by Pamela Crane
Wiping the blade off on my pant leg, I stood there, numb to their spurting blood, deaf to their wheezing breaths, blind to the death encircling me.
In a daze I walked back downstairs, dropping the knife on my way through the living room to ensure Ellie’s innocence. My slow shuffle left a trail of crimson behind me through the front door.
I didn’t know what would happen after this—whether my letter would give my identity away, or a witness would place me at the crime. My prints were all over the weapon, so there was that. By this time tomorrow I would be in a jail cell. Oddly enough, I didn’t care. It didn’t matter what I left behind, because I had nothing to begin with. All I wanted was to do one selfless act for the one I loved. I’d carried out my purpose, and I hoped that with my sacrifice she would get the wonderful life she deserved, with or without me.
This was love at its fullest. Maybe it was a twisted kind of love, a love only I could understand. I knew what a woman needed but would never get if she stayed in an emotionally abusive marriage with hateful children: her identity. Her passion in life. Her beautiful soul. Yes, I loved her enough to give her back her soul.
Chapter 39
Ellie
You never expect to come home from a confrontation with your husband’s mistress to find your family murdered, sprawled out in pools of their own blood. You never expect to go from wife and mother to widow and childless in a single earth-shaking moment.
But here I was, living this nightmare. While cops swarmed the house, paramedics packed up their bags, and CSIs collected evidence, I sat stoic and stunned, unable to process what surrounded me. My initial response was to tend to Denny and the kids. My brain knew they were dead, but my heart couldn’t accept it. I wanted to hold Darla to my chest, stroke Logan’s head, kiss Denny’s lips. But instead I just sat there like an invalid, unable to move or speak.
I was in complete, utter shock. My feet felt nailed to the floor. An indescribable weight hung on my shoulders. After the dust settled from my mental explosion, I pieced together what had happened.
Only one tiny thought flickered in my mind: why?
With my heart ruptured by the one person I trusted, I suspected who did it, and then I knew why.
This wasn’t about vengeance. This wasn’t an act of terror. It was a message, an attempt to give me a clean slate … but my slate was now covered in blood, and I couldn’t push the images out. My stomach clenched and I thrust forward, vomiting on the floor.
A hand patted my back. “Are you okay, Mrs. Harper?”
I shook my head, spitting out the lingering taste of bile. I would never be okay again.
“I know this is a terrifying experience you’re going through, but we want to help find out who did this to your family. Do you know of any enemies your husband might have had?”
It’d only been a little more than thirty minutes ago when I had walked in the door, four shopping bags packed with tonight’s makeup dinner, and found Denny facedown on the floor. Dropping my bags, I ran to him, afraid to touch him. Pressing my hands against his neck, his skin had the chill of death.
I’d just finished recounting to Detective Cox the panicked silence that greeted me when I called for the kids and got no response. After running upstairs and finding them both dead, I couldn’t make sense of it. Who would want to kill my family? I admit that over the past few days I’d played around with scenarios of taking Denny’s life, but my children? They were innocents in all of this.
It wasn’t until I found the bloodstained letter lying next to Denny that I realized the reason for it all. It was supposed to be a gift of freedom to me—but instead she had ripped away everything I cared about.
In my pocket was the folded up letter with her confession and Denny’s blood. I touched my hip where the letter was hidden, fingering it with uncertainty.
“I had found out my husband was cheating on me with a woman named Janyne Wilson,” I explained. “He had tried to break it off, so I’m sure she was pissed off about it.”
“And I’m guessing you were pretty upset, too,” Detective Cox said, the accusation tinting his question.
“At him, yes. At my children, no. I would never hurt my kids, if that’s what you’re implying.”
“I’m not implying anything, Mrs. Harper. I’m just trying to figure out what happened and why.” The detective glanced down at my bruised knuckles. “Did you take up boxing recently?”
I rubbed the achy joints where a black and blue tinge spread across the top of my hand.
“No. I paid the mistress a visit. It didn’t end well.”
“Ah, payback, right?” I shrugged as he continued. “So other than his mistress, do you know of anyone else who would want to hurt your family?”
“No, not that I can think of.”
And yet the truth itched to come out. Maybe it was best I come clean with the letter. If I didn’t, she would walk free and hurt someone else. I couldn’t watch that happen. The scariest part, as I waited in the aftermath, was that I had never seen the warning signs. All mothers felt it at one point or another—the breaking point. That moment you snap. I knew what that was like. But to follow through and take the life of a child … that part I couldn’t digest.
What if she did this to her own family next? And chances were high she’d come after me. I imagined a modern-day Romeo and Juliet death scene playing out as she tried to entangle me in a murder-suicide plot, the same as I’d tried to do with Denny. The difference was, I’d chickened out. This was a whole new level of crazy.
I deliberated, my fingertips playing with the corner of the paper sticking up out of my jeans. I realized now how much she loved me, and I loved her, too. I loved her enough not to condemn her to a guilt-ridden life.
I’d free her soul to own up to her sins. I’d stand by her side through whatever came; I’d forgive her and do whatever it took to carry her through the coming consequences. But I couldn’t turn away from this.
“Here.” The paper crinkled as I pulled it out and opened it up, handing it to the detective. “I found this next to my husband’s body. I know who wrote it.”
I had memorized the poignant words, both appalled and honored that someone would do something of this twisted magnitude for me:
Sorry isn’t enough anymore. Sorry can’t fix what’s broken.
Sometimes a sacrifice is the only way to start over again. This is one of those times.
We’ve shared many years and many memories together. We’ve exchanged dreams and jokes and sorrows and judgments and advice. But what I’ve never shared with you is the truth about how I feel about you.
I love you.
I love you with a love that sees through your smile into the pain you hide behind it. I see your fear of losing everything, when the reality is that you’ve lost yourself because of it. I see the way Denny looks through you, and the way your kids don’t even notice you except for when they want something. They all take from you, and you keep giving without getting.
You’ve suffered too long. You deserve more. So I’m giving you more.
It will cost me my life, and I’m okay with that. I lost my sanity long ago when I should have confessed my love for you and I didn’t. Instead I settled into a life of mediocrity and misery, whoring myself out to a thankless husband and raising his children. It’s too late for me to change my life for the better. And I’m sorry I never stood up for you sooner, but it’s not too late for you.
This is my hello and goodbye. It’s a hello to a new life for you where you can become the speech therapist you always talked about being when we were in college. And it’s a goodbye to the crappy hand you’ve been dealt.
Don’t worry about me. This was the greatest thing I could do with my life—a noble sacrifice in the name of love. I’ll take the punishment I’m dealt with pride, knowing I could suffer for you.
I love you, Ellie, my sister from another mister.
Detective Cox read the note, then fixed his eyes on mine. “Do you know who
wrote this?”
I nodded, my chest aching and throat suddenly sore.
“My best friend, June Merrigan, killed my family.”
Chapter 40
Jo
Three-Year-Old Returns Home After Manhunt
Durham, North Carolina
After a terrifying four days, police located the abducted daughter of Jay and Josephine Trubeau, 3-year-old Amelia Trubeau, who went missing from Forest Hills Park early last week. Search parties and a media blitz failed to turn up any viable information. A park-goer’s chance cell phone photo showing the kidnapper, Jude Simmons, walking away with the child, provided the crucial lead in solving the case.
A partial license plate number for the vehicle used in the abduction, a red Toyota Camry, led investigators to Simmons’ residence, where Amelia was found unharmed and returned to her family by Detective Tristan Cox, one of the lead detectives in the investigation.
Under interrogation, Simmons admitted to abducting Amelia in a bizarre act of retaliation after being spurned years earlier by the child’s mother. “Jo and I were lovers long ago,” Simmons explained to police. “She broke my heart and I just wanted her back.”
After serving a seven-year sentence in Pennsylvania for assault, Simmons was released last month. He is currently being held on a $500,000 bond while awaiting trial. The court date is set for next month.
I set the News and Observer on the dining room table, glaring at Jude’s mug shot, wondering how someone like Jude Simmons could steal a child. Yet because it was someone like Jude Simmons, and not a sadistic serial killer or child molester, my daughter came home unscathed. The night she walked through the door she recounted four days of ice cream, candy dinners, board games, and cartoons. I was thankful Jude was simply disturbed and obsessed, not perverted. It was an odd gratitude to feel.
Jay never asked for the details about who Jude was; I couldn’t understand his desire for ignorance and I didn’t want to understand. Had it been Jay’s infidelity, I’d want every last heartbreaking, excruciating detail. Not that it would have helped, but I would have needed to know. Maybe out of morbid curiosity, maybe because human nature was a glutton for punishment. Or maybe my imagination would have made it far worse than the reality, and I would need to hear that it was just meaningless sex.
Not Jay. How I knew Jude wasn’t important to him.
“I’m so sorry,” I had begun the conversation the night before, after Amelia came home as we sat on the sofa talking things out into the early morning hours. With Amelia tucked in on the love seat between us, I was too wired to sleep. So Jay and I drank coffee and hugged and watched our daughter sleep. It’d be a long while before I’d let her sleep in her own bed without me there. “There’s something I didn’t tell you, Jay. Something that at the time didn’t seem important, or relevant to Amelia going missing, but looking back on it, apparently it was.”
He had squeezed me tighter to him.
“What is it, honey?”
I swallowed the thickness that swelled in my throat. I hadn’t wanted to hurt Jay any more than he’d already suffered. But I couldn’t harbor anymore secrets. “A letter Jude had sent me about a month ago. I never told the police about it because I didn’t think it was relevant to the case. It was so vague, and it didn’t even have a name or anything useful to the case in it. I just feel like if I would have handed it over, maybe Amelia would have been found sooner.”
He had kissed my head, sensing my apology. “Don’t sweat it. It’s over.”
“Is it? Until the trial is over, he’s not technically guilty. Maybe I should give it to the police.”
“Is there a reason you don’t want to?” He had asked it so casually that I was certain he had no idea of the contents of this letter … or the nature of my past with Jude.
“I don’t want the details going public. It’s kind of a personal letter that I really would rather stay private. Unless you want to read it.”
I had looked up at him, my eyes sore from crying tears of relief all evening. He had cupped my chin and pressed his lips to mine.
“I don’t know, don’t care. As long as Jude was in the past and he’s gone for good, which he will be, that’s all I need to know,” he had told me. I was lucky that I didn’t have to share such life-shattering details with the man I loved. As far as Jay knew or cared to know, Jude was a fling from the past—the timeline wasn’t important to him. I guess ignorance was bliss for Jay.
I wasn’t granted the luxury of ignorance when it came to Jude Simmons. I’d spent the morning with Detective Cox unearthing every detail, scouring through my past like he was panning for gold. I purged myself of every horrible memory while sipping bitter police station coffee. Every detail came out except for the letter, which I withheld not for me, but for Jay. I didn’t care how bad the intimate details would made me look; I didn’t want Jay to be forced to hear words he could never unhear about my doubts in him, in us. But things change, hearts change. That’s the part that Jude didn’t understand. After making it through the trenches with Jay, I knew I would never doubt us again.
As the police interview unfolded my secret, Jude’s motives likewise unraveled. After our one-night stand, he had committed my name to memory, while his name was lost in a blur of drunken regret. He’d apparently fallen for me that night, though a week later when he read about my marriage in the local newspaper, he’d attempted to move on. Apparently to a mirror image of me he’d found online—a blonde, blue-eyed, freckled girl living with her parents in Pennsylvania. They’d even lived together, until he beat the shit out of her one day, almost to the point of death, I’m guessing for burning dinner or not folding his socks properly. At least that’s the kind of innocent act I imagined would set off a psycho like Jude.
Fast-forward seven years as he recycled long-lost fantasies about me during those long, lonely nights in prison. Upon his release, all it took was an online search to find my address, a few days of stalking to figure out my schedule, and a twisted plan to steal my daughter in some insane hope that it’d bring us together. Why me? While a small part of me wanted to know how his deranged brain ticked, why all the effort without any guarantee of it working, it was probably best I’d never know. No one could truly comprehend the mind of another or why people do what they do.
I pushed today’s newspaper across the table and reached for my mug of chai. Running my fingers through my washed and air-dried hair, I savored its silky texture. It was refreshing being human again, doing mundane things like taking showers and brewing tea. But while my life had regained a semblance of normalcy, chaos ruled beyond the feeble security of my home.
I’d just read about a family that was murdered by their friend—happened on my very own street, 15 Oleander Way. What kind of woman—a normal mother like me—can stomach killing innocent children? But it happens all the time. The news is chockfull of perfectly sane moms and dads who go off the rails on a crazy train on a really bad day and do something unforgiveable. Something breaks them. Reality cracks. People snap. The same mothers that tuck their children into bed at night drive into lakes, drowning their children with them. No one really knows the thoughts that torment them. To the world at large they might appear merely stressed out, but their demons attack them relentlessly when no one’s watching.
After losing Amelia I sort of got it—the reflex. The compulsion. You act without thinking. Our desperation can change us, mold us, turn us into something warped and unrecognizable. In my own survival mode I neglected Preston and Abby for the sake of finding Amelia. I sacrificed my own children out of fear, panic. I had even verbally attacked a neighbor and physically assaulted a car. I’d done things I wasn’t proud of, things beyond my control. The rage had taken the reins from me, leaving me helpless to my urges until I learned how to tame it.
Maybe I was no different than the monsters out there. Maybe we all had a little bit of monster inside us.
Chapter 41
June
Six months later …
The inmate who shared a cell with me wandered the halls like a ghost. I was pretty sure she was dead inside, the way her vacant eyes never moved, how her lips trembled with no words, her slow shuffle heading nowhere. Only once did I ever see her alive, and I’ll never forget that day …
By the slant of the sun through my one-foot-by-one-foot barred window, I could tell it was late afternoon. My legs splayed out on my stiff cot, I was trying to get comfortable, which was impossible on a mattress as firm as a concrete slab. I was halfway through the pile of books Ellie had mailed me, all of them with broken binding from a guard haphazardly inspecting them. I was one of the lucky few who got regular care packages and visitors.
Casey was my roommate’s name, though don’t let the term roommate fool you. Roommate implied living together; we barely existed together. Two passersby who eyed each other warily. I was pretty sure she was going to shiv me in my sleep.
Sitting upright on her bed next to mine, I felt her watching me with a dull expression. I lifted my eyes to meet hers, and for the first time since I’d been there we made a brief connection.
“Hey,” I said. A simple word not intended to break into conversation, but an acknowledgement of her presence, mostly. I had been meaning to break the ice with her for weeks, but to be honest, I was petrified of her.
Casey looked like she belonged on the cast of The Ring. Her long, black hair hung in front of her face, greasy and knotted. She never bothered to push the tangled mess out of her eyes as she instead peered through it with beady black eyes. Everyone avoided this creepy character that I had the misfortune of bunking with.
It was only now that I realized her eyes weren’t black at all, rather a spring green with yellow flecks.
