Page 47 of Haven't Killed in Years
Dominic shook his head. “No, he told me she was a dead end. He told me to leave her out of my book or he would stop talking to me.”
“And did that make you stop? Or did that make you more curious? Did that make you look even harder?”
Dominic squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed at his temples. I was making sense and he didn’t want me to. He was too drunk to reason out another comeback and so was I. Not that I needed one. I was right.
My head started pounding, my brain sloshing around. I sat up, hoping for equilibrium, and scooted back against the headboard. I turned to Dominic, whose face was pleading for me to acknowledge that I didn’t think he was being controlled, consciously or unconsciously, by Abel.
“Has anyone ever…approached you after visiting him?” I asked.
“What, like you did?”
“Yeah, but not me. Like, did anyone ever leave a note on your car while you were inside?”
“Someone left a note for Porter? What’s going on?”
“It’s nothing.”
“Dammit, Gwen, why do I feel like you’re more involved in this than I am? What do you know that you aren’t telling me?” He flung his arms down on the bed, alcohol giving him his own sense of gravitas.
“Nothing,” I said. “It just seems like everyone is so obsessed with this. It was twenty years ago.”
“Yeah, and it’s now. There are victims—James Calhoun, Oswald Shields.”
And Reanne, I thought.
“It’s not safe for Porter to be getting involved,” he asserted.
“You sound jealous.”
“I’m not jealous; I’m trying to figure out what the hell is going on.”
“Don’t act like you’re so noble,” I said. “You could have called the cops and told them what you know. You’re only thinking about yourself and your great American novel.”
“I’ll call the cops right now. Is that what you want?”
“Sure,” I said, calling his bluff.
He threw his head back, then rolled it around and returned to me. “And what if there’s some hit out on Elyse?”
“Don’t worry about Elyse,” I said for no real reason other than I wanted him to stop talking about her. In reality, if she wasn’t involved, I should be very worried about something happening to her. The idea that she could take care of herself was birthed from my own fantasy of who she was.
“What, are you her keeper now?” he asked.
“Shut up,” I said. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Ihave no idea…” He nudged forward to the edge of his bed, as close as he could get to me without standing. “I have been communicating with Abel more than anyone has in years. What’s going on now…it’s not going to just blow over. There are bodies. Abel is letting Porter in. This is not some old ghost story from twenty years ago.” He placed his hand down onto my comforter, inches from the tips of my fingers. I swallowed hard. His voice leveled out slightly above a whisper. “I think more people are going to die. Are you okay with that? Okay if Elyse dies?”
I crawled my hand forward to touch his. I was not okay with Elyse dying. Or Porter. Or Dominic. With my walls lowered from Blue Bahama Breezes, I realized maybe my mother had taught me something after all. I had complicated, angry, ugly feelings when itcame to Reanne, but seeing her dead body, it was a different sensation than with all the others I had seen. She wasn’t just a dispassionate representation of the meaning of life and death. She was my mother. Maybe more importantly, she was my father’s wife, the only other person in the world who could understand what it was like to be us. It was my fault she was dead, and I wasn’t used to dead bodies making me feel things. I didn’t like it; I hated it.
I slipped my hand over Dominic’s. It caused his body to inch an almost undetectable amount toward me. I pulled his hand closer and it brought him off his bed and onto the edge of mine.
We were both fired up, falsely empowered with how right we thought we were about everything, and it caused a carnal charge that my drunk brain couldn’t ignore. I grasped his shirt and guided him to my face. He leaned in and kissed me. The whiskey was still strong on his tongue, but I didn’t mind; my mouth tasted like I had eaten a warehouse full of Skittles.
I sat up off the headboard as we started to get more into it and my thoughts went completely numb. His hands reached for my shirt, lifting it up. I thought nothing of it as we parted lips so it could pass over my head and then we were back together.
I seized the opportunity to tug at his hair, see if I could enjoy it the way he did.1-2-3.
His fingers started under my arms and slid toward my waist. Then they stopped; his whole body stopped.
