen as the silence stretched between them, taut like a bow.

  “I’m sorry to come here,” Rachel said. Her voice was scratchy and hoarse, absent of the melody it once carried, and Jenny had to lean in to hear her. “I didn’t know where else to go.”

  “You can’t be here.” Jenny swung the door open and grabbed Rachel’s wrist, pulling her into the kitchen, unable to ignore the odor that followed them inside. “You have to leave,” she continued, thinking better of bringing her into their house. She dragged Rachel back out the door and behind the toolshed. “The police have already been here looking for you, and your face is all over the news. They’re looking everywhere for you.”

  “I don’t have anywhere to go.”

  “Did you do it? Did you shoot that pregnant woman?”

  The nail marks that were embedded in Rachel’s skin when Jenny finally released her grip took a moment to fade. Rachel rubbed at them before moving on to the mosquito bites that pockmarked both of her arms.

  “It was an accident,” she said, her words barely a whisper and the dark hollows of her eyes giving her a ghastly appearance that was made more shocking by the unforgiving light of the sun. The terror that danced through them was more disturbing than any Jenny had ever seen. “Is she still alive?” Rachel said. “Please tell me she’s still alive.”

  “For now.” Jenny glanced back toward the bayou to make sure her husband and son were still fishing. “But it doesn’t look good. And how the hell do you accidentally shoot a pregnant woman? What were you even doing with a gun?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  Rachel leaned back against the side of the shed and slid herself down to the ground, her sleeveless shirt catching on a nail and tearing. She didn’t seem to notice, or perhaps she just didn’t care. It had once been blue—Jenny could see the original color popping out from the inner hem of the collar—but it was a dingy grayish black now, along with the pants that had likely been khaki the day she shot her boss. The clothes she wore weren’t heavy enough for the chilly spring they were having, and she was visibly shaking, but any pity Jenny felt for her was quickly whisked away. There was nothing she could do for her.

  “You have to go, Rachel. I’m sorry. The police have already been here, and I have my family to think about.”

  When Rachel looked up at her, Jenny could almost see the girl she’d once thought of as a sister. She’d never had a sister and had never really understood how to be friends with another woman until Rachel came along. But that was a long time ago, and whether those feelings had died with Jonathan or when Nick finally left her for good, Jenny couldn’t say. Like most of her relationships, though, it never really had a chance.

  “Please,” Rachel said, still looking up at her. “Could I just spend one night here in the shed? If anyone finds me, I promise I’ll say we haven’t talked. That you didn’t know I was here.”

  Jenny squatted down beside her, wishing she could offer her something more, wanting to be a better friend, but not willing to risk herself for it. “Why don’t you just turn yourself in?” she said. “If it was an accident, why are you running?”

  “Because they won’t see it that way.”

  The words had barely left Rachel’s mouth when Hank’s booming voice found them from the bayou. Jenny glanced back to see her husband and son giving each other high fives, celebrating a big catch, no doubt.

  “I have to go,” Jenny said. “If Hank sees you here, he’ll call the police.” Her words and warnings had little effect on Rachel, though. She was a woman who was out of options. From her head to her toes, she was soiled and battered and bruised, and as Jenny watched her with her knees bent up to her chest and her head bowed between them, she couldn’t help but pity her. “One night,” she said. “If you want to stay in the shed for one night, it’s fine. But I haven’t seen you, and if anyone finds you, I had no idea you were here.”

  “Thank you, Jenny.” Rachel reached out for her, grasping at her arm with dirt-caked hands and staring up at her with tear-filled eyes. How could this be the woman Jenny had once admired, and even envied? The woman who picked herself up after the father of her son left her on her own? The woman who pulled herself together after her son was torn from her? The woman who had done it all on her own? “I won’t let anyone see me,” she said. “I promise.”

  “Just make sure you’re gone by the morning.” Jenny felt ashamed as she walked away. The words she’d left with Rachel had sounded cruel and merciless coming from her mouth, and as she pictured her friend cowering in the corner like a neglected dog, shivering and hungry, she was ashamed for having voiced them. It would have cost nothing to offer her a kind word or some encouragement or a moment of companionship.

  Hank and Dean were still propped on the edge of the pier when she sneaked back into the house. They had fishing poles dangling from their hands and their heads were nodding in time with the bobbers that floated atop the murky bayou water. They looked like a couple of boys who’d just popped out of a Norman Rockwell painting, and as she watched the sun shift its position behind them, she wondered how much time she had left.

  She knew she should have been telling Hank or calling the police at that very moment, but she couldn’t force herself to do it. It was Rachel, and she was cold and hungry and scared, and she had nowhere else to go. Before Jenny could talk herself out of it, she pulled the bread and bologna from the refrigerator, as well as a bottle of Coke, and slapped a couple of sandwiches together. She snatched the quilt off the guest bedroom bed and hauled all of it out the kitchen door, careful to not let it slam behind her, then darted behind the toolshed. Rachel was curled up and shivering in the back corner and didn’t stir when she opened the door. She was in bad shape, and probably in need of a doctor, but Jenny could only risk so much.

  “I brought you some stuff,” Jenny whispered, waking her up to witness the same terror coursing through her eyes. “It’s not much, but the blanket should keep you warm tonight. And you look like you haven’t eaten in weeks, so I made a couple of sandwiches for you.”

  Rachel tore into one of the sandwiches with an animal hunger that reminded Jenny of the hyenas she’d seen on a National Geographic special a few months earlier. She couldn’t believe this was the same woman who had once eaten pizza with a fork and knife. Both sandwiches were gone, along with half the bottle of Coke, before she finally acknowledged Jenny’s presence.

  “Thank you,” she said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “I haven’t eaten in days.” She chugged the rest of the Coke and wrapped the quilt around herself.

  “You don’t look so good, Rachel. Why don’t you let me take you in to the police station? At least there you’ll get food and clothes and a doctor. You’re not going to survive out here alone.” Before Jenny could even finish her sentence, she felt certain she knew Rachel’s intentions. Survival wasn’t part of the plan. “Where’s the gun?” Jenny asked. �
��You’re not going to kill yourself out here, are you? Where is it?”

  “I’m not going to kill myself,” Rachel replied, pulling the quilt back around herself. “I got rid of it. It got too heavy and I couldn’t carry it in my pocket anymore without my pants falling down.” She gestured with her head toward the pier behind them where Jenny hoped her husband and son were still fishing. “I threw it in the bayou.”

  “Here?” The leaf blower banged against the wall when Jenny sprang to her feet, frantic to get it stilled before anyone heard them. “You left a murder weapon in my backyard?”

  “It’s not in your backyard,” Rachel said. “It’s in the bayou. And it’s not a murder weapon. I didn’t kill anyone.”

  It took some restraint to not snatch the quilt and send Rachel on her way, or to tell Hank, or to call the police. Jenny didn’t know much about the law, but she knew she was committing some kind of crime by letting Rachel stay. What could she do, though? When she looked down, Rachel was slouched over on the concrete floor, her breathing deep and labored, and the brokenness of her too unbearable to witness.

  One night.

  Jenny would give her one night, but if Rachel wasn’t gone in the morning, she’d have to turn her in.

  * * *

  “What happened in here?” The screen door slammed behind them as Dean followed his father into the kitchen and took a seat next to him at the table. Tupperware containers littered the floor, and slices of bread were spread across the counter like playing cards after a night of high-stakes poker. “Looks like a tornado came through.”

  “Just making some lunch,” Jenny said, knocking over the condiments on the counter as she tried to quiet the tremor in her hands. “No fish today?”

  “Nothing worth keeping,” Hank replied. “You okay, Jen? You look a little shaken up.”

  “No, I…” Jenny wiped her forehead with the back of her hand and forced a laugh as she surveyed the mess around them. “I was trying to find a Tupperware lid and a roach crawled across my hand. Scared me half to death.” She shook her head and laughed again before she smeared some mustard across a piece of bread. “I still haven’t found him,” she said, holding up the butter knife in front of them, “but I will.”

  They watched the news until dusk seeped into the house and the outside world was cast into darkness. Vigils were being held throughout Mississippi for the pregnant woman Rachel had shot, and while she was still lingering on in a coma, doctors didn’t think she could hold on much longer. Rachel’s face was popping up with alarming regularity on the local and regional news stations as the manhunt expanded to the surrounding states. The story was even starting to stake its claim in the hearts of the rest of the nation, with a blip here and there on national news stations.

  Jenny couldn’t stop thinking about Rachel, shivering in the shed, trying to stay warm beneath the checkered quilt, hungry for one more sandwich. Or the gun sitting at the bottom of the bayou. She’d been half listening to Hank and Dean go on all night about Rachel, both certain she was already dead, that she’d taken her own life instead of facing up to what she’d done. When she had finally heard enough, Jenny got up and took the remote from the armrest of Hank’s recliner and turned off the news.

  “Stop it,” she said. “Both of you. It was just an accident.”

  “If it was an accident, then why is she running?” Dean was trying to open the news on his cell phone, but Jenny knew he wouldn’t have any luck with the WiFi. “I haven’t read anything about it being an accident. Was that on the news?”

  “No,” Jenny stammered. “But you know Rachel. She couldn’t have shot someone in cold blood.”

  “Apparently we don’t know Rachel as well as we thought we did,” Dean continued. “Now they want to question her about her baby’s death, too. There’s some kind of letter the police have, but they’re not releasing it yet.”

  “There is no way Rachel had anything to do with Jonathan’s death,” Maria replied. “She was crazy about that baby. And you know how much stress she was under after Nick left her, trying to raise that baby on her own.”

  “That didn’t give her the right to kill him. There are plenty of single moms out there who manage to get through tough times without killing their children.”

  “She didn’t kill her child,” Jenny snapped back. “I know Rachel well enough to know that she couldn’t have hurt that baby. And it’s not as easy as you think, being abandoned by a man and having to raise a child on your own. You have no idea what that’s like.”

  “And you do?” Dean’s words were jagged and sharp, seamlessly ripping through Jenny’s defenses. “You’ve never worked a day in your life,” he said. “And you’ve certainly never had to worry about being abandoned by a man.”

  It was the hurt more than the anger that pulled her from the couch, and as she stood over her son, Jenny could only see his biological father in him. The man who’d abandoned them both before he even laid eyes on his son. The man who destroyed her dreams and left her to live a life that had always been one giant question mark: What could have been?

  It would have been easy to spill the secrets of Dean’s life onto the floor in front of him, to make him mop up his words, but she could feel Hank imploring her to stay silent, forcing her to swallow her pride.

  “Don’t ever talk to me like that again.”

  Her footsteps were soft and silent as she retreated to the bedroom, the shadows from the sun having disappeared from the walls. She sat in darkness, not wanting to be found, not wanting to hear anyone follow her down the hall or knock at the door, not wanting to deal with the secret in the shed. Hank slipped inside without a word and wrapped his arms around her before he pulled her into an embrace that broke through the layers of defenses she’d built up over so many years.

  “Thank you,” he whispered into her hair. “I know how hard that was.”

  She buried her face into his chest and let all the guilt and regret soak into the collar of his shirt with the tears that spilled from her eyes. Too many secrets were piling up—secrets kept from her husband, from her son, from the police. She could no longer contain them.

  “I have something to tell you, Hank.” She wasn’t sure which one was going to spill out first, but she couldn’t balance the weight of them, and they were about to topple.

  “I have something to tell you first,” he said, slipping a finger under her chin and tilting her face up toward him. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you today, but you would have done just fine on your own.”

  “You can’t possibly know that.”

  “But I do.” Hank swept his hand over her forehead and with clumsy fingers tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “No matter what might have happened in your life, whether we ended up together or not, you would have always been a great mom to Dean.”

  “But I’ll never know for sure, will I?” Her thoughts churned together in a jumbled mass of remorse and guilt as she sat transfixed, almost hypnotized by the green in her husband’s eyes. Without Hank, she could have been the one shivering in the shed. “Because you saved me.”

  “I didn’t save you, Jen,” he whispered. “You saved me.”

  His words brushed against her forehead as he breathed them out, and Jenny didn’t protest when his lips traveled down her cheek to her neck, or when his hunger for her blotted out any need she had to share her burdens. She felt her own hunger when he laid her back onto the bed, and so, for the first time in years, she gave herself to him completely.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  maria

  THE SHEERS ON THE WINDOW FLUTTERED beneath the breeze of the fan as the first of the sun’s rays peeked through them. The minutes ticked by on the clock beside her, with no regard to her predicament. What little fitful sleep Maria had found the previous night was occupied by Sylvia. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the blood from her dreams pouring down her wrists and dripping from her fingers, and it was getting harder to force it from her mind. She didn’t think she had it in
her.

  Her mother was waiting for her on the couch when Maria finally dragged herself from the bedroom. She’d been browsing through the coupon pages of the newspaper. “Good morning, Maria,” she said. “How are you feeling?”

  “I’m fine,” Maria replied, clearing a spot for herself on the couch. “Just not quite myself.”

  They sat side by side, mother and daughter, too intimately close for eye contact as they stumbled through an uncomfortable session of You Can Tell Me Anything.

  If kids are being mean to you at school, you can tell me.

  If you’re struggling with your classes, you can tell me.

  If boys are trying to pressure you into doing things you’re not ready for, you can tell me.

  “It’s nothing, Mom. There’s nothing going on that you need to worry about.”

  It was an easy lie. Easier, perhaps, than it should have been. Who was there to help her, if not her mother? Her husband and her children and her life were somewhere out there, waiting for her, and all she had to guide her back were disjointed dreams and memories and the words of a dead patient.

  I’m here to save you, Dr. Forssmann. I’m here to protect you and your baby.

  “… his lunch break today.”

  “What?” Maria asked.

  “Dr. Warner. He said he’d see you on his lunch break today. And he wants to get some kind of scan of your head and do some blood work, too.”

  “Sure,” Maria mumbled, but the two Sylvias in her mind—the sallow-faced girl who sat in her office vowing to protect her and the skeletal creature who pointed her to the grave—were struggling for her attention. Were they sending the same message?

  “Are you okay, Maria?”

  “I’m fine,” she said, and as her mother rambled on, blissfully unaware that a dead woman’s haunting voice was echoing through her daughter’s mind, Maria could hear only Sylvia’s words.

  The first time I was here … you ended up being someone very important to me. Now I finally understand why.