In To Her

by JA Huss

  “But how do you know it’s not it?” I ask. “It’s a fucking confession.”

  “He’s not looking for a confession, AJ. He’s looking for…”

  But he stops.

  “He’s looking for what?”

  But he just shakes his head. “I don’t know, but it’s not a book. It’s a person. That’s all I know.”

  “The guy who so obviously lived here?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Logan, you’re not making any fucking sense. What did he tell you? Like specifically?”

  “He said… he said if I found it, I’d know it.”

  I shake my head. “Fuck that! Fuck that, dude! That’s not a directive. ‘Know it when you see it?’ Well, this is it! I know it when I see it!”

  “It’s not it.”

  An angry sigh bursts out of me. He’s being fucking stupid. I’m still holding the book, my thumb holding the place at the first entry, So I open it back up and read it out loud. “‘I am Damon Dell’Ariccia, and this is my true confession.’” There’s a page break so I flip the page and continue.

  “‘The first time I raped Glori Bennett she was twelve years old.’”

  I am so stunned, I stop reading and just stare at those words on the page. Handwritten words. My true confession.

  When I look up Logan is staring at me. “Still think this isn’t it? We should call him.”

  “It’s not it,” Logan insists. “And we can’t call him, AJ. There’s no service.”

  Both of us look at the window. Checking to see if it’s still snowing. Which it is.

  “This is it,” I say. “All we gotta do is take this back to him and we can let Yvette go.”

  Logan shakes his head. Slowly. Almost sadly.

  “Yes,” I say. “I’m not killing her. Not after… all this. Not after tonight. I can’t do it.”

  In fact, a realization hits me in this moment. I’m tired of this life. I’m tired of killing. I’m tired of working for Damon. I like this place. I’m kinda jealous of whoever was living here with Yvette. I’m jealous of his gym, and his stupid shit cars, and his lift, and his tools. I’m jealous of his quaint little bar on the top of a mountain. Hell, I’m jealous of his tractor.

  But most of all I’m jealous of his girl.

  I’m into her, I realize.

  Very fucking into her.

  She is a lost, sad mystery of a woman every way you look at it.

  How did she escape? I have been wondering that for weeks.

  But also, in the back of my head, I have been wondering about other things too. Maybe more realizing than wondering. And this other nagging, little realization is… if she can get out then so can I.

  I’m sick of my life. I want this one instead. Some small business with an apartment overhead. Local customers who come in for lunch just because they want to visit. Working with my wife—or whatever she was to him, since she’s still married to Damon. Coming upstairs after a long day and not having to deal with traffic or loud neighbors who can’t ever seem to shut the fuck up.

  Eating dinner with her, and showering with her, and then taking her to bed and loving her.

  I have never been in love. I have never even pretended to be in love.

  And Logan doesn’t count because he’s a dude and what we have is just friends with benefits. That’s it.

  But I could see myself with Yvette. I could see myself up here on her mountain running this bar. Or hell, if we had to move, we’d move away. Somewhere far. Maybe another country so if Damon ever got second thoughts we’d be safe.

  Maybe we’d have a kid? Change our names and be married. Open a bed-and-breakfast on a beach or something like that. Live the expat life. Raise a family that way. With a pack of little too-blonde kids with too-tanned skin running around barefoot on a beach as they grew up.

  I could see that life. I could love that life.

  I could have that life.

  We could have that life.

  And hell, if Logan wanted to come I wouldn’t mind that either.

  So I picture a whole new scenario. The three of us replacing the two of us. Everything else stays the same. Only some of the kids would have gray eyes, like his. And some of them would have blue eyes, like mine.

  But we wouldn’t care.

  We’d treat them all the same. We’d love them, and teach them how to surf.

  I don’t know how to surf. Hell, I’ve only seen a beach once in my life and that was in New Jersey. But I’d learn. I could learn lots of new things.

  Logan sighs, pulling me out of my fantasy. “So… I don’t know what to make of this.”

  He’s holding up the letter.

  I’m just gonna pretend I didn’t read that letter. That’s what I make of it.

  “But it’s starting to make sense,” he continues.

  “No,” I say. “No, that letter is a mistake.”

  Logan shoots me a look I’ve seen hundreds of times. But it’s been a while. We were a lot younger the last time he looked at me this way. It’s a look that says… You’re stupid.

  “This isn’t a mistake.” He laughs. “You don’t write a letter like this by mistake, AJ.”

  But it has to be a mistake. Otherwise everything we’ve done tonight turns into just another bad example of wrong time, wrong place.

  And I refuse to believe that.

  I simply refuse.

  This is a really great example of right time, right place.

  I feel that so completely.

  “We should just do it now,” Logan says. “We can still wrap her in the tarp and stuff her in the trunk. It’s cold enough outside that she’ll freeze and then when the storm clears we can take her to the ravine and—”

  He stops talking because I punch him in the face.

  “What the fuck?” he says, feeling the blood on his lip. “What the fuck are you—”

  “We’re. Not. Killing her.”

  “AJ, don’t be stupid. If we go back to Damon—”

  “Maybe we don’t go back to Damon? Maybe we—”

  “Have you lost your fucking mind? He will kill us, AJ.”

  “Only if he finds us,” I say. “And besides. I’m not afraid of that asshole.”

  “You don’t need to be afraid of him. You and I both know he doesn’t kill anyone himself. He’s got dozens of people like you and me to do it for him. And they will find us, AJ. We found her, didn’t we?”

  “That’s another mystery,” I say. “He knew she was here. Has been here, probably playing house with the guy who actually owns this bar. And he let her live.”

  “He was toying with her, don’t you see that? He was biding his time and playing with her. We’re living fucking proof!” I open my mouth to speak, but Logan puts up a hand to stop me. “Just… listen to me, OK? There’s more going on here than you know.”

  “Obviously.”

  “He’s already unhappy with you about losing that money, AJ. He’s already pissed off. And he’s nuts. We all know he’s nuts. Always picking fights with people. Everything he does is a gut reaction. He’s impulsive, and careless, and stupid. The guy has maybe five years on the job before some other boss decides to shut his stupid trap for good. All I have to do is lie low, do my job, keep my mouth shut and pretty soon someone else is gonna take over. His cousin, Joe, maybe. Or his little brother, Anthony. Damon is temporary. All I gotta do—”

  “All you?” I ask.

  “What?”

  “You keep saying all you gotta do. What about me?”

  He looks at me for a second, then says, “I mean us, AJ. I mean we. All we gotta do is play it smart. Then when the regime change happens, we slip away. Quietly, no drama, no debts. Just slip away.”

  But he did not mean us.

  He very much did mean him.

  “We do this job,” Logan says, gripping my upper arm. “We finish it. We go home. We bide our time. And we get out.”

  I shake my head no. “We’re not killing her.”

&nbs
p; “It’s OK,” Yvette says from the doorway.

  We both spin around to see her standing there holding a stack of clothes that she did not just happen to find in her little lost and found.

  “It’s OK,” she says again, sighing with a whole lot of sad resignation. “I know that’s why you’re here. You can kill me. I don’t mind because… I don’t want to live anymore.”

  Logan and I both look down at the note he’s still holding.

  Her suicide note.

  Which describes, in detail, how this night would’ve gone if we hadn’t shown up.

  Chapter Fourteen - YVETTE

  Did I want to get them clothes when I offered?

  Most days I’d have said no. It was too painful to go down into that room. Seeing everything I lost laid out before my eyes was unbearable. Too difficult to endure.

  But I liked having someone to care for. It’s been so long since I had that. And so here was a chance to help in some small way. To make them more comfortable.

  Even so, when the words came out of my mouth I was as surprised as they were. I count the weeks between visits. And it has been seventeen now. So the count would start over if I went down there to get them clothes.

  At first, in the days following the “accident”, I counted the minutes.

  The bar was closed, so I didn’t have to worry about customers. And I’d go upstairs, back when everything was still upstairs, and just wallow in the emptiness as I sat in the middle of all the things that used to fill me up. Then I’d go back downstairs and do something meaningless. Like wash down the already clean bar, or rearrange the whiskey bottles so all the labels were facing forward. Or play a video game.

  I stayed away from the jukebox because Chris and I had a lot of fun with that machine.

  Maybe that’s why, when AJ held out his hand for me to dance with him, I did. I took it and I let him swing me around. Then let him fuck me with Logan.

  I guess I could make an argument for that. But I’m not going to bother.

  I took his hand because he offered it. I let them fuck me because they didn’t ask permission.

  I’d have said no if they were the timid sort. The kind of men who were not spontaneous and daring. Who were not in charge and bossy.

  But they were, so I let them.

  I just don’t want to think anymore. I don’t want to make any more decisions. I’ve made enough of those over the last year. Enough for an entire lifetime.

  Three caskets in one year is too many to choose in ten years.

  Two funerals. Three burial plots. Two times I had to fill this bar with friends and family so we could say goodbye to the people we lost.

  And then… those minutes that came after the accident. After the last funeral was over. When everyone went home and all the food was put away, I just sat here. Alone.

  And yes, Chris had family still. But they live hundreds of miles away down in New Mexico.

  I wasn’t going to go with them.

  Maybe the bar was empty and l was lonely, but I didn’t want to leave it behind.

  So those minutes were hard. And eventually they turned into hours, and hours became days. I started sleeping on the pool table. I got pillows and blankets, stuffed them in the office, and slept on top of them at night so I didn’t have to sleep in that bed alone or walk past that empty second bedroom.

  I stopped eating upstairs too. Went days without cooking, just grabbing those pre-packaged cookies we sell. Or the beer nuts and pretzels we give out for free during happy hour.

  But I had to do something. I had to move on. I was here, and they were not, and I had to open the bar back up. I thought I needed the money.

  Of course, I didn’t need the money. After Daniel—my father-in-law—died, Chris inherited his entire estate. So we were OK. It was a decent amount of money. But Chris and I never really married. Not legally. And he had brothers and sisters who I assumed would get the estate after the “accident”.

  But they gave it all to me.

  So I didn’t need the money. I just didn’t know it yet. So I did open the bar, even though I wanted to just shrivel up and die like the people I lost.

  But I’d find myself upstairs in those early weeks. Just sitting in our bedroom asking myself how things went so sideways.

  I couldn’t even open the door to baby Bonnie’s room. Could barely walk past it without just dropping to the floor in sobs that felt like they’d last forever.

  It was all too painful.

  So I closed the bar again. Hired some construction workers, and they ripped out my cozy, middle-class two-bedroom life upstairs and replaced it with some new, one-bedroom version. Some new high-end version built for one that didn’t really belong to me.

  I made them erase my sadness.

  And when my sisters and brothers-in-law came to visit, to check on me, they saw it and… oh, how I adore them. They said it was beautiful. And I deserved to be happy.

  How? How do I deserve to be happy? When the only man I’ve ever loved and our baby daughter were killed in an “accident” just two months after my new, and much-loved, father-in-law died of cancer?

  I didn’t deserve it. Not one bit of it. I didn’t deserve them, either. Those patient and supportive brothers-and-sisters-in-law.

  But I didn’t throw everything away when I remodeled the apartment. I took some things down to Daniel’s bedroom. The room he died in. The room where cancer took everything from him. And I put some things in there. Pictures, mostly. But their clothes too. I kept Chris’s clothes. And my favorite outfits that baby Bonnie never got to wear along with the one dress she wore all the time.

  I didn’t touch the shop, either. Never went in there again, in fact. We didn’t drive those cars in there. They were just projects. The Corolla was the first car Chris ever had and the Jeep was some old clunker he bought back when he was twenty-one. To fix up and take mudding and climbing eventually. Once he fixed it up.

  Which he never did. So it sits there, never used by us at all.

  I never turned on the generator when Chris was alive. He took care of that stuff. So even though I have it, and the power has gone off at least a dozen times since the “accident”, I never bothered to go flip that switch.

  But remodeling the apartment didn’t really help. Didn’t fix much. Nothing, really. In fact, I think it made it worse.

  But I got up every day and put on my yoga pants and my Snowbunny t-shirt. I tended bar and served lunches and sometimes dinner too, but more often than not, I never even opened the kitchen.

  They say time heals things like this and I’m sure that’s true for some people. It just wasn’t true for me.

  So two nights ago I made a decision. I went into Daniel’s room—which I did not change in the remodel and which has been sitting closed up for a whole year—and found his bottle of painkillers. I filled that prescription the day he died. Drove all the way down the mountain to Pagosa Springs to get them. But he never had a chance to take them.

  But I knew where they were. And I could take them.

  So last night I got out a piece of paper and wrote my final words. Stuck it inside that journal for someone to find, planned an outfit to wear on my last day—I wanted one last day at the bar. One last chance to take care of people because there was no one left to take care of. And I got dressed up this morning. I did my hair, and put on makeup. I even put on some sexy lingerie.

  And I got drunk as the snow rolled in.

  It felt fitting to go out with a storm.

  It felt right.

  But then, just as I was about to go upstairs and take those pills, two mysterious, handsome strangers walked into my bar and all my best-laid plans were ruined.

  I look up, because I’m looking at the floor, and realize I just said all that out loud. Just told AJ and Logan my whole story.

  Well, not the whole story. Just the parts that count.

  I stare at them and they stare at me.

  AJ says, “Oh, shit, Yvette. Oh, shit.”

/>   Logan says nothing.

  “I’m so sorry,” AJ says, coming towards me. He takes the stack of clothes from my hands and places them on a nearby chair. I appreciate that. That he didn’t just drop them on the floor. It’s like he heard everything I just said and gets it. Like he knew they were precious things and not just faded and oil-stained jeans my dead husband used to wear. That they were more than just well-loved worthless t-shirts.

  And then he wraps his arms around me.

  Like we’re not strangers who met this afternoon. But old friends. And he’s been gone for a while but now he’s back. Catching up. And all the news he’s missed has been bad.

  “I know who you are,” I say, sighing. “I know why you’re here.”

  “Why?” Logan says. “Why are we here, Yvette?”

  I swallow hard and say it. “To kill me. Damon sent you. I’ve been waiting, actually. Before I decided to take matters into my own hands I figured I’d just wait. Wait for him to show and take my life too. He’s already taken everything else.”

  Logan just stares at me.

  AJ hugs me tighter.

  “But you guys took too long so…” I shrug. “What else could I do but end it myself?”

  There is a long, heavy silence in the room. Thick like the steam in the shower we just took.

  Then Logan says, “You said baby, Yvette. How old was the baby?”

  I shake my head.

  AJ pushes back, places his hands on my shoulders and keeps me at arm’s length so he can look down at my face.

  I shake my head again. “She wasn’t his, Logan. I gave his baby away.”

  “What?” AJ says.

  But I’m still looking at Logan. He’s the one who makes the decisions here. Not that I care what decision he makes now. I’m done. I’m over it. I want to die.

  I just need him to understand this so when he goes back to Damon, he can make this perfectly clear.

  “My daughter was not his baby. I gave his baby away the year before Bonnie was born. I don’t know where he is, and even if I did, I’d never give you, or him, that information.”

  AJ turns. Whirling around, placing himself in between Logan and me. He says, “This?”