by Julia Derek
As Jason enters his car that he parked several blocks away from Herman’s apartment building, he keeps wondering what must have triggered her to feel a need to kill herself so strong she went to steal her father’s gun. John came back from work as soon as he found out that Lexi was missing and, together, he and Sue Ann combed through their house to see if the gun was there somewhere after all. But they couldn’t find it anywhere and John remains certain that he hasn’t moved it from his nightstand. Which means Lexi must have taken it.
The only thing that makes even a little sense to Jason is that her sudden death wish has something to do with the stillbirth of their son, albeit belatedly. In the days after Matt’s birth and while being depressed himself, he as well as Lexi’s parents had been super worried this second tragedy would cause her to relapse into a depression so severe she would never become herself again. So, in addition to walking on eggshells around her at all times and treating and talking to her with extreme care, they had removed all the photos of their daughter again since that had seemed to help to finally heal her tremendous grief the first time. Dr. Meyer had thought it was a wise decision to have every trace of the girl removed during the difficult weeks that followed Matt’s death.
It is only a few days ago that Jason thought of bringing all the photos back up again, five months after having removed them a second time. In the last couple of weeks Lexi seemed to be completely recovered from her latest depression, so he had made a mental note of calling Dr. Meyer and asking her what she thought of this.
How could he not have noticed that something was in fact off with Lexi? Is it possible that this has something to do with alcohol? But wouldn’t he have noticed if she started to drink again? Except for that night when she accused him of flirting with that cocktail waitress at Capital Grille—which he had definitely not been doing, but given Lexi’s fragile state he’d thought it was best to just agree—she has not touched any alcohol around him. He watched her carefully in the days that followed that night, but couldn’t see any signs of her having secretly begun drinking again. No, he doesn’t think this has to do with her drinking excessively again. Well, he supposes he might have missed red flags being as busy as he has been lately…
He shakes his head with despair as he stares out at the rainy road he is driving on, the windshield wipers working hard to remove the rain that keeps hitting the BMW’s tinted windshield. If only he didn’t work so much, had paid her more attention this would not have happened…
He suddenly decides that, instead of heading home like he had first planned, he will go to St. Michael’s Cemetery and see if maybe Lexi is there now. That was one of the first places he had thought she might have gone to since she had wanted to be close to their child’s grave while trying to drink herself to death. Now, with two children dead, what better place than their graves to kill herself, next to the two of them? He had of course informed both the cops and Rutherford of his thoughts and both had assured him they would check the cemetery immediately.
Jason doesn’t doubt that they have actually gone there to check for her, especially Rutherford, who Jason pays handsomely and is solely focused on finding Lexi. Both Officer Garcia and the P.I. have informed him that they didn’t spot her in this area much earlier today. What Jason is not so sure of all of a sudden is if either of them has stayed there in case she shows up at a later point. Like around now, later in the evening, when the cemetery is likely to be deserted.
Rutherford, who is only one person, has obviously not stayed. Jason has heard from him a couple of times throughout the day as the investigator checked in with him and he was in the city then. Come to think of it, with all the other matters the cops have on their minds, it’s unlikely one of them is still there either. At the most, they might swing by the cemetery every now and then, if even that. But as dark and rainy as it is this evening, it’s hard to see much. So even if they do come by on occasion, it would be very easy for them to miss Lexi were she to sneak into the cemetery.
The more Jason considers this scenario, the surer he is that she might in fact be there after all. He’d better get there as soon as possible. He finds the nearest road that will take him in the direction of St. Michael’s Cemetery and steps on the gas pedal. He eyes the car radio and sees that it’s almost eight at night. Oh, God, please don’t let her lie dead next to the graves, he prays silently. He steps harder on the gas pedal, making his car leap forward, while grabbing the steering wheel tighter.
The traffic is fairly light, so it doesn’t take him more than twenty minutes to reach the deserted cemetery and find a parking spot nearby. He stops his car and practically jumps out of the vehicle. There are no cop cars around anywhere, so his hunch has proven correct. She could easily have slipped inside the cemetery through the black wrought iron doors he now approaches with quick steps. He feels more and more convinced that he will find her close to their children’s graves. His heart is pounding like a jackhammer in his chest and his face is coated with cold sweat and icy rain that keeps whipping his skin.
When he finds that the cemetery doors are not fully closed, his conviction grows stronger that she is in there. Who else in their right mind would be visiting dead loved one in this freezing, miserable weather so late in the day?
Oh, God, please don’t let her have killed herself already…
He enters the dark cemetery that, as far as Jason can tell, is completely empty, which is to be expected since it’s a weeknight in December and raining cats and dogs. People are working or attending holiday parties. Jason keeps his ears pricked as he walks farther in between the many gravestones in the direction of where his children are buried, hoping not to hear the deafening sound of a gun firing suddenly. That can only mean one thing.
It cannot happen, not when he is so close.
He picks up his speed so that he is half running. The rain beats down all around him, creating tiny holes in the mud. The cemetery is big, but he knows exactly where the two graves are. He and Lexi have both been there many times after all.
Maybe not after Matt died, but plenty after Celeste did. Jason did everything in his power to avoid Lexi going there after Matt’s burial, thinking she would not be able to handle seeing both her children dead. Fortunately—or maybe surprisingly—the one time they went to put flowers on Matt’s grave, she had been okay. The way she had ignored Celeste’s grave had been a bit odd, but he decided it was best not to mention it. Surely she had her reasons.
The gravel crunching under his feet, he is running now along the meandering path that cuts through the cemetery, certain that he is seeing someone crouching before a grave in the area where their children’s graves are.
Oh, God, it’s Lexi! She is here, just like he had suspected. Oh, God, please don’t kill yourself. I’m coming, Lexi. I’m coming.
He runs as fast as he can toward the person, hoping he won’t hear that loud, devastating gunshot as he keeps moving forward. When he is only a few yards away, he realizes that what he thought was Lexi is only the shadow of another gravestone close by. The sheen from a streetlight outside the cemetery is producing this shadow that made him think he was seeing a person hunching down. No one is sitting in front of any of the small tombstones there. No one is sitting or standing anywhere else, either, he determines as he looks around the area. As far as he can tell, he is still alone in the cemetery.
Allowing himself to catch his breath, he walks in front of his children’s gravestones and squats first in front of Matt’s for a few moments, then he moves on to Celeste’s pale pink, round gravestone. His eyes fill with tears as he reads the words carved into the sandstone:
In Memory of Celeste Anne Marie Woods, Beloved Daughter. June 11, 2006—Aug 4, 2008. A Little Angel Taken Too Soon.
He wipes at his eyes with the heel of his hand, doing his best not to think about the day when he got the call from the hospital and the doctor informed him that his daughter was dead. But it’s hard, very hard not to do so. Finally, he has no choice but to make
himself move back to Matt’s grave in order to stop thinking about that horrible day.
After having stayed at the two graves for he doesn’t know how long waiting for Lexi to show up, he finally decides to leave and go home. He can’t be sitting here forever. As he checks his phone for messages from her parents, the police, Rutherford, maybe even Lexi herself—he should be so lucky--he sees that it’s almost midnight now. The rain is still coming down hard around him and he is soaking wet. Even he has to admit to himself that, if his wife had planned on coming here to kill herself, she would have come by now.
He gets to his feet and begins making his way back to the cemetery entrance. It doesn’t take him many minutes to get there, and by the time he is there, it has stopped raining and instead the moon has appeared from behind a few light gray clouds. It’s three quarters full and hanging low in the inky dark sky.
He takes one last look around for Lexi before he slips inside his BMW and takes off toward Manhattan
***
When Jason enters their apartment building on Central Park West, he is hoping that the doorman will tell him that Lexi has come home. Jason has told the doorman staff that she is missing and to let him know if they see her. But of course this doesn’t happen; instead, the old man just greets him as politely as always, wishing him a nice night as Jason disappears into the elevator.
Jason sighs heavily as he walks into their spacious apartment, certainly no longer expecting Lexi to appear somewhere there. He reflects over the fact that the apartment is so big, a conscious decision they made since they had expected to have a large family one day and neither Lexi nor Jason liked the idea of having to move. They also both loved New York City, so at the time of getting this apartment, they had thought that they might as well get a big place in preparation for all the kids that would one day join them.
Who would have thought their first two children would both end up dead?
He removes his still wet coat and shoes and finds a towel to dry his damp hair. Then he goes into their bedroom to change into a dry pair of jeans and a sweater. Even though his coat is on the thicker side, the heavy rain has managed to make him wet all the way into his skin.
As he finds a dry pair of jeans and a new sweater, his thoughts go to the journal Lexi used to write in after he found her with Herman and brought her back home. Well, it took her a few weeks before she got started. Unlike Jason, who has kept a journal since he was in college, Lexi has never been into writing much of anything. She’s always preferred to read instead of to write. He knows that she keeps her journal in her dresser somewhere. Despite her resistance to writing in general, he can’t help but wonder if she might have written in it lately. If she might have written anything that might give him an idea where she could be or what was on her mind in the days before she decided to take her dad’s gun and disappear on him all over again. He seriously doubts he’ll find anything useful as hard as it was to make her start writing the last time. Still, it’s worth exploring.
He opens every drawer in the white-painted wooden dresser, not sure in which one she might keep her journal. He used to keep his own journal—he hates it when Lexi calls it a diary; only women write diaries—all over the apartment, but lately he brings it with him in his briefcase in case he gets some good ideas for his book. He prefers putting them down in longhand. He moves around all her clothes folded in each drawer in search of the worn, blue book she uses. When he gets to the third, the middle one, he finally finds the thing under a stack of sweaters and pulls it out.
Looking at it, he can instantly tell that it has been used a lot. A lot more than he had ever expected Lexi to use it. He fills with hope. Does that mean she has written something to help them figure out what’s been going on inside her head lately?
He takes the diary with him and walks into their living room where he takes a seat on the big couch and opens it to see what his wife might have written. As he does so, he fills with unpleasant feelings. A diary or a journal is private stuff and he should not be doing this without Lexi’s permission. But he also knows that these feelings of his are irrelevant. These are desperate times and such times call for desperate measures. He needs to know if she has written anything that might clue him into where she is.
Surprisingly, his wife has filled many, many pages of this diary with words—more than he had thought—and some are illegible. She doesn’t seem to have written in the journal for quite a while, though, he soon determines, much to his disappointment. He starts to read some of her writing regarding her feelings surrounding the accident, even though he knows that he probably shouldn’t be reading this. It will only bring back bad memories. Even so, he can’t stop himself:
He keeps turning the pages in the journal and nearly drops the blue book when he sees the stark words written across one page:
I killed her.
It’s not like he’s not well aware that Lexi blames herself for their daughter’s death. Still, seeing the big, glaring letters in his wife’s unmistakable handwriting, seeing how dented the paper under them are, most likely from an avalanche of tears, it’s still jarring to him.
The letters are so BIG.
Not able to stomach looking at them any longer, he closes the worn, blue diary and puts it away. Then he grabs his phone and returns to the couch. Placing the phone in his lap, he resigns himself to the phone call he knows will eventually come. He doesn’t know what else to do but to wait for this inevitable phone call. A phone call informing him that Lexi has been found dead somewhere, having committed suicide with her own father’s gun.
Chapter 26
It’s two in the morning when the phone in Jason’s lap finally sounds. Opening his eyes, he jerks to life, not sure where he is or what is sounding so sharply all of a sudden. He soon realizes that it is his own phone that’s both ringing and vibrating in his lap. As he reaches for it to answer, he sees on the screen that he has missed two calls already from the number currently calling him.
Rutherford is trying to reach him.
Jason grabs his phone and presses the Talk button.
“Hello,” he says into the phone, his voice hoarse.
“I think I’ve found your wife,” the deep-voiced investigator says.
Jason is instantly awake and sits up straight on the couch. “Are you sure? Is she…” He can’t make himself ask the question. He figures it isn’t even necessary. He’ll find out soon enough.
“She’s alive,” Rutherford says.
Jason feels suddenly several pounds lighter and delirious, he is so relieved. “Really? She’s alive? Are you sure it’s Lexi?”
“Her driver’s license says Alexandra Marie Woods and she fits the description you’ve given me of her perfectly. She also has a handgun on her.”
Jason presses the phone closer to his ear. “Where are you?”
“At the ER at the New York Presbyterian Hospital. She’s unconscious from having drunk way too much alcohol, but other than that, she’s apparently fine. The staff here told me she’s beginning to come to now.”
A huge grin stretches Jason’s lips.
Lexi is still alive…
“Thank God,” he mumbles while closing his eyes. “Thank you so much. Which Presbyterian are you at?”
“The one on the Upper East Side.”
Jason tells him that he’ll be there as soon as a cab will take him there. Before he leaves his house, he calls Lexi’s parents and Officer Garcia to let them know that Lexi has been found and is safe. When Sue Ann says she and John will come to the hospital, Jason tells her it’s better that they hold off; from the sound of it, he might be able to take Lexi straight home as soon as he gets to the ER and the doctor has given his okay to discharge her.
It being the middle of the night, it’s easy for Jason to find a cab and get to the hospital. He rushes inside the tall, white building and identifies himself as Lexi’s husband to the nurse behind the reception desk. She gives him directions to the room Lexi has been taken to. He is there only
minutes later. Rutherford, big and square and dour-looking in his dark clothes, stands next to the door, making sure she can’t go anywhere. Which Jason told him to do, in case she would try. Before entering the room, Jason shakes the man’s hand and thanks him profusely for having found Lexi for him.
A fully awake Lexi is half sitting up in the hospital bed, her face blotchy and her eyes bloodshot and swollen. There is an IV attached to her arm. She glares at Jason as he comes inside the room, her mouth pinched sourly.
“Lexi!” he exclaims as he runs up to her. He reaches for her hands that are clasped over the gray blanket covering her lower body. She snaps them away before he can grasp them.
“Don’t you touch me, you pig!” she hisses at him, her hazel eyes narrowed into slits.
He looks at her, shocked. Did she just call him a pig…? “What… Why do you—”
Her puffy face twists into a furious grimace. “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be fucking your young mistress? Or did she realize what a disgusting, selfish, murderous pig you are and kicked you out?”
Jason stares at Lexi, at the sincere fury with which she is hurling all these horrible words at him. “…fucking your young mistress?” “…disgusting, selfish, murderous pig…”
So is that why she decided to kill herself? Because she thinks he is having an affair? But why would she think this? Yes, he has been working more than normal lately, paid her less attention than he should have done in the last few weeks, but that’s it. He can’t see how that would ever lead to her suspecting that he is being unfaithful to her. He hasn’t been that negligent. Besides, she must know how much he loves her. He tells her practically every day.
“Lexi,” he begins, “I’m not having an affair with anyone. I know I have been unusually busy, but I assure you, that has all to do with work”—he clears his throat, feeling a little guilty—”well, and my book.”
