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It was 5 o'clock when I woke up. Earlier than usual. But it was a big day.
I tried to roll over and tug the quilted blanket back up over my head. I closed my eyes and willed sleep to return. My back screamed a tightly kinked protest, and my stomach gurgled in response. My bladder also had an opinion about this whole "go back to sleep" idea.
Cursing, and not quietly, I shoved the blanket back, my legs and arms flailing like a toddler in a full-swing tantrum. My head fell to her side of the bed. It was empty - the pillow still all crumpled and her blankets in disarray at the foot of our bed. The middle of summer and she still buried herself under six blankets. She liked the weight of them, she would say.
I swung myself to upright, rubbing my eyes viciously with one hand. Tiny black spots exploded behind my closed eyelids as I pressed into my sockets. I ran my hands across my scalp and face stretching the skin taut as I did, feeling the stubble of my hair stubbornly returning. One annoyingly smooth spot right at the crown of my skull belied my age.
So too did the groaning, creaking, and sickening pops of various joints as I stood up from the bed. I padded into the kitchen, passing the dining room table, its surface still strewn with photos and papers. I'd spent yesterday pouring over the last details, confirming all the pieces of my plan were perfect.
Jamming a button on the coffee maker, it whirred to life with a hiss and thud. Her coffee cup sat abandoned on the counter beside it. The dregs of her fancy Columbian-Kenyan blend still painted the bottom black. It was probably the last thing she'd touched before leaving that morning. I fingered the handle idly while my off-brand "Pastry Shoppe" coffee brewed.
Novelty mug in hand, I wedged my fingers between slats of the blind in the front window, pulling them apart to peer through the glass. The street in front of our condo was busy, as it always was. Cars glided by, weary commuters closing in on their homes. Children were being called in for dinner. I imagined the 20-somethings were deep inside their homes, primping and preening for their night on the town. Everyone else was celebrating their Friday. With their workweek done, their short, sweet precious weekends were underway.
My work was just beginning.Â
And it had begun three hours earlier than I had intended.
I sipped at my coffee and returned, for the thousandth time, to the table. I scooped up a photo from near the center. This crime scene investigator had been meticulous with their photos, every angle of every corner of the room captured. Every speck of blood spilled had been a ready subject. The picture in my hands had been my primary tool for getting everything ready. It was a wide shot of the country shack. All the various tools and implements hanging on the walls and scattered across the floor were visible. It was important to me that I got all the details right. It would have been important to her.
I'd still been asleep when she slipped out the door that Friday morning. That was normal for us. I was not a morning person, but she was. She would wake up before the sun, go for a run, and then return home for some light reading and pretentious coffee before work. She'd be well into her train ride into the city before I even touched feet to the floor. Her nursing shift started at 8am at a hospital across town. I worked in an office building six blocks away, a standard 9-5 arrangement. It was not unusual to miss each other in the mornings.
I'd known we wouldn't see each other that evening. She was going out with a few girlfriends to celebrate someone's impending marriage or recently acquired child. I hadn't listened to the details. She and her little crew would enjoy dinner at some restaurant with impossibly small portions followed by a bit of light to moderate drinking at a favorite Irish pub, a fitting end to the workweek in New York City. That's where he'd spotted her, at the pub with the best Black and Tans in town.Â
He must have watched her all evening, chattering with the girls, laughing, her head thrown back, the way she did. I knew my wife. I knew that once they decided to call it a night, she dutifully stood by each woman, helping them load into their Ubers. I knew she was the last of them to grab a ride home. He would have seen her, alone after she'd seen her friends to safety. He would have seen her balance wobble just a bit. She wasn't a lightweight by any means but she wasn't going to be drinking anyone under any tables either. He must have thought she'd be an easy grab.
The coroner's report said she'd fought like hell. Skin and hair under her fingernails, broken bones in her hand, likely from punching, a cracked shinbone they attributed to defensive kicks. The photo from his arrest corroborated this. They'd caught him just 48 hours after they found her body in that god-forsaken shack in the New York countryside. His faced was raked with scratches, and she'd given him quite a shiner. Under other circumstances, I would have been proud.Â
The trial didn't take long. His work with her had been thorough - his work covering his tracks, less so. He hadn't even bothered to dispose of her body once he was finished playing with it. He'd been charged with kidnapping, torture, murder, some other tertiary legal-sounding crimes and been found handily guilty. It was an open and shut case as far as the law goes. Life in prison, no parole. He escaped the death penalty only because they stopped handing that sentence out in New York state ages ago.
The whole debacle had done nothing for me; no closure was offered. It was not over for me. My wife was dead; horribly, grotesquely dead. I needed someone to understand this feeling. I needed someone to know that catching the guy and tossing him a box is not a proper ending to stories like mine. There is no end to stories like mine. The grief, the confusion, the bitterness just rolls on and on. I needed to make someone understand that.
I'd gathered every inch of investigative material they'd created on her case. The photos, the documentations, the statements, the depositions, the confession, all of it accrued over these past three months. I'd purchased some land upstate and built myself a little lean-to cabin, just like the one she'd died in. Using the photos, I'd outfitted the whole thing just like his - same ropes and cords on the wall, a rusted engine block in the northern corner. I'd even gone to the trouble of painting the table he'd tied her to the same odd shade of peachy orange.
I needed to make someone understand there is no end. The pain is constant. I decided that an eye for an eye was the way to go. I wasn't sure if he'd feel that same lack of closure if he could feel something like that. But someone would, I was sure of that. I would have loved to take his wife the way he took mine, but he didn't have one. She'd left him years ago. Probably smart.
I checked my watch. I'd been staring at the photo for nearly an hour now. My coffee had grown cold. I still had another three hours before I needed to head out. His daughter got off work at the coffee shop at 10. She'd walk home, nose buried in her phone the whole way. She always took a shortcut through this little alley about three blocks from her apartment. That was my spot. That was my shot. We'd be at our shack by midnight. That's when the work would begin.
I wondered who would leave her things just the way she left them before she died, who would understand there is no closure to stories like ours, no end. I wondered if she'd left a coffee mug on the counter. I wondered if she was the type to make her bed or leave the blankets all wrinkled and askew.
Disclaimer: This is an original short story by Gwenna Laithland. Any similarities to real people or events is purely unintentional. All rights reserved. No one may repost this story or any part of it for commercial or financial gain without authorization from the author.
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