Because, you see, there are a few things that make no fucking sense about my sister’s death. And all of them involve Joe.
Reasons I think my husband might be a killer:
The Book.
A few months ago, I had an interesting case at work. A woman in her twenties, pale and painfully thin, reeking of panic. I prodded her gently for two one-hour sessions, but she gave me nothing. In our third session, she finally broke down and confessed. Years before, she’d been driving home from a housewarming party. “I’d had abit to drink,” she confessed, trembling. “I shouldn’t have been driving. I know that. I know.”
She looked up at me with pained eyes and whispered brokenly, “I never even saw the boy.”
She ran a stop sign and plowed into a child riding a bike. “I pulled the car over,” she told me in a dead voice. “I looked in my rearview mirror and saw him. He was lying in the middle of the road…just a child. Just a little kid.”
She drove off, never told a soul, and somehow I was supposed to put all her broken pieces back together. But I didn’t know how. In a half-hearted attempt to cover my ass, I bought a $4.99 book on Amazon titledLet Go of Guilt.I spent hours reading it, and something about it just set my teeth on edge.Excessive guilt can open the door to a host of problems. It can lead to anxiety, extreme weight loss, rage, preoccupation with past mistakes, regret, self-defeating behavior.
One night, I was sitting on my bed, wrapped in a blanket, reading this, and it hit me: My husband ticked off all these boxes.
I stared at the wall for hours, thinking. Well, of course he felt guilty. We were the reason my sister killed herself. But I justcouldn’t let it go.Something had always felt off about the way he grieved my sister. It was obsessive. Fanatical.Personal.
God, I finally thought, you’d think he was the one who actually killed her…
The Lie.
My sister hanged herself in our garage on August 5, 2015. Mum found her. It wasn’t hard to believe she killed herself. She’d always suffered from dark moods, and when she found out I’d slept with Joe, she plunged headfirst into the worst dark mood I’d ever seen. She spat; she howled; she ripped off the posters over my bed and defaced my side of the wall with thick black marker.How could you? How could you?
Her dark moods rarely lasted longer than three days. This one lasted ten days and nights. Then it came to a gut-wrenching, screaming halt on August 5.
Joe was inconsolable, lost. But one thing stood out. In the blur following her death, I do remember him telling someone, a friend maybe, that he hadn’t seen Sarah since she found out about us.
But that wasn’t quite true. The truth was, he’d been showing up at our house for days, desperate to get back with her. Sometimes he’d park on our street late at night and stare at our house. Sarah even confronted him once—stormed out onto the street, stuck her head in the car window—and I heard his whiny cries about how much he missed her, how sorry he was. That was only two days before she died.
I guess he didn’t want people knowing he’d been borderline stalking her. So, it made sense that he kept it to himself. But what didn’t make sense was the ring.
The Ring.
My sister always wore the same ring on her left index finger. She slept in it, showered in it, never took it off. It was cheap stainless steel with a black spiderweb on it. The last time I saw her, the day before she died, I’m certain she was wearing it.
How do you think I felt, then, when I found that same damn ring in my husband’s possession?
I did all the packing when we moved here to Black Wood, while Joe sat listlessly on the couch. I was on my knees, reaching under the spare bed, pulling out empty Pepsi Max cans, shoving them into a garbage bag, and hating him for not helping. Then I peered under the bed and saw the box. It was palm sized, made clumsily out of balsa wood. It looked homemade. Sentimental. Odd.
Something about it made me stand up and silently close the door. I sat heavily on the bed, stomach churning, and opened it. And that’s when I found her ring. The spiderweb ring that belonged to my dead sister. What. The. Fuck.
I closed my fist around it, thinking. Then I slowly put the ring back in the box and shoved it under the bed.
For months now, all I’ve been thinking is,DidSarah kill herself? Or did Joe go to our house, beg her to take him back, and she refused? And then…did he snap? Stage her suicide? I don’t know, Andy. I don’t know. I don’t know.
What I do know is that if I hadn’t gone after Joe, my sister would still be alive. My sister with her answers and drive and passions. What a terrible waste to lose her so young. The world never even got to know her, Andy. Please look into this.Please.And Andy…if something happens to me…Joe did it. He’s not who you think heis.
I don’t write this next bit. Andy doesn’t need to know this: But what if they could? What if my sister could live on through me? I could become what she wanted to be—a therapist who has all the answers. I could even have the boy she loved right by my side while I did it.
Some people might think that’s messed up.
But I am not some people.
My eyes drift to my bedroom door. Downstairs, Joe is probably sexting his girlfriend in between packing up his shit. I sit up, and my head spins. Then I get slowly to my feet.
Dear Diary,
I’m so confused all the time. I know I’m forgetting things, but I can’t remember what.
