“Hey, it’s okay now.”
“It’s not okay. You killed him. What are we going to do? If the police show up, they’ll take you away!”
“Hey, it’s fine.” He pulled back, forcing me to look into his eyes. “I promise. Everything will be okay. I’ll take care of the body.”
“How?” I asked, completely freaking out. “How can we get rid of him without anyone finding out?”
He thought for a moment and then said, “I’ll take him out to the mine.”
“But it was shut down. We can’t go on that land.”
“Exactly. It was shut down. No one goes there anymore. I’ll take his body and drop him down there.”
“You can’t possibly do that by yourself.”
“I’ll need your help. Can you do that?”
I looked over at my father, saw the fat lump of a lifeless body and knew that I could. He didn’t deserve to be buried properly, no matter what he used to mean to me. All that mattered now was protecting Matthew.
“Let’s do this.”
I shook away the thoughts that still lingered, squeezing the sides of the sink as I tried to gain control. It didn’t matter what happened in the past. I did what I had to, for both my parents. Looking up in the mirror, I didn’t see the same girl that lived in that small house in West Virginia. I only saw a woman that would fight for everything, no matter the costs.
Grabbing what I needed, I headed back downstairs to help Andrew. I put a smile on my face and forgot about the memories that haunted me. They were in the past, and they needed to stay there.
Andrew
I sat in the living room, holding the towel to my head as I leaned back on the couch. I couldn’t remember what happened. One minute we were talking about taping, and the next…Why couldn’t I remember? Obviously, I had hit my head pretty hard, but not knowing was the worst part. I couldn’t trust anything she said. For all I knew, she didn’t want me to remember.
But that didn’t make sense. If she was trying to kill me, and she hadn’t succeeded, why didn’t she just finish me off when I was unconscious? Because then it wouldn’t look like an accident, I thought. If I didn’t remember what happened, that would only work in her favor. I needed to try and remember.
There was just one thing that was bothering me, as much as I was terrified that she was trying to kill me, I couldn’t figure out why. She didn’t have access to my accounts. We weren’t married, so there was no reason for her to kill me. But the close calls I’d had so far around her made me rethink that. One close call was understandable, but this many?
The wrench, the tub, and now this… How many more close calls would I have in her company? The longer I laid there, the more I considered risking my life in the snowstorm. I could drive out of here. I might freeze to death after driving into a snow drift, but at least I wouldn’t be another notch on her belt.
The lights started to flicker and I cursed myself for not leaving sooner. If the power was going out, it meant the storm was getting really bad. I crossed my fingers and made a wish that everything would be fine. But then the lights flickered again and the power was gone. The only thing lighting the room was the fireplace.
“Andrew!” a strangled cry came from upstairs. I shot off the couch, despite my reservations about the woman, and swayed as I ran toward the stairs. Damn, she had me all wrapped up in knots. I shouldn’t be worried about her, but that cry sounded like a scared kid, not a grown woman in a dark house. “Andrew!”
I took the stairs two at a time, pushing through into the bathroom where I thought the cry came from. “Lorelei?”
She didn’t answer, so I backed out and felt my way down the dark hallway pushing open doors as I went. I was just one room away from the master bedroom when I heard a small cry that sounded something like a wounded animal. I pushed the door open and squinted to see in the darkness.
“Lorelei, where are you?”
“Here,” she squeaked.
I followed the noise to the corner of the room, expecting to see her standing in the corner, but instead, she was huddled in the corner, her knees pulled up against her chest protectively. I knelt down in front of her and reached out for her, but the instant I touched her arm, she jerked away from me. She was scared, absolutely terrified. With just that one touch, I had felt how much her body trembled.
What the actual fuck? One minute, this woman was higher than life, taking on anything a man would do, and the next, she was curled up in a corner, scared as a kitten.
“Hey, it’s me.”
I saw her nod her head jerkily and I could hear her breath sawing out of her lungs.
“Hey, just…just take a deep breath. You’re okay.”
She nodded jerkily again, but she wasn’t calming down. I sat down on my ass and squished against the wall next to her. I didn’t know what the hell to say. I’d never met an adult that was scared of the dark. And why was she scared of the dark? The questions were digging at me, but I couldn’t push.
“You know, when I was a kid, maybe six years old, we had this summer of storms. I mean, it was insane. It was constantly raining and it got so bad that the sump pump got overworked and died. We ended up with a flooded basement. So, my dad went to get another one to get it fixed, and in the meantime, it was still raining cats and dogs outside. And since we live in the ass end of
