by Mia Ford
I haven’t asked for an explanation since Saturday. I’ve been resigned to the fact that I’ll probably never get an actual explanation off Jessica. I convinced myself that I didn’t want to hear it. Even yesterday, when I threw it back in her face that we could never have a relationship while she was still deadest on keeping her secrets, I didn’t tell her I wanted to know.
A thought occurs to me and I narrow my eyes.
“Is this because I told you we can’t be together while you won’t tell me the truth?” I ask, my voice low but angry.”
“No,” she denies instantly. “I’m not telling you this in the hopes that we’ll get back together. I think you were right, that jumping into a relationship after everything that happened would be stupid. But you’re also right in that you deserve to know how it all happened. I should have told you at the time…but I didn’t. If I’d just talked to you…”
She shakes her head, frustrated. It’s surprising that she’s upset by the very same thing that has played on my mind these last few years. I’m upset that she didn’t at least talk to me before she left. Apparently, she’s also upset that she didn’t say anything.
I open my mouth, then close it. What am I going to say to her? “It’s okay”? Because it’s really not okay, not at all. I’m not saying I didn’t play a part in everything, but it all came to a head with her actions and her refusal to explain herself. If she hadn’t just left, if she had actually just spoken to me and explained what was going on her mind…
I’m not saying we would have stayed together. Maybe we wouldn’t have, and it would have hurt, but it would have been okay in the end. Instead, we’ve both been stuck in a three-year limbo, neither of us able to go back or move on while we were stuck in a whirlwind of feelings and “what ifs”.
So, no, it isn’t okay.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask.
More than wanting to know what had caused our sudden split, I’ve always wanted to know why she hadn’t felt like she could come to me. Before, we had trusted each other with everything. So what had changed?
Jessica looks away. She fiddles with a hole in her jeans and drags her cloak tighter around her. Owen stirs on her lap, as though subconsciously noticing his mother’s distress, and she glances at him before obviously forcing herself to relax.
“Do you remember when you joined the Roughshod Rollers?” she finally murmurs. “You were so excited…and I was excited for you. You didn’t have a lot of friends, really, and now you were going to meet a lot of people with the same interests as you.”
“Yes…” I say slowly, wondering what any of this has to do with what happened. I narrow my eyes. “Did you get paranoid because you thought I was joining a gang?”
“What?” Jessica asks, and she’s so genuinely startled that I relax. “No, of course not! You were always so happy. So I was happy for you to join them. Then, one night, we were talking about it, and you told me that your group of friends was almost as large as it was before we got together.”
I don’t like to think about that time. I purse my lips together.
“And?” I ask, my voice sharper than necessary.
“It just…got me thinking,” she says with a shrug, sighing. “You never spoke much about your past. I knew that you were in the foster system and that you didn’t have a great time there, but I didn’t know anything else. It was a little puzzling. But I put it out of my mind. I figured you’d tell me when you were ready. And then…”
She falters. And, with a blast of understanding, I know where this was going.
“You found my folder,” I breathe.
The folder in question… I don’t know why I keep it. Maybe to remind me what happens when I make the wrong choices and trust the wrong people?
Jessica flinches.
“I didn’t mean to,” she says hurriedly. “I was cleaning in the study, and I knocked it over. I picked it up…and some old newspaper articles fell out. I was curious, and then…”
I carefully move Owen’s feet off my lap and get up abruptly. Jessica bites her lip as I stalk away.
I don’t know what I’m thinking right now. Almost mechanically, I rummage in the cupboard in my bedroom, finding the old folder I was looking for, and take it back to the living room. Jessica’s eyes go wide at the sight of it.
“This thing, right?” I ask quietly.
“Yeah,” Jessica says, closing her eyes. “I found the one…the one that says ‘Murder Suspect Still at Large’.”
My breath shudders in my chest. After all these years, my past can still catch up to me. No matter what I do, it continues to ruin my life.
“And you read it,” I say dully.
“All of them,” Jessica says, her voice barely audible. She smoothes Owen’s hair off his forehead. He’s still sleeping, blissfully unaware of the tension between his parents. “There were so many, and your name was on them all. Then I saw the arrest report. And some of the pictures…” She shakes her head. “It didn’t explain everything. I was so confused. What had happened? So I…”
She loses her voice again. But she’s come too far to stop now.
“What did you do?” I ask. I feel cold.
“I went to Alex,” she whispers.
Alex, who had looked me in the eye and apologized. Who had somehow managed to ruin my relationship with Jessica. Has he known, every time he looked at me, that he played a hand in Jessica leaving me?
“Alex… He didn’t want anything to do with it,” Jessica says with a hollow laugh. “He scolded me for even thinking the worst. But I begged him. I needed peace of mind. I needed to know what happened because some photos and some reports weren’t enough. You weren’t in jail, so were you innocent? I begged him and begged him until he finally gave in. He said…” She swallows. “He said he’d only do it if I talked to you about it too; he said you had a right to defend yourself.”
The fleeting anger that I felt toward Alex disappears, leaving me feeling empty and tired.
“He’s a good friend,” I say quietly.
“He is,” she says. She closes her eyes. “He kept me updated on the search for information. Then, one day, after he told me he had tracked down the arresting officer, he suddenly stopped telling me anything. And then he said he had to drop the case. He said there was nothing to worry about and to stop thinking about it, to talk to you instead.”
“I guess you didn’t do that,” I said with a wry lilt to my voice.
“Obviously,” Jessica sighs. “I figured he must be hiding something. So I broke into his office.”
I remember that. Alex had been so upset, and we never figured out who it was. Oddly, nothing had been stolen. It’s funny that I finally solve that little mystery three years later.
“I took pictures of all the files he had on you, and left,” Jessica continues. “Then I went home.” She looks down. “I don’t know if I got everything he had. But what he did have was pretty damning. The interview with the arresting officer was the worst. He…”
“I bet he had nothing good to say,” I snort when she trails off. “He hated me. Thought I was guilty.” I slump. “You did, too.”
It isn’t a question. None of this would have happened if she had thought I was innocent.
“Yeah,” she says inaudibly.
My mind is blank. I can barely comprehend what I’m hearing. Part of me knows that I should be hurt or upset, but I’m just numb. Jessica wrings her hands beside me, anxious.
“If you move Owen now, would he wake?” I ask quietly.
“What?” Jessica asks, thrown. “No…he’d probably sleep through me taking him home at this point.
I nod. “Good. I’ll call the two of you a taxi.”
Jessica blinks at me. “But…”
“No.” I barely recognize my own voice. “I need some time to think. Please leave.”
I can almost hear her gearing up for a fight. She’s right in that we probably really do need to talk about this. But I can’t bring myself to, righ
t now. I’m too cold.
After a moment, maybe seeing this, she settles down.
“Okay,” she says quietly. “Don’t worry, I’ll call the cab. We’ll wait in the lobby.”
I watch as she gathers up Owen and takes him to the door. When she gets there, though, she turns around. Her eyes are shimmering.
“I am sorry,” she says.
I stare at her. When long moments pass with only silence in reply, she turns and leaves. The door shuts quietly behind her.
And then I’m alone, only the movie frozen on the screen on the television. There’s a cartoon girl there, and she’s crying, shedding the tears that I can’t right now. Slowly, I lift the remote and turn the television off.
Then I get up and go to my room. I need to sleep.
I need to forget the rest of the world for a little while.
Chapter Twenty
Grant
Unfortunately, the numbness didn’t last as long as I would have liked it to. I wake up the next morning and my body is so full of roiling emotions that I almost want to knock myself out to avoid them. But I stagger out of bed instead and head to the bathroom to splash my face with water.
I had nightmares all night. In my dreams, Jessica is shouting at me, accusing me of being a murderer, her finger pointing imperiously at me. She won’t listen when I tell her that it was all a mistake, that I was innocent, or I still would be in jail. Instead, she tells me that she’ll be taking this matter to the courts; she doesn’t think a murderer should be allowed visitation rights to her son and she regrets ever telling me the truth.
That was when I woke up.
I look up into the mirror. My eyes are tired, and there are deep bags under my eyes. I try to remember what day it is. It’s Friday? Or Saturday? Not going to work yesterday put me off.
No, today is Friday. Yesterday was Thursday; Jessica came to my apartment on Wednesday night and we had sex for the third time.
If today is Friday… I laugh hollowly at my reflection. That means it’s been a week since Jessica and I reunited. Just one fucking week.
How could everything in my life have fallen down so quickly? Last week, I was living my life quietly, acting like I wasn’t thinking about Jessica and where she is now. This week, I’m a father, I’ve gotten all the answers I wanted, and my past has returned to haunt me.
“Murderer!”
“Lock him up!”
“He did it, just look at him!”
“I’ll see you go away for a long time for this, boy.”
I slam my fist against the sink, breaking apart the memory voices. It’s been a long time since I’ve allowed them to be so loud, but the talk with Jessica has stirred up things that I wanted to stay buried.
“I didn’t do it!” I say aloud.
It feels good to say it. Only my lawyer had believed me, and he worked miracles, proving beyond a doubt that I was innocent. It had been a shock to everyone who followed the story. Instead, my so-called friends at the time were arrested for the crime they had tried to pin on me. All it did was leave me with a deep distrust of the police and strangers.
Until Jessica came along. She taught me how to trust again. She reminded me how to laugh and have fun. I fell so deeply in love with her that I knew I would never pull myself out of it. I didn’t mind.
And then she was gone. Torn away, it seems, by the past that I had spent so long running from.
My eyes burn. I will not cry over this. It’s over and done. I was innocent. Jessica decided to trust a sensationalist story over me. But that was all years ago.
This is the present. The case, Jessica, everyone who hated me… They can’t affect me anymore.
They can’t.
“Fuck,” I say, pressing a trembling hand to my eyes.
What am I supposed to do now?
I wonder where Jessica is now. I don’t remember much of the look on her face last night, when I asked her and our son to leave my apartment. Poor Owen had continued to sleep contentedly as he was carried away, no idea what was going on or what his parents were currently feeling.
Was she feeling sad? Angry? Guilty?
Do I care?
I want to say that I don’t. But then I remember her trembling voice as she described the series of events that had led to her finding a partial truth. It had started as an accident, all because I kept that fucking folder.
It’s still sitting on the couch in the living room. I couldn’t touch it again after Jessica shut the door behind her, so I left it carelessly on the couch, uncaring what happened to it by her. Personally, I wouldn’t give a damn if it was gone, but I know I won’t be so lucky. When I leave this room, it will likely be sitting there in silent accusation.
What if I just don’t leave my room then? I snort. Since today is Friday, I have an all-day shift at the bar. I’m tempted to ask Fiona to cover, maybe promise to do the Saturday for her next week. But then I think about rattling around, alone, in my apartment all day, and I feel worse.
I don’t really want to leave. But I don’t want to stay here, either.
Sighing, I leave the bathroom and gather my work clothes. I need to open the bar at eleven, and it’s already ten. If I don’t leave soon, I won’t make it on time.
When I leave my room, the folder is right where I left it. I’m seized by the sudden urge to grab it and toss it in the trash. I even make an aborted move toward it. But then I stop. I’ve kept it all these years. If I was able to throw it out, I would have done it long ago.
It’s a shackle I can never break from.
I slam my coffee cup down on the table harder than necessary, and aggressively make myself a coffee in a carry mug, intending on taking it with me. When I’m done, I grab a tin of coffee powder from the cupboard and shove it in the backpack I pick up; we were out of coffee on my last shift, and I’m not taking the chance that Fiona wouldn’t have remembered to pick up more. I’m going to need a lot of coffee if I’m going to get through today.
I lock up my apartment and head down the stairs, not willing to spend even a moment in stasis while I travel slowly down the elevator. I need to keep moving. If I stop moving, I’ll fall apart.
It’s when I’m on the road, however, that I finally relax. My helmet is sitting snugly on my head, and the motorbike is roaring beneath me, leaving me barely able to hear my own thoughts. I wish, for a moment, that I can just speed away and forget about work, or Jessica or things that were better left in the past.
Then I remember Owen. I’m not going to run away, if only for his sake. I have a son, now. I have a responsibility. I might not know how to be a father yet, but I’m not going to flee before I have the chance to learn.
So I pull up in front of the Anchor Bar and chain my bike up. It’s as I straighten, however, fishing the bar keys out of my pocket, that I hear the sound of another bike approaching. Confused, because it’s rare for anyone to come out this way before I’m even open, I turn to see a figure in a Roughshod Roller’s jacket speeding toward me. It cruises to a halt beside me, and the rider dismounts, pulling his helmet off.
My stomach drops.
“Grant,” Alex says seriously, the sun glinting on his glasses. “We need to talk.”
I don’t know what to say as I clean glasses from last night. Alex is sitting at the bar, nursing a soda, and he hasn’t said anything since I led him inside and directed him to a seat. Is he waiting for me to say something first? Well, tough shit; he approached me.
Is it too much of a coincidence, though, that he would show up just after Jessica finally tells me the truth? Is he still in contact with Jessica?
Then I see the deep bags under his eyes. He doesn’t look like he’s been sleeping. He didn’t look like this when I last saw him, when he had apologized with such sincerity that I had been taken aback.
“You alright?” I finally grunt.
Alex glances at me. He sighs, his shoulders hunching.
“Damn,” he says, closing his eyes. “Jessica told you. I…was coming
to talk to you about my role in it all.”
I glance at him.
“Why didn’t you before?” I ask.
“What did you expect me to say?” Alex replies. There’s a hint of despair in his voice. “I didn’t even know if that was the reason she left. I had a suspicion…but I never gave her my research. I refused to. When someone broke into my office, I did suspect her, but she didn’t say anything. Nearly a month and a half later, she left you suddenly, but I didn’t connect the dots until the other day. There was only one reason she wouldn’t have told you about your son.”
Something in my chest loosened. Alex honestly hadn’t known.
“Why did you take her request?” I ask.
“Honestly?” Alex grimaces. “You didn’t see her. She was half mad with lack of sleep and suspicion. I thought I could put all her fears to rest. But then I found your arresting officer and I knew I couldn’t let her see that interview. So I tried to put her off while I looked for more evidence to disprove him as well as her suspicions.” He scowled. “That officer was a real piece of work.”
I snort in laughter. “You’re telling me.”
Alex shakes his head, his moment of humor fading. “Anyway…I thought I managed to keep it a secret.”
“Except she turned out to be sneakier than either of us expected, and she snuck into your office to figure out what you were hiding,” I say dryly.
“And subsequently disappeared on you,” Alex says glumly.
Neither of us say anything for a long moment. Alex is stewing in guilt and regret. I don’t know what to say to make him feel better. I don’t blame him, not really, but I don’t think he’ll believe me.
“Did you ever… Did you ever keep searching?” I ask cautiously after a moment. “After she left.”
Alex stills.
“No,” he admits. “It was already enough of an invasion of your privacy. I didn’t want to look any further when I didn’t have to.”
Stunned, I stare at him, freezing in the act of cleaning a glass. Alex had accidentally tracked down all the evidence that was used in court to try and prove me guilty. Then he hid it from Jessica, the very woman who had requested his services, and tried to search for the reasons why I wasn’t in jail, ultimately failing to do so before Jessica left. After that, he stopped searching to respect my privacy, never knowing the truth. Yet he still treated me like a friend?
