Page 78 of Haven't Killed in Years
By seven a.m. Natalie was out of bed and at the window. Wesley was a lump in his bed. She microwaved a cup of instant coffee and dragged a kitchen chair over to the window. After all the vomiting the night before, he needed his sleep. She brought the mug to her lips and inhaled the scent before taking a sip.
An hour later, Natalie got up and put a slice of bread in the toaster. There was a noise from outside and she sprinted back to the window, but he hadn’t moved. It must have been a squirrel.
By nine a.m. she had eaten two pieces of toast, chugged three glasses of water, and dragged a comfier chair to the window. Still no movement. She was getting nervous. He should have at least rolled over.
By ten a.m. Natalie was getting really nervous. Wesley still hadn’tmoved and she needed to be at Painting Pots by eleven to see Gwen arrive. The thought did cross her mind:What if Wesley isn’t sleeping? What if it was too much poison?Natalie hurled the comfy chair across the room and it landed in the vicinity of where it belonged. She went to the window and slammed it shut. It was loud, but not sharp enough to startle someone awake. She pushed it open again and coughed as loud as she could a few times, but nothing.
She looked at the clock. There was no way she was going to be late again today. Not after yesterday, when she’d hit the blond guy with her car. She needed to wake Wesley up and she needed to do it now.
Natalie yanked open the fridge and scanned for something that would work. She slid the coffee creamer out of the way and grabbed for the jar of pickles. Without even closing the fridge, she stomped back to the window and lifted the jar above her head. She hurled the jar to the floor. The glass shattered, the juice sprayed everywhere, the pickles rolled past her feet. The smell was strong. She should have dumped it out first, but she didn’t care much about the cleanup when she looked across the driveway and saw the blankets move.
Wesley rolled over and reached for his phone on the nightstand. He was alive.
Natalie exhaled before dragging the trash can and a roll of paper towels over to her mess. 10:20. She had plenty of time to get to Painting Pots. She could do this, balance both Gwen and Wesley. She would make a choice if she had to, but for now she could keep them both.
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Natalie was in thePainting Pots parking lot by 10:45. While she waited for Gwen she ran her finger back and forth across her palm where the pickle jar had sliced her.
Ten minutes later and someone was unlocking the front door to Painting Pots. It was the girl with the big, curly red hair, not the boy with the bleach-blond hair. Natalie sat up in her seat. On Sundays the boy opened. That was why Gwen would go there when it opened.
Natalie scanned the parking lot, nerves heightening.Where is Gwen?This was not the routine.
She waited another hour. Stupid moms and stupid kids filing in, but no sign of Gwen.
At twelve on the dot, Natalie peeled out of the parking lot. She drove to all the likely spots. Gwen wasn’t at home, not at the grocery store or the movies. She wasn’t at Target or the taco place next to the hair salon. She drove to Gwen’s apartment four times. No sign of her or her car. Something was wrong.
Natalie pulled at her face. She pounded her fists on the steering wheel. Hours. Gwen had been missing for hours. She didn’t know what to do. It was almost three o’clock. If the boy and the girl had switched shifts at Painting Pots, he would be showing up soon. Maybe that’s all it was. Maybehehad changed the routine, not Gwen.
Natalie raced back to Painting Pots, driving up and down the rows of the parking lot looking for Gwen’s car or the blond guy’s. No sign of either, so she parked and waited. She picked at the scab on her hand, undoing any healing, and let the blood leak out before licking her finger and rubbing it away. When it scabbed again, she repeated the exercise.
At seven o’clock the redhead locked the front door and left. Natalie gripped the steering wheel, the skin under her fingernails dyed red from wiping the blood for hours.Where is Gwen?
Out of ideas, Natalie parked on Gwen’s street, knowing she wasn’t inside, and waited. A little after eleven, a car Natalie didn’trecognize turned onto the street and came to a stop in front of Gwen’s apartment.
There she was.
Gwen climbed out of the passenger seat. Her hair was a little messy. She held her cardigan in her arms.Where had she been? Who was this guy?
Gwen mounted the front steps and disappeared inside. Natalie wanted to stay, to finally relax knowing Gwen was there and safe. But the car was pulling away. How would Natalie get any answers if she didn’t follow him?
An hour later and Natalie had been to a twenty-four-hour car wash and two bars. There was no special place in Gwen’s heart for this new man; he was an Uber driver.
Natalie went home. She was exhausted and confused. Something was going on with Gwen and she wasn’t sure how she was going to figure it out. But she had to.
There was no car in the garage. Wesley was gone too. Natalie couldn’t worry about where he was. She had to stop thinking about him. Look what had happened when she got distracted. She had lost Gwen.
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Three days later andNatalie had still not seen any sign of Wesley. It was possible he came back to the house while Natalie was at work or with Gwen, but three nights straight, he hadn’t slept in his bed.
What if he had gone home? What if he’d finished his story and moved out without saying goodbye?The thought bothered Natalie. She had never needed anyone except Gwen, so why was she feeling this way about him? His casual nature, his proximity, the lack of any true details to interfere with whatever she wanted to believe about him.Or do to him. Natalie had manufactured his significance and was now struggling to unwind it all back to reality.
On the fourth night, Natalie did something she had promised she would stop doing. She left Gwen’s place early. Gwen was still awake, presumably on the couch, but Natalie was dying to know if Wesley had returned.
It started raining as she drove back to her apartment—cold, relentless rain that wouldn’t last long, only long enough to make Natalie’s drive home unbearable. It began to weaken as Natalie pulled into her driveway, but the pavement was flooded and she took the turn too fast. The bald tires on her car hydroplaned enough for her to bump into the garbage bins before coming to a complete stop. There was no damage, only an instant of panic when the tires couldn’t catch.
There were no lights on in the house, no signs of Wesley. Only, as she stepped inside the garage, there was his car.
