She Wouldn't Change a Thing

by Sarah Adlakha

  “How could you know that?” He eased back onto the bench beside her, cautious of her words and putting some distance between them. “Who told you this?”

  “That was when you started acting up and getting into trouble,” she continued. “It was so unlike you. And when your grandmother finally couldn’t take it anymore, she brought you back home. Things settled into place for a while, and because you followed your stepfather’s rules, he let you stay. But on the day of Beth’s eighth birthday, you and your mom went out to get her a present.”

  “Stop.” He dropped his head into his hands, his elbows resting on the tops of his legs. He didn’t need to hear more, but Maria continued, determined to make him face the truth.

  “When you got back from the store, you found your stepfather giving her a bath. She was crying, and when you asked her what happened she wouldn’t speak. She wouldn’t say a word. And even though you refused to believe it, you knew that something was horribly wrong.”

  “This is impossible.” Will’s focus drifted to his sister, who was sailing through the air on the swing, her arms stretched out to the sides and her face turned up toward the sun. Maria wondered if he was capable of doing it. Was he capable of writing a new ending? She knew the man he’d once been would have acted without hesitation, but this boy beside her with the earring in his ear and hair down his back wasn’t her husband, and there was no road that would lead to the man she loved without the trauma of his childhood. The circumstances of his life would turn him into someone else this time, and there was nothing she could do to rescue him the way his uncle had, to make him the man she’d wanted to spend her life with. And why would he want to spend his life with her—a woman who was always wanting something different, something more from him, always wanting him to be someone he could never be.

  “There are pictures of your sister, ones I know you won’t want to see, as well as some other evidence that he’s hiding in the locked cabinet in his bedroom. Call the police and tell them. He’ll kill her tomorrow if you don’t.”

  Will didn’t respond, but his sorrow weighed heavily on her. She’d never seen him suffer so deeply, and though she knew he had, it was only because he’d told her. She’d never had to witness the fresh, devastating wounds of his loss, and whatever pain he was bearing in that moment, on that bench beside her, must have paled in comparison to what he went through when he lost his sister, and his mother, and his wife. She’d been so consumed with returning to her family, she hadn’t considered that letting them go might be the one thing that could save them.

  “How do you know?” Will asked, his voice pulling her back from the void. Fighting through his words was a resolve that she was certain would carry him and his sister to a better place. It was a place where Beth’s father wouldn’t strangle her just to hide the evidence, where his mother wouldn’t overdose on sleeping pills and narcotics to escape the guilt, and where his uncle wouldn’t be the surrogate father he needed to guide him through all of life’s tragedies. It was a place that didn’t include Maria.

  “Another dream,” she said. “Well, I guess it was more of a premonition. We were a bit older then, and we had met and fallen in love.” She laughed under her breath and swallowed back her tears. “You had already lost Beth by then, in the dream, and I swore that if I could bring her back for you, I would do it.”

  “But you didn’t even know me. How can you dream about real people you don’t even know?”

  “I know you, Will.”

  She reached out and took his hand, her heart breaking as the end loomed. His hands were so achingly familiar, so perfect for what he had once been, and as she ran her fingers over his skin, she wondered what they were destined to become now, who they were destined to hold. It was almost too painful to imagine.

  “Thank you,” he said. “She’s the most important thing in the world to me.”

  “I know she is,” Maria replied. “And I want to thank you, too. For so many things I can’t even begin to tell you.”

  She could sit there forever, taking in every nuance of him, and it wouldn’t be long enough: the sapphire eyes that followed her as she walked down the aisle at their wedding, the delicate fingers that caressed her skin when they made love, and the beautiful mind that challenged her to be a better person in everything she ever did. In another time and another place, she would have her husband back, this man she would love for eternity. In another life, she wouldn’t have to let him go.

  “Someday,” she whispered, as she pulled him into a final embrace, “we’ll be together again.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  IT WAS THE SMELL OF BLOOD that Maria remembered most from that day, the coppery thickness that blended seamlessly with the acrid scent of gunpowder, grotesque and warm and soupy. There were other memories, too: Rachel’s sleeveless blue shirt, the shock in her eyes, the gun in her hand. She’d heard the footsteps as they approached, the clicking of Rachel’s shoes echoing off the concrete walls of the storage unit, but it was still a shock to see her standing there, gun in hand, as the weight of the laptop grew heavy in her arms. There were no greetings between them, no formalities, as Maria’s eyes homed in on the metal barrel of the .22 in Rachel’s hand. The seconds stretched into an uncomfortable silence before Maria spoke.

  “Why do you have a gun?”

  Rachel held the pistol with trembling hands that were unaccustomed to the weight and feel of a gun. Her movements were slow and cautious, like the weapon was a snake that could strike out and bite her at any moment. “I didn’t know how else to get in here,” she said. “I lost my key and I tried bolt cutters yesterday, but they didn’t work. And I looked online and read that I could shoot off the lock.”

  “Why didn’t you just ask me for the key?” Maria’s eyes went to the gun, and as she wondered whether her secretary even knew how to use it, another contraction started to grip at her belly. “Were you really going to shoot the lock off?”

  “I don’t know,” Rachel said, sighing and dropping her hand to her side, the gun pointing toward her feet. She looked defeated, the way Maria remembered her from her son’s funeral. “I don’t know what I’m doing, Maria. I just wanted to get my laptop and I didn’t know what else to do.”

  Maria dropped her gaze to the computer in her arms, the one Sylvia had told her about, the one Detective Andrews would be looking for in a couple of days. She didn’t know what she was doing with it, or what she expected to find on it. After all the warnings and questions and investigations, she couldn’t understand what had compelled her to sneak out of her house on the day her son would be born to take something that didn’t even belong to her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Sylvia told me before she died that I should get this to the police. I should have just stayed out of it. I don’t even know what she was talking about.”

  “She was talking about the letters that I wrote to Nick,” Rachel said. “When I was grieving for our son and heartbroken, I told him that maybe our relationship would be better without Jonathan, maybe we could start over. But I never meant it. They were just stupid, rambling words that I typed out one night because I was lonely and heartbroken.”

  “What are you talking about?” Maria said.

  “Sylvia thought I killed Jonathan. She left me a note before she died, too. And I don’t know how she knew about those letters that I wrote to Nick, because I never even sent them, but she did. And she was convinced that it was proof I killed my son. But I could never have hurt Jonathan. You know that, don’t you, Maria?”

  “Of course,” Maria replied. “Is that what this is all about? Letters you wrote?”

  Rachel nodded, her hands fidgeting with the gun and her feet shifting restlessly on the concrete floor, a wildness dancing through her eyes.

  “The detective will understand.” Maria paused as a contraction brewed in her belly, her eyes still focused on the gun in Rachel’s hand. “Don’t worry. Nothing bad will happen to you.”

  “No,” Rachel said, a
franticness darting through her eyes. “It’s not fair for people to be questioning me about my son’s death. Haven’t I been through enough?”

  “But what do I say if he asks me about it? I don’t know that I can lie to him.”

  “We’ll just say we haven’t been here. I’ll get rid of the computer and it’ll be the end of it. Please, Maria. Please do this for me.”

  Maria would never know if it was something she would have done for Rachel or not, if she would have let her friend have her peace. The pain dropped her to her knees, a relentless and excruciating contraction that gripped her belly with iron claws as the computer slipped from her fingers and crashed to the ground. “Hospital…” she panted. “Baby’s … coming.”

  “It’s okay, Maria.” Rachel locked her arms under Maria’s from behind and eased her to the ground. “Come on,” she said. “I’ve got you.”

  It was a beautiful day. The sky was blue, the birds were singing, and it was the day her son would be born. Maria never felt the bullet that pierced her chest. It was the noise that hit her first, followed by a flash of light that faded into Rachel’s horror-stricken face.

  “Oh God, Maria! No!” Rachel’s words tumbled through the tunnel of Maria’s mind. “No! Please, Maria! It was an accident! It just went off!”

  Every breath was an insurmountable effort, riddled with a burning pain where the bullet had torn through her flesh and lungs.

  “… please send an ambulance … I shot my friend … It was an accident … Come quickly…”

  Rachel faded away, her face and her words and the terror that went with them, and when Maria opened her eyes again, Will had taken Rachel’s place. The lights of the hospital corridor flashed behind his head as he hovered over the stretcher that whisked her through the hall.

  “Please…” They were Maria’s last words, whispered to him in the fading blackness. “Please don’t let him die.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Six months later

  SHE WAS JUST A WOMAN IN a park, it was just an ordinary winter day, and he was just a man holding his infant son on a bench beneath a shedding oak tree. There was no reason for anyone to suspect she had followed him there or that she had planned their encounter.

  “He’s beautiful,” the woman said, sliding onto the bench beside him, peering into the bundle of blue resting in his arms. The man’s wedding band glistened in the late afternoon sun.

  “Thank you,” he said. His child’s eyes flickered beneath their lids, and his tiny hands, looking like they’d been stitched together by an expert seamstress, twitched as he chased a dream through his own little wonderland. “He’s seven months old today.”

  The woman caressed the hidden bulge beneath her coat and laughed. “Me too.”

  “Congratulations.” A fleeting glimpse of sorrow flashed through the man’s eyes. “Your first?”

  “No,” the woman laughed. “But surely my last.”

  The man laughed too, his smile unveiling a boyish charm. “You never know,” he said. “This one here was our surprise baby.”

  “This one too,” the woman said, rubbing her belly.

  They sat in a comfortable silence as leaves swirled around them and floated on the wind, landing in gentle heaps on the ground. The woman reached down and picked one up, her eyes drifting from it to the baby in the man’s arms, powerless to pull her gaze from the child. The whorls of his hair wove a pattern through her memory as if she had once known him, as if her lips had once caressed the downy hair on his head and the soft lids of his eyes.

  “We just never know what life has in store for us,” the man said. “But things happen for a reason. Of that I’m sure.”

  “Are you?” The woman could see his words before her like a mirage, so full of hope in one moment, then slipping through her fingers in the next. “After everything you’ve been through, how can you say that?”

  “After everything I’ve been through?” The man’s gaze was steady on his son’s face, no shock or scorn permeating his words. “I take it we’re not meeting by chance today. Did you see me on the news?”

  “Yes,” the woman said. “I saw the interview you gave last week. And no, we’re not meeting by chance. I followed you here.”

  The man’s lips brushed over his son’s forehead, his head nodding pensively. “I suppose it makes no difference how you found me.” She could feel the moment his eyes landed on her, that steely gaze that had penetrated the television screen, into her living room, not two weeks earlier. “The fact that you’re sitting here beside me means that we were meant to meet today. That we must have something to learn from each other.”

  She shifted her weight on the bench, craving distance from the rawness of his gaze. “But what if we don’t have anything to learn from each other?” she said. “What if this meeting wasn’t a part of our destinies and I just made it happen because I needed to tell you something? What if everything you said in that interview about seeing our lost loved ones again is wrong, and when we die, we just disappear? Vanish? What if you never get to see your wife again?” Her eyes jumped frantically from the man’s face to his son’s as she tempered her impulse to reach out for the child, to feel his weight and warmth in her arms. “What if you’re wrong?”

  “I take it you lost someone too,” the man said.

  The woman nodded, a hefty sigh escaping her lips. “Yes,” she said. “I lost someone too.” She didn’t weigh him down with the details. She didn’t need to. Her loss was written into her face as much as it had been written into her life. She was a widow, but unlike the man beside her, she had been condemned to silence when her husband left. There was no rendezvous in her dreams, no whispers through the wind, no painted skies at dawn. Did they not love each other enough? Did this man and his wife love each other more? Did they call themselves soul mates and promise to stay together in this life and forever after?

  “Give him some time,” the man said, his face pressed against the baby’s cheeks. “And be willing to see him in the places you’d least expect.”

  She wanted to believe him; she yearned for his words to bear truth. But as she dropped her eyes to her belly and let the leaf slip from her fingers, she knew she had made a mistake by following him there. She was a keeper of secrets, and the one she’d come to share didn’t want to be told. None of her secrets did. She’d held on to most of them for so long that time was turning them into vines that were more difficult to contain by the day, twisting and climbing and choking out everything around them. If only they’d been clipped sooner, maybe they wouldn’t be devouring her.

  “I wish I had your optimism,” she said, rising from the bench and stealing one last glance at the baby in the man’s arms before turning to leave. “I’m sorry I bothered you.”

  “Wait,” the man said, halting the woman’s footsteps. “I never got your name.”

  “Jenny,” she replied, turning to face him. “My name is Jenny.”

  “Please.” He nodded toward the empty spot on the bench beside him. “Don’t leave. I’m Will, and this here is Blaise.” He bounced the baby in his arms and laughed. “But I guess you already knew that.”

  Jenny hesitated before stepping over the discarded carpet of leaves that had fallen to the ground and easing herself back down onto the bench beside them. Didn’t the man beside her deserve to know about the woman who had killed his wife? She’d gone over this moment so many times in her mind, but she’d never settled on a strategy. She’d thought that, when the time came, her words would start flowing and she’d instinctively know how to steer them, but as she sat there beside him, she could think of nothing but the bare and brutal truth.

  I helped the woman who killed your wife escape.

  Her exhaustion from countless sleepless nights was wearing on her, and the decision to confess felt suddenly reckless and irresponsible. What if he went to the police? What if she was arrested and her child was taken from her? But consequences were a part of life, a part of every choice and action and rea
ction, and the consequence of not telling this man about the woman who killed his wife would be her own undoing. She would carry it as a burden until it became too heavy to ignore, and then she would balance the enormity of it on her shoulders until it was all she could feel, and finally she would succumb to the massive weight of it until it crushed her.

  “Rachel is still alive.”

  The man on the bench beside her didn’t move at her words. He didn’t yell or gasp or even flinch. He gave himself a minute to hear Jenny’s message and then took in a deep breath that he exhaled into the air around them. He kissed the top of his son’s head before he breathed out his next words.

  “How do you know Rachel?”

  “The father of her son, the little boy who died last year, is my cousin.” Jenny couldn’t pull her eyes up to meet his gaze, her focus landing instead on the pile of leaves at her feet. “She came to me for help after she shot your wife. She was devastated. She wanted me to tell you that it was an accident. Maria had a contraction, and she was trying to help her onto the floor when the gun went off, and…”

  Jenny didn’t continue with the details. She couldn’t bring herself to voice them out loud, the intimate details about the last minutes of Maria’s life. His wife didn’t die that day, but the life that she and her family knew ended in that moment.

  “Rachel’s death was staged,” Jenny continued. “But she won’t be coming back.”

  “Where is she?”

  “I don’t know.” Jenny could feel the heat from Will’s stare burning into the side of her face, but she couldn’t force herself to look at him. She sat under his gaze like a cowering and guilty dog waiting for its owner to release it from shame, waiting for forgiveness. “I swear to God I don’t know where she is. But I don’t think you’ll find her if you go looking.”