Page 18 of Remember When We
“I’ve been calling you all night. Why didn’t you answer? Why the hell didn’t you answer?” Now he sounded like he was crying.
No… hold up, he actually was crying. I would have been quick to think it was, because he knew I was with Lyssa and it was because he was worried. Still Paul wasn’t that guy. He didn’t cry for anything.
So, something else must have brought him to tears.
“I’m sorry. Paul, what’s going on?”
Lyssa pulled the sheets over her breasts and sat up.
“Marshall. Marshall …” he started sobbing and that was when my stomach clenched and my chest tightened.
“Marshall what, Paul?” I was afraid to ask the question and even more afraid of the answer.
“Gio, Marshall’s … my boy, he’s dead.” Paul sobbed. “They killed him.”
I looked at Lyssa and dropped the phone.
It echoed on the floor.
“Gio, what happened?” she asked
I couldn’t answer. I just started at her. Numb…
She got off the bed and picked up the phone to speak to Paul. “Dad, what happened? Tell me.”
When she screamed and started crying I knew Paul told her.
Twenty missed calls from Marshall.
I’d never know what he had wanted me for.
Chances were, it was to back him up. I never answered the phone.
Chapter 5
Lyssa
* * *
Eight years ago …
I used to wonder why in films where there’d been a murder of a loved one why family members asked to be left alone when the police wanted to question them.
It didn’t make sense to me. Never did at the time. I’d always thought it was so odd, because wouldn’t you want to help the police find the person responsible for killing your loved one?
It always felt unnatural to me. It was like the tv and movie writers got that wrong, because people didn’t behave that way in real life.
I wholehearted believed that. I guess though that until I experienced such a horrific occurrence for myself, I wouldn’t know what the right reaction should be.
As Detectives Suarez and Chase sat on the sofa opposite me, asking questions I recalled my stupid assumption and I knew now that those writers had the emotion spot on correct.
When you lost a loved one the way I lost Marshall you didn’t want to speak, let alone speak about what happened. The police were just doing their jobs. Yes, I wanted justice, answers, and wanted to know why someone would kill my brother. Mostly I just wanted to be left alone to cry—to cry and scream.
Cry, to relieve my soul from the all-encompassing grief inside me.
Cry to try and release my mind from all that consumed it. The thing was I had feared this. I was afraid that this would happen one day. It scared me and I always believed Marshall would be okay, because he had Gio.
Except that, when he was killed Gio had been with me. Marshall had gone somewhere without Gio and got himself killed.
