I don’t say anything for a long time, and he glances at me. When he sees the tired smile on my face, relief floods through his features. No, his confession hasn’t scared me away.
“I love you too,” I say.
The rain drums all around us, composing a song.
Now that the adrenaline has died down, my muscles have started to ache. My neck hurts, and my head is starting to throb. But I will relive this night a thousand times after Edison is gone. I’ll remember how beautiful he was, how gentle his calloused hands, the protective watchfulness of his eyes. I’ll remember his child curled up inside me.
“There can never be another you,” I tell him. He smiles, taking this as a sweet declaration made in my delirious state. But the words are the truth, and I needed to say them.
By the time Edison pulls into my parking space, I can barely keep my eyes open. He sweeps me into his arms and carries me up the stairs, using the blanket to protect me from the rain. He sets me down only once I’ve fished the keys out of my purse, but I stop him with a hand to his chest when he tries to follow me inside.
“Lisa is sleeping,” I say. “I don’t want to wake her up.”
“You need someone to look after you,” he says. “Your head—”
“The nurses said nothing was broken,” I remind him. “I just need to take a couple of aspirin and get some sleep.” I kiss him before he can argue. “Good night.”
The ghost of my original plan is still in play. No, we won’t sleep beside each other, but he’ll spend the night thinking of me, loving me.
I’ll go to him just as soon as I figure this out. I’ll have my sisters to contend with first, and then the car, and the matter of paying for all of it.
And then the other thing. The one I can’t put words to just yet. There’s a blurred image of a baby’s face that won’t come into focus inmy mind, and I try to push it away but something else within me clings to it.
Once Edison has left, I move through the house silently. My sisters will be fast asleep by now, and if they knew I let Edison come all the way up to the front door, they’d be furious.What if we were down here, Sissy? What if he saw us?
My phone starts ringing again, and this time I fumble for it immediately and put it on mute so that the noise won’t wake my sisters.
Twenty-seven missed calls, all of them from Dara.
A new terror takes hold of me, and I drop my purse on the couch and I go to her.He’s done it, I’m thinking as I take the three strides to her front door. He’s finally hurt her so badly that she wants to run away. She has no one else to call. Her parents are in Florida, and her little brother is in Dubai for a year as a college exchange student. She would never confide in the nosy biddies in our complex, or the judgmental lady across the parking lot who keeps telling her that her music is too loud. Although it may come to her great detriment, all she has is me.
I knock quietly. Two brief raps with the knuckle of my index finger. There’s the glow of a light through the curtains, which are too thick for me to make out any silhouettes inside.
The door opens an inch, and Dara peers out at me. There’s blood smeared all over her face and her left eye is swollen, bruised deep purple against her skin.
“What did he do to you?” I growl.
Tears all over her cheeks. “Jade?” she whispers, her voice broken. “I—I need your help.”
“Let me in,” I say, but when I try to open the door, she holds it in place with her foot.
“I’m in trouble,” she says. “I—”
I know she wants me to see whatever’s happened in that apartment. She didn’t call me nearly thirty times just to show me the outside of her front door. I’ve never seen her like this, shaking and small, and I force myself to tamp down my rage so that I can reason with her. “Dara, whatever it is, I can help you. But you have to let me.”
“No.” Fresh tears well up in her eyes. “No, no, no.” She sobs, and I suspect those words aren’t meant for me. When she wipes her hands across her face, I take the opportunity to push the door open. This time, she doesn’t stop me. She tumbles out of the way, her back pressed against the wall.
The coffee table is upended, candle wax caked in splatters on the linoleum. The television is broken, spider cracks on the screen. Dara’s yellow flip-flop is wedged between the couch cushions, and I can see that she must have been running from him, crawling over the couch to put a barrier between herself and his monstrous wrath.
I close the door and lock it. She is cradling her left wrist, which is swollen like her eye. “Dara.” I stand in front of her and brush my thumb across her cracked, bleeding lip. “Where is he?”
Her eyes give her away. She looks over my shoulder to the kitchenette. There’s a bare leg sticking out from around the island with the bar counter. Pale and thin and unmoving.
I walk slowly, Dara whimpering in agony behind me. When I step into the kitchen I see what she’s crying about. Tim is slumped against the cabinet below the kitchen sink, trembling, blood pooled around the hilt of the steak knife wedged into his chest.
He looks at me with bloodshot eyes, blood dribbling down from the side of his mouth.
“Help,” he whispers, sound barely leaving his lips. “Help me.”
