by P. J. Vernon
“Oliver,” he whispers. “Please.”
A large sewing table stands to my right. Spools of fabrics and threads and ribbons and strings cross it every which way. Scissors and pincushions. An antique sewing machine—a pricey Singer.
“Open up.” Nathan hardens his voice. “Now.”
The knob turns and stutters again. I’m back to zero signal bars, but I predial 911. Maybe Victor’s call was a bluff or maybe he really fed the operator life-endangering lies, but regardless, I need help. Urgently.
“Mother did this, you know. All of it. To break us up and take the house back. You see how far she’ll go now.”
I open my mouth to speak, but only silence escapes.
“I tried to keep it quiet because I was scared it’d trigger you. I should’ve been forthright about the move, but”—he hesitates—“you should’ve told me about Hector too. Neither of us has been honest.”
Confront. Fear pulls my heart up my throat, and I try to swallow. Confront, dammit!
“Why?” I stutter. Unsure he’s heard me, I step closer. “Why did you do this?”
“You mean why did Mother do all this?” Nathan’s holding up the buckling facade. I picture him, hands on his knees, knuckles bloodless, as bricks crack and crumble around his aching back.
“Why did you message me as”—Kristian’s name won’t come to my lips—“as him?”
“What’s gotten into you?” He becomes condescending. He’s perfectly willing to pick up the charade where we’d left it. Ignore the smoldering wreckage that’s us.
“You know exactly what’s gotten into me!”
“Open the fucking door!” Nathan bangs so hard, the whole thing might come off its hinges.
My voice raises to match his. “Tell me!”
“Don’t be stupid. You don’t know what you’re accusing me of. I protect you.” There’s a tremor to his words that sounds like a veneer cracking. “You cheated. You fucking cheated.”
“Give me the truth!”
“The truth? The truth is you cheated, and you lied. You lied. Over and over again. You are a liar, Oliver!”
The accusation crackles and sparks with the heat of a branding iron. Searing my skin because he’s right. Another jolt of the door. The brass hinges creak. Their strength is unknowable.
“MeetLockr.” Nathan won’t stop. “A fucking bathhouse?”
So he did know. All of it. I’m so damn stupid to think he wouldn’t. After finding Wealth Wallet? Seeing the lengths he went to for information? Then there’s the report. He forced me to file a police report he knew was fake. To teach me a lesson? Teach me some sadistic lesson!?
“Answer me!” His scream strikes like a crack of lightning. Flickering, splintering, scorching. It sets another thought on fire: an escort. When Detective Henning called, she said Kristian—Olav—worked as an escort. Minutes ago, Nathan accused Kathy of paying to have me mugged.
I lower my head, narrow my eyes. An impossibility shifts its shape, coalesces into quite the opposite. Nathan’s and Kathy’s agendas couldn’t be more different, but the horrifying fact is, my attack serves both.
When I rifled through Nathan’s briefcase, his pad wasn’t all I found. Vibe, the city paper. Not the whole paper but specific pages. The classifieds. Ads for equipment and services. Teachers needed. Escorts.
“Did you”—the insides of my cheeks stick to my teeth—“hire him?”
On the door’s far side, movement stops. Nathan’s thinking carefully. Plotting a next move like he’d plan a surgery. Cutting delicately because nothing is sharper than a scalpel’s edge. I won’t lie still, and it all might unravel into a hatchet job.
“You needed it, Oliver. You were close to relapse.” Notes of anguish replace contempt. “We worked so hard to keep you sober. This is our journey, don’t you remember? The both of us.”
Blood falls from my face, pools at my feet. Spots, purple and fleeting, form before my eyes. The ground grows unsteady, churns into a rolling boil.
Nathan hesitates, tries again, his voice softer. “He was supposed to startle you. Just frighten you a little. Scare you from risking everything again. From leaving me.”
The chattering in my teeth spreads, and my entire body shivers. “You hired Kristian to scare me?” I wrap my hand around my throat. Still bruised. Still sore.
“I did it because I love you. You needed me, and it wasn’t meant to go that far. How was I supposed to know he was a psychopath?” Nathan’s voice escalates. He’s convincing himself, making excuses for both of us.
My shock evolves into sharp anger. “Because he took your fucking money to strangle me!”
“I know.” Nathan’s voice plunges to a whisper as though the Kleins or Tom or both were coming upstairs after us. “I’m sorry. But I fixed it. I made a mistake. I misjudged.”
“A mistake!?”
“I fixed it, okay? Kristian took it too far. Way too far. Tilly went missing. I fixed it.”
His prescription pad, and the impression his pen left. The ghost of the last drug he wrote for. Detective Henning said Kristian took bad dope, and nothing makes dope more bad than fentanyl.
Nathan’s sudden eagerness, his abrupt decision to leave town. To skip town. He returned home late the night he suggested we leave to recoup what we’ve lost. He returned from dinner with Tom and Hector haggard and disheveled. He looked like he…
I cough. “You killed him that night?”
“I fixed it.” He’s stuck on a loop. “I fixed my mistake.”
Nathan hired an escort to scare me, and when it spiraled out of control, he killed him. Took a life as easily as Kristian had. The man I live with and love is a killer.
My silence tears at Nathan. He’s coming apart. His voice rattles. No longer measured or controlled. It’s a pressure-plummeting, artery-nicking catastrophe. “Let me in, Oliver. Open the door.”
I press call. No service, but I try 911 anyway. A vain attempt, but one that represents a trigger pulled. I’m in far more danger now.
Low voices on the other side remind me I’m not alone in this house with Nathan. I tell myself this means things can only escalate so far—but I don’t know that’s true.
“We’ll be down soon,” Nathan calls out, before hissing at me. “Unlock the fucking door.”
I press call again. And again.
I’m trapped. Even if the call connects, how long will it take to get my story across? How long before the police get here? Nathan’s island is nothing but a bigger version of Kristian’s elevator.
“Look, Nathan,” someone says. I think it’s Tom. “We can talk all this shit out, okay?” He must’ve mustered some courage because his voice is getting louder.
“You’re damn right we can.” Nathan’s tone holds an edge, one I’ve not encountered. An edge so sharp and so poisonous, I wonder if anyone’s lived to remember hearing it.
“I’m not losing my career over pills.” Tom’s close. Bodies move. Nathan’s. Maybe Tom’s. “Or a dick pic for that matter!”
“Actually, Tom.” Nathan’s shoes scuff on the hardwood. “You sure as shit are.”
“Jesus! What are you—!” Tom’s voice breaks. Something weighty strikes the door, thuds against the polished steps. Tumbles heavily down the staircase.
Silence.
“Now look what you’ve done,” Nathan says coldly. “You got Tom hurt. Open the door before you hurt someone else.”
A boundary is shattered. Nathan’s lost it. He’s out of control.
“Why do you hurt people, Oliver?”
I call 911 again. No connection.
“You hurt me. You ruined my family. After I gave it all up for you, but that wasn’t good enough, was it? Because that’s how selfish you are. You just take and take and take. You’re a black hole of neediness and you never stop taking.”
“Guess I’m the fool for believing you. When you said you’d changed.”
Another bang.
“People don’t change, do they? Really, I shouldn’t be surprised you’d take so much.”
And another.
“I mean, you stole your mom’s painkillers while she was dying of cancer!”
Bang!
Everything inside my head collides wildly. I pace, searching, scouring the room, but for what, I don’t know.
“Open the goddamn door! I’m not fucking asking again!” Nathan pounds it with his fists. The doorknob turns violently, shakes and shudders. A sharp pop. Splinters fly as the bottom hinge tears from the wall. He’s kicking down the door!
Pop! Pop!
Destroying the first hinge makes the second all the easier. The small of my back bumps against the sewing table.
Pop!
The door rips free and drops inward. Nathan rushes over it like a breaking wave. Full-body press. Eyes aflame.
My vision blurs, everything whirls as I swoop, duck.
He grabs hold of me. Vise-like grip on my arms. I raise a fist, and he catches it. I kick out and find only air. His hands latch on to my neck, his weight falls as a wall of cement. My chin rests in the webbed groove between his thumb and index finger. My throat burns as fingers close around it again.
No out. Nathan won’t give me one this time. Not like he did in Indiana. No more patience. No more holding my hand, walking me through withdrawals and cravings. Dropping me off at NA meetings and interviews.
My windpipe buckles. No more. Over. Done.
Shadow swallows everything. Light vanishes in the wake of sticky fog. Steam. Condensation runs down the walls, down my face. I’m in Kristian’s rented room. The Cheshire Cat, off in the distance. For a flash, a gaping wound opens across Nathan’s cheek. Jagged like the teeth of a metal key. Black, inky blood pours from it.
Nathan’s red eyes bulge. He shakes, and the vein cutting down his forehead swells. So fat it might burst.
“I love you,” he sobs through his teeth.
I move my mouth. Writhe like a skewered worm. Try to take in air. Speak. Anything.
“I always will.” Our eyes are close, and tears gather in Nathan’s. “Know that, okay?”
The tips of our noses touch. One hand crushing my throat, Nathan’s other arm wraps behind my head in an awkward choke hold. He presses his cheek to mine, cries in my ear.
“I’m so sorry.” His breath is warm, and his words stuttering and honest.
Pressure builds in my skull. My brain winds down. My vision is tunneled and blurred. My only support is my palms, flush on the sewing table. His body shakes with mine.
On the table behind me, my index finger brushes a metal loop. I hook it with my pinky.
Crying, he sucks in breath.
Nathan squeezes tighter. He tilts my head up and down for yes. It’s all the absolution he needs to finish it. I start to close my eyes when something moves behind him.
His lips quiver, about to speak the last words I’ll ever hear.
“Stop, Nathan!” Kathy screams in the doorway.
His eyes dart over his shoulder. Only for a second. A slice of time in which his grip lessens before his brain says tighten up.
I drag the metal, take hold of its handle with a balled fist. A pair of sewing shears, Kathy Klein’s sewing shears. Like a knife, I thrust in a sweeping blow.
Nathan doesn’t see the blades. They enter his throat from the side. Plunging deep. Past skin, through sinew and muscle till they strike bone.
His mouth hangs open in silence, but his eyes howl. His hold softens, and the dam breaks. Air floods my lungs. They expand in stuttering heaves, ballooning back to life.
I’ve struck something inside Nathan—something important. A geyser of blood, hot and syrupy, erupts where the blade vanishes in his neck. He gurgles as if to speak, but his mouth is stuffed with soggy cotton. His tongue is limp.
As I grab my throat, Nathan collapses to the floor. Falls on his knees and tips over sideways. Blood still welling from his neck, he’s dropped like a curtain, unveiling Kathy.
“Oh my god!” She crawls to him, hands and knees deep in the gathering pool.
Victor emerges behind her. “Nathan!”
I bring the back of my hand to my mouth. Wipe saliva dangling like a spider’s silk thread. My chest is still on fire as Victor scrambles to his wife’s side.
“What have you done?” he shrieks. Our eyes meet, and for a second, he tenses as if to lunge. To tear the shears out of Nathan and push them into me. But he doesn’t.
Because now he can’t.
Through the window at my back, pulsing lights from the jetty. They paint the room—the walls, the floor, wailing Kathy, who straddles her son and pulls her hair—in sinister strobes of red and blue. He’d called the police. The response to his exaggerated report, now wholly appropriate.
“We can save him!” Kathy.
“My son! What the hell have you done to my son!?” Victor.
Nathan’s motionless on the ground. I can’t look at him. I turn a half circle, steady myself on the edge of the sewing table. Vomit works its way up my throat. Chin down, I raise my eyes.
On the darkened jetty, the line of emergency lights snakes its way to the house. Sirens scream. Brakes squeal. Steel doors open and shut. Voices shout.
“You killed him!”
Above, a quilt of twinkling stars covers the sky. An eerie beauty I appreciate for a cosmic second before my neck begins to throb and the questions come, fast and furious.
“You killed Nathan!”
What will the police do?
“You killed my son!”
Who will they do it to?
56
The uniformed officers enter first, hands close to the guns on their hips. Then paramedics. They hoist Tom onto a stretcher. Blood drips from his left ear. His temple struck something, maybe the railing, when Nathan threw him down a flight of stairs.
I’ve been separated from Kathy and Victor. I only notice Kathy’s cream blouse when it’s soaked with blood through and through.
By the time the plainclothes cops arrive, the investigators in unmarked cars, I sit on the same love seat from earlier. The house crawls with people snapping photographs and making notes and barking on phones. To my left, gloved hands unplug and bag the fried Wi-Fi modem.
“Can you tell me your name?”
A paramedic clicks a pocket light.
“Do you know where you are?”
It’s bright in my eyes.
“What’s today’s date?”
He pulls the light from my face as Nathan’s brought downstairs. A bag’s been zipped over him. His vacant eyes mercifully covered. It takes four uniforms to keep Kathy from charging the gurney that carries him out.
“I’m going with him,” she screams. “He can’t go alone!”
I say nothing. I don’t intend to either. At least not yet. People speak to me—and to the Kleins—but it’s hard to keep up. Snippets about shock or injuries. Keeping us all apart must be important because it comes up often. I lose time.
“Are you able to stand?”
I give a nod, push myself up.
“I can take him down in mine,” an unseen voice says.
“Nah,” another replies. “She’s takin’ him in hers.”
At that, my focus sharpens in time to see someone I know walk through the Kleins’ front door. Behind her, yellow police tape snaps in the wind. Her face is wreathed in flashing red and blue.
Detective Rachel Henning’s eyes hold something close to sadness.
* * *
• •
A blanket, thin and scratchy, wraps my shoulders.
I sit in a cramped room. Maybe it’s an office. Something about giving a statement. A hard voice snaps me to the present.
“Detective Henning,” it starts. “You got everything you need in here?”
“I do,” she says, setting her badge on the red folder beside her. “Thanks for your hospitality, Lieutenant.”
The door shuts. My arm trembles as I reach for a bottled water.
“You’re safe now, Oliver.”
“I’m not.” The plastic crinkles and shakes as I sip. An unanswered question surfaces. “How did you know?”
“When you called me back.” She fishes in the pocket of her blazer. “You said Kristian had been texting you, but I have his phone. There’s nothing outgoing to your number. There is other stuff we need to talk about.”
“But how did you know I was here?”
“Nathan’s private Instagram.” She spins her phone around, open to an account I’ve never seen. “He posted a photo the night before and tagged it Carolina Low Country. It didn’t take a warrant to find a Klein address in South Carolina.”
The filtered black-and-white is of a man sleeping. The malbec on his nightstand is empty. I know his rest is peaceful because he’d just proposed. Other captions include #InstaLove, #HeSaidYes, and #LoveIsLove. No surprise who posted the very first reply, the content of which is cruelly funny.
@Kath_Klein: ?
I also know the photo of me was surreptitious, and I shiver. “Didn’t know he had Instagram.”
“I don’t think you know a lot of things.” Detective Henning pockets her phone. “About Nathan.”
“You’re right.”
“I’ve been gunning for a warrant for his devices, but hunches don’t cut it. Not before you called me back.”
“That’s why you played along the whole time.” I could almost laugh. Almost. “You didn’t keep Nathan in the dark to spare me.”
“I did not, but I need to fill in the gaps.” Detective Henning goes on to ask the exact question Dr. Regina Purvis had five years ago. “What happened, Oliver?”