I don’t understand. I don’t understand. I don’t understand.
Do we ever?He wanted to scream.Do we ever understand?
“I don’t either,” she replied, her cut and bruised hands muffling her words. “I don’t know why I did it.” She looked back up at him, her features full of torture, her eyes wide, horrified. “Why would I do that, Elijah? Why?”
Elijah shook his head and opened his mouth, but no words would come out. Paul hadn’t mentioned anything about a death, or a murder. Elijah had known nothing about this when he’d set off down here. He had heard nothing since he’d been here. None of it made any sense.
Perhaps none of this was real, just a delusion her broken mind had concocted to torture her some more. That was the sensible option, the obvious one. But the fear in her face was hard to ignore. How could she truly believe something like this without it being true, he asked himself. It was too real.
So he asked the question that he dreaded. The one that might make things more clear to him, or might sink everything that they have. Because it was obvious that he was missing some vital part of information.
“Who did you kill, Delores?” he asked, his voice sounding confident even though his mind and body were not. “Who?”
Delores stopped crying, her wailing ceased and she stared at him. Her chin trembled, her mouth set in a thin, sad line. She shook her head and dragged a hand across her cheek to wipe away the tears, only to be replaced immediately by fresh ones.
A million tears for a sad broken woman.
“Elijah,” she said his name how he remembered it, full of wanting and need, full of desire and passion. Full of angst and hope and all those other things that made a woman a woman. “I killed my children.”
Her watery eyes pleaded with him not to hate her. Showing him a thousand hates she had for herself, because no one could hate her as much as she hated herself. There wasn’t enough hate in the world for someone to try and match the amount of hate and contempt she had for herself. If she could have bottled up that hate and sold it, it would have destroyed countries, finished wars. Her hate was all powerful. It was hate and rage and self-loathing mixed into one. It was stronger than a nuclear weapon, more powerful than a natural disaster.
There was nothing stronger in the world than the hate that Delores had for herself.
Elijah stared at her, his eyebrows pulled tight in confusion as he thought over her words. It made no sense, none of it. Yet her pain and belief in her crime was the truest and most pure thing he’d ever seen.
“Delores,” he swallowed down the hard lump in his throat. “That’s not true. Your children are fine,” he spoke the words and shook his head at her. He wanted to laugh and hug her, to tell her no, no, she wouldn’t do that, not her. She wouldn’t harm anyone. She was gentle and loving, caring and wonderful. No, she wouldn’t do that.
“I killed them,” she whispered, her voice trembling.
Elijah watched Delores, her terrified face and heartbroken expression so certain, so damned certain of what she’d done. Certain enough that a niggling knot of doubt began to grow in his lower stomach.
It was impossible. Elijah had seen her children with his own eyes. Paul had seen them. Unless, she’d done something afterwards, planned for something to happen after she left. Elijah shook his head knowing that was nonsense.
“This isn’t real,” Elijah said. “Delores, it isn’t real.” He pulled his cell from his pocket ready to call Paul right there and then and get him to confirm it to her. “It’s not tru—,”
She pressed her cold, pale palm to his mouth and shook her head. “Don’t, please don’t. I can’t hear it. I can’t suffer anymore than I already do. I can’t do it, I can’t, Elijah! I can’t! I’ll go mad. It’s too much, it’s too much!” Delores began to sob again, her sobs turning once more to wails, her wails turning to wretches. She choked on her own grief and pain, and her shoulders shook as her body was wracked with suffering. Her hair fell around her face like a curtain, blocking her features from view.
“But they’re alive, they’re okay!” he pleaded.
“I can’t,” she wailed. “I can’t, I can’t do it.”
“Why, Delores? Think about it! Why would you do that?”
“Because he was leaving me!” She sobbed. “He found someone else and I was jealous. I wanted to hurt him.”
Elijah shook his head, the tumble of thoughts crashing through his mind. He ran a hand through his hair, opened his mouth to speak. “No, that’s not true,” he mumbled, staring with fear at the woman on the bed before him.
This woman wasn’t Delores. Michael had broken Delores, taken her apart and reconstructed her into someone new. Someone broken.
“It is! He told me!” she yelled, her face twisting in agony.
“No, no, Delores! No, you were leaving him. You were coming with me.”
Delores put her hands over her ears and shook her head. “No, no, no. I did it. I did it!” she sobbed, rocking back and forth, her chants getting louder and louder. “I did it! I’m bad.”
“Calm down,” Elijah pleaded as her cries reached a new level. “Delores, please, calm down!” he took her by the shoulders and shook her gently, to try and bring her back to him. But she was gone, lost in the moment of grief.
“I saw the blood, Elijah. I saw their bodies, and their blood! It is true. It is. I killed them. My babies, I killed them,” she wailed staring up into his fearful eyes.
