by J. Conrad
“I’m fine.” I shrug and force a smile. “Crazy day.”
Sarah pushes out her bottom lip and puts her hands on her hips. “Oh wow, yeah. Sounds like it. Gosh, the police were here for a long time. We were worried that something horrible happened. So, this fire in the shed was pretty intense, huh?”
She tilts her head, searching my face for something. For an explanation? For the truth, I guess. She knows, or at least suspects, that I’m not giving it.
“It was,” I say.
“But how did the fire start? Were you smoking, or—you don’t smoke,” she says. Blink, blink, go her blue eyes.
“I—we don’t know how it started,” I say. I flick the red mailbox flag again. Up, down. Up, down. Irritation bringing an unwelcome heat to my face, I snap open the mailbox door and reach for the stack of letters.
“Oh. Do you think it was from the heat?” Sarah asks.
I clench my jaw and withdraw the envelopes. I click the black door shut. What the hell difference does it make how the fire started? Our shed burned down. I wish she’d get on with her own life and leave mine alone.
I say, “Yeah, I mean, I’m sure the heat definitely exacerbated it. I wasn’t by the shed when it happened, so I don’t know.” My words are flimsy. I can’t remember where I was when the fire started or what part the heat played.
Sarah nods slowly. Her lips are parted, and her hands still rest on her hips. “Wow. Weird. Well, I’m glad you’re okay.”
“Thanks,” I say.
My neighbor goes quiet for a moment, and I’m not sure if it’s because she doesn’t believe me or she notices how my gaze abruptly shifts toward the street at my left. A white SUV creeps toward us slowly. Korey drives a white GMC Suburban. Maybe he got my messages and wants to talk in person. Fine—but we’ll chat outside, just like this. From here, I can’t tell if the approaching vehicle is the same make and model as the one he drives.
The stack of mail quivers in my right hand. Maybe Sarah notices that too.
“Are you waiting for someone?” she asks.
I shift my weight. “No. I just noticed that SUV slowing down. They’re probably looking for an address for a delivery or something.”
She pauses before saying for the second time, “Yeah. Well, glad you’re okay.”
I nod absentmindedly.
“You look exhausted, Aria,” Sarah says. “Take care of yourself, all right?”
“Will do,” I say. I try to grin, but I think I only manage to sound sarcastic.
She returns an uncertain smile. We wave each other off, and my neighbor starts down the sidewalk on her morning jog with her huge, glittery phone shoved in the back pocket of her tight shorts.
The white SUV stops two houses down on my side of the street. No one gets out. Straining to read the plates, I make out DL7–xxxx. Not that it does me any good. I never bothered to note Korey’s license plate number because why would I? I want him out of my life. After I apologize for Ayden’s death—for that terrible thing that I can’t remember—I’m cutting the cord for good.
But the implications of that, of what it means, and how it will play out in the real world are lost on me right now. It’s too much to think about, especially trying to grasp how I’ll explain what happened when I don’t even know myself. And I can’t mention what I found in the cotton ball dish. It’s gone now, as though it never existed.
A crisp morning wind blows the hair from my face, and it dries my sweaty forehead. At the same time, the gnawing apprehension ices my bones. Rubbing my arms to banish the chill, I tell myself there’s no reason to be so paranoid. That car has nothing to do with me. I turn toward the front walkway and take the mail inside. Korey will call me back, or he won’t.
3
Three weeks pass. Korey doesn’t call. Whenever I’m not working, I check the local media and papers. I keep wondering if anything will turn up about the fire and Ayden’s shocking death. No reporters have come to see me. No one has called from the news channels. The days tick by, and no one prints a word of what happened anywhere. I guess not all crimes or strange occurrences get coverage. The reporters can’t be everywhere at once.
Reading the police report doesn’t help much. It’s a much longer, more tedious version of what Carol told me. It cites Ayden’s stab wound as “unlikely to be life-threatening.” While that should quell my fears, it doesn’t—because although the write-up mentions the deceased’s third-degree burns, it still gives the cause of death as “accidental (unknown).” The officer’s report contains nothing about a bloody ring. But then, I guess I knew that already. How could it? Besides, poring over a second-hand account isn’t the same as remembering what I actually did, and there are no witnesses to jar my memory.
After the first week, I took Carol’s advice and stopped blowing up Korey’s phone with messages. He’s grieving, she told me, and grieving people need space. I didn’t do anything wrong, Carol said, and if Korey has a problem, he can go to the police. Otherwise, he’ll just need to get over it in his own way.
When I’m not hunting for articles about the incident that evades my memory, I search the house for Ayden’s ring. I search every nook and cranny in the bathroom. Every container, jar, or box. I scour my room, the kitchen cabinets, the pantry, the drawers of my stepmom’s desk. And once the initial shock fades, I search the backyard too. I sift through the carbon-streaked boards that belonged to our shed in the hope of some answer. I don’t find it. And I don’t find the ring.
I’m not sad that Korey doesn’t call, but it increases my guilt in a way. It clings to me like a leaden cloak. The dark part of me, the monstrous part, knows that if Korey screamed at me, I’d feel better. Oh yes, he’d get angry and throw things. Maybe he’d pound his fist against the wall. Instead, he gives me only silence.
As the days tick by, I get jumpier. My sleep suffers, and I neglect my share of the household chores. Our grass needs to be mowed. I’m usually the one who does it, but this time I pay one of the teenage boys on our street to cut the lawns.
On Saturday, exactly three weeks after Ayden’s death, I drive to the HEB grocery store on University Boulevard to pick up a few things. I stop by the apples in the produce section. Scents of fresh blackberries reach me from the adjoining bin. When I glance up after setting a bag of Gala in my cart, I freeze.
With an olive complexion, dark brown hair, and near-black eyes, Korey’s white, button-down shirt complements his features well. He stands about ten feet away next to a case of fruit drinks. He fingers a bottle of orange juice before plucking it from the row. When I lock my eyes on him, he straightens, and his gaze connects with mine.
My shoulders tense. I grip the handle of the cart so hard my knuckles bulge white. My legs refuse to move. I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. What am I going to do? What can I possibly say to him?
“Hey,” he says. He flashes a smile full of white teeth. “Fancy meeting you here.”
The cheerful greeting unnerves me. We never officially broke up, but the last time we spoke, he was angry with me. Accusatory. And that wasn’t even that long ago. Now, after his brother’s violent death—after which Korey wouldn’t return my phone calls—he’s acting like he just ran into an old buddy.
“Hi, Korey,” I say.
My chest seizes up, and I can hardly breathe. Surely the authorities called him, his parents, or someone else in his immediate family. There must have been a funeral for Ayden. His death was known about, documented.
Korey stands there smiling. Beyond creepy.
I force out, “Listen, about your brother. I don’t really know where to start, but I can’t tell you how sorry I am, and I just want to say that I—”
“Oh no,” he says. He waves his hand. “He had it coming. How are you doing? Are you all right?” Korey sets the bottle of orange juice in his red shopping basket.
My mind turns somersaults. I frown and try to stop the torrent of confusion that assaults me. He’s saying what I want to hear, and it’s weird—
more than weird. It’s abnormal behavior, and that’s dangerous. That means that in handling this, I have to get clever.
I step out from behind the cart, keeping my right hand on the handle. Studying his face, I try to read his dark eyes and gauge how much he knows. I have no idea what the authorities or others told him.
“Did you hear about what happened?” I ask, my voice flatter than I intend.
Korey’s smile dims. “Yeah, Aria. I heard, and I’m really sorry.”
“What exactly did you hear?” I still don’t want to approach him. It’s strange to talk across the distance, but I don’t care.
He sets the basket on the floor. A strand of dark hair falls across his forehead when he faces me again. “Ayden attacked you in your backyard. And your shed caught fire. I don’t know how exactly. I guess in the struggle. But the police told me the gist of what happened. And that it wasn’t your fault, that what you did was in self-defense. I was shocked at first. I didn’t want to believe that Ayden had done those things. And I was really upset with you, you know. But after I thought about it, there was no possible way I could blame you. I mean, I know it was him. I may not like the facts, but they are what they are.”
He looks down and sighs. When he raises his head, his gaze is far away. “I’m sorry for not calling you back. I wanted to. I just needed some time to think about things.”
“Sure. I understand.” I stand up straighter, my back stiffening again. I can’t tell Korey I don’t remember what happened. Not only will he not believe that, but it will make the situation worse. And there’s a question that needs to be asked. It’s indelicate, but that’s life.
I steel myself against an explosion. “How did Ayden know where I live?”
Korey shakes his head. “I don’t know, Aria. But that question kept me up at night. I wondered if you thought I gave him your address, and that’s another reason I didn’t call you. But I would never, ever give someone your address or tell anyone, even my brother, to go by your house without your permission. I know we’ve had our differences, but I want you to know that. There’s no excuse for what Ayden did, and I’m just so sorry. You have no idea.” Korey swallows, and tears collect at the corners of his eyes. He blinks them back with a sniff.
He’s such an absolute, disgusting liar. If he felt bad, he would have called me right away. He would have driven to see me. My mind conjures the image of the white SUV slithering along my street. Korey’s not sorry about what happened. He’s sorry it didn’t play out differently. And that tells me something else—he knows, or at least suspects, I did something horrible since victims don’t kill people. But I won’t let on. I’ll play stupid like he wants. After letting go of the cart, I take a few tentative steps toward him.
“Wow, that’s definitely not what I thought you would say,” I reply. “I can’t tell you how terrible I feel that you lost your brother, but I also can’t tell you how thankful I am that you understand.” Two can play at this game. I stare at him, waiting.
Korey puts on another smile, a rather sad one with the corners of his mouth downturned. He regards me beneath his thick, dark eyelashes. “I know. It is what it is, and it’s not your fault. It’s not your fault, Aria.”
The words are too profound. Too effective. Too perfectly right for me in the wake of my guilt. My bottom lip trembles despite the need to remain detached. “Thank you.”
“I don’t bite,” Korey says. He grins warmly and holds out his arm.
My heart hammers as I contemplate doing what he’s silently asking. My mind races. How much should I play along? How far is too far?
“It’s okay,” he says. “If I was upset at all before, I forgive you now.”
Seconds tick by, and I don’t move. My feet are nailed to the floor. I want to say something. I should respond. He used to scare me a little, but now, acting the way he is, he scares me a lot. All smiles and sweet words and holding his arm out like he wants me to hug him is a bit much.
Accepting his gesture means accepting an unspoken agreement. There’s not only what it will mean right at this moment, but what it will mean tomorrow and the day after that. What sort of expectations it will place upon me. And then there’s the other side of the coin—what it will mean if I don’t accept. If I decline, there’s more to it than hurting his feelings or being rude. Refusing comes with certain implications. I may have no memory, but the consensus is that I killed his brother. Self-defense, according to some, but his brother’s still dead.
The image of Ayden’s bloody ring in the ceramic dish consumes my thoughts. I can almost smell it. The metallic blood so sweet, like an old penny. The oozy odor of slow decay. My nose twinges from the memory, but the only scents here are fruit and leafy greens.
“Aria?” Korey asks. His face falls, and he shifts his feet.
My heart pounds like it did when I saw the souvenir of my kill. I force a weak smile. Why hasn’t Korey asked any questions about what I did? My feet drag as I shuffle over to the man who’s still technically my boyfriend. Somehow, I make my body comply with this terrible decision.
“Thank you,” I say finally. The words lack conviction and give away everything.
I push my body slightly beneath Korey’s arm and against his side. He pulls me into a loose hug and holds me gently, carefully, the way one would cradle a small child or fragile bird. His slim torso feels like a slab of meat. It’s cold, solid and devoid of feeling. My mind reels with an exit strategy. Something, anything, so I won’t have to endure him after today.
Korey’s cologne blasts me with the artificiality that so suits him. It’s reminiscent of a pine tree dipped in battery acid. Returning his embrace with limp hands, I desperately try to hide my nervous revulsion.
“Aria, is something wrong?” He slides his hand down my back.
“No.”
“I can feel you stiffening,” he says. “Is there something you haven’t told me?”
He knows. Oh God, he knows.
“No,” I say.
He blinks. “Oh.” He pulls away and searches my face. “You don’t want to be with me anymore? Is that it?”
“I—I think I need some time—”
Korey staggers back like I struck him. “You need some time to think about if you want to be with me after you killed my brother?”
“I didn’t—I—that’s the thing. I can’t remember. I can’t remember what happened. I don’t know that I killed him,” I say, raising my voice. Big mistake, but I can’t take it back now. Two women by the potato section stop dead and gape at us.
“Oh, for God’s sake, Aria. I expected more from you—for you to be more responsible than that. What kind of monster rejects someone after killing his sibling?” He inflects his harsh words with a velvet-soft tone.
Pursing his lips, he crosses his arms with that crazed, overly-calm look on his face. “I think you’d regret something like that for the rest of your life. I know you’re sorry now, but you would really be sorry.”
His threat sends a wave of panic through me, but not enough to enforce his demand. What kind of monster? This kind. The kind that takes a kill trophy and then hides it from herself.
My pulse races as I backstep. “You’re wrong, Korey. I’m really sorry now. I’ve been sorry ever since the day I met you.”
Korey’s mouth falls open. Lightheadedness catapults my senses upward into the dizzying heights of blatant defiance. I guess I got bored with playing along. Every second only prolonged the agony.
“Besides,” I add, “monsters shouldn’t dwell in pairs.”
Abandoning my half-full shopping cart, I turn and march out the door.
4
Despite Korey’s threat, I don’t see him or talk to him again. I change my number. Four months have come and gone since I ran into him at the grocery store. Prior to Ayden’s death, our relationship was a lot like the conversation in the produce section. Korey was jealous and manipulative. He worded his threats carefully so they didn’t sound like threats. He knew how to �
�care for me” as a control mechanism. And yet, my guilt still hangs over me like the thick cloud of smoke after the fire. It’s the first thing to greet me each morning and my last thought before falling asleep. But even that isn’t enough to make me go back to him.
This morning, Carol and I finish up our remaining Christmas shopping. It’s a bitterly cold day, with a gray, ashen sky and a biting, thirty-degree wind that finds its way between every thread in our coats. The mall parking lot is full to bursting. It forces Carol to park at the outside edge near a planter area with grass and trees. That’s the best we can do.
We comb the mall for hours, and by the time we finish, it’s after 6:00 p.m., and the sun is down. With shoulders hunched inside our layered clothing, we trot back to the car with shopping bags in each hand. The scent of warm pretzels and salted, hydrogenated-butter-product popcorn drifts over to us from the adjacent cinema. Before us, lines and lines of vehicles stretch like a formidable sea. Now that it’s past sunset, I’m having trouble remembering where we parked.
My gaze darts between the nearest row and the right-hand one as I loop my scarf around my neck. I can make out a section of trees under the streetlamps farther down. I ask my stepmom, “Do you think we’re one more over?”
Carol sets her bags on the pavement and pulls her gloves from her pockets. She hastily tugs them on. “I think it’s this one, but all the way in back.”
Shivering, we clutch the handles of our bags and walk briskly through the rows, the steel car bodies floating by in our peripheral vision. The farther we get from the mall entrance, the fewer people there are. This is especially true because of the cold weather—no one wants to be out here a second longer than necessary.
At least the parking lot is well lit, and there are plenty of drivers on the road encircling the mall. However, there isn’t much foot traffic in our little corner. Many of the cars parked along the outskirts of the lot belong to employees. Their employers make them park there so customers can pick from the better spots near the building.
