Chapter 20 #2
“Now,” she said, “I’m going to get you a cloth for your face.
And then you’re going to go see Henry and Whit who are down at Whit’s apartment making quite a mess.
And you’re going to let them cheer you up a little bit.
You just remember we all love you, Zellie.
And you might have funeral potatoes and cobbler to last you till Christmas—”
I laughed and dabbed at my eyes with the heel of my palm.
“—but you’ll never be alone as long as you have us.”
After applying the cool washcloth to my eyes to reduce some of the puffiness and then saying goodbye to Pearlie, I took a deep breath and forced a smile before walking down the hall to Whit’s apartment. The door stood open, and I could hear Whit’s deep voice and Henry’s giggling.
I followed the sounds, and when I entered the bedroom where they were, I nearly burst out laughing.
Whit was letting Henry “help” paint the walls.
White paint was all over Whit’s jeans and shoes, a large puddle on the drop cloth evidence of a spill.
Henry had paint on his cheek, in his hair, and all over the back of his clothes where it looked like he’d leaned against the wet wall.
He held out his hands toward Whit, palms covered in paint, pretending like he was going to wipe it on him.
Whit jumped back with an exaggerated yelp, which Henry thought was the most hilarious thing he’d ever seen. He threw his head back, cackling.
And suddenly my smile was no longer forced.
“Hey there,” Whit said when he noticed me. He came toward me, opening his arms to hug me, but I laughed and ducked out of his embrace.
“No way,” I said, backing away, my hands held out in front of me.
“Oh, come on,” Whit teased following after me. “Just a little hug?”
Henry giggled. “Yeah, Mama! Just a little hug!” He ran to me and threw his arms around me, paint-covered hands pressed against me.
“Ewww!” I laughed.
“Don’t worry,” Whit said, grinning. “The paint’s washable.”
I lifted by brows. “Oh, really? In that case…”
I wiped my hand across the wet paint on my clothes and reached toward Henry.
He giggled and ran a few feet away, out of my reach. Whit wasn’t so lucky. I dabbed a bit of white on the end of his nose.
Laughing, Whit caught me around the waist and lifted me off my feet, spun me once, then set me back down, still smiling as he kissed me, the paint on the end of his nose transferring to my cheek.
Now it was Henry’s turn to “Ewww!”
Whit chuckled and held me close, whispering in my ear, “I love you.”
My arms around him tightened. “I love you too.”
“You doing okay?” he asked softly.
I nodded. “Yeah. I am now.”
I buried Vivian in a simple private burial service.
I insisted on the residents of Dawes House letting me do this on my own with just Whit and Henry as support.
Henry soon grew bored, though, so Whit led him away to feed the ducks at the cemetery pond while I stood alone as the attendants lowered a plain box into the plot Whit had insisted on paying for.
There were no flowers. No hymns or readings.
I threw in a handful of dirt on top of her coffin and then turned my back on that part of my life.
Or so I’d thought.
Most of the few possessions Vivian had in her apartment I either threw away or donated to local charities that helped victims of domestic violence, hoping that some good would come from what she’d left behind.
The only things I kept were a few spiral-bound notebooks she’d written in sporadically.
I should’ve just thrown them away with all the other trash.
But curiosity got the better of me. I don’t know why, but I had to get into her head now that she was gone, try to understand why she was the way she was.
Nothing could’ve prepared me for the deranged scribblings of a woman who had been completely consumed by paranoia.
I almost felt sorry for how terrifying her thoughts must’ve been—her claims of being stalked by demons, seeing their monstrous faces lurking everywhere, being tormented in her dreams by images of fire and people screaming, being accosted in her sleep by terrifying creatures who drew power from her fear.
But what was most horrifying were the ravings about Henry and me.
She was obsessed with the idea that I was possessed.
Nothing new there. But she was convinced my soul had been compromised, that I was a willing servant of evil, that I was colluding with demons, conspiring to kill her and feast on her entrails.
In one of the entries, she recounted a dream where I was standing in a dungeon, covered in blood, wielding a knife, my face contorted with vengeance while fire raged around me.
“Zellie, baby, what’s wrong?” Whit asked, coming into the living room where I sat on the floor, the notebooks scattered around me. He crouched down beside me. “I heard you crying from the kitchen.”
I looked up at him, Vivian’s ravings briefly tainting my vision, making the caring, handsome face of my beloved look like something out of a horror film. I gasped, shrinking back, as he reached for me.
He instantly pulled his hands back. Vivian’s toxic influence immediately vanished, and he was my love, my Whit, again. “Zellie?”
Relief washed over me, and I reached for him. “I’m so sorry… What she wrote… Whit, it’s so disturbing. I didn’t realize she was this troubled, that she needed professional help. I should’ve tried to get her the help she needed.”
“Disturbing how?” he asked, frowning.
I flipped back a couple of pages. “She was convinced that Henry was the son of the devil, that he was a product of a demon seducing me. She says she dreamed of the encounter…and she goes into great detail about that dream.”
“Jesus,” Whit breathed, his eyes going wide.
I held the notebook out to him.
He took it, holding my gaze for a long moment before finally turning his eyes down to the page.
I watched his face as he read. His jaw tightened, the muscles twitching with strain from how hard he must’ve been grinding his teeth.
I could see his rage growing, his expression becoming harder, the already chiseled lines of his face growing sharper.
When he looked up, his eyes burned with fury.
Without a word, he gathered up the notebooks and took them into the kitchen.
“Whit?” I hurried after him when I heard him rummaging through the drawers. “What are you doing?”
“I’m destroying these,” he said, his tone clipped. “Do you want me to tear them to shreds or burn them?”
“Whit—”
He turned abruptly, cutting me off. “Do you want to put yourself through more abuse? Are you going to let her do this to you even now, Zellie?”
I was conflicted. I knew he was right, but part of me wanted to finish reading them, figure out what else she’d put on those pages. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I just need closure.”
He gave me a curt nod and grabbed a box of matches from the drawer. “You sure as hell do.” He swiped the notebooks into the empty sink with his arm then handed me the matches.
I hesitated only a moment before taking them.
I looked down at the pile of notebooks. My final connection to Vivian.
Her last words to me, appropriately wounding and harmful.
Anger welled up in me so powerfully my hands shook as I struck a match and held it to the pages of one of the notebooks.
I stared at the flame as the paper caught fire, the white pages curling upon themselves, charred and crumbling into ash as the fire spread.
It vaguely registered that the smoke alarm went off, but the strident beeping was cut short. Several minutes later, only the metal spirals and a pile of ash lay in the sink where the notebooks had been.
Whit turned on the faucet, dousing the ash.
Then he pulled me into his arms, held me, wrapped me in his love.
And when I lifted my face to his, he wiped the tears from my cheeks and kissed me so tenderly that my pain from the searing agony of the rejection, humiliation, and hatred from a woman who was supposed to love me, began to dissipate, supplanted by another kind of heat.