She Wouldn't Change a Thing

by Sarah Adlakha

  “I can’t go back there,” Rachel said, trying to fold the paper into an even smaller square.

  “Well, you don’t have to go back there,” Jenny replied. “But you can’t stay here. Hank is home for another week, and you know how he is. He’ll turn you in if he finds you.”

  Rachel held the square of paper between them, gesturing for Jenny to take it. When she opened it, the words were faded, and the seams were almost torn from where it had been folded and refolded, but Jenny could still read the words:

  Dear Rachel,

  You don’t know me, except as one of Dr. Forssmann’s patients, but I know you. In fact I remember everything about you from the last time I lived this life. How you tried to convince the jury that killing Dr. Forssmann was an accident and that you didn’t deserve to rot in prison for the rest of your life. I remember that because I was on that jury. I was one of the people who convicted you of murder.

  I won’t let you do it again. I’ve already warned Dr. Forssmann to stay away from you, and I’m begging you, please leave her and her son alone. If you kill her, you are condemning her family to misery. Her father will die from the heartbreak and stress of the trial, her children will know their mother was killed by a woman they trusted, and her husband will cry himself to sleep each night before he visits her in his dreams. They don’t deserve this. They deserve to live a long and happy life together—even if you couldn’t have that with your son.

  I also know about the letters you wrote to your ex-boyfriend. The ones about wanting to start over with a “clean slate” after your son died. I always thought the police should investigate those, but for some reason they didn’t think you had anything to do with your son’s death. Someone will be looking into them this time. I’ve made sure of it.

  I’m leaving now. There’s nothing left here for me and I can’t live with these memories or the knowledge of what I’ve done. I have my own sins to atone for, just like you.

  If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 1 John 1:9

  —Sylvia Woolf

  “What is this?” Jenny sank down onto the ground beside Rachel, her eyes never leaving the paper as she read and reread each word at least three times. “Who sent this to you?”

  “One of Dr. Forssmann’s patients,” Rachel replied. “She’s dead now. She killed herself after she sent me that letter.”

  “What the hell does it mean?”

  “It means Maria’s going to die,” Rachel said, picking at the hem of her tattered shirt, her face expressionless, as if she were no longer in possession of emotions. “It means I’m going to spend my life in prison if I go back.”

  “She was obviously crazy,” Jenny said, pointing at the words on the letter as she spoke. “How could she have sat on a jury for a trial that hasn’t even taken place? And Maria’s not dead. This woman was just trying to scare you. It doesn’t mean this is what’s going to happen. This is just nonsense.”

  Rachel sat quietly as Jenny tried to convince her that the words in the letter carried no consequences and that they were meaningless, but Rachel didn’t seem to be hearing them. She mumbled under her breath as she continued to pick at the frayed edges of her shirt before she moved on to the scabbed mosquito bites on her arms. She jumped when Jenny touched her leg, her feral eyes scanning the room before they settled back onto the unraveled hem.

  “Rachel,” Jenny said, waving the letter between them to get her friend’s attention. “This is nonsense. You don’t have to worry about this.”

  “I do, though,” Rachel replied. “The woman who wrote that letter died before I shot Maria. She knew it was going to happen before I even did it.”

  “That’s not possible.” Jenny scanned the letter again, trying to piece together the significance of that information. “And Maria’s not dead. And Jonathan … You didn’t…” She stopped short of asking. She couldn’t bring herself to say the words, as if voicing them might bring them to life and make them true.

  Rachel finally looked up at her. “Were you going to ask me if I killed my own son?”

  “No,” Jenny replied, although the question was on the tip of her tongue. It needed to be asked. If she was going to offer anything to Rachel, she needed to hear her say the words. She needed to believe that Rachel wasn’t capable of killing her own child.

  “I knew something wasn’t right that morning.” Rachel bent her knees up to her chest, and when she turned her head toward the muted light from the dirt-coated window, the blue of her eyes seemed to glow between them. “You just … you know those things when you’re a mom. I couldn’t say exactly what it was. Maybe it was the silence from the monitor. No cooing or babbling that morning. Maybe it was the stillness when I opened his bedroom door. No little fingers gripping at the bars of his crib. I knew before I even saw him. I thought to myself, maybe if I go back to sleep and wake up again, things will go back to normal. I didn’t want to see him or touch him, because I knew I’d never be able to go back. But of course I went to him. He was so cold when I picked him up. I don’t remember calling nine one one, but I must have. I didn’t cry or say a word until they took him from me. I do remember that. And the screams. How loud they sounded, even to my own ears. How hard I tried to hold on to him. How they ripped him from my arms.”

  Jenny was the only one crying when Rachel stopped talking. She imagined that her friend had relived that moment every single day for the last six months, but she wished the story would just end. As selfish as it felt, Jenny didn’t want to hear any more.

  “So, no,” Rachel continued. “I didn’t kill my son. But I did write the letters to Nick.”

  “What letters?”

  “They weren’t even letters,” Rachel replied. “They were just stupid rambling thoughts I typed out one night after I’d been drinking. I was sad and lonely and they didn’t mean anything. I never even sent them. And I don’t know how that patient knew about them, because I never told anyone they even existed.”

  Jenny listened in silence as Rachel detailed the pieces of one tragedy after another, each stemming from the one before it. Why did fate pick certain people for misfortune? Why was she spared? Why, when they both ended up pregnant and alone, had Jenny been offered salvation?

  She couldn’t send Rachel back there. There would be no one to stand up for her. A wealthy woman had been shot, a respected doctor with a family and friends and the full support of the country, and Rachel would show up with the smoking gun. She didn’t stand a chance.

  Jenny rose from the floor and dusted off her pants before she placed a board over the window to be sure no one could peek inside.

  “It would be better if you didn’t leave the shed while Hank is still in town,” she said. “He’ll be back on the rig in four days, and then we’ll figure out what to do. In the meantime, I’ll bring you some fresh clothes and blankets. And some more food.”

  Jenny was thankful for the thickness of the air in the darkened shed and how it served to veil the expressions on their faces. She couldn’t stomach any more. She didn’t think she’d be able to hold herself together if she had to watch her friend begging for mercy or crying from gratitude, especially when it so easily could have been her, so she closed the door behind herself as she stepped out into the blinding light and shuddered at what was to come.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  maria

  THERE WERE THREE PEOPLE IN THE room with her, three separate voices. Her mother and father were two of them, but she didn’t recognize the third. Maria pretended to be sleeping while she listened to her parents tell the story of her life to voice number three. Her childhood sounded almost idyllic.

  … such a happy kid.

  … very social and outgoing.

  … always popular.

  She couldn’t help but wonder if they were all recalling the same childhood. Maria’s memories of youth involved watching from her window as the other kids in the neighborhood played kick the can.
Every night she would pray that, just once, they would knock on her door and invite her to join in. They never did, at least not until she hit puberty.

  “This just doesn’t make any sense.”

  Her mother’s frustration was pitiable, but as much as Maria wanted to decode the mystery for her, to show her the truth, she just couldn’t do it.

  “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Bethe. I can’t imagine what you and your husband are going through.”

  Voice number three belonged to a woman. She was confident and concise, with a touch of compassion, as she effortlessly dictated the pace and direction of the conversation. She was no doubt the psychiatrist her doctor had been calling for earlier. “If you don’t mind, I just have a few more questions.”

  “Go ahead,” her father said. “It’s fine.”

  “Does Maria have any family members, specifically blood relatives, who have ever suffered from depression or bizarre thoughts?”

  “Not that we know of,” her father replied. “The other doctor asked us the same thing a couple days ago, and we’ve been racking our brains trying to put the pieces together. Neither one of us has ever been treated for any kind of psychological problems. We’ve both had our ups and downs over the years, of course, but never anything we couldn’t work through.”

  Ups and downs. If she’d been asked to describe her parents’ marriage the first time she was seventeen years old, Maria would have likened them to June and Ward Cleaver. She couldn’t have fathomed their marital problems until she became a wife, and it wasn’t until her mother lay on death’s doorstep, succumbing to cancer, that she learned a secret she had no business, or interest in, knowing.

  Maria pushed the memory aside, wondering whether Sylvia had ever been able to convince anyone she’d come back from the future and hoping she wouldn’t have to use that secret to convince her mother of the truth.

  You get one chance.

  What did Sylvia mean by that? One chance at suicide? One chance to get home? Had she already used up her only chance? There was an answer out there somewhere, a way home. She just had to find it. Who could help her, though? Sylvia would still be an infant, Rachel a toddler, and Detective Andrews a soldier heading off to war soon.

  Bienville still seemed her best option. Her children hadn’t been there, but she wasn’t convinced she wouldn’t find her husband if she went searching again. She could almost see him standing in the hospital corridor in his blue scrubs with a stethoscope draped around his neck. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d gone to visit him there, and she was saddened by all the broken promises she’d made to herself, and to Will, to set aside an hour and have lunch with him.

  The itch that had taken up residence beneath Maria’s cast was daring her to ignore it again, inching its way from her hand to her fingers like the delicate legs of a spider. It was a useless endeavor, trying to will it away, and when she twisted her arm to alleviate it, a blazing pain shot through her wrist.

  “Son of a bitch!”

  The words catapulted from her mouth before she could contain them, landing in the circle of voices in the far corner of the room. Her father sprang from one of the plastic chairs like a gazelle ready to bolt, treading through waters so foreign that fight or flight must have seemed his only two viable options.

  “Maria, please!”

  “Please what, Dad?” She pulled her head off the pillow so she could see him. It was the only part of her body that had yet to be restrained, but it pounded with the effort. “I’m tied down to a goddamn hospital bed, my arm feels like it’s being stuck with a hot poker, and I’m trapped in hell! So please what?” Her eyes darted between her parents before they homed in on her mother and the unmistakable quiver in her lip. “You have no idea what’s going on around here, Mom. You don’t even know…”

  That you’ve been dead for the past two years.

  She somehow stopped herself before she finished the sentence. She had enough sense to know that highlighting her psychosis in front of her new psychiatrist would not get her out of the hospital.

  “Good morning, Maria.” The woman peeking over the rail was stout, her girth nearly matching her height. “I’m Dr. Anderson,” she said, “and I’ll be your psychiatrist while you’re in the hospital.”

  She paused as if expecting a response, but Maria rewarded her with silence before letting her head drop back onto the pillow. She was grateful when her parents were dismissed to the cafeteria, and they seemed equally grateful to be excused, almost tripping over themselves to get out the door. Her doctor settled her oversize frame onto the plastic seat of an undersize chair beside Maria’s bed before she opened the notebook on her lap and readied her pen above it.

  “Now,” she said. “I know a little bit about the days leading up to your suicide attempt from talking to your parents, but I was hoping you could fill me in on some of the details.”

  Maria let the words seep in as she considered an explanation, an excuse for nearly severing her arm in two, knowing there was little she could say or do to keep the word suicide out of her chart.

  “I guess everyone thinks I was trying to kill myself,” she mumbled.

  “Weren’t you?”

  The truth hung in the background of Maria’s mind, a story so bizarre it was certain to rival any that Dr. Anderson had ever heard. But even if she could convince this doctor that suicide was not her intention, the diagnosis of psychosis would be waiting to take its place.

  “I wasn’t trying to kill myself,” she said. “Not in the way that you think.”

  “What were you trying to do?”

  Maria could almost feel the warmth of the water washing over her skin as she held the tip of the blade against her wrist, certain she was going home, certain her nightmare would end in that tub. I was trying to get back to my family.

  Her memory was vague and sketchy, like a 1930s movie that had been poorly spliced together. She kept seeing the storage unit, the one place her husband had made her promise not to go. She must have been there. Why couldn’t she have just listened to him? She could have stayed home in bed, resting and preparing for the birth of her son. She could have taken Charlotte to ride her bike and spent the afternoon with Emily. She knew she must have lied to him, because she remembered sneaking out of the house and standing on the concrete floor. Her memory was fuzzy and incomplete, but there was something there, just out of reach, a place her mind refused to go.

  “Look, Maria.” Dr. Anderson sighed into the silence as she closed the notebook on her lap. “I’ve been doing this for quite a while, and, unfortunately, I’ve seen my fair share of suicides. But in all this time I have never seen anyone do to their body what you did to that wrist.” With the tip of her pen she pointed to Maria’s casted arm, which throbbed from the unwanted attention. “It took two surgeries to put that wrist back together, and I can’t even imagine the rehab you’ll have to go through. So, whatever it was that led you to do that to yourself, it needs to be addressed.”

  “I guess I can understand how it looks,” Maria said, seeing herself through the diagnostic eyes of Dr. Anderson. What could make her psychotic and suicidal if not schizophrenia or bipolar disorder or severe depression? There was only one thing she could think of that might get her out of the hospital without a more involved workup. “I didn’t want my parents to find out,” she continued, “but I took some pills the other night to keep me awake so I could study for my AP exam. I guess they made me a little confused.”

  “What kind of pills?”

  “I don’t know what they were,” Maria continued, hoping her doctor had some experience with methamphetamines. “Someone from school gave them to me and said they’d keep me awake and help me concentrate.”

  Dr. Anderson flipped through the pages of Maria’s chart, scanning through her lab results from the emergency room and shaking her head. “There was nothing in your system when you were admitted. They did a drug screen, and everything was negative.”

  Maria shrugged.

 
“What about the pregnancy?” Dr. Anderson asked. “You were really convinced you were pregnant when you came in through the ER.”

  “I was never pregnant.” Maria tried to laugh it off, but the words seemed to catch in her throat, a difficult lie to swallow. “I don’t know where that came from. It must have been those pills I took, because I barely even remember any of it.”

  “Well, some drugs can certainly do that.” Dr. Anderson’s pen landed with a thud on her notebook before she leaned back in the plastic chair and nodded her head. “I’d like to run another drug screen. A more specific one to make sure there’s nothing left in your system. I need you to be honest with me, though, Maria. Was it just that one pill or were there others? And how long has this been going on?”

  “It was just that one. But I took it for a few days before bed while I was studying. Just to help me do better on the exam.”

  Dr. Anderson picked up her pen and jotted something in her notebook before she continued. “You know I have to tell your parents about this, right?”

  “I’m ready to tell them, but I don’t want them to think I’m on drugs. It was just a onetime thing.”

  “I think they’ll understand,” she said. “Before I go, though, I have a few questions to make sure your memory is functioning. Would that be okay?”

  Maria nodded for her to continue, relieved to have gotten over that hurdle. It was almost too easy. Once she was out of the hospital, she’d find a way home. She’d figure it out. There had to be some sort of loophole, some clue she was missing. She’d been rash, acting on impulse, but she’d be more careful now.

  “Can you tell me your full name?”

  “Maria Bethe.”

  “What year is it?”

  “1988.”

  “What month is it?”

  “April.”

  “What state are we in?”