Page 87 of You Know Why

The bathroom door was locked. That wasn’t entirely unusual; it joined both Eden’s bedroom and the hallway. Chloe’s bedroom was across the hall, and they shared the bathroom. Eden sometimes forgot to unlock the hall door when she went to bed, so a key was hidden on the jamb above. Chloe retrieved it and unlocked the door. Flipped on the light.

Eden was in the bathtub. She was extremely pale, and the water was red.

Why was the water red?

It took Chloe a minute to understand, to comprehend, what was happening. Then she screamed for her mother.

Three deep vertical slashes in each wrist. Eden hadn’t been joking around. She’d lost so much blood, the water looked like cherry Kool-Aid.

The ambulance arrived in minutes, and the police. They thundered up the stairs, shoved her aside. Chloe didn’t want to watch, but she couldn’t help herself. The unfamiliar terms: arterial, hemorrhage, cardiac arrest, resuscitate. The frantic but measured actions: moving Eden to the gurney, chest compressions, starting an IV, oxygen hissing up her nose. The pained look on the EMT’s kind face; Officer Lee with her notepad out; her mother screaming; her father behind the wheel, tears streaming down his cheeks.

“We’re losing her, we’re losing her.”

Eden’s blood, on all of them.

Somehow, they saved her. Brought her back from the dead in the ambulance. At the hospital, the EMT commended Chloe. If she hadn’t found her sister when she did, Eden definitely wouldn’t have made it.

Malogen’s small hospital didn’t have a psychiatric unit, but the next town over did, so once Eden was patched up and stabilized, she was transferred there.

Chloe visited the first weekend after her sister’s attempted suicide. Eden wouldn’t talk to her.

Every weekend, for the next six weeks, Chloe came, and Eden refused to talk. She wouldn’t tell anyone why she tried to take her life.

But Chloe knew. Somewhere deep in her heart, she knew that while she was pledging her life and her body to Andrew Locke, her sister was in deep psychic pain, dragging a razor blade across her tender flesh.

The question was, Why?

Eden hated Andrew. That wasn’t a secret. The two of them were never going to be friends; there was always friction in their interactions.

Was she just that jealous of her little sister being the belle of the ball?

Or was it something else?

Something darker?

Chloe resolved to find out. She loved Andrew, and she loved her sister, and she needed to find a way to get them reconciled, because he was going to be a part of their lives for a very long time.

December 17

Enough of That

Trey

In the dream, he is walking next to Chloe. She is heavily pregnant, and they are at a hardware store buying paint for the baby’s room. She wants to paint the walls a neutral color, a soft green or yellow, and cover them with a mural of sweet jungle animals, but he knows in his heart the baby is a boy and is arguing for blue. Maybe a nautical theme. They stand in front of the swatches, holding them to the light, and without warning, her water breaks, and they are rushing to the hospital to meet their baby.

It is a happy dream, one he has often, and only when he’s under severe stress. His mind takes him to a safe place, to a memory of something that never happened. An alternate universe, perhaps, where he isn’t the husband of a murdered wife, forced to do things he never wanted to be a part of, constantly on alert, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

He wakes in the cheap, musty motel room off the highway, heart hammering, immediately alert. A noise—a scrape, a breath? He rolls hard to the right and just misses the whoosh of something that slams down where his head had been moments earlier.

He lands in a heap on the dank carpet and explodes to his feet. His assailant is on him a heartbeat later. Fists slam into his kidneys, knocking out his breath. He lands punch after punch himself. They grapple across the room, slam into the table that’s bolted to the wall. He feels something crack in his back, a rib, most likely, based on the searing pain.

Still, he fights, knowing this is his life on the line. Adrenaline coursing through his body helps keep him upright. He lands a kick and hears his assailant grunt in pain. He presses his advantage and takes a fist to his nose. Blood begins to gush, but he has his hands around the man’s neck now. He drives him into the wall, then onto the floor, leveraging his body weight to force him down. Squeezes the man’s neck until he feels something give way, and the gust of a last breath escaping the body tells him he’s won this round.

He stumbles to his feet, swiping his hand under his nose. It’s not broken, but it’s bleeding profusely. He gets a towel and presses it to his face, leaning his head forward so the blood doesn’t trail down the back of his throat.

He’s stayed ahead of them for several days, but they’ve found him, and he needs to leave again. Hasn’t slept more than a few hours, and he is exhausted. But the money is safe, still untouched, and for now, so is his family.

Keeping tabs on Brooklyn has been easier now that he was able to hack the hospital’s security system, read the charts, and watch her on camera. She’s had some medication issues, and she’s still confused at times, but they are getting things under control. She’s going to be okay. He just wants to be by her side, protecting her, but he can’t go home until he cleans up his mess.