Dead. Because of me.
I didn’t mean to kill him. I only wanted to show him that he should leave people alone, for fuck’s sake. We were only trying to have a good time out here in the woods. We weren’t hurting anyone.
Then I remember Kelsey screaming. She saw me. She’s probably running back to find her friend to tell her what happened.
I can’t let her do that. Nobody can find out what I did.
She needs to know she has to keep her mouth shut.
The Present
I shake my head as water rolls down over my face. I’d hoped a shower would make me feel better, but my mind insisted on going back to that night nearly twenty years ago. I haven’t thought about what I did for so long I think I convinced myself it never happened. That man ceased to exist that night because of my hands, and somehow my mind made him disappear over the years.
Until Bryan was murdered.
Nobody knows I killed that man. If anyone did, the police would have come to get me by now. It’s been nearly two decades. If they knew, I would have been arrested before this since I know there’s no statute of limitations for murder.
Then again, I made sure nobody knew. At least I thought I did.
I covered him up well enough, and then the six inches of snow that fell in the early season storm that came through the area a few days later made sure nobody would find him for at least a week. By that time, I’d made sure to tie up all the loose ends.
For all those years, I thought I’d gotten away with it. There was nobody to tell the police what happened because everyone who knew was gone.
Except for me.
Then tonight, I saw the face of someone who did know. All those years hadn’t changed them enough to make me not recognize them the moment I saw them standing in front of me.
But that’s impossible. There’s no way she could have been at that gas station tonight. Or any other place, for that matter. She couldn’t have been at the self-checkout at the supermarket or on the nature trail the other night.
I killed her to make sure she kept quiet. I know she was dead. I wouldn’t have made a mistake like not checking before I buried her.
Yet it’s like she’s been haunting me. I don’t know how, but it’s her.
She’s alive? How is that even possible?
Scrubbing my face as I let the shower rain over my head, I tell myself I’m losing my mind. Dead people do not show up nearly two decades later to haunt you at the grocery store and the gas station. That must have been someone else who looked like her.They say each of us has a twin somewhere in the world. That’s it. It has to be.
Kelsey is still just as dead as I left her in the woods that night, in a shallow grave that would have been covered over when it snowed just like the old man was. Whoever that woman was I’ve been seeing around town is just someone who looks like her. It has to be that.
It has to be because the only other choice means that terrible secret I’ve kept for all these years is going to come out.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Jamie
Closing my eyes,I let the sun warm my face after a long day at work. Contrary to what my husband thought, I was capable enough to find a job to support my girls and me. It’s not easy work. My degree in human resources wasn’t terribly valuable after not using anything I learned in college over all those years, so I had to start from scratch and find an entry-level job.
Our home isn’t like the one we used to have too. That’s okay. We may not have a pool anymore, but we can always go to my parents’ house if we want to go swimming. We don’t live in a community with an HOA either anymore. I don’t miss that at all.
I came to realize the community I thought I had didn’t exist. Not really. Oh, when we were living like everyone else with the perfectly manicured lawn courtesy of the landscaper and the home we could barely afford, our neighbors loved us. They joined us for parties and barbeques outside near the pool, smiling and laughing as they drank our alcohol and ate the delicious food I carefully prepared. As soon as trouble cameour way, though, we weren’t even good enough to say hello to anymore. That’s not the kind of community I want for my girls and me.
We don’t have as much of anything anymore, but what we do have we treasure. I make enough for the girls to still be in gymnastics, and now that what happened with Connor isn’t news anymore and people have moved on, their teammates have returned to how they used to be with Cassandra and Danielle. For my daughters’ parts, they’ve accepted their friendship, although I don’t know if they see it as temporary like I do.
Even the mothers have accepted me again. Once they found out that Connor wasn’t a great husband, they came around to understanding that whatever he did had nothing to do with me or our children. I’m polite when I see them, but now I know they were never truly my friends. They may want me to let them back in, but I’ve learned my lesson.
If it wasn’t for Kelsey, I don’t know if I would have made it through this past year. When everyone else abandoned me, she was there listening to me talk about my problems and offering help. She even loaned me the money to get the apartment the girls and I live in now.
“Mom, can we go swimming?”
