Page 74 of Grift

Jessica

I’ve made so many mistakes. It’s been days since I left my bed.

At least I have a decent excuse. The morning I leave Patrick’s apartment, my brother Jared is found dead. The police say he is slain in a drug deal gone wrong. It is being handled, and he will be remembered at a private memorial that will actually never happen.

But it’s the polite thing to say as my parents try desperately to spin the story and to shift the spotlight elsewhere.

A few days later the police come to my apartment to question me, but I’m unable to stop crying and eventually the detective gives me his card, makes awkward apologies, and leaves. I’m just a grieving sister, although not a single tear that I’m shedding is for my brother or his friend.

He thinks I have nothing to offer anyways.

My parents are in full damage control mode, and although my mother sobs once when she receives the news, her reaction is steely enough that my father clearly decided to tell her the truth. They have nothing to say to me about my part in the whole thing, about the tapes, about any of it.

I don’t want to be around them.

There is no follow up, no apology, no acknowledgement of what I’ve been through. What I went through. How my brother’s twisted greed and awful lies destroyed not only his life, but mine, and ours as a family.

Once again, their concern is the optics and making sure that Camden’s chances at a political career – and my father’s chances at a graceful exit to the private sector – aren’t impacted.

Days go by. I call into work, using bereavement leave and my accumulated vacation to take three weeks off. Three weeks without work is unimaginable to me, and I fully intend to work during the time.

But I just can’t face people.

How the hell do I make peace with everything? I’ll never know why my brother did this. Patrick, in his rush to vengeance, took that chance from me. Part of me wants to be angry. But realistically, I knew this ended only one way.

If Patrick hadn’t done it, my father would have. Jared would have gone on a trip somewhere and disappeared. Drunk and driving off a cliff in Capri. Drowned in a boating accident in the Caribbean. He would never have said anything that could have really saved me pain; what was there to say in the end?

The Kensingtons would have done something less unsavory, with less collateral damage to deal with. But it still would have been done.

Collateral damage.

I am more than collateral damage. I keep saying the words over and over, hoping eventually I’ll believe their hollow ring. When I try to sleep, the images on the tapes come flooding back to me. Their violence. The wave of horror I’d felt. The look on Patrick’s face when he discovered me watching them.

Patrick calls, but I don’t answer. What is there to say? I can’t avoid him forever, but I can’t summon the strength to be alright for him today. And I won’t see him until I could be strong, and thank him for what he’d done.

Even if Patrick destroys the tapes as he promised – and I don’t know why he wouldn’t – my life as I know it is over. Everything here is tarnished. The only things left are the echo of a time I want to avoid. There’s nothing for me left with my family. Even this apartment has their signature written all over it.

My job at the museum is great, but my true passion is archeology. I was meant to lead a dig, not to work in exhibits. Maybe it’s time that I finally go do a season on that dig, or at least look into an exchange program with a museum in Europe or in Cairo.

In a way, Patrick is right. Setting me free might be the greatest gift he could give me, because without him, there’s nothing I want to stay here for.

The distance would be good, I tell myself, but even as I think about putting distance between the city and myself, the tears start again. The endless tears. Everything I thought I’d discovered with Patrick is gone. It is the closest I’ve ever felt to love, to being loved.

It felt so real, so tangible, something to hold onto. Yet, it is gone.

How could I have been so wrong?

Even as the tears start, my stomach begins to ache again. I haven’t eaten, but feel like I might throw up. Trying to bury myself under the covers doesn’t help, and actually the stifling heat makes it worse as it feels like the world is closing in, dark and heavy. When I get to the bathroom, I end up on my knees puking bile into the toilet.

Standing up, I wash my face and rinse my mouth. Opening the cabinet, I’m searching for anything for an upset stomach when I see them and my entire body goes icy cold. An unopened box of tampons sits under the sink, undisturbed. The days of nausea. The aversion to food. The endless tears.

They could be explained away easily by the circumstances in my life. But there might be another cause.

I know, even before I bundle up, make the short walk to the pharmacy and buy the pregnancy tests. When I pee on first one, then two, and finally three tests and all of them say the same thing. Positive.

For the longest time, I sit on the cool tile of my small bathroom just staring at the way the light refracts off the shower stall. Forcing my mind to stay blank doesn’t work. I can’t keep the images at bay. How would this have been different if I’d been with Patrick? If I’d taken the test and told him, and he’d been filled with joy.

In my fantasy, he’s smiling and sweeping me up in his arms, holding me close.

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