Not that he’ll be missed. Nicky-boy was not a good man. Nothing more than a common swindler with an Ivy League education. An infuriating combination, if there ever were one. He made his fortune ripping off the vulnerable. The elderly. The incurably sick. Anyone at all, but especially anyone with no fucks left to give.
As I lead him to the edge of the cliff, he pleaded. He’d give me anything, whatever I wanted, he’d do anything. He has money.
When the bargaining failed, he moved onto the good stuff. His connections. Threats. I’d never get away with this. Do I know who he is?
Cute, this one. “Of course, Nick,” I said. “Everyone knows who you are.”
For just a moment, his breath switched up. It’s always a bit of a blow when they find out it’s not random. It’s easier to accept an accident than it is the opposite.
“Jump,” I told him, gripping the back of his neck the way a mother cat mouths her offspring. “Let’s see if you’re as good as you think you are.”
“This is crazy,” he stammered, trying to gain his footing.
“Would you prefer a bullet, or shall we see if you can fly?”
“Are you kidding me?”
“I do not kid.”
“If I jump, I’ll die.” His voice came out pathetic and shaky.
“That’s right.”
If you really want to kill a person, it’s not so hard. There are endless ways. Some quick. Some not so quick. Nick, ever the opportunist, knew that. It was such a bummer then that my options were only two. I still think of all the things I’d like to have done to him: Bind his wrists and his ankles. Take a machete and slowly peel back his scalp, carve into his brain matter, slicing little by little, peeling the meat off in layers, savoring it like you would a tender, hearty barbecue rib.
“Fine,” I told him at last. “If you don’t want to die…tell me…what planet is farthest from the sun?”
“Is this a joke?”
“I just told you, I don’t joke.”
“I don’t know. Jupiter?”
An Ivy League education, to end up with this. “Jump,” I said again, but he didn’t budge. I could feel it. I could feel that he was running out of patience, that he was going to put up a fight. He wasn’t the only one whose patience was running thin. The gun pressing at the base of his skull, I asked him once more which manner of death he preferred.
But this time, he was done talking. Nick reared back—he was trained for this, but also lazy. He swung left, as I expected him to. I went right. It took me a second, but eventually I regained control of the situation, clotheslining his skinny little neck.
As I held him over the edge, he teetered precariously. Mentally, he folded. I didn’t have to see his face to know. It was an energetic conversation. His shoulders slumped and he went limp. “Go on,” he said. “Shoot me.”
Placing his feet on the earth, I gave him a playful shove. “You aren’t worth the bullet.”
He started to turn then, whether to fight or to force my hand, I can’t say. As his feet found only air, I watched his eyes, honing in on the way they bulged as he fell to his death.
They closed only when he hit the earth, but just for a moment, or maybe it was my imagination. When I looked down at his twisted, mangled body, his eyes were open, staring, as blue as the morning sky he faced.
My most important task for the day taken care of, my mind quickly shifted to less pressing matters. To Nick’s wife at home, and his baby, a son just eight weeks old. I wondered what she’ll say when the officers appear at her door. Will she fall to her knees? Or can she manage to keep it together?
Even if it was the former, she’ll do okay in the end. They both will.
Maybe I’ll pop by later, just to have a look. I’ll lean over his crib and whisper a very important lesson, one I hope will stick with him: You have to give a person what they need, not what they think they want. I know this better than anyone.
Chapter Six
Hunched over my computer, with my beverage of choice next to me, I settle in for the long haul. Tonight I have one mission and one mission only: to seek out everything there is to know about Liam Martin.
He’s practically still an adolescent, so it shouldn’t be too hard to dig up the kind of info I need online. I probably should have done this already, especially before allowing him into my home. But I am not that young, nor green. If I have learned anything, I have learned it’s best not to cloud first impressions with things you already know.
Eve stirs in bed. The movement on the monitor catches my eye, the familiar sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach slumping my shoulders. It could be a long night. Depending.
Picking up the tumbler of Gentleman Jack, I swirl it around the glass. I take just a sip or two at first, but once she’s out of bed, I down the entire thing.
She hates being down there alone, but it’s safer for her to sleep downstairs. Like most lessons in my life, that one came too late and the hard way.
I am a writer and still I cannot come up with the words to describe what it’s like to have your wife, your life partner, no longer able to sleep next to you. To describe the feeling is like trying to find a word in a foreign language. It’s strange and hard to grasp. Perhaps it’s similar to how the French don’t say I miss you: they say: tu me manques, which translates to you are missing from me.
The situation is what it is. I know it’s safer. God, do I know. But what’s safe is rarely easy. This part of her illness—the mania—and the terrors didn’t come as quickly as the rest of it. And even then her episodes usually came forth in the light, so much so that by bedtime she was exhausted and slept well. But like most things, it didn’t last.
I suggested moving. Eve wouldn’t hear of it. This house, with its long corridors and wood-paneled walls, does not lend itself to comfort at night. It, too, seems to have a story to tell. At night, it whispers tales of the past, things we don’t dare talk about in the light.
The first time Eve woke in the dark, springing to life like a feral cat, I ended up with a twisted ankle and a broken wrist. Suddenly I was not only a stranger, but an enemy. And still I didn’t learn. It wasn’t until the concussion that I packed her things and moved her downstairs. I’d figured she would protest, but she didn’t— not even when I had to install the padlock on the door to keep her from wandering off in the middle of the night.
In that way, the Eve of today is nothing like the girl I met all those years ago.
I first laid eyes on her in English, freshman year of college. She wasn’t my type at all. She was attractive, sure. But she had dark hair, whereas I prefer blondes. She was short, with the body of a gymnast, and I always imagined I’d end up with a tall, curvy type. Also, her neck was strangely long. It’s an odd thing to notice about a person, but it stuck out. That’s what caught my eye initially. This and she was different from the other girls. She arrived early to class and sat near the front. She took copious notes and exited the seminar with her head down, as though she were in a hurry to get somewhere.
We didn’t have any other classes together, but I sat close to her whenever and wherever I could, sometimes in the library, sometimes in the dining hall. Whenever possible, I aimed for both. I admired the way her eyes crinkled at the corners when she smiled, the way she put her pencil between her teeth when she was deep in concentration. Eve may have been different, but she wasn’t a loner, not like me. And I liked that. She was gregarious and charming, and she was also serious. I could sense that she swung high to low. I think a part of me needed a little of that in my life.