Chapter Sixteen
“We have the autopsy report,” Matthew said.
I wondered how Matthew had come by this information before Vic had.
“What does it say?” Vic asked, casting a cautious glance toward me.
The three of us were in the kitchen and I was putting on a pot of coffee: the second of the day.
“Her body is in relatively good condition, no organ damage or deterioration beyond what is expected for her age. Her death was ruled as an accident, and she died of the injuries sustained during her fall,” Matthew said. “It seems like the treatment did her no harm.”
“Why would it?” Vic asked.
Matthew shrugged. “Call it a medical student’s paranoia. The idea of failure is itself an unconquerable phantom.”
“You’re still young,” Vic chuckled.
Matthew shrugged. “It’s good news anyway. What about Theresa?”
Vic leaned his chair back, so it balanced on two legs. “She’s on a ventilator. The hospital will call if there’s any change.” Vic looked over his shoulder. “Do you want to go visit her today?”
I realized he was talking to me.
“When do you want to leave?” I asked.
He glanced at his watch. “How about an hour?”
“Sure,” I said.
#
When we got to the hospital, we were immediately shown to her room. Theresa lay propped up in the bed. Her mouth was open and a breathing tube was led through. I could hear the rhythmic compression of the ventilator, and see the gentle rise and fall manipulation of her chest by the machine.
I sat down in the chair by her bed, while Vic leaned over her, inspecting the pulpy mass that was her face. The skin was swollen and bruised, to the extent that I would be unable to pick her out of a lineup, despite the time we had spent together.
“I don’t know,” Vic whispered. “Whoever did this is capable of God knows what.”
“Do you think it was Margaret?” I asked.
Vic shrugged. “I doubt she’d have the strength to do something like this.”
It didn’t look like Theresa had put up much of a fight. Frankly, it didn’t seem like she would have been capable of fighting an attacker off, regardless of their size or strength.
Vic shut the door and closed the venetian blinds at the hallway window. He sank down into the chair next to me, and buried his face in his hands.
“I feel like I’ve lost so much over the past few weeks. I’ve lost my mother, and I nearly lost the woman who raised me. I’ve never felt more alone,” he said.
I reached out, and placed my hand on his.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
He shook his head, his beautiful mouth forming a sad smile. “You’re so sweet to me.”
He took me by the elbows, and pulled me to stand in front of him. Vic’s hands ran up the outside of my thighs, his hands massaging the backs of my legs beneath my blue cotton dress. He gently squeezed my ass, before pulling me into his lap.
“Vic,” I breathed out, unsure of how to even speak about the situation.
So, wordlessly, I glanced to Theresa, and Vic’s eyes followed mine.
He pressed his forehead to my chest.
“Please, Nadia, you’re the only part of my life that makes me feel sane right now.”
He reached between my legs and unzipped his jeans. He freed his erection and pulled the fabric of my panties aside, while driving me down onto him. His cock entered me in a quick, single movement, and I gasped against his shoulder. His right fist grasped the material of my panties and pulled them hard against my inner thigh. I rode him to my climax, which was quickly followed by his own.
Everything occurred in a haze which blotted the lingering doubts from my mind with a single, carnal act. In the afterglow, I tried to give words to those fears which I knew had existed, but found I was without capacity, and without a defined memory of even my own thoughts.
When the nurse came in to give us an update from the doctor, I knew she could tell what had taken place only minutes before, given the self-contented grin that stretched across Vic’s face, even as he sat beside his aunt’s badly beaten body.
As the nurse was explaining some minutia of Theresa’s care, a call came in. Vic immediately picked up the phone, and within seconds his expression darkened.
“When did this happen?” he asked.
I couldn’t hear the response, but Vic immediately shot to his feet.
“Call the police, and have them come out to the house. I’m not risking anything with that woman. We’ll be back as soon as we can,” he said before hanging up.
I looked at him questioningly, but he ignored me.
“I’m sorry, we need to go. There’s an emergency at home,” he said to the nurse.
He grabbed my wrist and dragged me to the door.
“Vic, what’s going on?” I asked.
“Margaret showed up at the house. She’s got Matthew’s gun, and she locked herself in my mother’s office,” he said. “Matthew’s calling the police, but we should try to get back.”
Vic drove back at double the speed limit. I found myself wincing at nearly every turn, my balance thrown to the side, as he whipped the car around curves, revving the engine to speed through intersections and country roads.
When we got back to the house, Matthew was standing on the front lawn. His cellphone was clutched in his hand and he was tapping his fingertips nervously against the screen, only stopping when he saw Vic get out of the car.
Police cars were already lined up on the road, and I could see a few officers in the yard, a little ways from where Matthew waited.
“Vic, thank God you’re back,” Matthew said, walking quickly towards us. His eyes remained turned away from me.
“Where is she?” Vic asked.
“Still in the office. The police are afraid that if they break the door down, she might do something reckless,” Matthew answered.
“She has your gun?” I interjected.
Matthew looked me over briefly, before turning back to Vic. “She has a gun, and we can assume it’s mine.”
I heard an indistinct shout, and suddenly the police officers who had been milling around the property sprinted toward the front lawn.
There, on the porch, appeared Margaret. She was indeed holding a gun, the end of the barrel pressed hard against her temple. Her free hand was raised, as though in an act of surrender, while the gun stayed pointed at her own head.
“Please,” she said. “Don’t shoot.”
She was dressed in blue scrubs and a grey cardigan, which was tattered and stained. She was only wearing one of the sneakers in which I had seen her every day of our acquaintance. Her other foot wore a greyed sock, the sole of which was black with thick grime.
Her cheeks were raw, stained with tears, and her eyes had a wild look to them, similar to the uncontrolled expression she had displayed when she accused me of being Vic’s whore.
I remembered the way I had struck her again and again during that exchange, and I felt a sinking within my stomach. It was clear she was mentally unwell, and the damage I had inflicted on her body brought me no small measure of shame.
“I didn’t want to hurt them, any of them. I didn’t—” she cut herself off abruptly. “They are…they are dead, I know that. They are all dead, I know that. Everyone’s dead. Everyone’s dead and I know that.”
Her eyes were wild and fretting. She seemed to be in some incomprehensible turmoil, and the gun was pressed painfully against her head. I could see the blood crushed from the skin around the barrel, but she only pushed harder.
It was then that I noticed her hands. The skin between her fingers was torn to shreds, and bruises ran all the way to her wrists. The flesh had been ripped apart, and lay bloody and raw, wrapped around the handle of the gun, while the other mutilated hand was raised in a painful surrender.
The image of the fingers jutting through the cage returned to my memory, but I knew it couldn’t be her. After all, hadn’t the police searched the basement, confirming that what I had seen could not possibly have existed?
Margaret’s stare locked on me. Her eyes were open wide, the raw, exposed spheres rolling in their sockets, scraped and parched.
“Nadia,” she said. “Nadia, it’s—”
The sound of the gun at her temple rang out in the street, and her body collapsed on the porch. After only a moment’s hesitation, the police and medics rushed forward to tend to her.
I stood there silently as she was pronounced dead, and the body was covered and carried into the waiting van.
Vic’s arm had wrapped around me and I leaned into his embrace, while my eyes lingered on the pool of blood staining the white porch. I breathed in his scent. The amber musk still managed to run a thrill through my body, even as I witnessed the final moments of a woman whose mental destruction had occurred with impossible rapidity.
“Hopefully, this is the end of it,” Vic breathed. “Maybe with Margaret dead, the nightmare will be over.”
I said nothing, only stood by his side as we watched photographs being taken of the scene. I could see the flash of a camera in Edith’s office, and I was afraid of what would greet us when we finally entered the house.
“I’m glad you’re here with me,” Vic said, his arm squeezing around my waist. “I don’t know if I could weather this alone.”
I rested my cheek against his chest, unsure of what else I could do. Margaret was dead, Edith was dead, Theresa was on a ventilator. If I were smart, the small voice in my head told me, I would run.
That was the last thought I remembered having. I awoke, and my hand was filled with shards of broken glass. I pressed the glass, wetting the slivers with warm blood which slid the shards around in my palm. In a flash, the lights were brighter, and gauze was wrapped tight around my hand. Too tight, my fingers were turning purple and blue, swollen and dead.