by Darcia Helle
She shook as she told what happened a little while later to the heavy-set police officer with wavy dark brown hair. He hiked up his pants and sat in the rusting fold-up chair across from her in the break room. Betty forced her lips to spread out in a smile, her round face placid compared to the turmoil inside. She wrapped her hands around the Styrofoam cup holding black coffee and straightened her back. Officer Durante smiled, his golden brown eyes steadying her. He first asked questions about her routine and procedure. Then came the questions she dreaded. Her heartbeat spiked as she described the young man's gooey hair and the blood drenching the white sheets. That's the only reason she knew he was dead and not sleeping. She shivered a little imagining if she hadn't seen the blood and had just left or...or touched him, trying to wake him up.
The officer nodded and took notes, asking kindly if she would repeat a few things he missed. She swallowed and tried to speak more slowly so he wouldn't have to ask. Officer Durante finally closed his notebook, none too soon for her, and gently told her to go home and take it easy for a while. Betty nodded emphatically, her eyes welling up for the first time since she'd found the young man. The officer left her alone, joining his compatriots in another part of the hotel to do whatever he would do. The day manager popped her head in and told Betty to go home and recover. But Betty sat in the break room alone instead, steadying herself before driving home. She pulled her wedding band off and on her bloated finger and stared at the mint green wall in front of her. Something in the room buzzed and a fluorescent bulb flickered above her.
Fifteen years of cleaning someone else's toilet and nothing that astonishing had ever come her way. Nothing that threw her world into slow motion and made her rethink life. Betty purposely focused on the man on the bed whom she'd only seen for a moment. That's all she could think about anyway so she might as well. She thought he looked young, not that she saw his face, but he dressed young. Fashionably, even. He wore dark jeans with one of those modern washes she saw in GQ when she flipped through copies at the hair salon. He was only wearing a white T-shirt but she had the feeling he looked like a model strutting through downtown. She sighed and finished her coffee. She wanted to forget his face, and yet remember it forever.
Betty made spaghetti for dinner that night. Her husband and son sat at the table, buttering the Italian bread she had picked up on her way home. She sipped red wine, her diamond engagement ring askew on her finger. She hadn't told either of them about the day's events. After about a half-hour of sitting in the break room, she'd slung her leather black purse over her shoulder and driven the fifteen minutes to her white-paneled ranch house tucked away on a side street. David, her fourteen-year-old son, wasn't home from school and her husband Jack was still at work. So she cleaned. She washed the previous night's dishes, folded two loads of laundry, vacuumed the entire house, and then caught a few minutes in front of the TV before Jack got home.
Betty turned to her son, her bronzed face still smooth despite her forty odd years. David stuffed a wad of spaghetti into his mouth, his narrow face looking gaunt as he chewed. He resembled Jack, but he had her puppy dog eyes, the feature of her face that she liked the most.
"How was school?" She said, acting as casual as if the day had been all about spaghetti and wine.
David shrugged his underdeveloped shoulders, licking sauce from the corner of his mouth. Sauce that looked like blood, Betty thought. Maybe she'd chosen that for dinner subconsciously for that reason.
"I got a C on my math test," he said, glancing at his father from the corner of his brown eyes.
Jack tilted his stout head and sighed. He was fresh from the office, his graying hair slicked back off of his forehead. Betty thought he looked too harsh that way, but he insisted on styling it like that anyhow.
"It's an improvement from the D you got last time I guess," he said.
David grinned the same mischievous grin his father wore when in trouble with Betty.
"I'm getting Bs on my homework now."
Jack smirked and turned to Betty, who patted her golden-brown hair, the curls billowing out from her scalp.
"So what about that suicide in your hotel this morning?" Jack said, pointing his fork at her. "You haven't said a word about it yet."
Betty nearly choked on her wine and set down her glass, wiping her mouth to stall and figure out what to say. She set down the napkin, looking at the reddish-purple stain left behind and suddenly saw the sheets in the hotel room that morning. She stopped the flashback there and glanced from her husband to her son.
"Really?" She said, trying her best to sound dumbfounded. "There was a suicide?"
Jack narrowed his round green eyes as much as possible, and crossed his arms on the table. Apparently, she hadn't sounded as dumbfounded as she wanted.
"Weren't you at work when they found him?" Jack said, not flinching.
Betty swallowed, racing for a reasonable response.
"Of course I was. But I was busy. I had a lot of toilets to clean." She took another swig of the wine, hoping he'd just let it go.
Her husband frowned.
"He was a young guy apparently," Jack said, ignoring her for the moment. "Checked in to the hotel last night, found him shot to death this morning."
Betty shuddered. She hadn't been able to bear thinking about how he'd died earlier. "How…how do you know it was suicide?" She felt her voice quaver and hoped no one noticed.
Jack looked up at the ceiling as he chewed a slice of Italian bread, his square jaw chomping sideways.
"They found a gun in the room with the guy's prints," he said after swallowing. "Didn't get very specific on all the facts. You know how the news is."
Betty nodded, suddenly mesmerized by the squashed thumbprint on her wine glass.
"You OK?" Jack watched her from across the table, his rectangular brow furrowed in neat rows like a field.
Betty blinked her doe eyes, searching for yet another appropriate response.
"I'm just shocked," she said nonchalantly.
"Me too," Jack said. "I can't believe you didn't hear about a suicide in your own hotel."
After dinner, David hid in his room to do homework. Betty guessed he was actually playing video games but was too distressed by the dinner conversation to nag him. Jack vanished into the garage to stain trim for the living room, finally ditching his white dress shirt for a white T-shirt. Relieved to have a minute alone, she listened to him whistle a Johnny Cash song while she waited for the computer to ramp up. Once online, she searched through the stories on the local news station's Web site and found a leading article about a shocking suicide in a local hotel. Betty held her breath as she scanned the article, trying to slow down and focus on the words.
Adrian Annantuonio, a 23-year-old from a neighboring town, had shot himself in the head in the middle of the night. No other hotel guests or staff members heard anything, which is why Betty found him the next morning. The article covered the facts in a couple of paragraphs with no comment from his family.
His family.
An image of her son, just fourteen, lying on a bed with blood clumped onto his chestnut hair flashed through Betty's mind. And even worse, the idea that he would take his own life.
"What are you reading?"
Betty jumped, grabbing her chest.
David leaned over her shoulder, straining his skinny neck to read the article, his face glowing in the computer screen light. "Dad was right."
Betty closed the window with the article and rolled back in the office chair to stand up.
"You have homework," she said, not even able to look at him, wrestling with a sob.
"Not that much," he said indignantly, standing to his full height, which was now at eye level with her.
"Not enough from your grades," Betty said in a gravelly voice. "Get to it."
David blinked and skulked back to his room, his "No Adults Beyond This Point" sign banging against his door. Betty sat back down and rubbed her forehead. She knew enough.
>
Betty and Jack said goodnight around eleven, Jack still watching her with suspicious eyes as he kissed her lips. She still pretended the day had been all about dusting and changing sheets. Jack flopped onto his side and snored softly next to her in minutes. Betty laid there with her eyes closed but her mind awake. Every time she drifted off to sleep, she remembered something about Adrian Annantuonio. The white T-shirt fitted across his chest, his dark bare feet, the way his brown hair curled over his ear. She gave up after one in the morning and snuck out of their bedroom so she wouldn't wake Jack. Betty crouched over the kitchen counter in her light pink nightgown that fell to the floor, waiting for water to boil for tea.
She scanned the shadows covering the dining and living rooms, the fluorescent bulbs under the cabinets in the kitchen highlighting the furniture. The house was bare and dark, like the hotel room that morning. She yawned, wishing nothing incredible had happened that day so she could sleep. She dunked a bag of mint herbal tea up and down with her eyes closed.
"Back hurting or something?"
Jack leaned his thick frame against the wall at the kitchen's entrance in his white T-shirt and boxers, eyes half-closed. His formerly slicked back hair now stuck out in spikes on the side of his head.
Betty looked over her shoulder, too tired to be startled.
"No," she said through a yawn she tried to stifle.
"Everything OK then?"
Betty watched the steam rise from her tea, squishing the bag against the side of the mug.
"Betty?" He said. "Are you OK?"
Betty exhaled and squeezed the bridge of her pudgy nose with her thumb and forefinger. "I lied," she said wearily. "I did know about the suicide." She stopped, leaning her full weight on the kitchen counter. "I was the one who found him."
Her husband's eyes popped open. Betty supported herself on the counter, suddenly shaking. Whether from grief, relief, or just exhaustion, she wasn't sure. Jack wrapped his fingers around her arms, turning her toward him.
"Why didn't you say so?" He said softly, his brusque features melting in front of her.
Betty took a deep breath but her voice still shook.
"It was too awful," she said, tears forming and falling from her brown eyes before she could stop them. "I didn't want to repeat it. Thinking about it has been bad enough."
Jack pulled her into his arms, his chest muffling her cries. They stood in the kitchen until she calmed down, retreating into their bedroom to talk. Betty finally felt strong enough to empty her heart of everything she'd witnessed. Jack held her close in their bed, never saying a word. Cleansed of the fear and panic she'd contained all day, Betty relaxed enough to feel herself drift off. They both finally fell asleep side-by-side as the first signs of day peeked through the curtains.
***
About the Author
Amy Saunders grew up in Massachusetts, which often serves as inspiration for characters and settings. Other than writing, she loves graphic design, history, and baking. Amy is also the author of Dead Locked and "Bast & Immie."
You can learn more about Amy and her writing on her website: https://www.amysnovels.com
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