Chapter 37 #2
Her hands stopped.
For one breath, the whole yard hung. She looked down at Kai, and a question started assembling on her lips.
Finally.
Finally, I had broken the spell he had put on her. Hope hit my bloodstream hard—her stilled hands, the question building on her lips—and for two whole seconds I stood there and let myself believe that I could snap my wife out of this hold he had over her.
“Fuck. My head,” Kai murmured. He, who had never once in my presence produced a small sound, made his voice come out cracked and careful.
Amelie immediately abandoned her interest in pursuing the truth. “Kai. You might be concussed. Okay. Okay. Don’t move. Do you feel nauseous?”
“Only a little.”
“How’s your vision?”
“It’s really fucking bright.”
“I’ll drive you to the hospital.”
“No, Princess. Give me a minute. I’ll be fine.”
“Kai. This might be serious.”
“I’m okay, I promise. Just stay here with me.”
“Okay. Then follow my finger. Can you do that?”
“Yeah, I think so,” he said, as if it was costing him monumental effort.
And over her bent head, Kai looked at me. The corner of his mouth moved just for a second. If I hadn’t spent my whole adult life behind a camera waiting for the truth to cross a face, I’d have missed it.
He was faking it. And I watched, helplessly, as Amelie bought his victim act.
Everything I told her was already forgotten.
I could have screamed the truth until my voice tore.
Volume wasn’t the problem here. There was a time when she’d have believed me, and now, even with evidence, Amelie wouldn’t see reason.
A memory arrived, uninvited, from the kitchen of my old home.
My mother was at the stove, my father doing the crossword.
They had just informed me they’d be turning the guest bedroom into a room for Amelie.
It was a dream for any seventeen-year-old to have their girlfriend sleep in the room across from them.
But it didn’t stop my curiosity—why would they do such a thing?
My father hadn’t looked up from the paper. “Because no one in this world will ever love you the way that girl loves you.”
They knew Amelie was lonely in her big house, that her father was never there, and they gave her a room to make her happy. Because in their eyes, the girl who loved their son more than anything else in the world deserved to be happy.
Even then, my parents knew no one would love me as much as Amelie.
I was almost relieved that my parents weren’t alive to see what I had done with Amelie’s unconditional love. They’d be ashamed of the person I had become. Because no matter how prettily I had dressed it up, the truth was still irrefutable.
I sold Amelie and her unconditional love to live out my fantasy life.
All my adult life, people had told me that my wife loved me blindly. Friends had confirmed it, sometimes burning with jealousy.
Amelie is blind when in love. Lucky bastard.
Yet I convinced her to marry another man, and she did it because she loved me too much. Because she was blind when she was in love, and I had exploited it for my own selfish desires. And now…
Now, she was blindly in love with Kai.
Twenty feet away, my wife was cradling another man’s face like the world would crack if she let go.
She was murmuring to him—too low for the words to reach me—but nevertheless, I recognized the weight behind it.
As I was listening to my wife comfort him, I realized she was never going to hear me again at any volume because she was looking at Kai the way she’d once looked at me.
The man bleeding in the grass knew it, too.
“Amelie.” I tried once more, quieter. “He isn’t who you think he is. And he hit me too. Look at my face.”
“He was defending himself!” Furious tears spilled from her eyes, the scarf going red under her hand. She only got angrier at the sight of his blood. “I saw you. You attacked him! What was he supposed to do, stand there and let you?”
“He hit me, too—”
“You’re standing,” she yelled. “He’s not. Just look at him. He clearly needs stitches.” She had already turned her back to me, trying to stop the bleeding.
The patio door banged, and Bella poured out, and everything got worse.
“What’s wrong with Kai?” Bella’s wail went up like a siren, and she was crying before finishing the sentence.
“Bella, go to your room,” I ordered.
Amelie glanced at her, too. “Bella. Baby. Go inside.”
“I don’t want to go inside,” she protested. “August and Jamie are in their rooms, and they are not playing with me. What’s wrong with Kai?”
The yard was coming apart in pieces, but Bella didn’t sense the tension among the adults.
“Please, Bella. Go inside,” Amelie pleaded. “I’ll play hide-and-seek with you later.”
I saw my little sister out of the corner of my eye, twisting her hands, before turning back toward the house. Nobody was watching where her feet were actually taking her.
I was watching Amelie.
Amelie was distracted by Kai’s injuries.
Off to the side, Bella was crouching down in the grass. I belatedly realized she was picking something off the ground and playing with it.
Every drop of theater left Kai’s face at once. And that was how I knew, before my hand even flew to my empty pocket, exactly what she was holding.
Small. Cellophane. White powder.
During our brawl, I had dropped my packet of cocaine on the grass.
“It looks like snow,” Bella said, wet and wondering, to no one, her small thumbs working the zip open. “Did Mommy send this for me—”
“Bella, no.” Kai moved before she had finished the sentence. He crossed twelve feet of lawn in a flash.
The contents of the packet were already on her fingers when Kai had reached her. And then he had her wrist in one hand and the bag in the other.
I moved too. I’d moved the same second he did, but my legs were slow from the fight and the drugs, and I arrived at a patch of flattened grass with my arms out and nothing left to catch.
Kai was already gone, inside, with Bella in his arms.
“Bella!” Amelie was already running behind Kai.
“Bella.” I ran behind them and got as far as the glass door, just in time to witness the chaos.
My phone was out, my thumb hovering over the nine.
Then I heard Kai say “Dr. Bower” into his own phone, a direct line, a man with an emergency already on retainer, and I stood at the glass holding three numbers I never got to press.
Water was hammering into the sink as he washed Bella’s hands thoroughly with soap, phone cradled between his ear and shoulder.
Somewhere between the lawn and the kitchen, the concussion had subsided, and he was fully alert.
Nobody but me was keeping score.
As Kai set her down, Bella—scared and confused about why all the adults were freaking out—started crying again.
Amelie was kneeling in front of her with her nurse voice on. Bella’s voice was too small to reach me, but Amelie’s wasn’t.
“Bella. You’re not in any trouble. Did you lick your fingers after touching the white powder? You can tell me.”
“Okay, good. Did any of it get in your mouth or nose?”
“Stick out your tongue for me.”
“Okay. You’re okay.”
It went like that, Amelie’s voice steady as she confirmed Bella hadn’t ingested any of the ‘snow.’
I caught my own lips moving along behind her questions, half a beat late, like a man praying that all the answers came back right.
The saving grace was that the twins didn’t hear the madness because their rooms were far away and they were probably engrossed in their game station.
“I’ll take her to the hospital,” Kai announced. “Dr. Bower recommended keeping her overnight just to make sure nothing’s wrong.”
“Okay. I’ll stay with the boys.”
As if remembering I was still there, Kai’s gaze flicked to me for just a second. “You guys should come with me.”
My hand was already in my jacket, searching for my car keys, even though I knew Kai had only referred to Amelie and the twins when he said “you guys.” I was just hoping they’d let me tag along.
“There’s no point in taking the twins to the hospital. Mrs. Bea will be home in an hour, and then I’ll meet you. It’ll give me time to pack an overnight bag for Bella.”
They spoke like a fully functioning working pair, while I stood in front of the door, not quite crossing it, no idea how to help. Kai reluctantly agreed and left with Bella, while I stood there uselessly.
It looks like snow. Did Mommy send this for me—
Bella saw snow only once, right after our parents died. Amelie told her that our mom sent her snow because she missed her. Bella still believed that story. My little sister picked up my drugs because she thought it was a sign from our dead mother, and that was how I’d endangered her life.
Shame curdled in my stomach.
“Amelie.” I spoke her name as if it were a prayer, hoping for a lifeline.
Her gaze landed on me.
“God, Am, I don’t know what happened. I didn’t even know it was gone until she—oh, God.”
I tried to grasp for more words just as she charged toward me. I opened my mouth again just as Amelie slapped me across the face.