Let me preface this with I loved her more than I hated her.
Our life was a mess.
She'd busted my nose into pieces, twice. I was mixing my Percocet's with vodka in a lame attempt to off myself because I couldn't bring myself to go dig up the gun. I was in a really low place, alright.
I wrote letters.
The first to Tatia and Alex. I told them it wouldn't make sense because it didn't make much sense to me at the time either. I just felt that they would need to know that I loved them and how much I would never be able to put into words.
The second to Officer Ripkin. I detailed the events of the night that Caleb Downing was murdered. The truth. The whole truth. From when he'd taken her out of the snow to burning the clothes we wore. Names and dates and details. I told him where to find the books in Julia's house to the murder weapon itself, which I had planned on leaving in the lock box on my bed in my room. I killed Caleb Downing. Not Julia. Not Chess. Not Hayley. I put the knife to his throat. I have to live with that. I bear the responsibility for the decision. All that transpired from that winter night on Green Street in Maverick, I hold the sole responsibility and no one else. I made sure to include my brother in this because he got rid of the truck the night he came back to Maverick to bed my girl.
The third also to Officer Ripkin, detailing the second hand story that Tavin had told me of killing the man in Pittsburgh. His name, the store and the few important details of the storeroom he had killed him in. I wasn't going to kill my brother, but I was taking him down too. His confession to me to help me through whatever he thought I was going through was going to send him directly to a hell I swore I would never live through. Prison.
The fourth to Karen Keller. That's no one's business.
The fifth to Cal, my Aunt and Uncle and to Hay's parents. I apologized for what I had done. I spent my days and nights revolving my life around trying to keep it all together and separate at the same time. Me and her, me and the kids, school, work, and I juggled it all like a circus freak juggles knives. All I thought was one day this could all fall apart, if I dropped just one of those knives I was juggling. Add in a psychotic stalker and it was bound to explode the very thing I was trying to keep together.
Julia kept his books. A constant reminder, but she had her shit to work out like I did. She was raped by him and she dealt with the aftermath like no one else that was there that night could. He didn't violate us like he did to her. Yes, it made her crazy and inconsolable at times. Caleb made me drop the knives I juggled, cutting us all wide open.
I had nothing left. I took the kids to Julia's because somehow her pain was worth more than mine. I was on my way home and then I thought about the gun. I walked closer to that wooded area at the end of the block. I was going to do it. I had finally crossed that line that made it alright to me.
Then I got a text message. A damn text message. Why I looked at the message or even cared at the time is beyond me. Habit, maybe? Habits like answering a phone. I pulled the phone out of my pocket and it was her. Fucking Julia, was she reading my fucking mind? She has a way of being in the right fucking place at the right time. One text message made all the fucking difference in the craziness in my head. The texts, stupid...about the kids. But she was talking to me, not rejecting me or hating me. I turned around and I went home to take the last couple percs and just call it a night. The time wasn't right anymore.
When I got to my grandmom's house, she was having a little trouble breathing, but what else was new? The woman was never really healthy and she smoked a pack of cigarettes a day. I went in the house and said hi to her. She was sitting at the kitchen table like always with those circle a word books. She was real quiet, it was weird for her. She was usually real bitchy and grumpy. I did the usual things, turned on the TV and the fan in the living room, picked up some toys and put them away. She asked where the kids were. So I told her with Julia. It wasn't till I went to get a drink and take my Percocet's that I saw what she was doing at the table. I thought she had been doing puzzles, but she wasn't. She was reading those letters. All five letters I wrote. To mom, the kids, to the parents, the ones to Officer Ripkin. They were on the table. The truth was out.
My grandmother was never one to not say anything. She was just sitting there. Like in shock maybe. I waited by the counter with my Percocet bottle in my hand and my drink in the other. Just waiting. I mean what do you say to the person who had just confessed to his and his friends and his brothers sins in 5 small letters? She looked kinda scared. I have no idea why. I would not have hurt her. I wasn't going to kill her too. God, she wasn't part of the plan. She had created just about half the people involved in what she'd read and maybe she was feeling some responsibility for that? I don't know.
I put my letters back in the envelopes and put them in my back pocket. The whole time neither one of us was saying anything. I had been caught. I was just waiting for her to decide my fate. I accepted that. It had been up to her because, like I said, I wasn't going to kill her too. I'm not a killer, but I am a killer.
She got up and just walked away from the table. She went upstairs and closed herself in her room. Left me standing there waiting. I turned around to the sink, opened the bottle of Percocet to take the last two I had when I heard this noise upstairs. It was a weird noise, so I went to check on her. I didn't get an answer and I just broke in the door. Like what the hell had she done in there? I found her knocked out on the floor. There she was and I had a fucking choice to make. I hate the split second choices between right and fucking wrong. I chose to call 911 and thought of my fate every time I pushed on her chest. I don't know what I expected, her to wake right up? The paramedics to wake her right up? That she'd bounce right back and start talking like on television when they revived someone. It didn't happen that way, though and she wound up in the hospital, then the nursing home. She took the secrets to the grave with her.
The details of this night, I never talked about to anyone. Who could I explain it to? No one knew about my letters I wrote. No one knew about the thoughts I had. The one person who could really do me in was a vegetable and then she died.
No, I didn't get lucky. I didn't see it that way. Julia eventually brought the kids home and found the place all messed up. She tried getting hold of me when she got there, but not before that. I didn't tell her or the kids about my grandmother. Why ruin their time together? Plus we still didn't know what was really going on with the woman. Live, die, transfer. Take her off the machines. It was all so up in the air. So I get home and there she was with the kids and the house was clean and the kids were sleeping. For a split second, it was as if nothing had ever happened. I liked the way it felt. Us. Feelings, it was like I was sober for the first time in a long time and it was like I was happy for the first time in a long time. Cause she was there and not because of any other reason.
I should have left her go home. She wanted to leave a couple times and I told her to even call her dad once. Just have him swing by when he closed and grab her, take her back home and we could get started with this new us. The us that didn't sleep beside each other or hold hands. She didn't want to leave though. For all that anger she had like a month before and all that shit we said to each other and all those hard feelings, she did not want to leave. I am not strong like my cousin. When Chess and Hayley split, they split for good. He never looked at that again the same way, but I couldn't do that with her. We couldn't do that for whatever reason.
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