“Hey, how are you?” she said, while I pretended to be very busy with my vases.
“I’m alright,” he said to Sandra, then he came over to me. “Willow, can we talk?”
Suddenly, I felt angry with him. He had ruined my dream. “About what?”
He sighed. “I know you’re mad at me, but how I acted that day was not without reason.”
I stopped then and turned to him. “Bradley, I get that we have known each other for years, but I just can’t understand where you get off just butting into my life without permission.”
He was so taken aback by my tone that his eyebrows shot up. Even Sandra was shocked.
“Willow.”
“I don't want to talk to you,” I said, slapping the rag I’d been using down. “And you owe Caleb an apology.”
I began to walk away, but his words stopped me. “Did you already know the truth, but pretended to yourself? Is this why you’re so angry? That I brought it to light?”
“What?”
“You already knew that he was the one that killed your uncle and set his house on fire, didn’t you?”
I felt the breath knocked out of me. “What?”
“Bradley!” Sandra yelled and instantly went over to him. She stood in front of him and muttered something to him.
I didn’t need to hear what she was saying to know that she was scolding him for opening his mouth. What on earth was going on? I ran to him and pushed Sandra out of the way. “What the hell did you just say?”
There was a tinge of fear on his face, but also defiance. He was glad he had said it. He was glad he had ruined my dream.
The world around me spun. I felt as if I was going to faint. I looked at Sandra. I felt wild, desperate. I needed help. I was spiraling out of control.
“He killed my uncle? And set his church on fire? What the fuck are you both talking about?” My voice was trembling and my eyes filling with tears.
Oh the frustration of being unable to remember anything. I constantly felt like I was a breath away from being hit with a brick about something detrimental to my identity as a human being, and this was one of those times. Unless they were joking with me or wrong in which case I would never forgive either of them.
“Sandra,” I turned to her and she came over to lightly hold my hand.
I snatched my hand out of her grasp and stepped away from her. “What the hell is he talking about?”
Bradley looked shocked as his gaze moved from Sandra to me and back to her. “She really doesn’t know?”
“Know what?” I yelled.
Sandra’s voice became sheepish. “Willow,” she said. “Your uncle’s death wasn’t caused by a simple fire. He was killed in the church and the murderer set the place on fire to cover his tracks.”
Tears burned my eyes. “The murderer?’ I turned to Bradley. “And you’re saying that murderer is Caleb? Are you both out of your minds?”
Bradley was undaunted. “I couldn’t bring it up with you the last time because I wasn’t sure yet. All I knew was that there was the possibility that he was the same Caleb Wolfe who Henry had been talking about, so I showed Henry his picture that night and he swore that he was the same person. I confronted Caleb about it, and well, you know what happened. I told him that he had a week to tell you the truth and he attacked me like a wild animal. I couldn’t even face you then because I didn’t know enough, but after finding out even more this week I've realized just how dangerous he is.”
All the strength had drained out of my body.
I was exhausted, mentally and emotionally. Were they playing with me, or was life playing with me? Why was this happening to me?
“Who told you all of this?” I whispered.
“I searched up his record, and there was some news written about it at the time. Although his picture wasn’t shown to protect him since he was a minor at the time, it was absolutely clear that he must have been the person.”
My knees gave out and I screamed for Sandra. I felt so lost. Sandra ran towards me, but I didn’t allow her to touch me. I didn’t want anyone to come close to me. It felt as though once again, everything had been reset and I knew absolutely nothing.
I’d never felt so defeated. “Show me what you have,” I snarled.
With a sympathetic look on his face, Bradley pulled his phone out of his pocket.
47
Caleb
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvYSckKSL5g
Willow was coming over.
At first, I’d been surprised by her sudden call, but what concerned me even more was the coldness in her tone. She sounded like a stranger. An emotionless robot. My mind went to that bastard, and I wondered if he had finally poured his poison into her ear.
Waiting for her to arrive was the most excruciating time of my life. The last time I had been half as nervous about anything was the week after I’d been arrested, and the Sheriff told me that Willow had lost her memory. When I realized Willow had forgotten me. Twelve years later, I was experiencing it all over again at the possibility that Willow was going to forsake me again.
The very thought was enough to devastate me.
But I promised myself that even if she had learned of what I’d done, I would never tell her why I’d done it, because my love for her was greater than my love for myself. I promised myself that she would never find out what her uncle had done to her from me. I would guard her from that knowledge with my life. For as long as I lived. I would rather be in prison for the rest of my life than remind her she was abused and raped by her own uncle for a whole year.
And that was what scared me the most.
Because if she had found out then, was she coming to ask me the reason I had done it? But I would never be able to tell her. I watched her suffer once, and I’d be damned to hell if I had to watch her suffer twice from the same pain.
I met her at the elevator and she wasn’t expecting that because she froze the moment she saw me. Then she forced a smile to her lips, and stepped out. I didn’t smile back. I couldn’t. I felt as if my heart was breaking inside me.
I watched her fiddle with the strap of her purse. She couldn’t meet my eyes. Without running into my arms for a hug or kiss as was her habit, she continued on her way towards my office.
We arrived in my office, and she quickly moved towards the window.
“How have you been?” she asked in a quiet voice.
“Okay,” I murmured.
“That’s good,” she said woodenly.
“Will you take a seat?” I asked.
She shook her head.
I knew I needed to sit down for this, so I headed over to my chair and lowered myself into it, and met her gaze. With every breath I took, I could feel her slipping away. Further and further. And there was not a damn thing I could do about it. It seemed as if this would be one of the last times I would ever see her in my life. After this she would become a stranger. She was almost one already.
A smile trembled onto her lips, but I could see the tears that had welled up in her eyes. Then she began to speak.
“I just had a talk with my parents and they told me that—”
She paused a few seconds to get herself together. “They confirmed that the man who killed my uncle was named Caleb Daniel Wolfe. Bradley says … Bradley says that you’re the same person. I can’t believe I'm asking you this, but ...”
She turned away as the tears rolled down her face.
I wanted to go to her. To apologize for how cruel the world was because it wouldn’t even let me show my real self to her, or allow me to keep the promise I had made to her to protect her forever. Well, I would keep that promise even though the cost of keeping the truth from her would cost me the privilege of being her man, her husband, her lover, her best-friend, the father of her children, her rock through everything life threw at her.
That, I had to live with. That, I would live with, even if it killed me.
“Are you—” she began but couldn’t continue.
/> I did nothing. I just stared at her. I drank in the sight of her. Memorized every aspect of her. Her hair, her eyes, her lips, her eyebrows, the curve of her cheek, her throat, her body, that she had covered in a drab shirt and the baggy jeans she used when she was planting.
A few seconds later she summoned up courage. “Are you the one? The same Caleb Wolfe?”
Before I could open my mouth to speak she spoke again, her voice trembling.
“Don’t lie to me. You told me that you would never lie to me.”
“I won’t,” I replied and turned my face away. “I’m sorry, Willow.”
“So … you’re saying—” Her voice had become shrill with disbelief. Even though they had told her and even though it all made sense she had come here praying it was not true.
“They’re right. I killed your uncle and set his house on fire.”
As I had expected she didn’t run from the room screaming. She stood her ground, straightened her spine, and met my gaze head on and asked the one question I could never answer.
“Why?”
I clenched my jaw. I could do this. I could do this for her.
“Why did you kill him?” she repeated, her voice rising hysterically.
I continued staring expressionless at her.
“That’s it. You’re not going to answer me?” she demanded incredulously.
I shook my head slowly. I wasn’t going to tell her the truth, but I wasn’t going to make up some lie either.
She took a step forward. “Did he do something to you or did you kill him for fun?”
I shook my head again.
“You bastard,” she screamed. “Why? Why did you come here? Was all of this just some sort of sick joke to you? Are you like one of those serial killers that go to the funerals of their victim? Did you come here to gloat?”
“I never meant to hurt you, Willow. Never,” I whispered.
“Then what were you trying to do, by fucking the niece of the man you killed? And you cannot tell me that it was all a coincidence because you knew who I was from the very beginning, didn’t you? You came to the shop and you approached me. Why? Did you want to mock him all over again?”
“No,” I said harshly.
She drew a sudden breath. “That watch. That’s my watch, isn’t it?”
I blinked at her.
“Answer me, damn you.”
I nodded.
“Did you steal it?”
I couldn’t take any of this any longer. Anymore, and I would crumble right there at her accusation … at the coldness in her gaze, at the pain that had engulfed her heart.
“Willow, please leave. There’s no need to take this any further. You know the truth now.”
“And if I don’t leave, are you going to kill me too?”
That hurt, more than she would ever know. I took a deep breath and released it slowly. I felt as if I was committing hara-kiri on myself. The pain was incredible. Without looking at her, I said. “Yeah. I just might. When I get angry I … lose control of myself. You should leave.”
I didn’t need to look at her to tell that she was shocked at my admission.
“Is that why you killed him?” she asked. “Because you lost your temper?”
“Yes.” And that was the truth. I killed that animal in an uncontrollable rage. After I had killed him I kicked his dead body to a pulp. And if I had to do it all over again, I would. “Now leave. I don’t want to turn on you too.”
Her final words came out in breathless, difficult bursts. “I can’t believe … I actually fell in love with you.”
Then she ran out of my life.
48
Willow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2zeudxXjuU
All I could hear as I had hurried away from his office was the smashing probably of every item that was in his vicinity.
I was a complete mess. My face was soaked with tears, my heart felt like it had been ripped to shreds. I felt lost and alone and afraid. I was not afraid of him, I was afraid of myself. Even though he had just admitted he was a killer, and he had killed my uncle, I still wanted him. I wanted to run to him and punch his mouth and tell him to take it back and lie to me instead.
I ran to the elevator and got on it just as I heard his roar. I turned towards the sound then. I wanted to go to him. I wanted him to love me back the way I loved him. He was my heart. I couldn’t imagine my life without him. I hit my own chest in despair.
Don’t. Don’t go to him, Willow.
With tears streaming down my cheeks, I pounded on the elevator button. When the doors opened, I rushed inside and clenched my hands until the doors shut. I closed my eyes and kept myself held tightly in check until I reached the ground floor. As soon as the doors parted wide enough to let me through, I dashed out.
There was no one about and I ran across the empty lobby towards my van. I slammed the door and drove home in a daze. When I arrived home my parents were sitting in the living room. My father was watching TV and my mother was knitting. She looked up with a smile, but when she saw me her face changed. She jumped up and took a step towards me. “What is it?” she asked, her eyes filled with concern.
I couldn’t talk. I just held my hand up to indicate that my mother shouldn’t follow me, and hurried up to my room. There I locked my door and buried myself underneath the covers. I was so heartbroken I wanted to go to sleep and not wake up.
But I couldn’t leave my parents and neither did I want them to find out how destroyed I was. I also couldn’t bear for them to think anything bad about Caleb. I knew he had done wrong, I knew he was a murderer, but he was my murderer and I still cared how others perceived him. I wanted my parents to remember him as the man I had originally presented to them. In spite of everything I was hopelessly in love with Caleb. Deep down I still couldn’t understand or even believe how I could have been so wrong about him.
My phone rang, and for a second I thought it was him. I shoved aside the covers and grabbed my phone. It was Sandra. I didn’t want to speak to her, but I was worried my mother would call her and ask what was going on so I took the call.
“Don’t tell my parents any of this business with Caleb,” I said.
“Of course not. Err, have you spoken to Caleb yet?”
“I have.”
“And what did he say?” she prompted.
My heart constricted with misery. I formed words in my mouth, but no sound came out. What had happened in his office still seemed like a nightmare that I couldn’t wait to wake up from.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “From now on, I don’t want to talk about him anymore.”
“What?”
“Look, Sandra. I’m really grateful to you for looking out for me, but I really can’t talk about him to you or anyone. Not yet. Maybe one day, huh?”
“Okay.”
“I’ll see you at the shop tomorrow.”
“See you tomorrow. Willow?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m really sorry it worked out this way.”
“It’s okay. I guess it was not meant to be.”
49
Willow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4yRUO5IR8o
By the middle of the following week, my new normal became an empty gaze and a blank face. I had completely lost my appetite and I found it hard to sleep at night. Sandra did her best to cheer me up, she made jokes, and she never referred to Caleb. I was grateful to her for that.
Around my parents I forced myself to maintain my usual, somewhat light-hearted self, but every time my mom slipped up and asked about him it cut like a knife.
Bradley continued with his deliveries but he didn’t dare face me any longer. He knew I was hurting and he didn’t dare bring up the reason why. Perhaps he was just biding his time until I recovered enough for him to speak normally to me.
For my part I couldn’t even imagine the day when I would become normal again, when I would stop thinking of Caleb. Day and night an insidious voice whispered,
‘people change. He was just a kid. Everybody deserves a second chance.” Or I would find myself wishing he would come looking for me. That he would come to me and tell me he loved me. He would ask for my forgiveness and we could be together. Then I would catch myself for being so pathetic. He had lied to me. Worse, how could I even want to be with a murderer? Especially a man who had killed my only living relative and burnt down his house.
The pain in my heart was a physical thing. I lay in bed and stared into the dark night and cursed him for coming into my life. For the first time in my life, I wished darkly that I would once again lose my memory. That all the time we had spent together was somehow erased because it haunted me like a never-ending nightmare. His laugh … the tenderness I’d seen in his eyes ... the way he had taken care of me as though I was precious beyond belief.
It was all a lie.
And that was what haunted me the most. How could the same person that had killed my uncle because he had lost his temper, return to my life and treat me the way he did? It didn’t make any sense.
I lashed out in frustration, and only at the scream that broke the silence did I realize that I had knocked over a ceramic vase. I turned to see Sandra with her hand on her chest in shock. I moved my gaze to the shattered pieces of the vase on the floor. I just stared at the broken shards dumbly. The image before me seemed to eerily and perfectly mirrored the state I was in.
It was almost a relief that something could show perfectly just how I felt inside. I picked up my phone then and dialed his number.
I had let him go too easily.
He had come into my life and broke me into pieces, and he had to find a way to put me back together. The fucking bastard.
Saint & Sinner: A Second Chance Romance Page 20