AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Does it matter?”
“Yes. It does. To me.” Lily is quiet behind me. I turn back, looking hard. “You’re not going to tell me, Lily? That’s the least you can do, don’t you think?”
It happens as these things almost always happen. It was innocent at first. They ran into each other by accident and they grabbed coffee. But then it happened again, not so accidentally that time.
“Why?” I ask. “I thought you loved me, Lily.”
“I do. I love you more than anything, Christian.”
In this moment, I find that hard to believe.
“Where did it happen?” I ask. “Here? In our bed?”
“No,” Lily insists and it’s the one thing she says that I maybe believe. “Not here.”
“Then, where?” She swallows. I see the movement of her throat. “A hotel?” I spit out, losing patience. “His car, their house? Where, Lily?”
I can see in her face that I got it right. Lily had sex with Jake in his and Nina’s house.
“How?” I ask, aghast. It disgusts me.
“Nina’s mother always needs something from her, rides to the store or to church or whatever. She gets lonely. She lives alone and is practically dependent on Nina. It drove Jake mad. Her mother always wants Nina to come stay with her, to keep her company, and Nina obliges. But when Nina was with her mother, Jake was home alone.”
I shake my head. That’s not what I meant. That’s not the answer I was looking for. I say, “What I meant was how could you do that to your friend? How could you do this to me?”
Lily just cries.
“How did you know Nina wouldn’t come home and find you with Jake?” I ask.
“Jake would look for her on his phone. He knew where she was and when she’d be home.”
“He was tracking her?” I ask, laughing in disbelief, and then I stop laughing. I narrow my eyes at her. “That’s fucked-up, Lily. That’s really fucked-up.” I run my hands through my hair, thinking of those weekend afternoons that Lily would tell me she had errands to run, but instead of the grocery store or yoga like she said, she was stealing away to meet Jake, because Nina had left to take care of her mother for the day and Jake was home alone.
I ask Lily, “What really happened that day at Langley Woods? You didn’t just happen to run into him like you said?”
“No,” she admits. “I asked him to meet me there. I didn’t want to be with him anymore, Christian. I only wanted to be with you.” Lily gets on her knees on the bed. She reaches for me, clutching a fistful of my shirt, pulling me back to her. “I’d made a mistake. I was so stupid, Christian. I messed up. I’d been regretting it for weeks, but didn’t know how to tell Jake it was through, that I didn’t want to be with him anymore. I wished more than anything I could take it back, that it never would have happened in the first place. I asked Jake to meet me there, at the forest preserve that day. He didn’t know why I wanted to meet, only that I wanted to talk, and then I told him that it was over, that whatever he and I had was through. I told him that I only want to be with you. He got so upset, Christian. He flew into a rage. He lost his mind. He threw me to the ground, he called me a whore, he said I was leading him on and sending all the wrong signals, and I got scared,” she says, crying now, like I should feel sorry for her and maybe I do, a little bit. “I panicked,” she says. “It happened almost just exactly as I said it did,” she swears, and so help me, I chuckle. I fucking laugh, a demented laugh, though there isn’t anything even remotely funny about it, other than that it didn’t happen at all like she said it did.
I narrow my eyes. “You lied to me, Lily.”
“About some things. Yes. But not about everything. I thought he was going to kill me, and then I saw that rock out of the corner of my eye. I reached for it. I dug it out of the ground and I hit him with it. I couldn’t stop myself. I just kept hitting him with it. He tried to fight me off. We fought, and then eventually he fell and I ran away. But I swear on my life, Christian, on our baby’s life, I didn’t shoot him,” she says, clutching my hands as, from downstairs, the doorbell rings following by the sound of knuckles pounding on the door, and Lily’s eyes go wide with fear.
“You have to believe me, Christian,” she begs, moaning as a pain shoots through her abdomen and she clutches it, folding herself in half over her arm. “I didn’t shoot him,” she swears, her nails digging into my skin, from the fear, from the pain, leaving slits behind, “but someone else did.”
NINA
Ryan has called three times already. He’s left three voice mails and texted twice. He wants to know if I’m okay. He wants to know if I need anything. I’ve heard from Officer Boone, who finally spoke with the florist, forcing her to give up the name of the person who sent me flowers. It was Ryan. It didn’t even come as a surprise.
“Please, Nina,” he begged on the last voice mail, his voice steeped with empathy and something else, something I couldn’t put my finger on but that made me uncomfortable nonetheless, made me get up and go to the windows in my mother’s house and pull the curtains closed. “I’m worried about you. Please let me know what I can do to help you through this. You know I’m always here for you.”
I stopped listening at that point, and then I went into my contacts and blocked his number so that if he calls, the phone won’t ring and if he leaves a message, I won’t get a notification, though before I blocked him, one of the two texts that he sent read,Where are you, Nina?
My mother’s address is listed in the White Pages.
He knows I’m not home.
I wonder if it’s only a matter of time before he finds me here.
One day and then two days pass. There are many things to do when your spouse has died, especially when he has been murdered. My mother and I go to the funeral home and make arrangements for Jake for when his body gets released by the police. I pick out a casket. I pick out a cemetery plot. I call the hospital and Jake’s office and tell them the news, listening to complete strangers sob on the other end of the line and having to console them. I call the life insurance company at my mother’s reminding. In order to initiate the claims process, I need to fill out paperwork and send in a copy of Jake’s death certificate and make a request for benefits. It’s all too much to deal with and I’m grateful for my mother’s help. Otherwise I wouldn’t do any of it.
