How ill kill you, p.16
How I'll Kill You, page 16
Even though I could kill any intruder who broke into his house in the middle of the night to overpower us, I let him shield me. I turn into something delicate and sweet. I sleep wrapped in the steel of his arms and make myself small.
I drink it like rain. I’ve never been anyone’s precious thing.
Iris takes my hand. She weaves her fingers between mine. “Sissy, everything I’ve done has been to protect you. Both of you.”
I stare down at our hands. Identical pink nail polish. She held my hand just like this when we were five and the social worker was prying her away. We were so small then. I screamed her name—the legal name she no longer uses—over and over. She was the one with the ferocity. The one who bit and scratched and screamed until she got her way. She was my hero, but now I can look back and see that she was as powerless as me.
“When he’s gone, you have to talk to me,” she says. “Don’t get lost in your head.”
I nod, but her gaze is relentless, and I’m forced to look into her green eyes.
“Don’t screw this up for yourself by loving him the wrong way,” she says. “You don’t have a lifetime to let him sort his shit out. You need to go to him and make him say it.”
“I have four months, Iris,” I say, bristling.
“Yes, and they’ll speed by.” She squeezes my hand. I watch as a drop of chocolate ice cream falls to the bench between us. “Get everything that you can out of this, Sis. If there’s anything you want to say, anything you want him to say, any fucking position you want to try in bed—do it. Do everything. That’s the only way to get out of this without being haunted by regret.”
Everything. So small a word for what I want with Edison. Still, I know that Iris is only trying to guide me. I want a full love with Edison. Eager kisses, grasping at each other in desperation. I want him to gasp for me, cry for me, murmur for me as he falls asleep.
Edison and I will never have two beautiful little children who look like us. There’s a finite number of hikes and movies and lazy mornings lingering in bed. When he’s gone, I can’t have him back. I can only have the memories we’ve created, playing over on a flickering film reel in my mind.
How do I want him to tell me he loves me? I already know the answer to that. I want him to need me so much that it terrifies him. The way that it already terrifies me.
16
Love, I’m learning, is not a sudden revelation. I love Edison, but I look back and can’t be certain when it started. I love him when he sleeps with a hand on my hip, and when I hear the text chime on my phone and I know it’s him. I love him when he’s near me, but especially when I don’t know where he is or what he’s thinking.
The air-conditioning in the church is on full blast, but Pastor McDaniel looks especially wilted today at the pulpit. The sermon is about putting value on worldly things. Build your castle on a rock, he says. On salvation. The grandest palace built on dunes of sand will wash away.
Edison reaches over and puts a hand on my knee. We arrived late and slipped into a pew in the last row. We’re beyond the range of the AC and I fan myself with a pamphlet with all the upcoming get-togethers through the rest of the year. A youth Bible campout with outdoor movies next week. A devotional family-style dinner in September. Christmas pageants all through December.
We’ll skip the New Year’s Eve service. That will be our last night together and I want us to be alone.
Edison’s hand slides up my thigh, one finger moving under the hem of my blue dress. Tiny white ships ripple in the fabric at the movement.
I look at him. His eyes are straight ahead, and he cants his head thoughtfully, as though considering the sermon.
His hand moves, even as the rest of him is still. He’s in his white dress shirt, the buttons gleaming and pristine. His hair is combed neatly, and that one rebellious curl has escaped again. The one that hints at something wild lurking within.
Curiosity turns to desire as I watch him, and I know that he feels my eyes. There’s just the faintest hint of a wicked smile on his lips. I can see his teeth. To everyone else, we’re just another couple sitting alone in the back row, where the AC doesn’t cool us. I don’t move. Don’t make a sound as his hand moves up and up.
Heat rushes to my face when he touches me. One finger slips inside me and then another. I grasp the edge of the pew. The sermon drones on, the dull beat of some distant song as the world spins on.
Edison betrays nothing, mischievous thing that he is. When I grab the fabric of his dress pants, his smile twitches and that’s all he gives me.
My back arches. I hold my breath because I’m sure that if I let it out, I’ll scream. He’s managed to surprise me. He’s decided that he can’t resist me. That he wants to see what I’ll do, just how far he can take me. I live in his head—not Jade, but me. The real me. He sees somewhere in my words and in my face that I’m more than this sweet church girl who sings “Ave Maria” and strums her guitar.
How much does he see? When did I let it slip?
I shudder, claw at his wrist with both hands. I go to pieces, flushed and spent all without making a sound. He draws his hand away, leaving me to melt.
McDaniel asks us to stand and turn to page forty-five in our book of psalms. There’s an electric energy here and he feels God in this room today and he wants us all to sing.
My legs are rubbery, and Edison grabs my arm and hauls me to my feet, breathing out a laugh at the way I stumble and fall against him. His. I’m his, and he knows it.
He lets out a little cough and brings his fist to his mouth. His tongue moves across his fingertips, tasting me.
I hold the hymnal between us and we both sing, and he knows that he’s won. He knows how much I want to grab him and take him out of here, the things I’ll do to him later when we’re alone. But all I can do now is stand in this overheated church, reeling, wanting, stunned by how much I love him. He scares the living hell out of me.
* * *
—
THE LAUNDRY ROOM IS the closest thing to a basement you can find out here in the desert. It’s where every past tenant has apparently stored their useless crap. But growing up with nothing, my sisters and I have learned to be alchemists of broken things. With an old dust-coated phone book from 2007, Moody was able to prop up the archaic dryer so that it runs without rattling across the cement floor. Iris worked the rust out of the silver bicycle with baking soda and lemon juice, and now it gleams like new.
Here I stand now, staring at a small piece of plywood and a discolored cardboard box of nails. They caught my attention a while ago, while I was sitting on the washing machine, waiting for my clothes to be ready for the dryer. It’s time to put them to use. Edison would use something like this to lay the foundation for a porch, or a new hardwood floor. I have something else in mind.
It isn’t Iris who pushed me into coaxing a confession of love out of Edison. Rather, it’s the thought that time is slipping by. Outside, the sun is going down, and the brush along the desert plain is on fire with pink and gold. The mood-ring sky is pale blue until the clean line where it becomes suddenly dark, deep and deadly like the Mariana Trench on a satellite picture.
If I want to love Edison, I must do it—as all other things regarding him—ruthlessly. I kneel on the concrete and set the board before me. When I grab the hammer from where it’s been abandoned against the wall, it’s heavy with grit, the grime coming off on my palm. I hammer four nails into the board. Rusted, bent, long as a human finger. When I’m through, I put everything back where I found it, taking only the board with me.
I feel the first drop of rain as I’m laying the board in the trunk. It lands on my nose and rolls down my cheek before it’s gone. I hold my palm up, astonished that the weather would turn at such a perfect and romantic time. When I pull out of the parking lot, it’s started to pour.
I drive too fast. I know that. But I’ve yet to see a single state trooper out on this stretch of road. Rainwood itself is asleep most days, a town in which nothing ever happens. That is, except for the man who went missing back in June. Edison didn’t know him, never heard the name. But still, he’s been in knots about it. I’ve tried to tell him that it probably isn’t what he’s thinking. The man just wanted to escape his debts, or get away from his wife. He’s probably at a casino in Vegas right now living the high life with a beautiful woman on each arm.
I couldn’t have imagined I’d find a man as sensitive as Edison. He worries about Sadie walking home and me driving at night. I text him when I get where I’m going and I promise him we’ll be okay, and he eases in my arms and gives me that smile that warms the darkness in me.
I roll to a stop at the ten-mile marker. I put the car in park. There’s no one here but me, especially now that it’s after dark and everyone is home from work. No Good Samaritans will come and ask me if I need some help. A jump, a spare, a tow.
I get the board out of the trunk, pushing away the hair fallen into my face by the rain. I lay it in the street a few yards ahead of my car, jagged nails sticking up, and then I get back behind the wheel.
“Ave Maria” is playing on my phone, plugged into the car so that it throbs through the speakers. I start to sing quietly along. My sisters being torn from me. The sadness in Elaine’s eyes when she tried so hard to love me but I refused to let her be my mother, refused to be what she needed when there was no way to fill the void in my own life left by Moody and Iris. The stories I wrote in my journal—my secret journal, the one I never showed my sisters—about a mother who could sing like me, a father who hoisted me up on his shoulders and loved me. All the moments I hurt, or wished for something that would never come. “Ave Maria” makes these things flow through me like nothing else, and I need to be crying when he comes to me.
But the tears don’t appear until I let myself look at the construction site. There are more trucks parked in the dirt now, and houses have started being built. Wooden skeletons waiting for walls and warmth and life. Edison will be buried somewhere along that dusty trail of tire treads. I’ll lay him down gently. I’ll kiss him goodbye and cover him with dirt.
“Our time will come to an end.” I make myself say it as the song loops back around for a second time. My cheeks are wet and I draw a shuddering breath. I sob and cup my hand over my mouth, startled by the ugliness of the sound. My voice cracks when I whisper the words again. “Our time will come to an end.”
I throw the car in reverse, speeding fifty yards back. Stop. Put it in drive. The average car can go zero to sixty in five seconds, and that’s more than enough. My vision is blurry and wet, and the starlight drips down all around me with the rain. I take a deep breath and slam on the gas. I feel the tire blow out when it hits the board. The car spins and I clutch at the wheel. Go slack, I remind myself. Limp bodies incur the least damage in accidents. That’s why drunks walk away from their own accidents unscathed while everyone else ends up injured or dead. But it’s over in the time it takes me to think the words.
I scream. Something slams into me and I’m blinded by the brightness of it. White and red. Rain pounding angrily on the metal roof.
The airbag. I make myself think the word. Focus, but I can’t. Tears all over my face. I touch my forehead and my palm comes away slick with deep, dark blood.
My hands are shaking so furiously that it takes too long for me to dig into my jeans for my phone. Before I left, I put it in my pocket, not my purse, because I knew that I might lose my purse in the impact. I have no idea if this is true because I can’t make myself see anything but what’s immediately in front of me. Numbness creeps at the edges of my mind. “Ave Maria” has stopped playing, and I realize that I turned the car off, or it shut itself off. I don’t know.
I call Edison. He will pick up by the second ring the way he always does. He’ll come and save me and I’ll tell him I love him, and he’ll say he loves me too. He has to. I am delivering myself right into his arms so that he can rescue me.
“Hey, you,” he says, and at the sound of his voice I start to cry again. He’s in his house with the light from his window glowing out onto the barren lawn. He’s waiting for the pizza to be delivered because I’m supposed to be coming over to watch the first season of a new show that’s got great reviews.
I try to say his name, but only a squeak comes out.
“Jade?” There was television noise in the background, but it’s gone now. He’s standing up, holding the phone closer to his face. “What’s wrong?”
“Edison,” I choke out. “There was an accident.”
“Where are you?” His voice is something I don’t recognize. Because I love him, I am giving him a gift: the chance to save me the way that he couldn’t save his wife.
When I tell Edison I’m at the ten-mile marker, I don’t realize how far I’ve spun out. I stumble out of the car and into the rain, and I can barely see the construction site from here. One lone crane reaches victorious toward the waxing moon. I collapse to my knees on the pavement. My vision roils, and I double over and vomit. I didn’t know that it would be like this, with so much blood, my mind so hazy.
“Jade!” When I look up, I see him. A silhouette cutting through the rain, backlit by his high beams. I try to crawl away from my vomit. I don’t want him to see it, but my limbs have gone rubbery and all I can do is moan.
His hands are under my arms. “What are you doing out on the road?” he’s asking me. “Why did you get out of the car?”
In my delirium I tell him the truth: “I was waiting for you.”
“Jade.” He lifts me into his arms. He peels the hair from my face. “I’ve got you. I’m right here, Jade.” In this moment, that’s my name. That’s who I am, because he’s willed me into being. I’m in this place for him. Only him.
He wraps me in the blanket that he keeps in his trunk. It’s a soft fleece, bright red, nothing like the shade of the blood I’m getting all over it.
“It’s going to be okay,” he tells me, buckling me into the passenger seat. “I’m taking you to the hospital.”
“No,” I groan. It wasn’t supposed to be this ugly. There wasn’t supposed to be any blood. I was only supposed to blow out the tire and tell him I’d sprained my wrist. He would lift me by the hips and sit me up on the bathroom counter and patch me up with the brace he keeps for his construction injuries, and fuss over me, and bring me to bed and make love to me. And then, thankful I’m safe, he’s supposed to tell me that he loves me, that he doesn’t know what he would have done if anything had happened to me.
I don’t realize my eyes are closed until I feel him grab my chin, pulling me back to consciousness, back to him. He’s got that look about him. I saw it the night we drove to stake out his wife’s killer. Only, with me, he doesn’t seek to destroy. A weary smile rises on my lips.
“Don’t you dare close your eyes on me,” he demands. His voice is so strong that even if I were to die right here, his ferocity would be enough to bring me back. “You’re going to stay awake and I’m going to do the rest.” He grabs my shoulders, digging into my skin. “You aren’t going to leave me. Do you understand?”
I reach up and put my hand over his. “Yes,” I manage. I wouldn’t close my eyes again for the world; I’m too afraid that he isn’t real and that this beautiful bright desert town is all a dream.
He gets behind the wheel and I watch him. His jaw is tight. The construction site is behind him, encased by the window like a picture in a frame.
“Edison.”
He fumbles through the folds of the blanket and grabs my hand. He drives like hell, the engine of his ancient car straining noisily as we speed through the empty roads. He goes through stop signs, disregards the lights. I know, from being a passenger in Moody’s car when we were in high school, that we must be doing at least a hundred.
“It’s just two more miles,” he tells me. He’s laser focused. Like my sisters going for a kill. Like me dismembering the pieces and scouring for evidence. He clenches my hand, and the pain of his crushing embrace only heightens my desire for him. I can feel the rawness of his fear. If the doctors couldn’t save me, he’d park outside their houses, watch them move inside as he schemed. How would he kill them? Something efficient, I think, but violent. And as he straddled them in the debris of a frenzied struggle, he would demand to know why they couldn’t keep me alive. He couldn’t lose me, too. He never even got the chance to tell me he loved me, and it was all their fault, and he had to do it. For me.
He parks right in front of the emergency room in the loading zone. He’s going to get towed if he doesn’t move, but he doesn’t care. The car is still running when he comes around to the passenger side and lifts me, a cocoon in his red blanket. My forehead rests against his throat and I feel his heart beating wild.
I wince when the fluorescent lights inside the building meet my eyes. Everything is moving too fast, and then slow. The place is empty because this is the middle of nowhere. Someone brings a wheelchair and Edison sets me down. He jogs to keep up with the nurse who’s wheeling me down a hallway, telling her about the accident, how damaged the car was, how bad it seemed. I slammed into the mile marker sign and bent the post. Things I never bothered to look over my shoulder and check for myself because I was too busy looking to the horizon and waiting for him to come to me.
“There was something in the road,” he says. “There’s construction nearby.”
The nurse tells him to go back to the waiting area, that she’ll come out soon. But he doesn’t go. Once I’m in my room, I see him pacing on the other side of the window.
