Black Card Black

Chapter One

S he was in her dreary season; a time of year she tracked with the same regularity as fall or winter. It would start on different days and end roughly whenever the hell it pleased, but Essie could count on it towards the end of July—late August, if it was being stubborn.

Thick, grey clouds would drift over her days as summer began its final bid for life that year. As sunsets died brutal—struggling deaths across the sky, each red orb fighting to stay afloat before setting with bitterness—casting long, lanky shadows on the still hot streets of her Kentucky neighborhood, a grimness would slip behind her, grasping her wrists and whispering sweet melancholy into her ear. The words would slither into her eardrum before expanding parasitically, intertwining with her bones. Sadness seeped out of her pores, regret took shelter in the roots of her hair.

She’d move a little slower.

The days would feel just a bit more tiring.

Her patience would thin out until every minor annoyance became sharper, more savagely irritating.

Food tasted blander, as if everything needed a touch of salt.

It always began slowly, so that she could fight it and feel a flickering, cruel belief that maybe she could stave it off.

That was the trying period.

A time when you lean your head back too far to laugh too loudly. When you catch someone’s joke and choose to chuckle instead of having it pleasantly pulled out of your lungs. Listlessly trying new books, new shows, and new music. Clutching at escapism like rungs on a ladder you were failing to hold onto. Can this miniseries spark-spark and jump-start her happiness? Will this book series drip-drip enough dopamine to drown the depression growing inside her?

Music grew tinny in her ears and sunlight started feeling like a glare rather than a kiss.

You’d catch her on a random Tuesday evening in July, going for troubled walks in her neighborhood. The kind of walks that brooding teenagers went on. Essie walked with her head down, hands shoved deep in her pockets, wearing a hoodie despite the heat, watching her shoes leap out and slap the pavement.

The thoughts were the usual thoughts. If her depression were a season, then these thoughts were dead leaves. They fell off in bursts, three to four brown-grey thoughts, dry and begging to be burned, piling on her.

They had the texture of truth and the allure of the intrusive. Like the little ghostly impulse voice that told her to stick her hand into fire—just to see!—or saw train tracks and wondered briefly, how it would feel to lay down and be erased.

Your husband is a stranger. You recoil when he tries to touch you. You dread pulling into the driveway of your own home and seeing his car there.

These ideas would careen in and she’d field them, catching each one in her hands, examining it like it was a rare bug before casting it aside easily.

But during the trying period, one-two would be three to four, then four to five, then six quickly became nine thoughts like that and nine became, oh god oh why did I marry him why am I here what became of me?

So,

Walks.

It was on one of these walks—past trimmed lawns and pastel houses with brown shingles and two-car garages, past front lawn sprinklers and gleaming SUVs—that she saw a black van screech to a halt in front of the Gibson house. The dingy cargo van with rust spots along the trim clashed violently with Kara Gibson’s green shutters and pink tulips in the front garden. The van had a loud muffler, which gurgled loudly in the quiet suburb.

The door slid open and from her view from the corner, Essie saw a woman with a black bag over her head being dragged out of the van. Three men in masks and gloves carefully placed the woman on her lawn, and one of them unsnapped a knife.

Essie reached for her phone, swiping for the dialer to begin calling 9-1-1.

The man cut the woman’s hands free and took the bag off her head.

It was Kara Gibson.

Kara Gibson, who hosted barbeques in her back garden by the pool. Kara Gibson, married to Greg Gibson, who worked as a lawyer in the city.

The men gathered around Kara as she stood and embraced each one of them. She began to walk to her front door when one of the men reached out and swatted her ass.

Essie heard her giggle and say loudly, “Keep it up and I’ll have you kidnap me again.”

The men laughed. They waved cheerfully as they each climbed into the van and sped away.

Kara crossed her yard quickly. Her clothes were in tatters; the white blouse was torn open in the back and flapped in the wind. Her hair was frizzy and stuck out at odd angles. She walked stiffly, as if she were very sore.

At the door, she fumbled for her keys, dropped them, bent over to pick them up, then froze. She whirled around, looking down the street. Her eyes swept over to Essie, still holding her phone, the numbers 9 and 1 already dialed, her thumb hovering over the final digit.

Kara stared at her for a long pause. Then she firmly shouldered her front door open and went inside.

Essie thought about telling her husband.

There was a moment, after the door clicked open and before it snapped closed, as she kicked her shoes off and wandered down the hallway towards his computer room, where Essie thought she could.

There was a tennis court of silence between them and maybe she could serve this enticing green ball of gossip over the net. Ryan could swat it back. “Really?” he’d say. “Three men? In a van?”

She’d volley back. “It was like something out of a movie, I swear. She was all tied up, with a bag on her head.”

“Should we call the cops? That sounds insane.”

There would be interest in his voice. She would be edging into the room and sitting naturally in the little chair next to the desk. His eyes would leave the computer screen and find hers. He’d make a joke. Tendrils of connection would begin reaching out and joining hands over the chasm between them.

Because they’d have something to talk about.

The door snapped closed, and she lingered in the threshold of the room, watching the slant of his neck and the slight bend of his ears under his glasses.

“Hey,” she offered. A weak serve. Why didn’t she sprint in and begin chattering? Why did everything feel like it had to be scheduled or announced—every moment of intimacy organized by committee to avoid a fight?

Ryan grunted.

She frowned.

No tennis today.