10. To Hell
To Hell
Melody
My mother thought marrying into the Gray family was our ticket to an easier life. Access. Resources.
She was partially right. The man lying cold on the table had paid for my undergrad, and even that first year at Yale Law. He couldn’t not pay for them. His family would have never let someone, even an outsider like me, take out student loans. That was beneath them.
The reality of the Grays was a bit like going into the fallen castle of a dying dynasty.
A lot of gold had lost its luster, but they clutched onto their jewels and pearls, even when their fridge was empty.
Luke should have married someone like Valerie.
Someone with money and a career that wasn’t really a career.
Unlike my mother who had a job. A real job where she clocked in and out.
That was also beneath their dignity. Or some such bullshit.
I was only a child, but I didn’t remember my childhood being that bad. We were poor and living in a one-bedroom apartment. Birthdays and Christmas were small but loving. We didn’t have much, but we didn’t need much, either.
Life got so complicated when we became Grays. Stakes were higher. So high, no one would have believed it. Not even the man who was keeping me from completely falling apart.
Greg walked me to the passenger door and helped me climb in. He even buckled my seatbelt. He didn’t have music on while he drove, but I was grateful for the silence. He didn’t try to make me talk, either. He just let me sit there, doing nothing.
You couldn’t waterboard my secrets out of me, I was starting to get the feeling Greg’s kindness might tease the truth from me. He was the honey, and I was the worthless fly deprived of sweetness for so long, I might have welcomed drowning in it.
I was empty. It was a hollow, resigned feeling in my gut that whatever happened…would happen.
Good or bad, there was nothing I could do. I was a murderer. I couldn’t be angry because I had done it. Me. I’d made the choice. There was no one to bargain with, so I was in the middle of despair and acceptance.
Maybe pleading guilty to murder would be a relief. At least I would get a bed and three square meals a day. I thought I’d even seen that people finish law school from behind bars. Wouldn’t that be fun?
But what would happen to Miriam and Marcus? They’d go to Turner Gray. Miriam would be hurt, same as I was. He liked them young, too. Marcus? Well, all that goodness would be squashed right out. My mother wouldn’t have wanted that for him.
I didn’t, either.
But what could I do?
“Darling, I need you to get onto the floor, keep your head down below the windows, okay?” he said.
“Huh?” I asked, coming out of a daze and looking around.
He stomped on the gas and the car sped up. I placed my hand over my mouth to stifle a scream as we were rear-ended, our bodies lurching forward. The sound of metal scraping metal split my head like thunder.
“Get on the floor, now!” He reached over, unbuckled my seatbelt. I flinched as he grabbed me by the back of the neck and pushed me to the ground.
Greg put both hands on the wheel, his foot hard on the gas again, as he let out a frustrated growl.
What the hell was happening? What was going on? Who had just hit us?
The sound of gunshot and the cracking of the rear windshield silenced any questions I wanted to ask as shards scattering over us.
“Keep your head down, honey.” He voice was even but firm. Like he was trying to keep me calm.
I was not calm. I was the opposite of calm.
When I dared look up, I saw a black Lexus through the passenger-side window.
“Who are they?” I whimpered.
“Hold on.” Greg reached behind my head and opened the glove compartment, fiddling for something among the papers and tissue boxes.
With a Glock in his hand, he slammed the compartment closed. I screamed as the passenger window above me shattered, and a hole appeared on the roof of his truck near the oh-shit handle, just inches from his head.
He quickly took his hand off the wheel to charge his weapon, then pointed it over my head.
“Cover your ears!” he called before firing twice.
The other car sped forward.
“Damnit,” he said under his breath as the car spun, wheels squealing until it faced us. “Hang on!”
He put the gun on his lap, placed both hands on the wheel, and cranked the steering. I threw my hands out to steady myself as we changed lanes, and an oncoming semi-truck leaned on its horn while we squealed to a halt.
I was going to die. I was going to die!
The semi-truck rumbled past us, shaking our entire cabin and filling the air with noise.
Greg’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel as his jaw worked in concentration.
I made the choice before he could. I took his gun, leaned out the broken passenger window, and fired at the grille, the wheel, and the windshield. The two men ducked and threw their arms over their caps as if that would stop my bullets.
Greg didn’t take long to react. He stomped on the gas.
The tires screamed, and the smell of burned rubber tickled my nose.
Greg switched to another lane, flew past the Lexus, and returned to the right side of the road.
The remaining shards of our rear windshield hung on the edges of the metal frame like sharpened teeth in an open mouth.
The Lexus disappeared behind a bend and, to my horror, was smashed by a car speeding behind us.
A front-end collision, because they were facing the wrong way.
Perhaps their plan was to hold us up so we would have been rear-ended? Or to just shoot through the windshield?
“Put the weapon on safe and clear the chamber, sweetheart.” Greg’s voice brought me back to the here and now. To the inside of a windy car covered in shattered glass.
I did as he said.
“Do you want it back in the glove compartment?” I asked, my voice weak as my fingers trembled.
My question was silly. Ridiculous. This whole situation, my existence for the past year, was absolute nonsense. If I had watched it in a movie, I’d have called it unbelievable and seriously considered giving it a one-star review.
Not for an Unsolved Mysteries episode, though.
Christ! The thought of some YouTuber talking about the unspeakable crime that happened in the quaint, bucolic, small town of Mourningkill, with ominous music and my high school picture plastered on the screen, made me bubble with laughter. Then I whimpered. Then laughed again.
The thing about being scared for as long as I had been?
Eventually, you stopped being scared. Random, targeted drive-bys?
Whatever. No big deal. I’d killed someone, and for over a year, feared getting arrested and ruining the lives of me and my siblings.
What was one more shitty thing on top of an already gargantuan crap pile?
Was this what hysterics felt like?
I was going to die.
I was going into the deepest pit of hell, but not before I was dragged down in fire and pain, though, right? Karmic justice. I took a life, so they would take mine.
I was the human equivalent of nuclear waste.
“You should get away from me,” I whimpered. “I’m going to be nothing but trouble for you.”
“Darlin’,” he said, loud enough to be heard over the wind blowing through the truck’s cabin as the cool air swirled through the broken windows. “If I wanted to stay away, I would.”
He wiped glass and debris off his thigh, then reached over and pulled my hand there, palm down, flattening his own on top of mine.
“You’re insane,” I said, unsure if he could hear me. “A normal person would walk away after something as terrifying as this. I might not know who those people were, but I know that they attacked because of me. It’s always about me.”
I wished it wasn’t. I wished I could just be normal.
“Nah.” A smirk tugged at the corner of his lips. “Of all the terrifying things I’ve ever been through, this doesn’t even crack the top three.”
He lifted my hand, grazing my knuckles with his lips. It was such a gentle gesture. There was nothing lewd or inappropriate about it. Just…pure affection. It felt tender but also protective. Like a person staring out the window at a bird singing in a tree. Doing something just to savor it.
“One day, I’ll tell you about the time Goose and I were in a room when a grenade went off, and we had to crawl our way out of rubble while Taz, Griff, and Top were in a firefight right above us.
” He chuckled. “Then the damn Air Force dropped their load what felt like just a few feet from us, dangerously-motherfucking-close, and had us all shitting our pants.” Then he coughed.
“Sorry. That…was vulgar. I got carried away.”
That was what he was concerned about? Pants shitting? Not death by explosives and flying bullets?
It was a little cute.
“By the way, nice shooting, Tex.” He let out a high-pitched whoop, grinning. “You visit the gun range much?”
“I don’t like guns. But they did make me feel safer, at one point.” I swallowed.
It was cheap therapy, knowing I could have done irreparable harm to someone from a distance. I kept imagining him. His face. His smug expression. My fucking hatred made me a good shot. Then I kept doing it just to show myself that I could have—if I’d wanted to.
Imagining him dead again and again was probably what led me to murder. Why it became a solution—a necessity—in my brain.
I had unloaded clip after clip, and with tears streaming down my cheeks, I realized that if I didn’t do something, I’d never be free. Not of him, not of the shame, and not of the absolute horror that was my life.
No one could keep me safe but me.
“I learned when I was in undergrad. I did a biathlon and thought I’d try small arms. I liked it. It helped me work through some stuff.”
He put my hand back on his lap, his warm palm enveloping mine.
Then we turned up a driveway that wasn’t mine. A little higher on the mountain, with gravel instead of concrete. It went on for over a mile until the freshly painted Victorian house of sage and forest green, flanked by a red barn and a small wooden cabin, came into view.
“Don’t worry about a thing, darlin’. I’ve got you now.”