The Good Listener

by B. M. Hardin

I knew her height.

  I knew her walk.

  She was headed for the door wearing a dress and a black, short wig, but I knew that it was her.

  She stopped, pulled out sunglasses and turned around to face me.

  She placed one hand on the door, pushed it open, and just before walking out, she pulled her sunglasses down, winked, and then smiled.

  Summer.

  It was Summer!

  “That’s her! She’s not dead! Summer’s not dead! She just went out the door!”

  I screamed and nodded my head towards the door.

  Everyone in the courtroom seemed to run in that direction.

  “She’s not dead! Please! I just saw her! I saw her! I’m innocent! She’s alive! She’s alive,” I yelled as the officer pulled me away.

  Summer was alive?

  All of this time, she was alive?

  She had been there to watch me go down for her disappearance and her suspected murder, and she wasn’t going to say a word.

  She’d wanted me to go to prison.

  She’d left all of the evidence on purpose.

  They put me in a cell and warned me to stop screaming but I couldn’t.

  She was alive, and I’d seen her.

  I’d seen her with my own two eyes, and they had to believe me.

  Summer wasn’t dead.

  Why would she do something this to me?

  It wasn’t like I was sleeping with her husband…she had been sleeping with mine.

  Was this a part of some kind of plan so that she could have Joel?

  I would have given him to her.

  We were headed for a divorce anyway at the time, so it just didn’t make sense.

  I sat in the cell all night and waited for someone to come and say something, but no one did.

  No one said anything about what I’d said and when I questioned them, no one had any answers.

  I know what I’d saw, but still, no one seemed to believe me.

  “Mrs. Lewis.”

  I looked up at Officer Parks the next morning.

  “She’s alive. I swear to you, I saw her.”

  “A nearby camera has footage of her taking off the wig and getting into an unmarked car. We compared the footage from the camera to our facial recognition system. It was a match. Summer Waters is alive.”

  Hallelujah!

  Words couldn’t express what I felt inside.

  The waterworks started, and Officer Parks allowed me to have a moment.

  She was trying to ruin my life, but it didn’t work.

  She had tried to set me up, but she didn’t succeed.

  Why would a person do that to somebody?

  As much as I wanted to say that if I ever saw her again, I would kill her, for real, I didn’t want to think about anything of that nature. I just wanted to be free. I just wanted to live.

  “We haven’t located her. Every officer in town and in this state is looking for her to bring her in but we haven’t found her as of yet. We found the car that she was in parked behind an abandoned building, but she wasn’t inside of it. She’s probably long gone by now or hiding wherever she has been hiding all of this time. You are free to go. The department, the city, this state owes you one heck of an apology.”

  Officer Parks opened the cell door, and I walked by him, out of the cell.

  “An apology. A settlement. Your job and so much more. My lawyer will be in touch.”

  I was free!

  I didn’t call anyone to come and get me.

  I didn’t want to talk to anyone.

  I just wanted to celebrate.

  Tears of joy streamed down my face as I signed for and collected my things and headed out of the doors to the jail

  I was the happiest person in the whole world.

  That was a close one.

  My life was almost over.

  I’d almost gone to prison.

  Looking at the bandages on my arms, I’d almost killed myself.

  I sat on the steps just to cry and laugh at the same time.

  People stared at me.

  Officers stopped to question me.

  But I cried and laughed until I was finally able to stand to my feet and walk away.

  I started walking down the street, not sure of where I was headed, but it just felt so good to be able to walk and be free.

  I walked for a long time, enjoying the smell of the morning air.

  By the time I’d come to a stop, I noticed that I had walked all the way to town and waited at Mr. Calvin’s office.

  He arrived and looked at me as though he was seeing a ghost.

  “Hannah? What are you doing here? Did you escape? Are they allowing you to be out until sentencing? Why didn’t they inform me of this?”

  I forgot that he and Joel had walked out before I’d spotted Summer.

  “Summer is alive, and I’m free!”

  He embraced me.

  “What? How? How do you know?”

  “She was in the courtroom. Watching the whole thing. I don’t know how but she was there. Summer had been there the whole time.”

  He looked at me as though he didn’t know what to say.

  As though he hadn't believed in miracles until that very moment.

  “I still can’t believe it. I still can’t believe that I saw her just in time. I screamed out once she smiled at me. She ran out of the courthouse, but a nearby camera captured footage of her face and confirmed that it was her. That she had been alive all along. They haven’t found her yet, but when they do, I hope that she gets what she deserves. I’m sure there’s some kind of charge that she should be held accountable for.”

  “This was nothing shy of a miracle. I don’t know what to say, Hannah.”

  “You don’t have to say anything, but I want to thank you. I can’t thank you enough for helping me and believing me when no one else did.”

  “No problem. It was my pleasure.”

  “And I take it that it will be your pleasure to help me take the state and the police department for everything that they are worth? I want to make them pay.”

  “I’ll definitely see what we can do.”

  We talked for a second more and then I asked him for a ride home.

  We pulled up.

  Joel’s car was there, right beside mine and the house and cars were all a mess.

  Murderer, Dr. Killer, and so much more were spray painted on the cars and even on the house.

  There was trash everywhere, cans, and eggs shells.

  It was going to take forever to clean all of this mess up, and it was all for nothing.

  I was innocent.

  And soon the whole world was going to know it.

  “I guess he was innocent after all,” Mr. Calvin said.

  He had always had his suspicions about Joel, just as I had.

  “I guess he was.”

  “You owe him an apology you know?”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  I had said so many hurtful things to Joel and accused him of killing Summer and framing me so many times, that he would probably tell me to take my apology and shove it.

  But still, his infidelity had been responsible for all of this I’m sure.

  She had to have wanted me to go down for her disappearance for a reason, and I could only assume that whatever the reason was, it had something to do with Joel.

  To think about it, despite all that I had done to Joel, he had been by my side the entire time.

  Even when I didn’t want him around, and even though I called him names, and made his life a living Hell, he stayed around and never left my side.

  But he had done his share of lying, and my actions were simply a reaction to everything that he’d done.

  He couldn’t blame me or fault me for that.

  Mr. Calvin promised to get started on my new case, and I headed to the front door.

  Surprisingly turning the knob, it was unlocked.

  Nothing looked like it was missing so I headed to the spare bedroom
, but Joel wasn’t there so I went to check the master.

  There he was, passed out.

  A beer was on the bed beside of him, and the same photo that I had stabbed with the knife was beside him too.

  Tissues were on the bed, so I assumed that he had been crying.

  I was sure that he’d felt horrible and probably guilty.

  But everything still didn’t make sense.

  Things still weren’t adding up.

  Joel just seemed guilty.

  The way that some of the evidence magically appeared.

  The lying, the affair, and Summer being pregnant.

  I was just so sure that he was guilty.

  He was a liar.

  He was a cheater.

  But I guess he wasn’t a killer after all.

  I tapped him, but he didn’t move.

  I shook him a little harder, but he didn’t move.

  “Joel? Joel?”

  Studying his face, I touched it, and…

  It was cold.

  Joel was dead.

  “No!”

  I continued to shake him, but he was already gone.

  How could this be?

  I started to panic as I looked around for his phone.

  What happened to him?

  Before I could call for help, his phone started to ring.

  I recognized the name.

  “Hello?”

  “Hannah? Is that you?”

  It was Tori.

  Tori was one of my old colleagues.

  She was one of the folks that had cut me off after knowing me for years and assumed that I was guilty of such a horrible crime.

  “I thought you were convicted yesterday? What are you doing there?”

  “Had you been to the trial to show your support, you would have known.”

  “I’m sorry. I just didn’t want to get involved.”

  “Yet I was involved when you needed me, every single time. If you needed me I was there, including when you needed me to help you dig up dirt on your husband.”

  “That’s different. It didn’t involve a personal murder. I’m sorry Hannah. I really am.”

  “No. You’re not. You’re just like every other person in this world. You can’t be counted on. You only love, support, give to a person when it’s beneficial to you. You are that person and so was I.”

  “I need to speak to Joel, Hannah.”

  “Why do you possibly need to speak to my husband?”

  Nobody but God in Heaven was speaking to him at the moment but I was curious.

  “Because he’s my patient.”

  “What?”

  “He felt extremely responsible for everything that was going on with you. He’s been coming to see me for a while now. He felt so horrible for putting you in such a situation. He was stressed. He felt guilty. And he knew that sleeping with Summer was a huge mistake that ruined his life and yours. He’s in pretty bad shape, mentally Hannah and I need to talk to him.”

  What?

  And she had definitely just violated all of the rules of practicing and patient confidentially.

  “I need to speak to him Hannah. The voicemail that he left for me last night has me concerned. I think he might be about to do something to himself.”

  “You’re too late Tori. Joel is already dead.”

  *******************************************

  Chapter ELEVEN

  They found so much alcohol in Joel’s system plus what they assumed to be about twenty of the depression pills that Tori had prescribed him during therapy.

  He’d gone into cardiac arrest, and his heart gave up on him.

  Joel was gone.

  He felt guilty, and he tried to right his wrongs by taking his own life because he’d thought that he had taken mine…in a way.

  He’d written a long letter and left it for someone to find.

  He asked that whoever found it, that they made sure that I received it so that I could hear the things that I would never allow him to say, without telling him that it was either a lie or that I didn’t want to hear it.

  He expressed everything that he’d felt about what I was going through. He talked about the guilt in his heart.

  He told said that he loved me and that he didn’t deserve to live.

  He apologized for ruining my life and my career, and he stated that he wished that he could change the past and make things right. He said that he couldn’t come and see me in prison. He wouldn’t be able to handle looking at what he had done to me, but he promised that one of his siblings would always make sure that I was taken care of. He said that he would be looking down at me and watching over me from Heaven and that whenever I felt like I was alone, he would be right there.

  And then he said goodbye.

  He said that he loved me and signed his name and just like that.

  He was gone.

  I was so angry at him for taking his life.

  He really would have left me to go through my prison years all alone.

  Checking the log on his phone, that day at the hotel, he had been talking to Tori.

  He didn’t want me to know that he was going to therapy, so he lied to hide that he’d turned to the very thing that he’d always hated.

  He’d turned to the one thing that he despised, so I was sure that whatever he was going through and feeling was pretty darn bad.

  I guess he didn’t want me to know how bad it was affecting him because I was already going through so much and he didn’t want to make the situation about himself.

  He was trying to be strong for me, but I really wished that he had told me.

  Then again, I was so angry he must have known that I wouldn’t have listened. I wouldn’t have wanted to know what was going on with him.

  I probably wouldn’t even have cared because I’d blamed him for what was going on.

  Now he was gone, and I really was all alone.

  The funeral was over, and I didn’t bother to go back and to his parent’s house to mingle with the family.

  I headed home.

  At least it was home for now.

  There was no way that I was going to be able to stay there.

  There was no way that I was going to be able to stay in this town, in this city, or even the state.

  I didn’t belong here anymore.

  Though the news played the story over and over again and a public apology was issued, it still wasn’t enough.

  My name was tarnished, and everywhere that I went, I could tell that people were whispering about me.

  I just couldn’t stay here.

  There is nothing left for me here anymore anyway.

  I’d made up in my mind that I was never going to ever practice or counsel people again.

  I would never counsel a single patient as long as I live.

  The psychologist in me had died and had been buried along with my husband.

  Life for me would never be the same.

  After the civil suit against the police department and after selling the house, I was going to hit the road and never look back.

  I didn’t care about Summer or her motives anymore.

  I didn’t care where she was nor did I have the desires to get an explanation or to see her pay for what she’d done.

  I just didn’t care anymore.

  In due time she would get what was due to her.

  I didn’t care if Blake had ever made it out of town or if he’d ever killed his next victim.

  So what if he had?

  It was no longer my concern.

  I just wanted to go away.

  This time, I was going to take my money and live a normal life.

  No more working myself to death.

  No more putting everyone and everything else first.

  I was sure that I was going to walk away with a good bit of money, on top of what I already had and I was looking forward to having a completely different life than my old one.

  With plenty of time to think, Joel had been righ
t.

  I’d worked way too much, and I missed out on so much of my life from trying to be the best.

  Maybe a new husband, whoever that was going to be, maybe he would be happy with me because I wouldn’t have a job to put in front of him.

  Maybe there wouldn’t be a repeat of the infidelity issue in my new life, because I would have plenty of time to dedicate to making sure that I had a solid marriage.

  Maybe I would try to sneak a baby or two into the mix before I was too old.

  And maybe it was too soon after the death of my husband to even think about those things, but those were my plans.

  Joel would want me to be happy.

  If he was watching me from Heaven, like he said that he would, he was probably disappointed that he was going to miss out on the new and improved me.

  I could see him now with a frown on his face thinking how unfair it was, but he would definitely want me to be happy.

  I finally got out of the car and headed inside.

  After cleaning, I found my blanket and curled up on my favorite couch, just like I always did.

  I didn’t feel like crying or dwelling on the past, I just wanted to lay there.

  I just wanted to enjoy the silence.

  But before I could get comfortable, the alarm sounded, and I took my time heading for the monitor.

  I saw that a small cat was right in front of the motion detector, and I headed to turn off the alarm.

  Instead of putting in my code, I turned it completely off.

  If someone wanted me, they could have me.

  I’d been through hell and back and by taking my life they would probably be doing me a favor.

  I was all alone now anyway.

  ~***~

  I threw the paper in the trash before heading into the grocery store.

  My story and the search for Summer was still making the front page.

  Everyone wanted to know where she was and why she did what she did.

  Why did she let everyone assume that she was dead?

  Was she really pregnant?

  One thing was for sure, she didn’t have a belly at the courthouse.

  I saw her, and I didn’t see any kind of belly whatsoever.

  Maybe she’d gotten rid of it.

  It hadn't been long enough for her to have the baby yet so she still should have been pregnant according to the information that they’d gotten from the doctors on her.

  It hadn't taken them long to charge me, and send me to trial. It hadn't even taken them long to decide my fate; though it hadn't been my destiny.