This morning, however, I simply want cheap drinks and silence for a moment.
Being in my bed is an invitation to look into the darker parts of what Michael could be. He’s tiptoeing toward darkness, but whether he slides or runs, he’s still headed that way. Instead of being grateful to Reid for making this trip possible, Michael wants me to betray him. He’s asking me to invite police into my life. Nothing else would so clearly lead to my death—and once I sought that. I wanted death because it was the only freedom there was. Now, I have other things. I have a life in this city. If Michael pays attention, I’ll have a future with him.
I’m in a bar with my second gin in hand already when Michael finds me.
“You left me there,” he says as he comes to stand beside me.
“There are rules, Michael. I don’t know how else to explain that. There are rules I can’t break, not for you, not for anyone.”
“Because you’re afraid,” he supplies in barely a whisper. “He’s not here. You’re safe.”
I laugh. Maybe it’s wrong of me, but I can’t help myself. I’m never going to be safe. One day Reid will find me. If I go to the police . . . he’ll find me faster. I’m not sure how, but he will.
“I won’t go to the police,” I say in a level but loud voice.
The bartender looks my way, not obviously, but I’ve spent a lot of nights in bars. The best bartenders notice everything, hear everything, and know when to pretend not to recall most of it.
“You shouldn’t have followed me,” I add, sounding increasingly lamblike, not that Michael notices.
“Seriously? I know where you live, Tess. We’re going to sort this out.”
The bartender comes over, hearing things in Michael’s words that aren’t there.
Michael barely acknowledges the bartender. “Vodka, rocks.”
I meet the man’s eyes and smile. “I’m good. Thanks.”
There’s a part of me that finds it sweet that Michael can’t even hear the subtext, doesn’t see that his words sound alarming. He’s so used to being fawned over these days that he forgets that people everywhere are listening. I never forget. Even when I’m falling down drunk, there are things I won’t say. Reid’s secrets are buried in a place that no amount of liquor or pills can reach.
He’d be proud of me if he knew.
Well, after he hurt me enough to make sure I wasn’t lying. Pain is the only way to know for sure if you could trust people. If you hurt them enough, if you make them think that they might die, if you let yourself be willing to kill them, they’ll tell you the whole truth. If Reid found me, he’d have to ask if I kept his secrets.
I didn’t want to have that conversation.
“Did you kill someone there? Is that why you’re afraid? Just don’t tell them that part.” Michael keeps his voice low after the bartender walks away.
“You’re missing the point.” I swirl the ice in my glass.
I keep my silence until after the bartender brings Michael’s drink. I nod at the man as he asks again if I’m okay. It’s cute that he worries—or maybe he sees that same spark in Michael that excites me.
“She stopped hurting because of me,” I explain.
“She was a person.”
“So am I.” I poke my finger into my drink, stir it around, and then suck the gin off my skin.
Michael watches, as he should.
“I hated her,” I say conversationally. “Not her specifically, but all of them.”
Silently, Michael drinks, listening, watching, trying to understand. He can’t. He cannot imagine what it’s like to hurt so much to want to die. I envied them. I hated them because they got to be free after only a few days.
I toss the rest of my drink back. “Does it matter? They’re dead. They all died.”
When Michael finally speaks, he says only, “Why not you?”
That’s the question I used to ask myself. It took me years to answer it. There’s no way for me to explain it easily right now, not yet. Michael is still trying to understand why he wants these answers.
“I killed, not all of them, but sometimes I killed them. They stopped crying, and it . . . I can’t explain it. I just wanted them to be done, to leave. I wanted it to stop.”
Michael stares at me.
“I didn’t think he’d kill me, not really. For two years, I thought I’d find a way to make him happy. That he’d get better, that I’d be enough. He said if I was good he’d stop hurting them. I survived so much, so he wouldn’t catch another lamb. It never worked. He got worse. He hurt me more and more. Did things. Made me do things. I wanted to die—and he wouldn’t let me. He was going to kill me sooner or later. Maybe an accident. But first . . . first he would keep hurting me.” I shake my head. It’s hard to understand; I know that. “He hurt them worse than he hurt me, and when I wasn’t good enough he made me watch all the ways he hurt them. If I cried or looked away or looked at the wrong thing, if I wasn’t good enough, he hurt them more. I hated them. They all got to stop hurting. I didn’t. I healed. Then he did it all again.”
Michael keeps staring at me. He doesn’t take out his pen. He doesn’t ask questions. He listens, and I know he’s horrified.
Teresa was too.
I look at Michael, catch his gaze, and will him to understand. “The memory you saw? I killed a girl because it was that or we both died. Reid watched, and I killed her.”
Michael looks at me, opens his mouth, and closes it without saying a word.
“You watched me kill. That’s what you saw me remember. I killed her in front of him.” I toss back my drink, and take his hand in mine. “Let’s go.”
He stands.
“They all died. When Reid picked them, they would die. I’m alive, Michael. You’re alive.” I try to sound like it doesn’t haunt me. It does, though. I wake screaming. I tried to save them—first by being strong enough and then by ending their suffering. I was trapped in ways no one will ever understand. Sometimes I feel guilty for surviving, for wanting to survive, for wanting a life. Maybe that, at the end of it all, is why I want Michael. When he writes his book, Reid will know I talked. He’ll come at me then, and one of us will die. Maybe we’ll both die for our sins.
I’m ready to leave and Michael is unmoving. “Michael?”
Michael still doesn’t move. “How many?”
There’s no way I can answer that. I used to try to remember them all. I can’t. They fade and roll into a single image. Their faces blend into people after I left Reid, faces of men and women I spoke to when I shouldn't, strangers and the lovers. I have a lot of blood on my hands.
“I’m alive, Michael,” I say again. “Come with me.”
Finally, he lets me lead him out of the bar, and we drown ourselves in drink. The more of my secrets he knows, the more he suffers. If Reid were here, Michael wouldn’t be strong enough to endure. He’s lucky my husband didn’t target men. If our lives had been reversed, Michael would’ve died years before I reached the point of fleeing.
37
A Girl with No Past