by A. Zavarelli
Birdie pursed her lips. “Fine. I guess I’m just chopped liver now, huh?”
I pulled the car into the driveway and turned off the ignition. “Is that what this is about? You think I’m going to forget about you?”
“No,” she shot back. “It’s about the fact that you always treat me like I’m a child who’s never going to grow up. Like I have no clue what I’m talking about.”
I opened my mouth to reply, but she held up her hand. “I get that I’ve given you plenty of reason to come to that conclusion. But while you’ve been playing house with Lucian, I’ve been doing just fine, haven’t I?”
“I don’t know,” I answered sourly. “Have you?”
“See, that’s what I’m talking about,” Birdie huffed. “You always believe that I’m up to something I shouldn’t be.”
“That’s because you are!” I shouted.
We both looked away, and several minutes of tense silence followed. Birdie, as always, was the first to crack.
“I know I’m an asshole for not coming to visit you sooner,” she said. “But honestly, I was scared. I thought that if I saw him hurting you, I would fly off the handle and do something crazy. And I didn’t want to disappoint you like that again.”
She looked down at her hands, and I swallowed back a decade’s worth of repressed emotions. “You didn’t disappoint me, B. You saved us when I couldn’t.”
She didn’t acknowledge the sentiment. “I’m not jealous of him either. I just don’t want to see you get hurt. Maybe you don’t always see it, but I am looking out for you too.”
I gave her a watery smile. “Of course, I see it. You always have. We look out for each other.”
The anger in her eyes dissolved and gave way to worry. “Then trust me when I say that you can’t fall for this guy. No matter what.”
She was so serious it gave me pause since Birdie was rarely ever serious. But I knew I couldn’t tell her what she wanted to hear.
It was too late.
I just hadn’t admitted it to myself before then.
“WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO tell him?” Birdie asked for the third time this week.
I finished loading the dishwasher and pressed the power button, busying myself with cleaning the counter. Birdie had been concocting all sorts of so-called meals, which mostly consisted of ice cream and peanut butter sandwiches, and she’d left a mess everywhere.
“I don’t know,” I said. “He’s got a lot going on right now. The trial is starting in three days. He can’t have this heaped on top of him with the pressures he’s already dealing with.”
“Well, it’s kind of important that you figure it out, isn’t it?” She propped her hip against the table. “You’re already two months in. Before you know it—”
“God, Birdie.” I dragged my hands over my face and groaned. “I can’t do this right now, okay? I’m doing my best to try to figure it out. But you nagging me isn’t helping.”
She looked at the floor and rolled the rubber end of her Adidas shoe against the tile. “I found something I think you should see.”
Her voice was too scratchy. She sounded emotional, and Birdie never got emotional unless she was in a fit of rage.
“What did you find, B?”
She gestured down the hall. “It’s in the safe. In your closet.”
I stared at her, dumbfounded. “You were snooping?”
“I saw it, and I thought he might be hiding something in there, and I was right.”
“How the hell did you get in?” I demanded.
“It doesn’t matter how I got in.” She gave me a pointed stare. “All that matters is that I did, and you need to see what I found.”
She moved in the direction of the hall, signaling for me to follow, but I was rooted to the spot. My chest was so tight, it hurt to breathe, and dread curled in my stomach as I imagined all the horrors that might await me in that closet.
The first thing that came to my mind was that Lucian had someone else. It wasn’t logical, but it was pure jealousy and maybe a dash of pregnancy hormones that spurred the notion on. I knew instinctively that would be the most hurtful. I trusted him, and when he told me he was working long hours on Emmanuel’s case, I believed him. But now, I was doubting everything.
“I’m not sure I want to see,” I admitted. I looked weak for saying it, and I knew it.
“You need to see,” she pleaded. “This is important, Gypsy.”
I still didn’t move, and Birdie sighed. “Do you remember how you always used to tell me not to look away during the ugly parts of a movie?”
I nodded stiffly.
“You said you weren’t doing it to be mean, but because you wanted me to be tough. You wanted me to see the worst of things, so that I could always be prepared if anything bad ever happened to me.”
“I remember,” I croaked.
“Well, this is like that,” Birdie said. “I’m not doing it to be mean. I want you to see so you can be prepared.”
She was right, of course. I needed to see whatever was in that closet, no matter how bad it might be. I needed to know what secret Lucian had been keeping, and in preparation, I already felt my heart hardening around itself as I lurched forward and joined Birdie.
We walked together, and she led me into the closet that used to hold my trophies. The material items I’d collected from my victims over the years. Now, it held only department store clothes and Lucian’s lies.
Birdie retrieved a stack of old photos and handed them to me. “Did you know he already has a kid?”
My heart squeezed as I traced over the lines of the angelic baby face staring back at me. It was, without a doubt, Dawson. And he looked so much like his father, I wanted to cry all over again at the loss of him.
“He did,” I acknowledged. “But he passed away.”
I wasn’t in the mood to tell Birdie the rest, and I couldn’t believe she’d been snooping through Lucian’s things, getting me all worked up like this. “You need to put these back where you got them,” I told her. “Now.”
She glared at me. “I will after I show you the rest.”
“The rest?”
She bent down and wedged a finger between the safe door that was already cracked, pulling it back slowly to unveil the thing that would seal my fate with Lucian. My breath had stopped, but it returned when light poured into the small space, at least momentarily.
I stared at the orange bottles and looked at Birdie. “Prescriptions?”
She scooped a couple from the safe and handed them to me as I examined the labels. There was a supply of antibiotics, steroids prescribed for persistent cough, and cough syrup.
“This is what you had to show me?”
Birdie stared at me, exasperated. “He’s sick.”
“He’s not sick,” I argued. “He has bouts of bronchitis. We live in the desert. So what?”
Birdie shook her head, hopeless. “Haven’t you noticed anything else weird going on with him? Anything at all?”
I wanted to chalk this up to Birdie being dramatic, but she had a point. Acid burned the back of my throat as I recalled how sick he’d been when he needed to go to the hospital. The blood he coughed up. How his health had seemed to be declining rapidly lately, and I wanted to believe it was stress. He was exhausted all the time, and he seemed to have a fever every night in bed.
My mind hadn’t connected the dots in a way that could lead me to believe they were all related to one thing. I wanted to attribute those symptoms to his job, and I had. I’d swept them under the rug and choked down Lucian’s assurances that everything was fine. But when I looked at my little sister, it occurred to me that he wasn’t fine. In my gut, I knew it before Birdie even dropped the next bombshell.
“I didn’t want to do this,” she said with a gentleness uncharacteristic of her. “Believe me when I say I didn’t want to do this.”
She pulled something else from the bottom of the safe. A plain green file folder I didn’t want to open.
&nbs
p; I wrapped my arms around myself. “I can’t. I can’t look.”
I felt like I was going to throw up, and Birdie took pity on me. She helped me back to the bed and let me sit down for a few minutes to process my wild thoughts. Logically, I knew there was no getting out of it. But logic no longer ruled my heart. Logic didn’t dictate the way I felt about Lucian and his presence in my life. I was carrying his baby. And now, the universe was about to deliver up another cruel slice of life.
“What is it?” I blurted. “Just tell me, B.”
She hesitated before sitting down beside me and staring at the file in her hands. “Hodgkin’s lymphoma.”
I didn’t know what that was. Or at least, exactly what that was. From what little I’d heard on TV, I knew it was a type of cancer , but I wasn’t ready to accept that.
I pulled the file from Birdie’s hands and began to tear through the pages frantically, seeking out some other possibility. Maybe she’d read it wrong. Maybe this wasn’t his. I had a plethora excuses at the ready, but with every page I turned, my reality grew smaller and darker.
“This says he was diagnosed two years ago.” My hands trembled, and tears leaked down my face before I could catch them. I wasn’t in the habit of letting Birdie see me cry, but it was too late now.
She placed a tentative hand on my back and rubbed in small, soft circles the way that I used to when she was a child. “It also said he refused treatment.”
A sob erupted from my chest just before I lunged from the bed and ran to the bathroom, scattering the papers everywhere as I vomited up my lunch in the toilet. When I was done, Birdie was beside me, sitting cross-legged on the tiled floor as she picked up the papers and tucked them away from my sight.
I hung my head against the seat and cried some more. It was uncontrollable at this point, and I didn’t care if Birdie saw anymore. Maybe it was about time she learned I was all show, and that deep inside, I was weak.
“It’s okay,” she whispered. “It’s going to be okay. We’ll get through this together. I promise you.”
Her words pulled me back to reality, and I straightened up, wiping the tears from my eyes.
“No.” I stood and adjusted my shirt in the mirror. “You need to go back to Washington, B. You need to focus on your studies, and I need to deal with this situation on my own.”
“I’m not leaving you alone,” Birdie argued.
“You have to,” I told her. “If you love me, then you will let me do this on my own.”
MY PHONE VIBRATED AGAINST THE desk, pulling my attention from the documents in front of me. I hadn’t checked my messages all day because Emmanuel’s trial was starting tomorrow, and I couldn’t afford any distractions. But this was the third time it rang in under ten minutes, and it prompted me to check the screen. I frowned when I saw the number, recognizing immediately who it belonged to.
“Warden,” I answered. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m sorry for the late hour,” he replied. “But I thought that you should hear it from me rather than the chaplain.”
My gaze skittered across the room, blurry, as I tried to shake off the exhaustion that had seemed to permanently fog my brain over the past two months. “What is it?”
“Emmanuel Morales had you listed as an emergency contact on his records.”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“I regret to inform you that this morning, he hanged himself in his cell with a bedsheet.”
My grip went lax around the phone, and it almost fell from my hand as I tried to come to terms with what he was telling me.
I didn’t want it to be true. We’d worked so hard. Tomorrow, I was ready for the chance to prove his innocence at trial. I’d been working on nothing else. This was it. My last case. My last chance to help someone. And just like that, Emmanuel had given up on me.
“Thank you, Warden,” I said quietly. “For calling me personally.”
“Would you like to claim the body?”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re listed as the only next of kin,” the Warden explained. “I wasn’t certain if you’d like to claim the body, but legally, I have to ask.”
I thought of Emmanuel being laid to rest with nobody there to mourn him. Nobody to make the hard decisions that usually came with death. If he wasn’t claimed, the county would be left to work out a deal with a local funeral home. In the end, he’d most likely be burned in a cardboard box, the state sparing no expense for the cases that were a sad reality in this world.
He’d died alone. And after the media laid him bare, I doubted I’d see many people showing up for a funeral. But that didn’t mean he shouldn’t have one.
I closed my eyes, and my entire body seemed to deflate. “I’ll claim the body, Warden. Thank you.”
AFTER A LONG-DRAWN-OUT ARGUMENT, BIRDIE finally agreed to leave on the condition that I check in with her every day and let her know what was happening or if I needed her. I promised her that I would, but even that felt like a lie.
In truth, I didn’t want to think about it, but I also couldn’t stop. I’d spent the entire day on Google doing my own research before I finally decided to call a cancer hotline for information. So far, what I’d learned about Lucian’s condition hadn’t been as hopeless as I’d automatically assumed. It was cancer, but it was a highly curable cancer with treatment success even in late stages.
But in my heart, I knew that wasn’t the real issue. Birdie told me that Lucian refused treatment, and if the notes I saw in the file were accurate, then it was true. It wasn’t something I wanted to wrap my head around. I didn’t want to believe that he’d just given up on living, but on reflection, his actions and words told me everything I needed to know.
He’d been preparing me for goodbye since the beginning. Even after he’d told me that he cared for me, he wanted me to know what we had was temporary. I’d been such an idiot.
All this time, I believed that maybe he would change his mind. I saw the affection in his eyes when he looked at me. I felt it in his every touch. And foolishly, I wanted to believe that I was more to him than something he could just throw away in the end.
I couldn’t figure out when it all turned upside down, but it had. I was in love with Lucian West. I was having his baby. And he was ready to give up and leave this world… and me… behind.
I spent the day alternating between hatred and sorrow, trying to determine the best course of action from this point forward. There were really only two options in this scenario.
The old Gypsy would have run. She would have run far, far away and pretended this chapter of her life had never happened, closing her heart and protecting herself from the inevitable pain to follow. But I wanted to believe there was more to me than that now.
I wanted to believe I was braver, smarter, stronger… and most of that was because of what Lucian had done for me. He’d saved me, and I accepted it, never knowing that he was the one who needed saving too.
I stared into the cavernous space of the closet we shared, my eyes moving to the items I’d already folded and packed, then unpacked several times over. I was exhausted and emotional, but this wasn’t a time in my life when I could take the easy way out. There was no easy way. If I ran, I’d be deluded to believe that Lucian would ever leave my mind or my heart.
He was my forever, and I couldn’t give him up without a fight.
It wasn’t just up to him. He didn’t get to decide for both of us. I was determined to change his mind. We would get through this ugliness, just like we’d made it through all the ugliness of our past lives. Except this time, we would do it together.
Emmanuel’s trial was starting tomorrow, so I made a conscious decision to wait until at least the first day in court had finished before I broached the subject. Even that felt like it would be an awful time, given Lucian’s projected exhaustion, but there wouldn’t be a good time to discuss it.
We just had to talk about it.
That was the only thing that mattered. At le
ast, I thought it was.
I’d expected Lucian home around eleven. He said he wanted to get at least six hours of sleep before he got up in the morning, and even though he’d been working late every night, he was always home by eleven.
I waited up for him. I’d made him a late snack of fresh berries, just in case he was hungry. I’d showered and dressed in a silky nightgown for him, hoping that I could offer to relieve some of his tension. And then I curled up on the couch and waited.
He didn’t come home at eleven.
He didn’t come home at twelve.
And when I woke up and checked the time again, it was almost one a.m. and still no Lucian.
My airways felt like they’d sealed shut as I texted him and stared at the screen, waiting for a reply. It didn’t come, so I called him. Three times. And all three times, his phone went to voicemail.
I paced the length of the room while I texted Ace, whom Lucian had made me add to my contacts, just in case. Ace texted me back, unconcerned, telling me that Lucian always went a little crazy before a trial. But in my gut, I knew that wasn’t it. Lucian should have been home by now, and if he wasn’t, there was something wrong.
I grabbed a long coat from the closet and tied it around myself, concealing my nightgown as I snagged my car keys from the hall table. I drove to Lucian’s office, but his car wasn’t in the lot.
I tried dialing him again, but the phone went straight to voicemail. There were only so many places he could be at this late hour, and I knew from experience the church would be locked. But there was still a possibility he might be visiting with Cristian, so I drove there anyway. His car wasn’t there either. And that left only one other place I could check. It was my last resort.
I drove to the club with white knuckles wrapped around the steering wheel. Lucian should have no reason to be there. That was what I kept telling myself as I blasted music with the window down to keep myself from thinking too much. But when I pulled into the lot, I recognized the Dodge Demon with Nevada plates right away. And when I swallowed, it felt like a handful of nails had lodged in my esophagus.