Bound for Nirvana

by Kendra Leigh

  “Jackson.” My tone was low, threatening. “You have no idea the kind of day we’ve had. Trust me—right now, Ethan is homicidal. If he catches up with Sloane, he will kill him. Please… go after him.”

  In a frantic state of insanity, I paced the living room, wondering who in the hell would go to these lengths to upset things between us. I toyed briefly with the idea that Sloane had hired someone to have those photos taken, but something told me it just wasn’t his style. Then suddenly, the answer was staring me in the face.

  There was one person who would take great pleasure in causing me pain and misery. The same person who had been causing it all my life. The same person who, twenty-three years ago, hated me so much he tried to kill me. But why? And why now? Why would he lash out now? Then I remembered the night of my birthday, and Ethan packing my father’s girlfriend on a plane to Texas, her pockets bulging with a million dollar payoff. That’s why. This was payback.

  Well no more.

  My father wouldn’t get away with even one more day of hurting me. Because I was way past doling out some payback of my own.

  Within ten minutes, I’d dressed, grabbed my backpack, and was in a cab heading toward Brooklyn Heights. I spent the thirty minute journey staring into my lap at my twisting hands, the knot in my stomach tightening with every mile I grew closer to my father’s house. The cogs of my mind were rotating at an impossible rate. Every cruel and heinous memory of my childhood, combined with every atrocity I’d learned from both Ethan’s parents and Ernest Schrader, fueled my anger and my hatred for that poisonous man.

  “Hey, lady?” The cab driver’s voice broke through my odious thoughts. “I said we’re here.”

  Turning my head, I looked out of the window at the 1800’s-built townhouse, that same stifling, oppressive feeling I always got from just looking at the place creeping under my skin. It was familiar to me, in that it was the house I’d grown up in, but the oversized windows with luxury drapes and the large, solid-wood front door didn’t offer sanctuary from the rest of the world. It was in no way comforting or welcoming—because this house had never been my home. Instead, it had been a place of purgation—somewhere I’d existed in a state of torment to expiate my sins. A sin which I now knew appeared to be the single, simple act of being born.

  I passed the cabbie a fifty dollar bill, told him to keep the change, and climbed out. My father’s Mercedes and the black Volvo S60 I shared—but never used—with Adam were parked at the curb, which meant both appeared to be home.

  Opening the gate, I climbed the steps, my heart bumping loudly and aggressively inside my chest. Adrenaline pumped around my body, initiated by the blend of fear and fury, the fusion inciting conflicting urges to stay and front this out or lose my nerve and get the hell out of there. Summoning the strength and resolve I felt back at the apartment, I squeezed my eyes shut, and filling my lungs, reached out and firmly pressed the buzzer.

  Moments later, I heard footsteps and the sound of my father’s voice, made muffled by the barrier of the door. “You forget your keys?” The door opened, his intimidating frame immediately filling the space. His initial reaction was one of surprise, but it ghosted his features only fleetingly, before he quickly chased it away. As he narrowed his eyes, the edge of his lip curled up into the usual look of arrogance he greeted me with.

  “Ah, Angelica, what a… pleasant surprise.”

  The derisive implication in his voice fuelled my determination. “Oh, I think we both know there is nothing about our encounters that are ever pleasant.”

  Surprised by my tone, he hitched a contemptuous brow. “What do you want?”

  “I need to talk to you.”

  He glanced at his watch, mildly irritated. “I’ve got two minutes. I’m expecting the boys back.”

  Pivoting, he led the way through the house to the kitchen at the rear. The room had received some modernizing since I’d last seen it, but I curbed my curiosity to focus on the task ahead. He stalked into the room, snapping closed the lid of a laptop he’d clearly been perusing, before grabbing a cup and pouring himself a cup of coffee from the machine on the countertop. He didn’t offer me one.

  “So, what’s on your mind, Angelica?”

  Suddenly, I realized I had no idea how I was going to approach this. And then the words just seemed to tumble out of my mouth without warning. “Why do you hate me so much?”

  He gave a mirthless chuckle. “Dear girl, next month will be the twenty third anniversary of the day you killed—”

  “You! The day you killed my mom,” I interrupted. The muscles of his face dropped as he eyed me warily. “I had a chat with Ernest Schrader this morning.”

  “You tell yourself that if it makes you feel better, but you were the reason she was there that day.” It was as if he hadn’t heard the latter part of what I’d said. I shook my head in disbelief at his unrelenting determination to hold me accountable. “I’d warned her months before, when I finally confronted her about sneaking around behind my back. But she just couldn’t resist. She had to defy me one last time.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Are you still seeing Wilde?” He asked the question with a self-assured smirk, and I knew instantly he was trying to drive the conversation in another direction.

  “That’s none of your damn business.”

  He laughed. “So you are. Well it might be best if we continue this little chat when you’ve had the pleasure of the… in-laws.” He chuckled again. “What an interesting little chat that’s going to be. I’ll almost be sorry to miss it.”

  I wasn’t going to give the smug bastard the satisfaction of knowing how shocking the revelation of my mom and Veronica’s friendship had been for all us. “Actually, Mr. and Mrs. Wilde were very enlightening.” His eyes widened in astonishment, and I felt a smack of jubilation as he realized his juvenile little secret hadn’t gotten a rise out of me. “Yes, I learned all about your petty little jealousy. How you couldn’t bear to share Momma’s attention with anyone, not even her own daughter.” His face fell some more, this time I’d tweaked a nerve. “Is that why you did it? Is that why you pushed me in front of that car, because you couldn’t bear to share her with me, you pathetic little man?”

  “It was disgusting the amount she loved you,” he spat the words with venom. “Even the boys didn’t come close, and that made me despise you even more.” The words stung even though I’d never been in any doubt about his contempt for me. “She used to leave them here with a nanny just so she could pander to your needs. Well, that last day, I’d just had enough. I had to pry you out of her fucking arms. She just wouldn’t let go. It was her own fault. She was the one who followed you out into the road. When I pushed you, I gave her an ultimatum: you or me. She made her choice.”

  Jesus Christ, I was right. Jealousy—that’s what all this was about? He tried to kill me because he was jealous of my mother loving me. I shook my head, my eyes brimming with sadness as I stared at the pitiful, pathetic man whose uncompromising demands had forced my mother to choose the life of her child over her own.

  “It was all in your head, you sad, deluded man.” The tears spilled onto my cheeks. “Veronica Wilde told me—my mom didn’t love me any more than you or the boys. She was just afraid for me, protective of me, because you made her that way. You wouldn’t accept me. All you had to do was love me—and everything would have been alright.”

  “Love you?” His tone dripped with contempt and ridicule. “How the hell could I love you? I was prepared to share her with our children, not a mongrel. Not an illegitimate little bastard spawned from a dirty, surreptitious love affair.”

  I felt the air snatched from my lungs. “What?”

  Suddenly, he began to laugh, a deep mirthful laugh echoing off the walls of the room. “You still don’t get it do you?” He paused, his expression hardening with deep-seated hatred “You’re not mine to love, you stupid girl. Have you never asked yourself why the two of you were there, that day a
t the park? You were there to meet your mother’s lover—your father.

  “You see, I know because I intercepted the love letter that your mother sent arranging to meet him. He was supposed to come to say goodbye, but I never gave him the chance.” He stuck out his bottom lip in mock sadness. “Still, at least you’ll get the chance to get to know your daddy now. He’s a very successful man, by all accounts. I believe you’ve met. Goes by the name of… Richard Wilde.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  The ground began to shake underneath my feet, the room swaying, my vision becoming blurred. I backed up toward the door, desperate to escape from the shrill, poisonous laughter reverberating in my ears at a deafening volume. Stumbling my way through the hall to the front door, I heard the devil’s parting words. They tore through my soul like the piercing, plunging point of a dagger.

  “Give your brother my regards next time you’re screwing him, Angelica.”

  Breathe! Breathe!

  I repeated the instruction in my head over and over, a deflecting mantra to keep the evil words from embedding into my mind, where I knew they would stay forever.

  Breathe! Breathe!

  Somehow, I managed to scramble through my backpack and swiftly retrieving my keys, succeeded in making it to the Volvo before my legs gave way.

  Breathe! Breathe!

  By rights, that was the day I probably should have died. My soul had been plunged into the depths of perdition, damned for all eternity. But somehow my physical being managed to swerve the infernal forces of evil. Instead, I awoke to a fate far worse—Hell on Earth.

  I was disorientated at first. The daylight that seeped through the slithers of space in the blinds was barely enough to light the room. With immense effort, I pushed my head up off the pillow where I’d lain face down, and the room began to spin. Immediately, I squeezed my eyes closed as my stomach began to roil from the stench of vomit lying in a pool at the side of the bed. The pain that sliced through my head was akin to the sensation you might expect from an ice pick driving deep into your skull. When the dizziness finally abated, I opened my eyes. And as my mind clambered through the debris of memories, my living nightmare began all over again.

  In a trance-like state, I’d driven out to Claudia Miller’s house in the Hamptons. Somehow, I had a vague recollection of stopping at the side of the road to vomit and my cell phone screaming at me for the umpteenth time. When I’d finished heaving up my stomach contents, I’d launched the phone into a nearby field, unable to bear even the sight of the letters that spelled out Ethan’s name on the vibrating, illuminated screen.

  Using the keys and codes that Claudia had sent to me via Abby, I’d gotten through the main gateway, but unable to face the immensity of the house, had made my way around back to the pool house.

  After that, everything was pretty much a blur. I don’t know if I stopped off to buy the surfeit of vodka bottles on the way, or if I found them in the pool house, but after downing the greater part of a bottle in my quest for insentience, I’d finally attained it.

  Now, as my surroundings came into focus and the alcohol-induced haze began to clear, I was hit with the cold, hard reality once again. Suddenly, I was seized with panic, fear and isolation closing around me like a suffocating fog—a cold, malevolent cloak of evil. My body began to quake uncontrollably, my chest squeezing painfully as I gasped for breath that didn’t seem to exist.

  Breathe! Breathe!

  The mantra began again as I closed my mind to the impending doom and forced myself to focus on drawing in and expelling the air from my lungs. I don’t know how long it took for the panic attack to pass, but eventually it subsided, the urge to vomit swiftly taking its place. It hit me like a freight train, my stomach churning violently as I staggered into the bathroom. I dry heaved, my stomach convulsing painfully, but ejecting nothing but the acrid taste of bile.

  Unable to bear the pain in my head, made worse by the retching, I found my backpack to search for Tylenol and swallowed them with the remnants of the vodka bottle. Then I crawled back to the bed and folding my arms around myself, I began to rock. Breathe! Breathe! You’re okay, honey. It’s gonna be okay.

  Thoughts of Ethan splintered through my mind, my heart shattering into tiny pieces as I pictured him pacing the rooms of our home, frantic with worry. I wondered if he knew what I knew, and if he did, would he hate me, be disgusted by what we’ve done? I pushed the thoughts away, hating the way they felt and the fresh wave of fear they incited. What terrified me the most was that I would never be able to think of him or love him in the same way again.

  Without further thought, I opened another bottle of vodka and began to drink, gulping the pungent liquid until my vision blurred and my eyes closed. I needed to sleep. Needed to seek a place where I could forget—oblivion. A place where all this would go away, back to… before. But as my mind began to shut down and I was finally on the brink, I suddenly began to panic again, petrified that sleeping would erase all the memories I had of before. That when I awoke, all I would remember was this—sheer, miserable, heart wrenching hell. I opened my mouth to speak before sleep finally took me, the barely coherent words a softly whispered prayer.

  “I’d rather be dead.”

  In my cataleptic state, I had a distant awareness that the light outside had come and gone several times, days fusing with nights. It didn’t matter. I knew that in my devastated, isolated, fucked-up world it would always be dark, no matter the time of day.

  Over the days, I sank deeper into the murky recesses of my mind, engulfed in the all-consuming agony of grief. Other than the occasional gulp of water, nothing but vodka had passed my lips, leaving me unable to form coherent thoughts, and my body barely able to function. If life came with a self-destruct button, I’d pressed it. I existed, but only just, as if I were suspended between life and death in this otherworldly place, teetering on the edge of insanity. Coveting it—yearning for it.

  Dreams had been subdued by the vodka, just fragmented threads of garbled thoughts, really—not much more than unsubstantial floating vapor.

  Until finally, the vodka was gone. And the nightmares began.

  Tilting my little hand, I leaned over the arced wall of the bridge, allowing the last pebble to roll off and topple down into the pond.

  Splash!

  Mommy checked the fingers on her watch again. She looked upset and it made my tummy hurt.

  I wanted E.

  “When will E be here, Mommy?” My voice was meek, puerile—that of a child.

  “Soon.” Her long mahogany hair was blowing in the wind, like the tail ends of a kite. It was funny.

  Something caught my eye, and I looked over her shoulder hopefully, to see if I recognized the person coming into view. He was moving fast toward us, his menacing gait spine-chillingly familiar. It was him. I looked down at my shoes quickly and hurried to Mommy, burying my face inside the warm safety of her coat. I could hear shouting, him cursing, telling Mommy she was a cheating bitch.

  I wanted E.

  Suddenly, I felt a sharp pain in my arm, my shoulder being tugged and yanked. The bones in my fingers felt like they were being crushed as he grabbed it in his big, gnarly hand and began to tug me away from Mommy. His walk was far too fast, much faster than my run, and I was struggling to keep from falling, my legs moving frantically as he dragged me along.

  I shouted for Mommy, her sweet voice trying to soothe me when she called, “You’re okay, honey. It’s going to be okay.”

  My feet seemed to be getting tangled, like my silly rag doll’s, as they tripped over each other, the toes of my lovely, red shoes scraping over the stones on the footpath. Above the noise of my pounding feet, I could hear him, his booming voice shouting cruel words at Mommy and making her cry. Fear tugged at my senses, the horrible clawing feeling that something really bad was going to happen.

  I wanted E.

  Then suddenly, I could hear them—the spotted beasts. Although I could barely keep up with him, I snatched a quick
look over my shoulder. They were barking and growling, straining against their leash, and I prayed that it would hold because if they caught me this time, I feared they might eat me alive.

  As panic overwhelmed, I tried to run faster, but it hurt too much. My arm hurt from him dragging me, my legs burning from the frantic speed, my chest aching, because there just was no puff left. I thought my heart was bursting.

  I wanted E.

  Suddenly, the pain in my arm and shoulder became unbearable, a tearing, burning pain as he tugged me away from Mommy’s helpless, reaching hands and flung me with all his might into the road. I could hear Mommy screaming, and out of the corner of my eye, a car careening down the road toward me. Suddenly, I felt a shove in my back, my neck jolting painfully as my feet left the ground and I soared through the air.

  I hit the floor, my hands first, sliding and slapping against the concrete, and then my face, my chest, my knees, colliding heavily, scraping through the dirt. My teeth bit painfully into my lip and suddenly my mouth was filled with a warm, nasty, salty taste. My first taste of blood.

  Then I heard the loud booming, crashing noise as it pierced the air, people screaming, the sound of footsteps running. I couldn’t hear Mommy anymore.

  Every bit of my body felt broken, but worse than the pain was the fear that settled inside my soul. Too afraid to look up—too terrified to see. I just wanted to curl into a tight little ball, like the spiders did when E tried to pick them up. Because somewhere deep inside, I knew that after today, nothing would ever be the same.

  Pulling my knees to my chest, I folded my arms around myself. My hair was cold and wet, matted to my face, the wind an icy blast, but inside my clothes my skin was hot and clammy with a fine sheen of sweat.

  I wanted the noise to stop.

  I wanted to be safe.

  I wanted E.

  I tucked myself into a tighter ball and peeked through the narrow slits of my half-open eyes. But I dared not look up, or glance around, so instead I kept my gaze focused on my shiny, red shoes, scuffed at the toes.