Reckless Radiance (5 page)

A creak of the floorboard woke her and she sat up. Glancing at the clock, she quickly realized she’d been asleep for two hours. The sky out her window had darkened. She felt her heart in a vice when she looked up and saw a shadowy figure standing perfectly still near the door. With a shaking hand she flipped on her bedside lamp and let out a breath realizing it was Henry.
Time to change the locks
.

“You scared me,” she said, clutching a hand to her chest.

He remained silent, his face unchanged. Valerie’s stomach pitched and she straightened, standing up next to her bed slowly. “What are you doing here?”

“Who is he?” Henry growled.

Again, her stomach lurched and she felt her throat tightening.

“What are you talking about?” she choked. He stepped further into the small apartment with frightening determination.

“I asked you who he was at the diner and you said he was just a customer. Then you break up with me for him?” Henry slurred.

The smell of booze wafted off of him the closer he got to her. She could see his eyes glazed over, pupils wide and black as night. His body swayed ever so slightly.

“It’s not like that. I’m just—moving on. It doesn’t have anything to do with you.”

She wasn’t sure what she was thinking when she said it. It was a moment of panic. But it was a sentence she regretted the moment it rang out of her lungs. Henry stared at her with his mouth gaping and daggers in his bloodshot eyes. She’d seen the look before but never quite like this. He wasn’t a man in that instant. He was an animal completely taken over by rage, his control handed over complacently to alcohol.

Valerie shuddered. When he saw her fear as a physical reaction, he smirked and stumbled closer. Her voice evaded her. She looked at him then glanced quickly at the door wondering if in his drunken state she’d be able to get by him. Calculating the distance once more, she looked to Henry and that's when she saw it.

He stood there in his dirt-smudged, grass-stained baseball shirt and in the hand held freely at his side—was a gun. Her breath caught in her lungs with a stabbing pain as he began to speak more animated than before. She knew he owned a gun. It was one of those things he loved to brag about when he was good and lit. Valerie had chuckled to herself a few times when he’d gone on one of his tangents, telling her how big his gun was. Deep down she’d hoped it was a lie or just another way to puff up his chest. His hands flopped about and all she heard was the muddled word
whore
as if she was hearing it through a tunnel. Her heart pounded in her ears as she watched him wave the gun limply in the air as he condemned her with more forceful insults.

"Henry ..." She tried to break his intoxicated monologue.

"Shut up, bitch!” Valerie winced and like a miracle, the door opened again.

Russell walked in and her heartbeat slowed.
How did he know?
Henry's eyes widened and without flinching, he raised the gun and pointed it at Russell. Russell's hands rose slowly out in front of him and he glanced at Valerie from the corner of his eye.

"Are you all right?" he whispered.

She nodded robotically. Her breath heaved watching their interaction.

Henry’s lips curled as he spit his words at Russell with revulsion. "You think you’re better than me? What‘s a pretty boy like you runnin’ around with farm trash anyway?” Quickly his attention flipped back to Valerie. "You’re flavor of the week to a guy like this, Val. You oughta know you’re not lucky ‘nuff to get saved from your sorry excuse for a life.”

She saw Russell step toward Henry. She knew he wanted to get the gun away from him but Henry was too quick despite his condition.

"I'll kill you where you stand, asshole." Henry's voice dripped with rage. Valerie watched in horror as a sickening smile spread across his face and he spoke again, turning to her with the gun raised in his quaking hand.

"Or better yet, I'll kill
her
."

She felt her face going pale and the only thing she could think to do was back away from him. As her heel butted up against the bistro table in the corner of the small space, the shot rang out. A scream ripped from her lungs. She tensed and took one last look at Russell. Valerie closed her eyes and prepared to die.

Chapter Nine

She waited. And waited. Nothing. There was no bright light. No winged creatures waiting to greet her. No fire and brimstone either. As her conscious thoughts slowly came back to her, she felt gratitude to Henry for using a gun. She hadn’t even felt it.

"Shit! Oh God! Valerie, don't just stand there!"

What?
Why could she still hear Henry? She was supposed to be seeing Gabriel soon. She was done. She’d made her sacrifice and now she could just move on, right?

Valerie opened her eyes.

Wrong.

Confusion flooded her and her head spun as she looked around the room. She was still in her apartment and Henry was still standing there holding the gun. Only now he was crying. Turning in each direction to look for Russell, her head felt heavy as her eyes dragged over the space. He’d been there. It wasn’t a dream. She was sure of it.

It took her a moment but eventually she thought to look down. There he was. On the pale, eggshell laminate floor in a pool of blood. His eyes were closed and his shirt had a small hole in it near the fourth button. Valerie dropped beside him and pulled his weighty frame close to her. The back of his shirt was soaked in blood and the floor beneath him was painted in a blackish red sheen. He was still warm. Her heart pounded feeling the blood stick to her hands.

She let go of him and he slumped back down, his arms falling limply to his sides. Valerie crumpled on top of him. Her ear pressed against his chest and she waited. No breath and no heartbeat. Russell was dead. The room spun around her and before long blackness swam in front of her eyes. Dizziness took over and the world went dark as she slipped away from the dreadfulness she’d just seen.

***

Memories laced together with dreams and soon Valerie was back in time with Gabriel in her mind. She felt outside of her body watching a day she knew all too well. It wasn’t like remembering. It was like the ghost of Christmas past had a hold of her, laying out the scene she’d once lived.

She looked upon herself and recognized the tired and distant look in her eyes. It was near the end. Gabriel had been sick for months. No treatment had made a significant impact on the tumor, it only weakened his body. Valerie was weak, too. She’d been at his side through it all. Every doctor’s appointment and every new test. She wiped the sweat from his brow as he slept and cleaned his vomit from the bed sheets.

They were at Gabriel’s mother’s house for the last few weeks. He wanted to leave the hospital and Valerie agreed. She didn’t want to mention why, though. She didn’t want to say he needed to be comfortable
in the end
. Or he should be with family
in the end
. The thought of what would happen to Gabriel when the cancer in his brain finally took him from this Earth frightened her more than she expected. Heaven? Hell? Nothingness or darkness? She had no idea and she didn’t want to share her doubts with him. Her faith was lost weeks before.

Gabe tried his best to comfort her in return by avoiding the
D
word. Instead, he talked about their children. The ones Valerie knew they would never have. He talked about buying a home and making fifty Thanksgiving dinners together. She wanted so desperately for all his dreams to come true. But she wouldn’t pray.

As a little girl, church filled her with such a sense of hope and love. She felt peaceful singing and praying beside her family. If she put it all in God’s hands, it would all be okay. Well, things had been in God’s hands when Gabriel was crawling from the toilet to the bed.
He
was in control when Valerie was forced to watch the love of her life seize over and over again, foam spilling out of his mouth like that of a rabid dog. Nosebleeds and headaches, fainting spells and IV bags. God did that. So instead of believing God could be so cruel, she simply dismissed the idea of God all together.

She walked into Gabe’s room and found him sleeping. He was the weakest he’d been yet. She hadn’t seen him awake for long enough to do more than take a sip of water in days. Valerie looked him over and flipped off his bedside light before taking her spot in the recliner.

“Hello, gorgeous,” he croaked.

She sat up and came quickly to his side.

“Hey. I didn’t mean to wake you, go back to sleep,” she said, smoothing her hand over his clammy forehead.

“Where is he?” he asked.

He’d been talking gibberish for a few weeks. The doctor’s said it would happen. That he would start to hallucinate or blur the lines between his dreams and reality. He often talked about people who weren’t there.

“That was a dream, baby. It’s just me and your mom here,” she said.

His eyes grew wide and glassy. “He’ll be back … it’s almost time.”

Her heart sank. Even his hallucinations were telling him it was time to die. She was about to tell him not to worry and that she loved him when he fell back to sleep. A sigh escaped her lips and she moved back to the chair to get some much needed rest.

Just a few days later Gabriel died in that bed. Valerie knew it was coming. The doctors who checked in on him earlier in the week told them to expect it soon. Gabriel’s mother slept in the recliner and Valerie slept next to Gabe, holding his hand.

She woke up to Alicia’s voice saying her name.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” Valerie asked.

Alicia rubbed her eyes and sighed. “I slept terribly.”

“You can go sleep in your room. I’ll take the first shift. Probably another long day ahead of us,” Valerie said.

As the words came out she glanced at Gabriel and stopped suddenly.

The room was deafeningly quiet as she held her breath. His hand was limp in hers and she watched closely but his chest never rose and his lips never parted. He was gone.

And soon after, so was she. Gabe told her from the very beginning he’d never begrudge her leaving without saying goodbye and that if she needed a break, she should take it. He said he knew it would be bad from the beginning until—the end and that he trusted Valerie would know herself well enough to know just how much she could or couldn’t take. She couldn’t take watching him be lowered into the ground. She left a note for Alicia and her parents, packed her things and drove to Somerset. She was going to be a college girl, reinvent herself and take classes like Women’s Studies and Philosophy 101.

But she was ill-prepared for that life. Her lack of concentration and passion for academia showed quickly in her grades. So she did the only thing she felt she could do and dropped out. She rarely talked to her parents. She emailed her brother a few times a month but for the most part she was just as much of a ghost as Gabe was. Too ashamed and scared to go back to her tiny farm town, she walked in to Penny’s Pie Diner one day with the
Help Wanted
sign in hand. And with that it was clear the fairy tale was over and the life she never really wanted very quickly became all she had.

Chapter Ten

Valerie sighed and tried with all of her energy to wake up. She blinked to clear the sleep from her eyes and caught a glimpse of the room. It was dark. Maybe it was all a dream. Maybe Russell was a dream.

A voice called out to her from near the window. "Are you awake, Valerie?" Henry asked.

She sat up and grimaced at the realization that the horror she remembered wasn’t a dream at all. Glancing at her hands, her stomach twisted in knots seeing the dried blood that was caked into her nails and crusted onto her skin in ruddy brown splotches. Quickly, without thinking, she rubbed her hands together and felt the crumbles of gore falling from her fingertips. She thought she might vomit at the sight.

She pushed herself off of her futon bed to find Henry. He was standing at the only window in her tiny apartment staring into space, impatiently tapping his foot.

“It’s a little after ten,” Henry blurted. Their eyes met and neither one needed to say what they both were thinking.

“What should we do?” she asked, daring to step closer to him.

A laugh burst forth from Henry’s lips. “
We
aren’t going to do anything.
You
are gonna drive him out to your parents’ place and bury the bastard.”

Her mouth gaped open. “I can’t just drag a man out to my parent’s farm and bury him! We have to call the police.”

“You’d have me arrested? Shit, don’t you understand? I can’t have this happen to me. I wanna do something with my life. I’ll be ruined. Look, I’ve already put him in your trunk,” Henry rambled as he paced the apartment.

“You did what?” she screamed.

Russell was dead because of his drunken fury and now he’d done the unthinkable. Her thoughts were racing as Henry moved toward her with the same rage in his eyes she’d seen before. In an instant she was shoved back, Henry‘s strong hands forced into her chest. Her head banged against the wall behind her and she felt an odd sense of deja vu.

He stood eerily calm as he stared her down. “You’re going to do it and that’s the end of the conversation.”

She knew the gun was still near. The alcohol on his breath and the new arrangement of empty bottles on her kitchen countertop were more clues he’d kept drinking after she fainted. There had been moments in their past when she feared him but none like this. He was now a murderer which meant he was capable of killing her, too.

With Henry’s palms putting bruises into her collarbone, she nodded slowly and slinked out of his grasp. She threw a bag together quickly, taking only things she really needed and said a painfully simple good-bye to Henry.

The list of things wrong with what she was doing was endless. Failing to report a crime and transporting a dead body seemed like things that could easily ruin her life. Then there was the fact she was driving to her parent’s house, a place she hadn’t seen in over a year. As the open road put her in a trance, she wrestled with her options.