Instead of giving in to the fantasy or his nasty words, I flash my pearly white teeth his way.
“Okay, dear. I’m not that hungry, anyway.” I slice the apple, grab the jar of peanut butter, and leave the idiot standing in the kitchen with his threat backfiring. Make your breakfast, you cowardly bitch. I’m not here to serve you. You got away with that shit for far too long now. No more. If Anna can persuade you in a short text conversation to turn against me, then I hope God has mercy on both of your souls, because I won’t.
Medeia’s Journal
Dear Anna,
Everything you do is right. And everything I do is wrong.
I watch you feed John pizza, and he doesn’t snap on you for being too lazy to fix him something better. I watch you gorge on three slices, and he smiles, impressed, instead of rolling his eyes in disgust. Whenever you act like me, I feel a kinship with you. Perhaps we are John’s type, but you were the better option. The traits that turn him off from me turn him on to you.
That isn’t fair.
I wanted my husband. I wanted our marriage. I wanted a life.
You took it.
Maybe it’s because you didn’t have a stable life growing up. Your father ran off, and your mother was a whore sleeping around with men and leaving you home alone. I’ve come across all the times the cops were called on her for leaving too young of a child at home without supervision. She lost you to her mother, and she didn’t bother to fight.
He won’t fight for you, either.
He’ll be the death of you.
Twenty-Eight
I’m impressed that Anna can keep up with all the men without any of them realizing the other ones exist. I think about finding a way to blow her cover, but I hate to take something so precious away from a dying woman, so I watch.
I watch as she and Thomas play the same twisted love games in her apartment that she plays with John at the warehouse. I snuck into her apartment again recently and added a camera just for her own TV show. She likes to be the center of attention, so I made her the star. She makes sure to use the same things on each of them, either it’s her only bag of tricks or she doesn’t want to expose herself by slipping up in dirty talk about previous lovemaking sessions. All the one-night stands have begun to fade as Thomas pushes himself into her life, and John pushes for their plan.
Thomas isn’t a remarkable person. I’ve followed him twice now, and he’s squeaky clean. He has a good relationship with his mother and works hard at his job that doesn’t pay nearly as much as John’s, but he doesn’t seem to mind because he gets to run his own business and follow his passion. That’s what his Facebook is all about, following his passion. Thomas will be another victim of this tragic love affair. He’s too good for her, but he loves Anna all the same. He is buying her flowers every Friday on his way home from work. I watch them sit and wilt on her dining room table every week before he replenishes them for her. She doesn’t appreciate the gesture; instead, she expects it to be done.
I haven’t seen her mouth a thank you yet. I barely need to turn on the camera app when I want to watch Anna’s place because the visual of it all is readily available since she hates to draw her curtains closed — always longing to be the main focus in all aspects of her life, even the ones that are meant to be private.
She likes to undress with her blinds open, and there’s a neighbor boy across the street that appreciates this. She knows. I watch as she looks for his attention before she gets down to her task. What’s the point in shedding her clothing if it isn’t a show, as well? Anna has a small tattoo on her upper right shoulder. It looks a little bit like a bird or possibly a butterfly—either way, an animal with wings. Maybe something she’s always longed to be able to do: fly. I could make her fly. I’ll grab her by the hair and toss her out the window so she can test those imaginary wings.
The gym is still my favorite place to watch Anna. Jane doesn’t particularly care for my favorite blonde for her own reasons, but she doesn’t know mine. She makes the game a lot more fun with her intentionally cruel narrative.
“I think her tits are fake.”
“They are,” I blurt. Running and talking has become a lot easier for me. I feel everything about me growing stronger.
“How do you know?” Jane is a little out of breath today. She said she downed a bottle of wine last night in celebration of an anniversary. The way her eyes looked off into the distance when she said it, left me curious about what kind of anniversary it was.
“What’s the anniversary you celebrated last night?”
“Anniversary of my ex-husband’s death.” I think that’s why I’m so drawn to Jane. She’s blunt where I’ve needed to be censored the past ten years. I notice she never gives this attention to anyone else in the gym. Not even a simple hello to another person working out. She’s only ever talked to me from what I’ve gathered. Can she read my thoughts? Why are we drawn to one another?
“How?” Spending time with Jane has stripped me of a level of censorship, as well.
“Heart attack.” She winks at me in a smooth serious movement. At that moment, I stumble on the treadmill but gain my footing before falling and causing everyone in the gym to look at me. Could Jane be just like me? “What?” She shrugs.
“Why did you guys divorce?” My interest in Jane has peaked.
“Cheated on me,” she pants. “Hey, this is the first time you’ve asked questions about me. I’ve answered, now be fair and do the same.” She nods toward Anna.
“Her high school photo on Facebook shows her flat chested. There’s no way those are real, especially the rippling on the sides. She got ones put in that are too big for her body type. Did you fare in the divorce?”
“No, fucker took everything, but his life insurance still had my name on it. Do you know her? Are you stalking the gym trollop?” I note Jane’s comment about life insurance.
“That’s the bitch fucking my husband.” It’s Jane’s turn to stumble on the treadmill.
“Would you like to come to my husband’s birthday party this weekend? I’m not allowed friends he doesn’t approve of, and he’ll hate you.”
“Is wavy tits coming, as well?” She points to Anna taking another selfie.
“Of course, it wouldn’t be a party without her.” I laugh, but it has no humor.
Jane shuts down her treadmill. We still have ten minutes left to go, but she dismounts and leans in over the handle of mine. “What’s in your head?”
“What’s in yours?” I mimic the seriousness.
“I’ll tell you my dirty secret if you share too.” I’ve followed Jane without her knowing. I wanted to understand her character when no one was around because she kept pushing herself into my life. She is what everyone hopes to be, a great person. She feeds other people’s meters, holds doors open for the next person behind her, cries when she sees mistreatment, and I listened in from the bathroom stall of a restaurant as she helped a young girl get herself out of date that she felt unsafe in. There was also something darker about Jane that drew me in, her ex-husband’s money. How did she end up in a decent house when the old newspaper gossips about him taking everything? Jane is the only one I can tell my secret to, and I’m dying to let it out.
I slam the stop button on the treadmill. “Breakfast?”
“Drive-thru. My car,” she directs, grabbing her water bottle and towel off the treadmill.
“Done.” We walk out with a purpose, each of us dying to know what the other one is dying to tell.
The second we get in the car Jane demands to be informed. “Spill.”
“Are you wearing a wire?” I say it to break the seriousness in the air and make it lighter., but Jane lifts her shirt and shows me nothing but skin.
“Jesus, Jane, I was only joking.”
“Now, you.” She’s serious.
“Are you off your rocker?” I lift my shirt anyway, and Jane searches my back, as well. She nods when she’s satisfied, and I put my shirt back down as she pulls out
of the parking lot.
“I switched my ex-husband’s heart medication with a placebo before I moved out.” She spits it all over the dashboard, and the air in the car is thick but not uncomfortable. I nod along. “It took several months, but it caught up to him. No one knows. His family didn’t want an autopsy because of his heart history.”
“You got away with it.” It’s not a question, but a statement.
“Yeah.” She bows her head at the red light.
“Did he hit you?”
“Every single day.”
I knew this already by the way Jane flinches when people yell, and she always tries to be louder than them to put a brave face on. “John and Anna plan on making me think I’m crazy so he can put me in a mental facility.”
“How can they do that?” She stares over at me, thirsting for more.
“Well,” I say as she turns into the drive-thru lane. “When my mother passed away last year, I had a mental breakdown and was put on medication. However, it was diagnosed as situational depression, not long-term. John has been manipulating me to have me tell the doctor to raise my doses. That is, until now.” I pause so Jane can give the speaker our breakfast order. Once she receives the total and moves up one in line, she shuts the window again and turns to me. It’s too juicy to let a whisper hit the outside air.
“Ever since I saw them in a restaurant window, I’ve opened my eyes to his manipulation techniques. Now, I know everything they’re planning. I’m one step ahead. I know that they want me to be committed. I plan on stopping them.”
“How? Do you need help?” Jane, my ride-or-die, has been found.
“Thank you!” she shouts out to the worker in the window, and we park in a spot on the corner lot to talk and eat.
“Jane—” I gather her attention to my face— “I want to kill her.”
“Naturally.” She bites into her burrito.
“No. No.” I interrupt and place my hand on her forearm. “I want to kill her.” I pronounce each word slowly.
Jane doesn’t flinch. The color in her skin remains; she isn’t frightened. I watch as the wheels in her mind spin. “Why not him?”
“I thought about it. That was the original plan, but it’s stupid. They’ll suspect me. The wife is the first to be suspected. I’m not in the situation you were, John has no heart history, and I am sure I’m on no life insurance policy. I need him to be the one in jail.” I pick at my sandwich. “I want to take her from him the way he has taken my ability to be an independent human being.”
“Fair enough.” She slurps at her coffee. “Tell me more. There’s more on your face that you’re proud of figuring out. You seem confident about pulling this off. Spill.”
“John has a criminal record.” I smile at her.
“For?” She scooches up in her seat.
“Beating a man into a coma when he was in college. I thought it was a bar fight and the guy dropped the charges. That’s what John told me. When my then-boyfriend was on what I thought was a three-month trip for his graduation present, he was actually serving jail time.”
“So, he’s prone to violence. Has he hit you?” The burrito pauses in the air.
“No. He’ll shove me out of his way from time to time, but it’s more fun for John when he verbally belittles me.”
“Bastard.”
I nod and bite into my breakfast burrito.
“How can we prove that he verbally abuses you?” Jane is seeking out the flaws in my plan. She wants me to succeed. I can feel it.
“Oh, well, my therapist has taken outstanding notes on what we discuss there. I’ve made it a point to not only tell him about everything John calls me but also the fact that he doesn’t let me have a job or friends. And I’ve let him know that it’s John who doesn’t think my medicine is working and needs to be increased.”
“Brilliant.” She stabs the burrito in the air, and lettuce falls on my arm. “More. I’ll be your fresh eyes to the plan. Tell me more.” She grabs the piece of lettuce and shoves it in her mouth.
“Jane, he just got into a physical altercation at work, as well.”
“It’s the fucking universe smiling on you.” She cackles.
“They fuck in the warehouse that was supposed to be my real estate office. The one thing I worked so hard to complete classes for, he took away from me and told me I couldn’t work. That it was insulting to him.”
“And you can’t have friends?”
“No, and I’ve told my therapist as much. Not unless John approves of them. He claims that people will try to use me to infiltrate his company, but I realize it’s because if I told anyone else about him, they would point out the obvious abuse to me.”
“What is he? A spy?”
“CPA.”
“Loaded. I can tell from your house.”
I nod.
“Prenup?”
“Unfortunately.” I sigh.
“You get nothing, huh?”
I nod again.
“I’ve been there. Legal representation?”
“I tried, but the divorce lawyer I spoke to just laughed at me, even after I gathered proof.”
“No, I mean, did you have a lawyer look over the prenup before you signed?” Her coffee lingers in the air.
“No.” I’m confused.
“It may be null then.” She sips and nods.
“Huh?”
“My divorce lawyer told me that I would have had a better chance of getting our prenup thrown out had I not had a lawyer look over it before I signed. But, unfortunately, I did, and I told him I didn’t care because I loved Stewart.” Her face turns up in disgust at the words.
“Huh?” I kiss her on the forehead. “That’s wonderful news.”
“But you should still kill the bitch.” She finishes her first burrito and unwraps her second.
“You’re not a normal person, are you?” My coffee warms my hand as I wait for Jane to confirm what I already know.
She shakes her head.
There’s silence in the car while we finish our respective meals.
“Jane?” I venture.
“Yeah.”
“My father killed my mother when he was in a drunken rage. I was supposed to meet her that morning.” I stare out my window, even though I’m not looking at Jane I know she is giving me her undivided attention. “When she didn’t show up, I drove there. The medics were already there. She was on the floor in a pool of blood, and he just sat there on the porch.”
“I’m sorry, Medeia.”
“I don’t want to be like him.”
“You’re not; this is justified.” Jane starts.
“Is it?” I turn my head to her. “I always felt if I followed John’s rules for the wealthy lifestyle that I would never be tempted to commit all the crimes that my father did because he was poor. Now here I am, contemplating the worst one.”
“I can tell you aren’t your father. You’re in a survival situation in my eyes.”
“I could just blackmail John with his crimes that I have covered up.” I laugh toward my lap in reverie.
“What?”
“John beat this guy senseless one night when we were dating. I mean, I watched his eyes glow red as he kept punching him. When I was finally able to pull him off the guy, it was awful. I covered it up. John was so terrified, I know now that it is because he didn’t want to go back to jail, but I told him not to worry because I knew what to do. I cleaned up the scene. I got rid of anything that would prove that John was there. Then, I drove the guy to the emergency room and told the nurse that I watched him get jumped by two guys. I gave them descriptions far from John’s own that they wouldn’t look for him. John told me he was grateful and knew that I was the girl to marry, but I had to promise to leave my poor criminal ways.”
“Jesus.”
“I can’t use it against him, though. I thought I could.”
“Because you assisted him.” Jane finishes my thought.
“And the expertise my father gave me
in covering up crimes could make me a suspect if Anna disappears.”
“Yeah.”
“After all of that, John wants to take the rest of my life away.” I look at her, tears filling my eyes. “I can’t let him.”
She grabs my face with a hand on either side of it and shakes me gently. “Then don’t.”
Medeia’s Journal
Dear Anna,
I have tried on five different dresses for you. I’m nervous to see you tonight.
Twenty-Nine
I choose a night that John is working late — really working. I know he is because Anna is one of the first to arrive. Decked out in her best dress, hair done perfectly, and nails freshly painted. I gush over her as any good hostess would do. She brought a small gift for John. I take it from her for the gift table, knowing full well I will toss it in the trash.
“You look amazing, Medeia.” She mispronounces my name on purpose, and I think about spilling her blood here all over her sunshiny yellow dress.
“Thank you so much, Anna.” I do a small turn in my dress for her. “Only the best for a night as grand as this.” I watch as she tries to hide her growing repugnance at my trim body.
I have a black lace dress that hits just above the knees, showing off my fabulous legs. And, since John didn’t give me children in our long and torturous marriage, I show off my perky breasts in the deep v-cut neckline. The cap sleeves scream elegant, while everything else screams sex.
I am dark. Anna is light.
My nails are painted blood red to her nude color; my heels are spiked and black while her sandals are nude, as well. I make sure to show her my Louboutin shoes and gush at their price. Anna speaks my language when it comes to money.
“Just follow me, and I’ll introduce you to some people.” I hand the present to Jane with a wink. She wanted to fill in as a waitress. I told her it was nonsense, that I wanted her as my friend, but she insisted it was for the best in the long run of the plan. She could be my ears to the behind-the-scenes of the party.
Dear Anna Page 13