by Britney King
That tiny thing grew, as tiny things tend to do. As she grew more beautiful and more like her mother by the minute, it crossed my mind that inevitably she would meet a man like him. He was my worst fear materialized.
Unfortunately, I had been too busy to see. But not too busy to know that sooner or later you lose the things you love. I just hadn’t thought it would come so soon.
She’s not a girl, not yet a woman.
She’s not completely innocent. No one is.
I know that.
But there are a few things he should have known.
Like the law.
She’s underage.
She’s my daughter.
And I protect what’s mine.
This is how he ended up drugged, bound, naked, and just alert enough to be afraid. I placed him in his bathtub, where I cut into him slowly. I wasn’t precise, the way I am in the operating room. I drew it out slowly, in the way that would make sense if one were attempting to slit their own wrists. All the while, I told him the story of her birth, and how fortuitous it turned out it was the day his death was decided.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
SADIE
I didn’t see her put my husband in the tiny bathtub of his small rental apartment and slit his wrists that afternoon, but I’m certain she had something to do with it.
Also, she was right. Hearts are tricky. I know because Ann fixes my life, and the next thing I know, she is pushing me to hang myself with a resistance band. In asphyxiation, the most important component between succeeding and failing is the type of knot you use. The figure-eight knot is a good one.
Ann knows this, so I know this.
The biggest drawback to using the figure eight is that it can be extremely hard to untie. But that’s irrelevant, and in this case, a complication I won’t have to worry about. One more thing to be left for someone else. This, Ann says, is why paramedics carry knives.
If I can’t master the figure eight, she says, there’s always the bowline. A bowline knot forms a loop on the end of a rope, and the knot tightens further with any increase in pressure. This is why it is useful for hanging things.
Don’t stress, Ann says.
There’s time to figure it out, Ann says.
She tells me to imagine my funeral and work backward, so we can ensure the right number of people will be in attendance. A funeral is more important than a wedding, Ann says, because unlike marriage, you only get one shot at dying.
So far as we know.
She says it’s just a matter of time before the police figure out all of the murders are related. She says every good story must come to an end. She says I am the weak link, and coincidently linked to them all. She says she knows that I wanted Ethan murdered. She says she handles these situations for lots of spouses. It’s an easy way to get organs and money, and who cares, because everyone wins.
We go over what to say if and when the police come to my door. She’s pissed I hadn’t told her about the divorce. She says the cops might point fingers if they suspect his death might not have been entirely self-inflicted. She says I know too much, and she shouldn’t have trusted me. This is why if I want to kill myself, she isn’t going to stop me. She says she loves me dearly and that she doesn’t want me to die. But the alternative, she says, is life in prison, and she would rather see me dead than locked up. She just couldn’t bear it.
Prison doesn’t make any sense. None of this makes any sense. I was a good person when Ann Banks walked into my life. Maybe I wasn’t sleeping much, and maybe I was overeating, and maybe I wasn’t taking care of myself. Maybe I was a bit of a mess. But I was comfortable in that mess. I knew I’d find a way out of the fog. Eventually. I knew Ethan would see the light at the end of the tunnel in one way or another. As they say, life happens when you’re busy making other plans, and I was sure I’d learned what they meant the day I first ran into Ann in the supermarket.
THEY SAY FIND what you love and let it kill you. Well, it works both ways. I finished off her Danish, and then I climbed the stairs to her bedroom. Eleven steps to the top. Six stab wounds. I had them all mapped out: one for each of the “accidents” I realized she was going to try and pin on me.
I didn’t even get close to her with the knife.
“You’re too chicken, Sadie,” she said, and she was right. Turns out, I hate blood and open flesh. Turns out, I am weak. “When people are in love, they get predictable.”
Ann knows this, so I know this.
That’s why Ann and Paul are awake, waiting for me. She said I should have listened. She warned me they have cameras everywhere.
Together the two of them chloroformed me, took me to my house, where Paul later asphyxiated me in my bathroom.
The local headlines read: Devastated wife of child molester hangs herself.
But that wasn’t even the half of it.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
HER
It’s possible to make a murder look like a suicide, and it’s possible to make a suicide look like murder. She was always going to be trouble. I knew it from the start. She isn’t the first to fall in love with my wife. She’s not the first to be obsessed. To get in the way. To not let go. Ann couldn’t see it. Not like I did. She didn’t want to tie that band around her neck and pull, pull, pull—so as usual, she left that part to me. She always leaves that part to me.
The problem is her heart. That’s what Ann wanted right from the get-go. She got it. Just not in the way I thought.
Nothing with her went according to plan. Not with my wife begging me not to kill her—or rather warning me not to do it. And especially not with her handyman showing up, preventing me from finishing the job.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
SADIE
Ann visits me in the hospital. I am shocked. Not only that she visits, but that I still have all of my organs, and they’re mostly in working order.
There’s damage to my larynx, which prevents me from speaking, and the injury to my left temporal lobe, given the asphyxiation, would probably affect my speech even if I could talk. The brain injury is supposed to affect my memory as well. But since I can’t speak, well—no one knows for sure. This is why she visits.
This is why I’m not planning to let the doctors know what I know. My memory is just fine.
Supposedly, the situation to my larynx is temporary, but Ann says even if it weren’t, there’s a solution. She says they’re making medical advances everyday. She says a transplant of the larynx is always a possibility.
When my room has emptied out, she tells me about everything I’ve missed. Amelia is a mess. A distraught teenage mess. Which is basically the worst kind. She thought she loved Ethan, Ann says. The way I thought I loved him.
Ann doesn’t know what to do with her, so she sent her on one of those vacations where they take unruly teenagers into nature to sort themselves out. She’ll be gone for twelve weeks. I’ve seen documentaries about those kind of trips. Didn’t look like much of a vacation if you ask me.
Neil is as stoic as ever. Ann says he’s growing more and more like his father every day. They plan to have him intern with Paul this summer. He’s ready, she says.
She also speaks of the plans she has for Chet. She says she knows the reason I tried to commit suicide is partly his fault. She doesn’t mention the death of my husband or the ensuing media coverage that is partly hers. It makes her look good to her fans that she visits me in the hospital. Forgiveness is a beautiful thing. It keeps her books flying off the shelves. She says Chet will be our secret. Forever and always. She says that nothing can ever come between us again.
I’m glad Ann visits, actually. She provides the motivation I need to mouth my first word since she choked them all out of me. No.
I can tell she’s surprised by my reaction. This is a problem, she says to me. She says there is a remedy for all problems, and that if I’m not careful I will be at one with Ethan, Darcy, Darryl, and Creepy Stan. That, or I could end up like Kelsey. She tells me things have
not turned out well for her.
When I look away and refuse to look at her—it’s all I can really do to save myself in this condition—she apologizes.
She tells me not to worry about Chet. She says the good news is that his organs will be up for grabs, and maybe we’ll meet up again, under different circumstances. She says donors’ families often do that. She says his organs will be worth a lot. Just think, she tells me jubilantly, someone out there will have his eyes, his heart. Imagine if the two of you fell in love. How romantic would that be?
She says maybe I’ll get lucky and find a man with Ethan’s bones and Chet’s skin, and that anything is possible. And even though I like the idea of Ethan’s eyes and his heart and his skin being in and on someone else’s body—even though I like the thought of him and Chet all mixed together so I get the best parts of both of them—I can’t help but wonder where that leaves her. Is it really possible to have it all?
I close my eyes and think about it for a long time. When I open them again, it’s like I am seeing things clearly for the first time and I know what I have to do. I know my angle.
She tells me she’s sorry she’s been so dreadful about everything. She was afraid she might lose me.
Just get better, Sadie, she says, and I want to. I really, really do.
Our game depends on it.
After all, every love affair has its rituals—and you always kill what you love in the end.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
HER
Accidental shocks are a very common thing. Particularly for an electrician. He was a lucky bastard. I wanted his death to be a little more instantaneous and a little less how do you say? Leave-it-to-chance? Suspicious?
Which is why he has to go out on a high note in life. Before the ravages of time and age make him more unappealing. While he is still young and virile enough to bang multiple women at one time.
Yes, I’m aware he fucked my wife.
Ann has her roundabout ways of making things happen, you see.
He had the wind at his back and the sun on his face. Or rather in his face. His car radio was blaring Stevie Ray as he rounded the corner at sixty miles an hour. By the time he spotted the deer, he had less than a millisecond to respond. Obviously, he chose poorly. Which wasn’t surprising, given the choices he made in life. It was unlucky for him, his split- second decision both to avoid the deer and also fuck my wife. How could Sadie ever trust him after that, Ann wanted to know?
Not—how could I ever trust her.
And I certainly can’t trust her.
But that doesn’t stop me from loving her. Sex is sex. It’s fairly mechanical, fairly short. Around eleven minutes on average. Ann and I have history. Real history. We made a commitment. Till death do us part. I intend to see it out. Which is why this fellow had to die. Loose ends are dangerous in surgery, and they are dangerous in a marriage.
Sadly, it wasn’t even a real deer he swerved to avoid. Just a decoy, the kind hunters use to lure their prey. Although, by the time he realized that, if he had at all, he’d already hit the tree head on.
He didn’t die on impact. Unfortunately. His truck was old, and without airbags, and still he held on. It’s too bad he had an affinity for country roads and women who were off limits. The fast life, they call it. If only it hadn’t taken someone so long to stop for help. If only the fire department hadn’t had to work so hard to get him out. If only. If only. If only. If only, he might have lived.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
SADIE
I didn’t see Ann run Chet off the road. But I am not surprised. Ann always has preferred her endings tidy and neat.
As she wheels me through the hospital doors, she tells me it’s done. She says Chet is in the morgue downstairs, and it’s almost pleasant to think of us in the same place once again.
She pushes me out into the courtyard; it’s the perfect summer evening. As often as she can, considering her busy schedule, she comes to make sure I get to see the sunset. It’s important, she says. Endings are often new beginnings in disguise.
She sets the brake on my wheelchair, and finally I get a good look at her. She looks radiant, as I expected she would, having just come from a book signing. Taking her in, I get that familiar pang deep down in the pit of my stomach. Sometimes you sense you are holding onto something meant to be let go. I get that sense now, but I’m careful to push the thought away just as soon as it comes.
Ann says it was like that with Ethan. She said I held on too long and it very nearly ruined me. Other times, she says, like with us, when you’ve found something spectacular, you find you can’t let go. Sometimes if you’ve held something precious in your hands, in your heart, in your life—in all the places that count—you make sure you hold on tight. You do it because you know. You know what you have is so far beyond your wildest dreams that it would be nearly impossible to take anything less ever again. And what a shame it would be if you were made to; after all, the world can be a very mediocre place.
She has a point. Before Ann moved to Penny Lane, I was asleep. I was awake. But asleep. I was sleepwalking through life. But now I am awake, and now I can’t stay angry, not so long as there’s still so much to do. Not so long as the sun rises and it sets. Not so long as the future still holds so much promise. Not so long as I still have a shot at making things right.
And maybe it’s crazy to think, but even if I could go back in time and know this was how it ended, I’d do it all again. I’ve been thinking a lot and I think that I could be the kind of stand-in parent Neil and Amelia need. I think motherhood could give me purpose. Sure, I hate teenagers. But I suppose I could get over that. I’ve already gotten over so much.
The doctors say I’m progressing well in therapy. A full recovery probably isn’t a reality for me, but with the right therapies, I may be able to live on my own again. Ann says not to listen to them. She says doctors don’t know everything. As usual, she says nothing is impossible.
The book signing was amazing, she tells me. Sold out, with a line out the door and around the corner. I smile in the only way I can these days: half-lipped and half-hearted.
I suppose I could be really bitter about the way it all unfolded. I could rage against what has happened to me. What I’ve become. Brain injuries are atrocious. Every day is two steps forward, one step back. But Ann is right. How can I stay mad, when the world is filled with so much beauty?
As we stare at the purples and the blues of a day gone by, Ann reminds me that life is about the journey, not the destination, and what a journey this has been.
Without the ability to speak, it sometimes feels like all of my other senses are heightened, like everything is coming at once. When it gets to be too much, as it often does, I press a little red button attached to my IV and into my bloodstream something magically goes to help me relax. I let go, and it’s like I’m floating up, up, and away. It’s like I stop trying to contain it all in the ball of my fist, and it flows through me like a river. Now is one of those times.
Ann asked me early on if I know what the three Ps are. I didn’t then. But I learned. And now I know why. The three Ps are the key to any kind of success.
Passion: Without passion, you may as well forget your mission.
Patience: Patience enables you to stay the course even under the most difficult of circumstances.
Perseverance: Be persistent in pursuit of your goals and dreams.
Hope is not an option. It’s imperative. The three Ps are the only choice, really. Anger will not get me what I want.
The good news is, Ann is working on getting me a voice box. It’s difficult, because it has to be perfect. She says if I can’t have my own voice, that I need to at least sound like me. She tells me not to worry when I seem impatient. Ann believes short cuts are the root of all evil.
Paul is making great advances, and someday, when I get out of here, we’ll track down the man who got Ethan’s eyes and Chet’s heart. She says she plans to leave Paul —that the two of us can
live and work together. She says it will be perfect, and even though I know it’s not true, I can’t help but feel nothing but appreciation for every single lovely little lie she tells.
As the sun sinks lower into the sky, and my eyelids grow heavy from the weight of the day and the drugs, Ann tells me it’s a miracle we found each other on a planet of seven billion people. She says not to worry about any of it, she says the speech she gave tonight at her book signing was in honor of me. She told her fans not to spend a minute of their time worrying. Instead, she says we should focus on love and love alone. Love will see us through. We get one wild and precious life, and what a waste it would be not to realize what we have while we have it. She said, in the end we’re all made of star dust, and to dust we shall return. Ashes, ashes. We all fall down.
As I drift off, she tells me they probably had no idea what she was talking about, which is probably for the best. Someday, they will.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
HER
She wakes up on the operating table. I tell her not to worry, everything has gone according to plan. What I don’t tell her is whose plan. I can’t just yet—and, maybe not ever. It matters little anyhow. What’s done is done. I inject something into her IV to help with the panic she is feeling. It’s a scary thing to wake up tied down, in the dark, without your sight.
Although, fear does wonders for a relationship, I know this better than anyone. Still, I don’t want her to be afraid.
“I’m sorry Sadie couldn’t be here,” I tell her softly. “She wanted to be. She really did. But you know how she feels about blood.”
Ann is quite drowsy and it’s unlikely she’ll remember what I’ve told her later but just in case, I explain what’s happened. “You shouldn’t feel any pain? You’ll let me know though won’t you?”