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The words are all too familiar.
“It’s not his fault he’s stressed out, and he never hits me that hard,” my mother said. “He would never really hurt me.”
“Not that hard?” I reached up and lightly touched her left cheekbone. She winced when I made contact with the bruise.
“I can handle your father.”
My temples begin to throb, and I realize it’s because I’m clenching my teeth. I force my jaw to relax as Iris continues.
“I already sold the drugs, and I thought if I gave him half of what I made, he’d let it go or at least not realize I was shorting him until I got away. I thought I could handle whatever shit he dished out, but I was wrong. I was fucking wrong in a big way.”
I blink a couple of times as Iris’s story begins to collide with Seri’s account of her sister’s death. I hold my breath as she continues.
“When I handed him the money, we weren’t alone. Kyle’s partner was there along with some junkie hooker of his. I’d met the guy before but didn’t really know him. He went by the name Max, but I don’t think that was his real name. He was big, and he was fucking scary.”
“I gave Kyle half the money, and he handed it to his partner. When Max counted it, he knew it was short. I couldn’t talk my way out of it.”
She stops talking and finishes her cigarette, smoking it right down to the filter before she tosses the butt into the flames. Her eyes lose their mischievous glint, and she stares at the floor as she continues.
“They took me to the basement,” she says. “They…they tortured me, trying to get me to tell them where the rest of the money was. I held out because I thought they would kill me if I admitted to lying. I thought if I never admitted it, they’d think I was telling the truth and let me go. I suppose I was stupid.”
She pauses again, and I offer her the pack of cigarettes. She takes it, lights one, and then goes on.
“They dragged me out of the basement, right past that junkie, and threw me into the back of a car. Kyle was driving, and Max got in the back with me. He punched me in the face over and over again. He held a gun to my head. I thought he was just going to kill me right there in the car. I was going numb, my ears were ringing, and I’d been punched in the gut so many times, I couldn’t breathe well.
“Eventually, they stopped the car on a bridge over the river. Kyle came around and hauled me out of the back seat. He told me I was out of chances, and then they both picked me up and tossed me over the side. I remember hitting the water.”
Iris goes silent, and I have to prompt her to get her going again.
“Then what happened?” I ask.
“Nothing,” she says. She smashes the butt of her cigarette on the bricks near the fire.
“What do you mean, ‘nothing’?”
“Then I died.” She shrugs.
A shiver runs down the length of my spine. I’m reminded of a book I read where the narrator died at the end, and the last line of the book used the same words: “Then I died.” Yet this is a living, breathing person in front of me.
But she’s not the person who experienced this.
I narrow my eyes as I process all of this. Something still doesn’t make sense to me. If Kyle killed Iris, why is he looking for Seri? Does she know more than she’s told me about her sister’s death?
“Why is he following you now?” I ask. “I mean, what does he want with Seri?”
“Who knows?” she says. “He’s crazy.”
“Iris, that’s not helping.”
“Well, he is.”
How does this surrogate person, living inside of Seri, know so much detail? Did Seri piece together what happened to her sister? Did she speak with the junkie who was there? Did she do so much of her own investigation that Kyle is now looking to silence her?
“I guess that’s one way to end a marriage!” Iris laughs loudly, but there’s no humor in the sound.
“He was your husband?” I stare at her, open-mouthed and hardly able to believe what she just said.
“It was a Vegas wedding,” she says. “They don’t really count.”
