Ree
When I was a child, my mother turned to me one night and whisperedeverybody hates you. It was matter-of-fact, a hard lesson that a mother had to teach her child, a cold-hearted truth that I needed to swallow down like the syrup she so often poured down my throat.
Lena hadn’t heard it, and I was thankful for that, embarrassed that we had brought so much scorn on our young selves without trying. My mother never quantified her statement, but left me alone to fill in the blanks. And my mind worked nonstop listing all of the obvious reasons a cruel world would look to me with such disdain.
Looking back, as an adult, as someone who has absorbed copious amounts of self-help books, as someone who has listened to psychologists and psychiatrists alike as they tried to untangle the verbal knot my mother employed, I can see now that it was yet another method she employed to mentally restrain me.
But tonight, I’m here to return the favor. Upon her dying breath, I want her to realize that the world never hated me. It was her all along. There are not a lot of justifications for murder. There are not a lot of reasons that I would willingly go to prison for—that is, if I’m caught—but my mother has built up a damned good argument, along with a body count, and she would be worth the risk. I don’t know who killed Peter’s first wife. I do not know who killed those poor women littering his past. But I have no doubt my mother has latched onto the madness, her last desperate attempt to fuck with my mind—to kill me by taking away my husband.
And Peter. What can be said about Peter other than the fact he does not look innocent. Is it a coincidence that I left one feral psychopath, only to fall into the arms of another? In truth, I can’t sort any of it out. All I know is that I need to excise the demons from my life. Both the past and the present must go in hopes that the children and I can have a safer tomorrow.
The porch light ignites as the door yawns open, and Lena stands there hugging her bathrobe.
“What’s going on?” Her voice is groggy. Lena is an early riser in order to open the Blue Chandelier.
I push my way past her, dragging Peter in beside me.Bram. I can’t even bring myself to go along with the Bram farce anymore.
“Where is she?”
A set of soft footsteps heads this way from the hall, and Lena crosses the room just as my mother emerges. Her dark hair is damp from the shower, her skin vacant of the theatrical pancake makeup she’s come to adorn her face with.
“Well, look who’s here.” Her lips curve unnaturally in a vertical manner, something I’ve only seen cartoon villains pull off. It looks downright menacing. “So, you’ve finally brought the hubby.”
“Did you manage to wash all the blood off?” My voice carries across the room like an apparition streaming from my mouth with an agenda of its own. I’m not sure I meant to hit the highlights so soon, but my adrenaline keeps hiking higher to far more frightening levels than ever before.
“Ree.” Peter tries to pull me back a notch, but I wrangle myself free.
“I want to know.” I shrug over at the two of them huddled at the base of the hall as if they thought running were an option. “Did you take pleasure in killing Astrid? Did it thrill you when you dismembered that bird and jammed it down her throat?”
Lena shakes her head as she slowly backs away from my mother. “Did you do this? Is that why you were gone so long this afternoon?”
Our mother balks at the thought, looking to my sister as if she lost her mind. Forever the actress. She has honed her chops. Nearly two decades’ worth of performances. She slayed them night after night in preparation for the literal slayings. It was all leading up to death. I should have seen it coming.
“The emails weren’t enough.” I take a step away from Peter and pull the gun from my purse, pointing it in his direction. “Get over there. It’s time for a formal introduction.” I wave the gun as his hands ride up naturally, his wide eyes focused right over the barrel.
“Ree.” His voice drops to its lower octave.
“Mother”—my voice trembles with rage—“you have always wanted to meet my husband. You have about thirty seconds left of your disgusting life. Say hello.”
Her pie hole opens—the black maw of her mouth that devoured me right along with the thousands of empty calories she spent during my childhood shoveling into her face. She wouldn’t let Lena or me have a single bite, so she ate our share, ate for us. She ate our souls in the process.
“What emails, Ree?” Her eyes glint in this dim light like a coin underwater as the sun passes it by. Forever doomed, sealed off from the world and its purpose.
A dark laugh gurgles in my chest, and I suddenly feel alive, far more in this world than I have ever felt before. “You don’t have to play dumb, but if that’s how you insist to leave this world, with a lie on your lips, then so be it.”
“Lena,” my mother barks. “Are you going to stand there and let her tarnish my good name?”
Lena shakes her head, her body shaking as she looks to her. “Pull the trigger.”
And I do.
