by Brittle, D M
“I’m not sure that I like where this is going, but yes I am your best friend and ‘within reason’” she said firmly. “You know that I would do anything for you.”
“Good,” I nodded. “I need you to take me to prison.” Casey burst into laughter, actually holding her stomach as she laughed so much. “Sara wants to see me and I want to hear what she has to say,” I added. Casey’s laughter stemmed as she watched me in disbelief.
“What?” She asked in shock.
“I need to go and see her and I can’t do it alone. Please Casey, if I don’t do it now then I will chicken out and then I will regret not going and listening to her lame excuses.”
“Just, hold on a second,” Casey said as she shook her head. “Why the hell do you want to go and see Sara? Can you even go and see her? I mean you are the victim in all of this, she tried to kill you Jo, more than once I might add and as for Cooper, well she did kill him, so please, forgive me for asking you this again, but why the hell do you want to go and see Sara in prison?”
“She has requested to see me,” I said quickly. “I called Theo and it’s all legal and above board, he said that victims sometimes use it as closure.”
“She is being sentenced next week Jo, isn’t that closure enough?”
“I need to speak to her Casey, I need to know why, why she changed her plea, why she did everything that she did, why Cooper protected her; I just need answers that I can only get from her.”
“You play with fire Jo, you’re gonna get burned,” Casey warned.
“Please, you are the only person I have who I can trust to help me do this without hurting Blake, it will only be ten minutes maximum, it’s all sorted out and all I need to do is turn up, speak to her and go home. No one needs to know and then I will have my answers and my closure, please Casey, please,” I shamelessly begged.
Casey sighed heavily as she rubbed her eyes in frustration. “Blake isn’t going to be happy if he finds out Jo.”
“I will tell Blake when I need to, just not today. He is under too much pressure at the moment as it is and I don’t want to add more to it when I can see that he is struggling.”
“Going to see Sara is going to add more to it Jo, trust me.”
“Please Casey, please just for one second put yourself in my shoes and see why this is important to me,” I placed my hands together as if begging. “I will do anything you want, absolutely anything you need if you just drive me there, please, all I am asking you for is a lift to the prison.”
Casey shook her head slowly as she visibly began to cave, “If you weren’t so pregnant you would be easy to say no to.” She sighed in frustration as she grabbed her bag and coat and headed for the door. “Come on, let’s go.”
*~*~*
There was a smell, a distinct, disturbing sickly smell of disinfectant and food that I imagined could only be served to caged animals in the room that I was sat in waiting for Sara to enter.
I wasn’t sure if it was the smell that had gotten my stomach in complete knots or the fact that I was once again about to come face to face with Sara for the first time since visiting her in hospital. Casey had spent the whole journey here trying to talk me out of the visit but my stubborn mind was having none of it, once I had made the decision to come here, there was definitely no turning back.
Casey had been made to wait outside the building, which had annoyed her as she had expressed her concern for me and was worried about how I was going to cope with seeing Sara. I hadn’t even given a thought to the fact that Casey wouldn’t have been allowed in the building. Watching her face just before the door slammed shut behind me made the nerves inside of me bubble up for the first time since reading the visiting request.
I still hadn’t heard back from Blake when I reached the prison which I took to be a blessing, the very last thing that I wanted now was to have to lie to Blake about where I was when he was already on the verge of destruction.
I heard the door open slowly behind me before the silence that had surrounded me became filled with the sound of metal being scraped heavily across the floor. I took a deep breath to calm my ever growing nerves, my heart was pounding so hard against my chest that it became difficult to concentrate on anything other than trying to keep myself calm. My eyes finally met with Sara’s as she was guided into the seat opposite me, she was barely recognizable as she sat shackled with chains to her arms and legs. The orange jumpsuit that she was wearing hung from her skinny body and her long red hair looked dull and uncared for as it sat tied up into a messy bun on top of her head. One thing that remained on Sara’s face that she could never lose was the smug smile that she wore constantly before she turned into the vile monster she now was, that smile was still as present as ever.
“Hey, Jo, I almost didn’t recognize you, you got fat.” She spat out.
“I got pregnant,” I replied forcing a smile.
“Of course you did,” she nodded. “How else could you have trapped Blake into staying with you?”
I placed my hands flat to the table and sighed, shaking my head at her lack of conscience. “Okay Sara, you got me here, now why did you want to see me?”
“To be honest Jo, I didn’t.” She shrugged. “I just knew that you wouldn’t be able to resist coming here, turns out I was right.”
“Still playing games I see.” I shook my head in disgust at her.
“Why change the habit of a lifetime huh?”
“Tell me, what is going on inside that ridiculously, delusional small mind of yours, Sara, that makes you think that you have anything to smile about? You are going to rot in prison for the rest of your life. You are going to die, old and alone with nothing but memories of prison food and the occasional ball game or exercise out in the yard. You had everything Sara, my God you had the best life you could have wished for and then for some stupid, ridiculous reason, you spoilt it for yourself and for Cooper, remember Cooper? You killed him Sara, you killed Cooper. Guess what that has left you with? Nothing, you have nothing Sara,” I said leaning forward towards her. “Nothing. So,” I sat back in my seat and folded my arms across my chest, “you tell me, it’s not really something for you to laugh about is it?”
“Oh but it is.” She smiled as though she actually believed herself.
“You really are delusional,” I laughed. “You were caught Sara and you were charged with multiple offenses, you were then forced to change your plea to guilty because the evidence was just stacked right up against you, how is any of that even funny?”
“It’s funny, Jo because I won,” She said confidently.
“You won?” I laughed as I nodded, “really?”
“Yes, I won.” She said again with meaning.
“How exactly did you win?” I asked. “I must have missed something here because you are the one sat in this room in an orange jumpsuit shackled with chains while two prison guards stand over us while we talk. I am the one who won Sara, I am the one with a life, a husband who loves me and would do anything for me to ensure my happiness. I have great friends, two beautiful babies on the way and a family who love me. So if this is a contest and there has to be a winner? Then here I am.” I felt my body begin to shake with anger, she was goading me, purposely trying to get a rise from me and I was so angry that I was more than capable of giving it to her.
“This is how I see it,” she began. “For you the victim, to have won there would have required to have been a long, dragged out, boring as hell trial. You would have then spent night after night wide awake, lying in bed praying to God or whoever you believe in to give me a guilty verdict and then when that guilty verdict would have been delivered, you would have thought that you had won; justice and all that crap.”
“I have won Sara,” I said firmly.
“No.” Sara said in a harsh tone, “NO NO NO NO NO!” Her fist hit the table with such force, the chains rattled as the bounced against the wood repeatedly. “You see Jo, by me changing my plea to guilty; it takes away your victory. I don’t
know how things work in good old London town, but here in the US, when you admit to something that you have done, you get a little bit of justice yourself, a reduced sentence, good behavior, perks, if you will. I pleaded guilty not because I admit that I was at fault; okay I was responsible for pretty much all of it, who am I kidding? I was responsible for it all!” She laughed. “But as far as you being the winner goes. You lost Jo, you lost.”
I stood abruptly from the table, my chair scraping across the floor with force; two guards were at my side immediately, preventing me from getting any closer to Sara.
“Touch a nerve did I?” She smiled as she cocked an eyebrow at me.
“What happened to you Sara? How did you get here from just one stupid mistake of a night with Blake?”
Sara licked her lips slowly, “That one night with Blake was worth it all. Tell me Jo, does he ever do that thing to you where he tugs on your hair pulling your head back to him as he sucks on your neck like a hungry horny vampire and all at the same time while he thrusts his cock into you so hard that you forget how to stand? I think he almost paralyzed me with pleasure.” Again the anger boiled over as I reached across the table for Sara who was laughing hard at me, but again my attempt of dispersing my anger was stopped by the guards.
“You know what Sara? You are not worth this; you are not worth any of this. I came here for closure,” I laughed once humorlessly. “I came here to ask you why you had done the things that you did to me and to Cooper, but I suppose that I have now seen all that I need to see from you. Enjoy hell Sara, and I’m not talking about the hell that you are going to go to when you die.”
“Enjoy Blake, Jo!” she shouted back to me as I grabbed my bag and headed for the door. “Because pretty boys like Blake? They don’t stick around for too long; he will soon get bored of his perfect little housewife and move on.”
My fingers wrapped around the door handle tightly, in my head they were around Sara’s scrawny neck. “Men like Blake only ever make one mistake in their lives Sara; and I am walking away from her right now. I’ll see you in court.” I opened the door and exhaled the breath that I had been holding the whole time that I had sat in that room opposite Sara. Had I got the closure that I had been desperately looking for? I suppose we would know that the day that she got sentenced to the rest of her life in prison.
Blake
Jo wanted to fix me. My wife; the woman who I love more than anything, the woman who I had always promised that I would fix and care for and love forever now thought that I was the one in need of fixing.
The problem with that was that I no longer believed that everything that was broken could be fixed.
I was fast losing control of my life. For the first time in my thirty-one years on this earth, I knew that I was no longer capable of being the fixer and I truly believed that if I couldn’t fix it, then nobody else could.
The two people who meant more to me than life itself needed me; both my mother and Jo needed me now more than they had ever needed me before.
They needed me to be the strong one, they needed me to be their fixer, only I knew that this time I couldn’t be what they both needed, for the first time ever, I was unable to fix either of them or even attempt to.
Somewhere between Jo’s pregnancy scare and my mother telling us about the cancer, I had lost all ability to be able to assure them both not only that everything was going to be okay, but also that I would personally be there to help them through it.
I was beginning to crumble. I was finding it increasingly hard to just sit and talk to Jo without imagining my life without her in it, whenever she would talk about the babies I would try desperately to see our future, our happy future as a family but all I saw was dread and me alone, with no-one to love and grow old with.
I was the fixer in life; I had always been the fixer, but now? Now I knew that there were things in life that I was never going to be capable of ever fixing and it made me feel like I had failed those who loved me and trusted me to fix any problem that would ever occur.
I also knew that no matter how much I could be at Jo’s side throughout the rest of her pregnancy, no matter how much I could hold her hand and promise her that everything was going to be just fine, no-one could give me a guarantee that everything would go as planned so for the first time in a long time, I felt completely helpless and I was too scared to admit it out loud for fear of it actually being true.
My mother needed me to be strong, but how could I be strong when deep down I didn’t even know if she was going to survive this ordeal. The doctor’s confidence about catching the cancer early did nothing to quash the fears that kept on building inside of me. How did they really know that she would beat this? No one knows that from just a scan surely.
Then there was Jo, my beautiful wife who was not only kind, but delicate and scarred from her life before me.
From the moment that she had finally let me break down her walls I had made her a solemn promise; I had promised her that I would always fix her, but since Sam had told me about the pregnancy problems that Jo could still yet develop, I knew that fixing Jo during pregnancy and labor was completely out of my hands too.
Jo knew that something was wrong, I had seen her observing me now for over a week; watching my every move, waiting patiently for me to succumb to the fear that I now held so close.
She would study my face while I held her tummy as the babies kicked back at me. She could see it; she could see that I now held onto that fear, that I now believed that you can’t experience happiness without pain.
I refused to lean on Jo however. Even though this was the first time in my life that I had needed to lean on someone, how could I lean on the one person who was so broken when I met her that the glue holding the cracks so tightly in place hadn’t even dried out yet? I couldn’t.
I hadn’t slept much since taking Jo to my parents’ house to rest.
Sleep had betrayed me night after night and the less sleep that I was getting, the more frustrated and desperate I was becoming to get to the end of each and every ordeal that faced us.
Each time I closed my eyes desperate for sleep, the visions that I was now becoming more accustomed to, of me standing at my loved ones’ headstones, wouldn’t only return but they were also fast becoming more and more graphic.
Last night I had been stood in a graveyard surrounded by a deafening shrill sound of screaming. They were screaming at me to help them, to save them all from what had come and taken them all away from me one by one. I was alone, that was my life now; I knew in my dream that I had no-one and nothing left but myself, everyone that I had ever loved was gone; my family and my friends too but those screaming out to me for help were the same voices each and every night; my mother, Jo and my babies. Each night I would wake in a panic, my eyes would open suddenly at the sound of Jo screaming to me to save our babies; that is how each nightmare ended before my eyes would shoot open and immediately search for Jo who was always sleeping soundly next to me.
I needed to regain control and I needed to do it fast.
I had made plans for this coming week that I desperately hoped would keep my mind occupied enough that I could shake off this stupid faze that I was going through; by keeping as busy as possible it would give me only a small window of opportunity to think things through too much.
I just needed to get to the end of the ordeals that were breaking me; once the trial was over along with mom’s surgery and the arrival of the twins, I hoped that my fears would then disperse and I could go back to being the person that I have always been in life, the fixer.
*~*~*
I had hated leaving Jo alone this morning. She looked like a lost puppy as she lay in bed trying to tempt me to stay.
She was beginning to get fed up of the constant bed rest and even though she needed it, I felt guilty that I couldn’t stay and keep her company, but my meeting was important for the future that I so desperately craved and being out of the apartment also gave me some much needed breathin
g space from my thoughts.
I had starred in the cable show for six years, and those six years had been fantastic, but despite the bad dreams and fears that I now harbored, I needed to concentrate on the fact that if all went well with mom and Jo, I would soon have a real family and that family were always going to be far more important to me than the show or any job for that matter.
In addition, the thought of either leaving Jo and the babies behind in London or dragging them back with me here to New York for months of recording and late night shoots, had made my decision to leave easy. I just hoped that the producers would see it that way too.
After over eight hours of being sat around a table with the producers and writers, we were still stuck in limbo. They had spent the best part of the day trying to convince me to stay by throwing ridiculous amounts of money at me and the rest of the time begging me to return for just one or two episodes to give the character the sendoff that the fans would appreciate.
Why did no one understand anymore that no amount of money or fame could replace me not being there to see my babies smile for the first time or say their first word? One thing that I had learned from each bad dream, along with reality, was that you never know what life is about to deal you, I wasn’t about to lose time with my family for the sake of a TV show.
We were to meet again in a few days’ time which I wasn’t happy about but I was determined to stand my ground where leaving was concerned, I may have been crumbling inside but this was one thing that I was still sure I could take control of.
I left the meeting feeling frustrated and completely worn out, my mind was overloaded with stress from the meeting and I needed to calm down before heading home to Jo; I was determined that she wouldn’t see me like this again.
I climbed into the car and drove to Sugar to see Alex; I needed, just for now, to forget how my life was spiraling out of control and the one thing that was sure to help was a few glasses of scotch with my best friend.
Alex was sat at the bar on his laptop when I walked in.
