unStrapped

by Nina G. Jones

  He sighs. “She got sauced again. I don’t know what’s going on with her these days. Let her in.”

  “Hi Nan,” I say with the tone of a question. “Did you drive over here by yourself? Is everything okay?”

  “I’m fine,” she says, pushing her way into the house. She’s definitely enjoyed her alcohol tonight.

  “Nan, what’s going on?” Taylor asks. “I’m not letting you drive back like this.”

  “How thoughtful,” she says sarcastically.

  I shoot Taylor a baffled look.

  “Are you here to talk to us about something?” Taylor asks.

  “You killed Eric, didn’t you?”

  The question hits so hard I nearly gasp.

  “Okay, you definitely had too much to drink. This is ridiculous.” Taylor says, walking towards her.

  “Don’t!” She says, pulling out a small-caliber pistol from her clutch. She waves the gun at me and Taylor, who is about fifteen feet away. I, on the other hand am standing about two terrifying feet away from her.

  “Easy…” Taylor says, putting his hands out.

  “Nan…calm down,” I say. Having a gun pointed in my direction by a Holden is getting far too common these days.

  “Nan, talk to me,” Taylor insists, drawing her attention away from me.

  “I know about everything. All these years, you lying sack of shit!”

  “Nan, you need to be more specific,” Taylor says. His demeanor is frighteningly calm, just as it was in the field when he killed Eric. Taylor is not like other people, he doesn’t panic in the face of death, he sees things just as clearly. I on the other hand, am trying hard not to lose my shit. It’s not my safety that I am worried about. I can’t lose my husband on our wedding night. If I lose Taylor, then I hope she kills me too, because I won’t be able to breathe without him. Please, no.

  “Shyla, I told you I had a dream about Eric visiting me one night. Well that was only partly true. It wasn’t a dream at all. He did come. He told me everything. How Taylor made him leave without even saying goodbye. How all these years, it was you who kept him away. About your sexual proclivities. His fiancée. And then how the two of you framed him! He told me he was going to make it right. Get his life back. Get rid of you. And maybe I couldn’t have Eric back, seeing as you destroyed his name, but I could have Evan. With you gone, I would be next in line to run H.I.”

  “Listen to yourself, Nan. Doesn’t this all sound a little far-fetched?” Taylor reasons.

  “I knew he spoke to his father. I’m not stupid. I know Randall was keeping some sort of secret about him. But I thought he was just asking for money like the junkie you made him out to be. Randall knew I wouldn’t support that, so I figured he was hiding that from me. It makes me feel a lot less guilty for poisoning him.”

  “What?”

  “Oh, don’t you ever wonder how a successful strapping man, like your father, suddenly becomes chronically ill?”

  “He has a disease,” Taylor states flatly.

  “I guess it could be called that. Super low-dose cadmium over a very long period of time looks a lot like an autoimmune disease. Where most people fail is they get impatient, they give too much too fast, and then the doctors know. But I gave tiny amounts, until right to the point where I knew he would be irreversibly ill, but live with the consequences.”

  My knees tremble as I listen to Nan. She’s lost her mind, and she’s far worse than indifferent. She likes to make people suffer.

  “How did you get your hands on cadmium?”

  “Money buys you anything.”

  “Why would you poison Randall?”

  “He humiliated me. Having an affair with a teenage slut and then bringing their bastard into my home! I tried with you. I thought: he’s an innocent boy. But you were insufferable with your issues. I couldn’t defend Eric though, because at least you had an excuse for your behavior. Then when we found the drugs in his room—that I now know was your doing—well I thought he was a lost cause too.

  “Oh how I sometimes wish you had drank the milkshake,” Nan snarls. “I thought Eric would inherit the company. I thought that would be the thing to get him on track, but then Randall gave you the position and he just vanished. Now I understand why.”

  “Nan, listen to me. I can’t talk with you like this. Please put the gun down. The reason he left years ago was because he tried to have me killed after Randall gave me the company. I had my differences with Eric, but I did not kill him. He left the country and got caught up in some shit.”

  “You expect me to believe that he just decided to hook up with some cartels instead of finishing you like he had told me he would?”

  “I do. He’s left without telling you before. What do you want anyway? If you think this is true, then go to the police. What? Are you going to kill me and go to jail for the rest of your life? That’s what would happen.” Taylor’s voice goes soft, almost hypnotic. “Nan, why are you here?”

  “I wanted to tell you I know. I wanted to see your face. I wanted to be the one to tell you that all of your lies have caught up with you. And I will go to the police. I will tell them that Eric was in the country and went to see you, that you lied about the rape. It might sound crazy at first, but they will investigate, and I don’t care how much clean-up you think you did, you will be all over the news. Your reputation will be ruined. And you will go to jail.”

  “Nan, let’s talk.”

  She laughs loudly. “Oh now you want to talk.”

  I eye the gun in her hand. The caliber is small, she’s getting comfortable talking to Taylor and seems to have forgotten my presence. Taylor needs my help. He has always protected me, now it’s my turn to protect him. I give Taylor a wide-eyed look to let him know I have a plan, and he looks at me and yells: “No!”

  But it’s precisely enough to distract Nan as I thrust myself up and against her arm, knocking her to the floor, causing the gun to slide across the foyer.

  Taylor runs for it, and removes the bullets as I pin her arms overhead. “Taylor, I need some help here!”

  He places the gun on the counter, puts the bullets in his pocket and runs over. “I’ve got her.”

  He drags her into his office and sits her in a chair.

  “You can’t kill me, people know I’m here.”

  “I have no intention of killing you. And I didn’t kill Eric. However, I am not interested in you fanatically spreading rumors about my life.”

  “Well, good luck with that.”

  “Considering you just confessed to poisoning my father, I wouldn’t be so confident.”

  “I stopped eight years ago, so good luck trying to prove it with just hearsay. You know how good our family attorneys are. Marnie prepped all his food, I would hate to see her take the blame.” She reveals a smug smirk.

  “You are insane,” I say under my breath.

  “On the contrary, I know exactly what I am doing. I was wronged here. I was a devoted wife! And what do I get? Cheated on? Humiliated? Lied to? Living with the constant reminder of my husband’s infidelity! I’m just making everything right again. So if you’ll excuse me, I have a wedding reception to return to.”

  She confidently rises, and I watch helplessly as she slowly takes a few steps towards the office door, arrogance oozing from her body. Taylor can’t stop her, he can’t lay a hand on her right now.

  “Oh wait,” Taylor says, scratching his head, as if he just remembered something. Then he starts to laugh, it’s one of those mocking, sarcastic laughs.

  “You might want to grab that seat again, Nan. There’s something that you should know. My lovely wife here knows about it, but I’m sure she’ll forgive me for having to hear all this again.”

  Nan, hesitantly turns to listen to what Taylor has to say.

  “See, I have a general distrust of people. I’m always telling Shyla that people aren’t as good as they appear to be. That might have to do with my life experiences. I have had the privilege of seeing the darker side of hu
manity. So…I had this journal, where I kept secrets of all the women I have slept with. I destroyed it, but I actually did a better job of taking the secrets that I have of all of these women and putting them in separate secure locations. I do this with business associates too. Pretty much anyone I think I might need to ‘correct’ in the future.”

  Nan slumps in the chair behind her, as if her legs can no longer hold her up.

  Taylor’s tone shifts, from one of arrogance to one of soft sympathy. “Shyla, I am sorry for what I am about to tell you. I am not proud of it. And I didn’t want to hurt you, but there is one part of my story you don’t know.”

  My breathing becomes shallow as my mind reaches for all the possibilities of what terrible news he has for me.

  “Nan, remember me when I was sixteen? I was a quiet kid, I did all my schoolwork, sports. I just wanted to be left alone. And it worked. My dad thought I was fine. I felt like maybe I could pull off this normal act. And then Randall left on a business trip. Eric went to hockey camp. It was just the two of us. And in the middle of the night, my door opened. I remember that distinctly, because it was a big fear of mine. You see, when I was very little, a man used to come into my room at night to beat me. And even nine years later, I still hated the sound of a door slowly opening late at night.

  “But it was you, my stepmother. I felt relief, thinking I was safe with you. You were the closest thing I had to a mother. And then you sat in my bed, and you told me how handsome I had become, how I looked like my father when you first met him, and how you understood the things I must be feeling now. That my mother was sixteen when she was pregnant with me by Randall, and it was only fair you got something out of it. You told me how you had gone through my room and found magazines about sex, you had even looked through my computer and saw the things I was exploring. You said you wouldn’t tell.”

  My breathing becomes frenzied and my vision tunnels as I piece together what Taylor is saying.

  “It happened once. We never spoke of it again. Sometimes I think you think I forgot or pushed it away with all the other things people did to me. But that’s the thing, I never forgot, not a single person, not a single face. That includes you. People like you, they tend to have a certain taste. And I’ve been watching you for about eight years now. And I know all about your taste for underage young men. How you lure them with gifts and money. I know their names, I know where they live. I have pictures. I know about the one you visited before Randall’s birthday brunch. It’s all waiting, in a box. All I have to do is make one phone call, and it will be sent out to every major paper before you even make it back to your car. And then, who will believe a word you have to say about me?

  “So, I am giving you a choice. A merciful one. Shut the fuck up, or accept that your life as you now know it is over. And believe me. The only reason you won’t be dead, is because my father loves your frigid, black soul and you are all he has.”

  My body trembles with rage, sadness, sickness. I look over at Taylor with sympathy and compassion. “I’m sorry, Shyla. I didn’t want to hurt you with this. I didn’t want to hurt you.” He didn’t want to hurt me. His stepmother snuck into his room one night and used him and he didn’t want to hurt me. He looks at me with painful eyes. And then I see blood, like it’s pouring over my eyes. It’s rage I have never experienced in my life. A need to protect. I always thought I could never confront the people who hurt Taylor when he was young, because they were all dead. But now, when I look at Nan, I see them all. All the people who ever laid a hand on him, who ever made him suffer, who used him for their own sick pleasure, they are all encompassed in her, looking at me through her almost transparent aqua eyes.

  Taylor and I are so close to finding the happiness we have fought to achieve. We are so close to making it end, just as Taylor had promised. And now, right when I can feel the warmth of our promising futures grazing the tips of my fingers, Nan wants to rip it all away. Not only did Nan use Taylor in the past, but she wants to take away his future. And now I understand the rage Taylor felt towards Eric and Rick, the desire to kill, because I feel it too. I feel like I could kill her with my bare hands without an ounce of regret.

  “You sick bitch,” I say lunging towards her and grabbing her neck, tears streaming down my face as my words erupt with a quivering wrath. “You knew…you knew what he had been through…and you took advantage of him…you were supposed to protect him, you sick fucking bitch!” My hands squeeze tighter and tighter around her neck, my thumbs press against her windpipe, her glass eyes are vacant as she stares back into mine. “You knew he wouldn’t tell…He should have been able to trust you…and you used him like the others…you hurt him again. You evil cunt bitch! I’ll fucking kill you!”

  A series of hisses and choking sounds emit from her throat as she grips my wrists. “Shyla…Shyla…” Taylor’s voice comes closer and closer from a distant place I had tuned out. Taylor grabs my forearms and pulls them away gently as Nan falls back into the seat, gasping for air and clenching at the high collar of her dress.

  I collapse into Taylor’s chest, softly pounding on it with unfocused anger. “I wish I could have protected you,” I murmur.

  “I’m sorry Shy. I am so sorry. I didn’t want you to carry this burden. The others are dead, but she is still in our lives. I didn’t want you to look at her knowing that.”

  Taylor turns to Nan. “Get the fuck out of here. And if I hear a peep about anything we spoke of here, I will make your life so miserable, I promise you will kill yourself. You will be a leper, you will have no friends, and everyone will know you are a filthy, sick bitch. You will not have a fucking dime to your name when Randall and I would be through with you. And you will cut off your latest boy toy. If I find you saw him, I will send out the information without hesitation.”

  Nan scurries out of the office. In the distance, I hear the front door slam.

  “I never want to see her again,” I declare with fierce conviction. “If you have to make her go away. I won’t blame you.”

  “Shyla, trust me on this. I will make this right. It will end.” Taylor says, stroking my head gently.

  Chapter 42

  “What are you doing over there?” Taylor asks, coming out onto the deck of our oceanfront private hut. His eyes match the color of the endless ocean in front of me.

  “Oh, I’m looking at studios available for sale back home.”

  “All work and no play…” he says, grabbing a piece of fruit from my plate as he walks by.

  “You should talk, Mr. Holden Industries.”

  “You have to admit, I have been very well behaved on this trip. I only check my email two times a day.”

  He reaches his arm out to a thin pillar that extends up to the thatched roof, and leans his tanned naked body towards it. Yes, he is completely naked, and yummy. I cannot believe I am married to that tanned, taut ass.

  “I think you are trying to distract me from my current task.”

  “Oh?” he says innocently. “You should know by now I am usually direct. So in that spirit, come for a quick morning swim with me.”

  “How about I meet you in the hot tub in ten?”

  “Sounds like a plan. Bring your fuck pants.”

  “My fuck pants?”

  “Well, not literally.”

  “I’ll make sure to bring my figurative fuck pants. Yikes, I think this time away from the office is turning your brain to mush.”

  “Watch that mouth of yours. Keep up that smack-talk and I’ll have to shut you up using my favorite technique.”

  “Who says it’s not mine too?”

  “You little slut.” He turns, winks and me, and then dives into the ocean from the deck.

  I smile to myself, feeling so utterly content right now in our own little corner of the world. Life will never be perfect, but it’s getting closer. Slowly Taylor and I have shaped our environment to eliminate as much of the negativity of our pasts as we can.

  He may not ever have a close relationship
with his mother, but he knows she did what she had to do to protect our sister and give him the best life possible. He knows she was willing to kill for him, just as he has been willing to do for me. We now have a niece, a brother-in-law, and a sister. Sure, the world will never know that, but we do. And they are good people who have come into our lives through all of this devastation: a glimmer of light in the darkness.

  Eric is dead. And while that is tragic, I’ll admit, he sort of had it coming. He tried to recruit Rick, which triggered a series of events out of his control. And he did put a gun to my head; he should have known Taylor wasn’t going to show the same mercy twice.

  Rick is gone and no longer a threat to our happiness. He turned out to be far more pathetic than I ever gave him credit for.

  Nan, well, I am confident there will be a solution for that sick, vile bitch.

  My mom has her best friend back. They speak on the phone quite a bit these days. I admire my mother’s capacity to forgive and so I, in turn, have forgiven her too.

  Randall, well, I think we’ll be having an interesting dynamic. And I am okay with that. I get why he’s so paranoid, he’s married to Nan for fuck’s sake. Taylor is his only living son, and I am sure the daughter of the cult leader that abused his son was the last person he wanted his son with. That man has made a lot of mistakes, and I am sure he wanted to avoid such a path for his son. That being said, I think he likes me, he just has a god-awful way of showing it. He still doesn’t know Lyla is alive; Taylor and I agree that it’s best to keep that painful knowledge from him.

  I flip through the tabs on my browser and notice a plethora of facebook alerts:

  So sorry!

  I am so sorry for your loss.

  RIP Rick

  I frantically search for the original post, it is a newspaper article posted by Pete, Rick’s best friend. He has tagged a bunch of people who knew Rick.

  Today I lost one of the most incredible people I have ever known. I wish I could have done more. We all knew you were having a hard time, but you kept telling us you were fine. I hope you are at peace. If you are battling with depression, please seek help.