Taryn’s thumb rubs in circular, rotating motions on my leg. Her attempt to soothe me tenses my muscles, but the reminder that she is here is all I need.
Christian’s fingers adjust their grip on the phone, and he sighs, closing his eyes. When they open, they hold Taryn and me in place. “After she ran out, I chased after her. I thought she was headed to her parents’, but when I pulled in front of their house, her car wasn’t there, and they said they hadn’t seen her. When I returned that next morning, it was because I searched for Jane all night, but I never found her.”
“I don’t believe you,” I mutter through gritted teeth.
Lies. Lies piled on top of fucking lies.
“What do you remember?” he asks, my heart plummeting into my stomach, creating a commotion that leaves me struggling to breathe. “When you first walked into our room… What do you remember?”
My jaw pops. The wrath circulates through my veins. I don’t want to do this. But it’s why I’m here, isn’t it? To get answers. To relive the past because it has already haunted me every single fucking day since it happened.
“It’s okay,” Taryn croons from beside me. “I’m here.”
The warmth of her fingertips caressing my thigh works to dissolve some of the boiling rage. If I erupt in this visitor’s room, they’ll toss me out and leave me feeling as empty as when I came in. I want to move on. I owe it toherto try to settle the past.
The images flash behind my eyes.
The bloody glass in one of my father’s hands.
The bottle of liquor in the other.
The broken shards of mirror scattered on the floor.
The blood soaked into the carpet.
My mother clenching her hands to her bloody stomach.
“When I walked in, I saw—she was holding her stomach where you stabbed her. I saw you try to murder her!”
Another tear falls from his dead eyes, and it makes me want to send my fist flying through this glass partition to smack it off his face. He doesn’t deserve to cry for her.
“It was her wrists…”
My heart just fucking stopped beating. Taryn holds her other hand up to cover her mouth, inhaling an audible breath beside me.
I stare at him expectantly. “What do you mean by ‘her wrists’?”
He shakes his head. “It wasn’t her stomach, Colten. It was her wrists.”
Sweat seeps through my pores, chilling instantly. “So you slit her—” His head moves from side to side again, and my mouth falls shut.
No. No. No.She wouldn’t willingly leave us that way. She wouldn’t.
He clears his throat, his eyes holding mine. “After Tristan was born, something changed. It was gradual, something festering day by day. It also started happening around the same time the company picked up, increasing my hours away from home…away from her.”
I listen intently, the room blurring around me as his story becomes my focus.
“God, I used to love touching her,” he whispers, closing his eyes. “The way she would melt into me. She was the love of my life, and back then, when I met her, I knew it instantly.” Taryn stirs beside me, leaning closer to the phone gripped in my hand. “She started looking more exhausted than usual. There was this physical distance that started growing, and whenever I would touch her—hug her—she would push me away.” He shakes his head. “I didn’t understand it, but I never bothered to ask her what was wrong. I ignored it… Ignored her. Life was so good until it suddenly wasn’t.”
My heart thumps aggressively in my chest.
I remember it—the beautiful days when Mom and Dad would take Cam, Bren, Jess, baby Tristan, and me to our grandparents or on the boat. The family dinners at the table were full of laughter and vibrancy. Those days, I always felt warm, thinking nothing would ever change. But I was naive then.
“When Tristan was around one,” he continues, “your mother would disappear randomly for hours at a time. Some nights, she wouldn’t even come home.” That timeline slides through my mind. Around that time, Dad started to find refuge at the bottom of a bottle. That’s when his addiction began.
“I thought she was having an affair,” he mutters. He rubs a palm over his cropped hair. “After a few months, I confronted her about it. She screamed at me—she was defensive. Jane turned the blame on me, claiming she would leave for hours because she was burnt out from caring for our five children alone and needed time to herself. I didn’t understand it at the time. For years, there were good days and really low days. She would be fine one moment and breaking down the next. But when she got pregnant with Elena, things got worse. She started disappearing again. Around you kids, her mask was flawless, but alone…her and I.” Another tear cascades down his cheek. “She was withdrawn and resented me for focusing more on the company than our family.”
The correctional officer steps behind him. “You have ten more minutes.” Their voice trickles through the phone enough for me to hear.
