The Diary

by Julia Derek

  “Hey, how long have you been here tonight?” I ask him in a light tone that I hope doesn’t give away how eager I am to find out what he is hiding.

  He smiles at me. “About twenty minutes before you got here. A guy I know bought me a drink. He left right before you came. Good timing, huh?”

  I stare at him and then I make myself smile back. “Yeah, you could say that.”

  “So tell me more about why you want to die so badly,” Rick says, gazing at me with a serious face now. “Nothing or no one is worth killing yourself over. Life is too beautiful.”

  The nagging feeling I have how awfully convenient it is that “a guy he knows” bought him a drink and then left right before I came is growing within me, so what he is telling me doesn’t fully sink in. I’m thinking his explanation must be another lie. I wouldn’t be surprised if the bartender swoops by soon and asks Rick to pay for his first drink. It will be interesting to see how he handles that situation. Maybe he will claim his friend, who’s now gone, paid and the bartender forgot about it. I can’t see what else he could say.

  Rick places a hand over mine and repeats his words, and this time I hear them loud and clear: “Nothing or no one is worth killing yourself over. Life is too beautiful.”

  “I don’t agree with that,” I reply. “I thought you’d understand.”

  Upset suddenly, I grab my drink and gulp down half of it. What happened to the Rick I met the last time I was here? More and more, this guy seems like a different person, a person I don’t really want to know. I feel terribly alone. I decide then that I will get shitfaced and then I will eat that gun. The alcohol will give me the strength I need to do it.

  He squeezes my hand. “Take it easy with the drinking, Lexi. You’ll get drunk if you keep that up.”

  I raise a brow at him. “Maybe that’s what I want. Don’t you want to get drunk?”

  He shrugs. “Not really. I just wanted to enjoy a drink or two and then go back home.”

  “But I thought you said you were so depressed that you couldn’t handle being home. What changed?”

  “Hearing you talking about killing yourself. I must say that it had a sobering effect on me. I don’t want you to kill yourself—or anyone else for that matter. It’s not worth it.”

  I grab my drink in defiance and finish the rest of it, raising my empty glass to the bartender, who keeps looking over at me and Rick. I signal the bartender that I want a refill and he is quick to oblige. Then I turn to Rick and smile.

  Chapter 20

  “Is Lexi with you?” Jason asks Sue Ann, Lexi’s mother, at seven forty the following morning. He keeps squeezing the phone in his hand, as if this will yield the answer he is hoping for—to hear that his wife has gone to his parents’ house in Long Island and just didn’t feel like telling him. That she is secretly mad at him. He knows that, lately, he hasn’t been as attentive with her as he should have been, having been a lot more focused on work than normal. And a couple of the nights he didn’t even go on work events like he had claimed, having just made them up so that he could remain at the office and work on his novel. At long last, his writer’s block finally let up, which made him ecstatic and he just had to write on the book as much as possible, even if that meant that he would have to ignore Lexi further.

  “No, the last time I saw Lexi was when she came over for an early lunch,” Sue Ann says, “and that was three… no, four days ago now. Why? What’s going on?” There is a pause and then she adds, her voice having turned ominous. “Don’t tell me she disappeared again, Jason.”

  Jason closes his eyes and inhales quietly. Oh, God, what can he tell her mother? As hard as it is, he has to admit to himself and to her what appears to be the truth. If Lexi isn’t with her parents or her sister, Claudette, whom he has already spoken to, it sure looks like she has disappeared again. She has disappeared exactly like she did that time five years ago.

  He clears his throat. He must confess what he suspects. “Unfortunately, that is what seems to have happened. I haven’t seen her since yesterday morning. And the last time I heard from her was at five last night.”

  “She didn’t come home last night and you didn’t think anything of it?” Sue Ann sounds outraged. “Didn’t you think it was strange that your wife never came home?”

  “Well, when I first got home I didn’t think it was strange that she wasn’t there. I thought that maybe she was out with a girlfriend or Claudette and had deliberately chosen not to tell me about it. I assumed she was just mad at me for working so much lately.”

  “Why would you assume that?”

  “Because the last few weeks have been unusually busy at work.” He decides not to add that he has also stayed late at the office so he could write on his book. It will only complicate matters and he doubts Sue Ann would understand. She has no idea that Jason secretly dreams of becoming an author and probably wouldn’t like it if she found out. “And when I told her I had to work late over a text yesterday, she was short with me in her response. I was busy with clients, so I didn’t have time to give her any details about what I had to do. I did come home at nine thirty last night, which was sooner than I’d planned on, and hoped that I could explain then why I’ve been so busy.”

  Yesterday wasn’t a writing night but a legitimate business dinner, but he managed to cut it short and went straight home. When he entered the apartment, Lexi was nowhere to be found. As he had just finished telling Sue Ann, he had instantly assumed that she had gone out for a drink with someone and just chosen not to tell him about it because she was pissed with him. When they first started dating several years ago, this had been a common way for her to show her displeasure with him when he neglected her. And now that she had bounced back finally from her most recent depression, she was going out more, something he was in full support of, so it had seemed to be the most likely explanation.

  He wanted his wife to become the way she used to be, before the deaths of both their children. He had been determined to wait up for her last night so he could talk to her, calm her down if she was upset. But he had been so tired that he soon fell asleep on the couch where he had been waiting, his feet propped up on the coffee table. When he woke up it was seven in the morning and Lexi was still nowhere in the apartment, nor had she gotten back to him in a text or a phone call, telling him where she was. Only then did he begin to worry.

  “We should call the police,” Sue Ann says. Jason can envision her face right now, her pink-painted lips having disappeared into a thin line and her nostrils twitching with ire. She is furious with him. He can understand because he is furious with himself, too. How could he have fallen asleep on the couch like that? But he needs to keep it together; maybe there is a perfectly reasonable explanation to Lexi not having spent the night at home after all. He can only hope. Still, he says, “Yes, you’re right. I will go right now.” Better to be safe than sorry. “We should also call her friends and see if maybe she slept there last night. It’s not even eight yet. Maybe they had a big night out last night and are still sleeping. It’s Saturday after all.”

  “Do you really think that’s the case, Jason? Why would she do this to you after all that’s happened?” She inhales. “Please tell me—did the two of you have a fight? Is there something going on between you two that I should know about? That she wouldn’t tell me or her sister about? Did you speak to Claudette? Maybe she’s with her.”

  He sighs. “Yes, right before I called you. And no, truly, there is nothing bad going on between us. Except for her being so short with me yesterday, I really didn’t even realize she might be annoyed with me for working so much lately.”

  “Well, then something must have happened to her.” Sue Ann’s voice is tight. “While you go to the police, I’ll call her friends to see if she’s there. I suppose it doesn’t hurt to check with them. Do you have access to their contact information?”

  He searches his brain to figure out whose contact information he might have out of Lexi’s friends. He can only thin
k of two, a woman named Lily and Lexi’s boss, Angie, whom he knows she is close to. He tells Sue Ann this, adding, “But maybe Lily or Angie know her other friends. Or Claudette might. You should talk to Claudette while I go to the police.”

  “Fine. Give me their numbers and I’ll call them while you go to the police. I’ll call you if I find out that she’s at someone’s house. And you’ll let me know as soon as you find out something.”

  “Of course.”

  After Jason gives Sue Ann Lily’s and Angie’s numbers, they hang up. Then he calls Lexi’s phone again. Like the other times he called, late last night and when he woke up this morning, he listens to the rings going through, his anxiety growing with each unanswered one. And like the other times, the call eventually connects with her voicemail. He leaves her another message, imploring her to get back to him as soon as she hears his voice.

  Pressing the End button, he goes to the bathroom to take a quick shower while hoping to hear his cell ring and it’s Lexi or Sue Ann telling him that she has turned up; or, even better, hear the apartment door opening and Lexi walking in. A lump has formed in his throat that he keeps trying to swallow, but it refuses to disappear and instead grows larger by the minute.

  The phone remains dead on the little plastic stool next to the shower and Jason can’t hear the apartment door open, despite pricking his ears and removing his head from the spraying shower every several seconds. This particular bathroom is fairly close to the front door, so he should be able to hear someone entering.

  When he steps out of the shower and reaches for a towel a few minutes later, it is past eight a.m. After drying himself, he walks through their large apartment hoping that he might have missed hearing the door open after all and that Lexi has come back. But it is as still and empty in all the rooms as it was before.

  The lump in his throat has grown so big it hurts, but he doesn’t care. He wants it to get even bigger, hurt even more. He should be hurting. If something has happened to Lexi, if she has done something to herself, he will never forgive himself.

  As he puts on a pair of jeans and a sweater, he keeps checking his phone, willing it to ring. Willing it to be Lexi at last, telling him that she is all right. He keeps his ears turned to the hallway, expecting to hear a key entering the front door’s lock. But, again, he doesn’t get what he wants.

  After he has put on a pair of sneakers, he checks the time. Eight twenty now. Maybe in the time it takes him to get to the police station, Sue Ann will have gotten some good news for him or, finally, Lexi herself will have called or texted him, even though as time passes, the latter seems increasingly unlikely. He tells himself that her phone might be dead or she might have just lost it while being out partying with a friend yesterday, not contacting him on purpose to punish him. Punish him despite that even she must realize that this is an extremely cruel punishment considering their past. He hasn’t behaved that badly.

  He calls her phone again, and this time around the answering service informs him that her voicemail is full. He groans with disappointment. Well, there is nothing left to do but to go to the police now. He learned from her first disappearance that the sooner he reports her missing, the better. That 24-hour rule often seen on TV shows is a misconception.

  After he has put on his coat, it strikes him that he’d better leave a note for her just in case she has lost her phone and shows up at home while he is at the police station. He finds a piece of scrap paper and a pen in the kitchen and writes her a note in big letters:

  Babe, I’m at the police station filing a missing’s person’s report for you. If you see this, call me immediately. I’m going crazy with worry.

  I love you, J

  Putting the pen aside, he leaves the note in the middle of their big kitchen table so that it’s impossible for her to miss it when she enters the kitchen. If she enters the kitchen. He sighs heavily.

  As Jason turns to leave and finally head to the police station, the nagging fear that has haunted him since he woke up this morning and discovered that Lexi had still not come home finally surfaces. It has been hovering at the back of his mind, but he kept pushing it away, refusing to acknowledge even the possibility of it. Irrational or not, it’s an even bigger fear than that she might have done something to herself.

  What if she has returned to him?

  One of many fantasies—nightmares—that have kept following him over the last five years appears in his mind. It’s an image of Lexi lying in a dark, filthy bedroom having sex with Herman, that man she stayed with all that time. She is under him in the missionary position on a mattress directly on the floor, her legs and arms wrapped around the rangy man’s bare back. She kisses him deeply, passionately, the way she kisses Jason when they make love. More passionately even. In Jason’s mind, it’s clear that she is enjoying herself very much at the moment, enjoying the way this man fucks her. Probably even more than she enjoys having sex with Jason.

  He tries to push the disturbing image out of his head, but it sticks there and expands instead, becomes sharper and more distinct. He can see the ponytailed man grabbing Lexi and flipping her around so that she ends up on top of him. Herman’s cock is still inside his wife as he grabs her hips and starts to move her up and down, making her ride him. She places her small hands on his hairy chest and undulates on top of him. He groans loudly as Lexi’s large breasts hang over his face, just out of reach of his mouth. His hands soon leave Lexi’s hips and move to her heavy breasts that he grabs and starts playing with the way Jason likes to play with them. Except Lexi seems to enjoy the way this man touches, sucks on her tits much more than she likes Jason’s moves because she throws her head back and moans loudly, appearing about to have an orgasm.

  The man suddenly loosens his grip on her breasts and lifts her off of him and then tells her to suck him. Lexi immediately obeys and slides down the large man’s body until she is at his feet and takes his large erection into her mouth. It disappears far down her throat and the man groans with pleasure, complementing her on how good she is at blowjobs while stroking her head. His compliments seem to spur her on to do an even better job because she moves her head faster, takes him deeper down her throat. Jason can tell that she thoroughly enjoys sucking this man, even more than she seemed to enjoy riding Herman. She then—

  The sharp sound of Jason’s cell ringing interrupts the unpleasant little video that insists on playing inside his head, just at the point where the man is about to come from the great way his wife is blowing him.

  Shuddering and shaking his head, Jason reaches for his phone in his pocket and checks to see who is calling him. Please let it be Lexi.

  But it’s not. It’s Sue Ann. Well, hopefully she is calling with some good news at least.

  “Hello, Sue,” he says breathlessly. “Did you hear from her?”

  “No,” she replies in a strained manner. “And so far it seems none of her friends have seen her either.”

  Jason’s heart sinks. That’s not what he had expected to hear. The images of the rangy man and Lexi fucking in that dark room materialize inside his head again. He tries his best to push them away, but they insist on staying. He can feel cold sweat break out along his hairline and his gut screams with pain.

  Oh, God, what if she has returned to him?

  “But that’s not why I called you,” Sue Ann continues, her voice much too somber, not angry like before. “I called you because it seems like John’s gun is missing. And I think that Lexi might have it.”

  A chill skitters over Jason’s spine like a quick spider. “What? Are you sure? What makes you think that?”

  Sue Ann’s voice is tight and controlled, but Jason can still hear the note of hysteria shine through. “It was really just out of a whim as I got to thinking after I finished calling anyone Claudette and Lily and Angie could think of. Lexi was acting a bit tense when she was here the other day, and it was very important that she could come over and see me that particular day. I always thought it a bit odd that she was in
such hurry to see me. And now that I thought about it some more, it struck me that maybe it had something to do with her wanting something. So I walked around the house, trying to think about what that something could be. Somehow I ended up in our bedroom and that’s how I discovered it missing.”

  “Maybe John moved it.”

  John is Sue Ann’s husband and Lexi’s father.

  “No, I just called him and asked him about it. He’s working today. He says that he hasn’t touched it in years.”

  Jason has gone ice cold and the disgusting images in his head have finally disappeared. “He’s absolutely sure?”

  “Yes. I told him it was very important that he thought it through and he said that he’s absolutely certain. He hasn’t moved it from the drawer. I believe him.”

  Jason draws his fingers across his eyebrows, the pads of his thumb and index finger meeting. This feels like a nightmare that is only getting worse and worse. Like Sue Ann, he doesn’t doubt for a second that Lexi’s father—an engineer with a very sharp mind still despite turning sixty now—has moved the gun and then simply forgotten about it. John has never been a scatterbrained person. And it isn’t likely that Sue Ann herself has touched it, either, never having liked having the gun around in the first place. But John has always insisted that it is necessary for protection when you live in a house. Since John wears the pants in the Collins household, that was the way the matter ended.

  Surely Lexi has taken it, just like Sue Ann suspects. Jason doesn’t even want to consider the “why” behind it, it unsettles him so much. Suicide has been a word that has slipped between Lexi’s lips far too many times for Jason to feel comfortable with her having a gun in her possession. Even if it has been a couple of years since she last spoke of it. They had all been so worried Matthew’s stillbirth would trigger a depression so huge in her that she would never again recover. Certainly all of them had expected that she would try to kill herself again. But, much to everyone’s relief, she got through it comparatively easily.