A light blinked on the phone on the coffee table, then a second later, it buzzed with a text message. I picked up the phone and read it:
You can call me the Problem Solver, buddy. About your little problem, I know someone who can make it go away. I’ll be in the wind tomorrow, but you can reach me on this burner phone if you need me. – Randy
Had Ben asked this Randy person to make me go away? What the hell did that mean?
I searched for his text history, but it had been erased. Just like he’d erased me from his life. I deleted the text and set the phone down.
Show no mercy, my father’s words echoed inside my head. Ben didn’t deserve mercy, and he didn’t deserve to live. His heart became a pin at the end of a bowling lane, and with every angry cell I aimed the knife, then plunged the blade down into his chest cavity. I immediately let go and stepped back, waiting for something to happen.
With a gasp he jerked up in response to the impact, mouth open in a macabre circle, then he reached his arms out toward me as blood seeped into his shirt. His fingers were close enough to move the air above my skin, and the fine hairs on my arm prickled at the near touch.
Our eyes locked for the last moment as I watched the man I love die. It was awful and liberating and soul-ripping and powerful being there for his last flittering moments on earth. His arms dropped to his sides, his eyes closed, and gravity lulled his head sideways. Goodbye, my Dark Prince.
A commercial for Mr. Clean ‘Magic Eraser’ – replace your grime with shine! – blared on the television behind me. An omen? Somehow all the mess I’d made of my life would be made clean? I found the remote tucked in the wrinkles of a blanket imprinted with Ben’s children’s smiling faces, and I imagined Ben and I wrapped in the smile of our own child’s face. It was a fantasy that would always remain just that – a fantasy.
Turning off the television, I dropped the room into stark silence. Much better. I needed quiet to focus on how to replace my grime with shine.
I found a bottle of bleach under the kitchen sink and got to work cleaning off all traces of me, going strictly based on what I had learned about forensics from watching thriller movies and police procedurals. God willing, most were accurate enough that I didn’t leave any evidence that would lead back to me. After wiping down the knife with a paper towel soaked in bleach, I placed his hands on the handle. Finally, I wrote a goodbye – a goodbye that would prevent any suspicion of murder.
I knew Ben’s handwriting intimately from the many notes and love letters he had written me over the months. Forgery was a gift I had practiced a lot as a teenager when I wanted to excuse myself from school. I had never imagined putting that talent to use by framing a murder as a suicide. I considered what Ben would have wanted to say, then I remembered he had already said it. To me.
From my back pocket I pulled out the letter he had written to break me. I examined the straight, capital letters, rigid and formal, that he had penned:
Candace,
You saw this coming, didn’t you? You knew one day it would have to end between us. You can’t blame me for this. You put us here, after all, with your choices and entrapment. It was only a matter of time before we closed this chapter, because it was all that was left to do. You’re not my true love; you never were, you never will be. I tried. I really did. But in the end, trying isn’t enough. I’m not able to manufacture love. We lived on lust, and that’s about it.
You’ll spend the next year hating me, but then you’ll have your baby and move on and be better off without me. You’re tough. But raising a baby together isn’t an option. If you choose to come after me for support, I’ll take the baby and raise it with Harper. You know I have the means to take everything from you, and you can say goodbye to any happily ever after. So take this chance to have your family and move forward. I don’t say that as a threat, but a warning and a promise. I won’t hurt you if you don’t hurt me.
I love Harper, and that love is enough for me.
Ben
Then I began rewriting it, tracing his penmanship as best as I could, specially adjusted for his beloved Harper, so that she felt the same sharp pain that I did. How darkly poetic that his cruel goodbye to me would be passed on to his wife:
My darling Harper,
You saw this coming, didn’t you? You knew one day you’d walk into our home and find me like this, taken by my own hand. You had to, after all the suffering. All the secrets. All the pain.
You can’t blame me for this. You put me here, after all. It was only a matter of time before I escaped the pain of this world, because it was all that was left to do. I couldn’t carry on anymore … not after what happened. What you did. What I could never forgive. I tried. I really did. But in the end, trying isn’t enough. It’s not enough to erase the past. It’s not enough to blur the memories.
You’ve spent the last year hating me, and I’ve spent the last year missing you. We’re not who we used to be, and I realize now we’ll never find ourselves again. When you lose too much of yourself, there’s no way to rebuild. Moving on without you wasn’t an option, but this was.
I
