AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Blood. There was so much blood. And the world around her was fading. Shewassorry. For everything she’d done that led her to this moment. She wrapped her arms around her middle, curled up, let the darkness come for her.
“Why?” she whispered.
“I’m just trying to clean up the mess of this family,” said Trina.
The last thing Liza heard was the other woman’s derisive laughter.
23
Trina
“Turn off the light.”
Joshua stands rooted, staring at Liza’s still form on the ground. He’s gone pale, eyes glassy. “Y-y-you said it was only about him.”
“Thisisabout him.” How is he not seeing that?
His face. It’s a mask of accusation, of fear. I’ve seen that look before. I should have known that he’d unstitch. “You—killedher.”
Like he’s surprised that it came to this.
I glance over at Liza’s lifeless body. “Maybe.” Blood seeps silently, pools black.
I walk away from her, turn off the light, as he sinks onto the couch and dumps his head into his hands. “What have I done?”
No one likes to be confronted with the truth about what they will do when motivated by fear. But it’s only human to act in our own self-interest. The slope is a slippery one, an abyss below. It gets away from you, that morality you cling to when things are going well. It’s when the bottom falls out of your life that you really see who you are.
“What happens now?” he says, although I’m not sure he’s talking to me.
“That depends.”
He lifts questioning eyes to me, shakes his head.
Uncertainty. We don’t care for it.
But I have come to understand—in my mindfulness and meditation practice—that there is nothing certain in life but death. We may labor under the delusion that we know what the day ahead of us holds, what the hour holds. But we don’t. We may think that our death—our very certain death—is something distant and remote, an island we might never visit.
But for some of us, it’s right here, waiting.
Just pay attention. You can feel its breath on your neck.
I am the agent of uncertainty.
He rises now, pulling himself to his full height. The sadness is gone, replaced by anger. Not good.
“Sit down,” I say, summoning the voice of the lion tamer. I have intimate knowledge of all of his little isms, habits, appetites. All his secrets. I am good at that, peeling back the layers people hide behind, to find the beating heart inside. I try to imbue my words with that knowledge.
The truth. That’s what ties him to me now, even though I can feel him edging away.
I take a breath and feel it fill my lungs. I can hear the distant rumble of thunder. There’s a big storm coming.
My phone pings and it breaks the standoff between us. I press back a swell of annoyance as I read.
This has to stop.
I couldn’t agree more. All of it has been so much harder than I imagined.
That’s how it is when you strike upon an idea, something huge, something you imagine will change your life and change the world. There’s a fantasy element to that type of thinking. There has to be, otherwise we’d never embark on the big journeys.
