“Hey, Aric if you get to see Chyanne tonight tell her we were here a'ight?” one of the twins asked of me. I had no idea if he was Aaron or Aaden.
I nodded. “I'll do that.”
They both nodded and jogged down the hall in the direction their older brother had gone. I watched April as she stood and rubbed her eyes.
“I don't know what happened,” she started. “All I know is I get a phone call from Mr. Jerry, he lives across from Chyanne, and he's telling me that somebody done attacked the girl.”
“Who attacked her?” I asked her as rage filtered through my body.
“I don't know. He said he went to her house to check on her because he heard a lot of screaming and commotion going on. He said he'd found her lying on the floor with a bullet in her and she looked like she had been beat up.”
I shook my head trying to wrap my mind around all that she was telling me because none of it made sense. We both were quiet for a few seconds and by the way April was looking at me I could tell there was something else she wasn't saying or something she wanted to say.
“This doesn't make much sense. Did somebody try to rob her? Was it a random attack?”
She shrugged. “I don't know. The cops wouldn't tell me anything.”
“Damn! I need to know something,” I belted out in frustrated annoyance.
“Justin told me about your wife attacking Chyanne at the job before.” April said after a moment of silence.
I furrowed my brows. “So...”
“Mr. Jerry said some woman was running away from Chyanne's house right after all of the commotion and the gun shot he heard.”
The reality of what she was saying was starting to sink in. “Are you asking me if I think my wife did this to Chyanne?”
Stephanie was a lot of things but I didn't think she had it in her to shoot anybody.
“I'm just saying Aric. She attacked her once.”
“Yeah, it was a physical fight. Stephanie isn't stupid enough to shoot anyone, especially not Chyanne.”
I stood up, too annoyed to continue to sit. Stephanie didn't even own a gun. She detested the things. I'd known she'd been acting crazy as of late, but I refused to drape my mind around the possibility that she would have gone to Chyanne's to shoot her.
“How do you know?” April asked with way more attitude in her voice than necessary. “If you're running around here cheating on this woman and she showed up out of the blue and attacked Chyanne before, how in the hell do you know what she did and what she didn't do?”
“You need to mind your own fucking business. Don't try and act like you have Chyanne's best interest at heart right nowâ”
“I know I've done some fucked up shit to Chyanne, and I know I've been a horrible friend,” she said as her posture went rigid with defense. “But that doesn't mean I can't and don't care about her well being. She didn't deserve to be attacked and gunned down in her own home because you can't keep your shit in order!”
“That's comical. You're coming at me like I had something to do with it.” My voice had escalated enough for people passing in the hall to stop and look at us.
She sighed and exhaled with a look that insinuated I was trying her patience. “Does your wife drive a red Mercedes Aric?”
Panic and alarm gripped me. “What?”
“Does your wife drive a red Mercedes?” she asked again. This time with more force behind her question as she walked closer to me. “Because if she does Mr. Jerry said that was the kind of car he saw leaving Chyanne's house. That's the car the woman was in. So if your wife doesn't drive that color or kind of car you have nothing to worry about.”
I didn't answer right away. I couldn't. What she'd said slammed into me like a head on collision. I closed my eyes and bit down on my lip to smother the curses that threatened to escape my mouth. I should have known that if Stephanie was stupid enough to attack Chyanne once then she would do it again! I said a silent prayer that I was wrong but how else could it be explained that a red Mercedes was seen leaving Chyanne's home right after she was shot? I didn't even know Stephanie owned a gun, if she owned a gun. I fought with the decision of leaving the hospital to go and confront Stephanie, or staying and waiting for news on Chyanne and the baby. My conscience was fighting with my heart and, at that moment, neither was winning.
Â
Â
Five hours later after the doctors had told me the fate of Chyanne and my son, I sat beside her bed side with her hand in mine.
“You okay,” Gabe asked me as he got ready to leave the room.
I nodded my head without looking up at him.
“Call me if you need me. I have to go and pick up dad from the airport,” he said.
He'd come to the hospital after I'd called him to tell him what was going on. His voice was low as if he didn't want to disturb Chyanne.
They'd put her into a medically induced coma because her injuries were so life threatening and the fact that when she got to the hospital she was already crowning. While fighting for her own life, she went through natural birth to fight for her son's life as well which is why they put her to sleep. She had two broken ribs, one having punctured her lung, and she had a gunshot wound to the shoulder. It had penetrated deep, ricocheted off of her collar bone, and stopped inches from her heart. She'd been lucky.
Now I sat beside her with my right arm in a sling. Pain caused me to flinch with a headache so bad it hurt to keep my eyes open, but I'd refused to move once I was seated next to her bed side.
Five hours ago, after April told me about Chyanne's old neighbor seeing a red Mercedes at Chyanne's house, against my better judgment I rushed out of the hospital telling April to call me as soon as the doctors let her know anything. I'd rushed home, needing to know if my wife had actually done what I was suspecting she had done. See, I was beating myself up, kicking my own ass for the games I'd been playing recently.
Making the drive to home gave me time to think and for some reason anxiety took a strange hold of me. Over the past couple of months since finding out I was going to be a father a lot of my perspectives had changed. I realized that for the longest time I had been a shell of the man that I used to be. I mean, I'd been happy, at least I thought I'd been, but just thinking back over everything, the last few years to be exact, I wasn't the same man I once was. Stephanie had been right in her assessment a while back.
I'd always been the smooth talking business man, but I was trying to figure out when I'd become the man who just didn't give a fuck anymore. When had I become the man who didn't love and cherish his wife and when had I become the man who would lead a woman on just to satisfy my own selfish needs and wants? I guess that my love for Stephanie had hardened me. There's a thin line between love and hate they say and I think it was safe to say that all the love I'd had for Stephanie had turned to hate. I was finally able to admit that; finally able to admit that I'd been doing to my wife what she'd done to me in an effort to inflict the pain on her that she'd inflicted on me. As a kid all I'd ever really wanted was for my mother to love me enough to not hurt me. I think she'd loved my father more though and it showed when her love for him turned into her hate for me. People say I looked, walked, talked, and acted just like the man who was my father. Maybe that's why my mother hated me so.
When Stephanie walked into my life, I'd finally found the love that I'd wanted from a woman. The first couple of years with Stephanie had been the best times of my life because I thought, at the time, that she had loved me unconditionally. I found out the hard way that her love was limited. So once again I found myself on the receiving end of a woman's wrath and once again I was left to try and figure out why. Nobody else had the power to hurt me the way Stephanie and my mother had. Chyanne being there the way she'd been gave me the balance needed in my life and now that she was blessing me with a child it had me thinking about just what the hell was going on in my life.
It was almost dark as I pulled into the cul-de-sac. For the first time parking inside of the garage didn't matter to me. Not seeing Stephanie's car in the garage, I called out to her when I walked into the house and got no answer. I laid my keys on the island in the kitchen and followed the music I'd heard out back to the pool. Stephanie was lying by the pool and I didn't know what to feel as I watched her slowly turn and looked at me.
She looked up and smiled when she saw me. “Hey honey,” she crooned.
Even though she was wearing dark sun glasses I could tell her smile didn't reach her eyes. It was a forced smile, one mixed with condescension that overlapped a sneer.
“Took you this long to get in from work?” She asked. “I've been calling you . . .”
I slowly approached her, rubbing my hand down my face as I did. I found myself getting angry at the notion that she'd attacked Chyanne. To keep myself sane and to keep from wrapping my hands around her throat, I chose my words carefully.
“I just came from the hospital,” I told her.
My words came out slow and precise. She looked up at me. I couldn't see her eyes behind her sunglasses but I'm sure they were in slits. For a second she opened her mouth as if she wanted to say something and then she closed her mouth and continued to silently stare at me.
“Who's in the hospital? Are you hurt? You okay?” She asked as she stood.
When she walked over to me as if she was really concerned and tried to touch my face I slapped her hand away. She stepped back into a defensive posture and dropped both hands to her side. Rage was tearing me up on the inside eating away at my resolve.
“Were you at Chyanne's house today?”
She struggled for breath before asking, “What?”
“Were you at Chyanne's house today, Stephanie, and don't lie to me.”
Standing mute for a second, she turned and walked back toward the lounge chair she had been resting in before. She was in a white tunic that covered a red bathing suit with red stiletto heels, and a big floppy red straw hat. I got tired of playing ring around the roses with her and quickly snatched her by her forearm to bring her attention back to me. She squealed and tensed up and like a scalded cat baring her teeth at me.
“Let me go Aric!”
“Were you at her house today?” I yelled in her face.
With the heels on she stood face to face with me, but with the pressure I had her arm grasped in she was limp and that forced me to look down at her.
“Yes,” she yelled. “Now will you please let me go?”
“Why were you at her house?”
“I just figured it was time to hear her side of the story. You never tell the whole truth so I wanted to hear it from her. You know, you have her eating right out the palm of your hand. She's so in love with you she can't see past that fake ass smile of yours. You should be ashamed of your damned self playing with women's feelings the way you do.”
I shoved her down into the lounge chair gripping her neck as she fell back. I could see her eyes widen behind her glasses because of the pressure I was inserting into the choke hold. The anger that resided in me was so strong that my eyes burned in frustration. The thought of the possibility that my wife had indeed attacked Chyanne and in turn attacked my child gave me murderous intent.
“Aric,” she managed to get out barely above an audible whisper.
“Did you shoot her?” I asked her through clenched teeth.
“Aric. . . . please let go . . .”
“Did you?”
I was so close to her face that my lips brushed her nose when I yelled the question in her face.
She shook her head as she gripped my wrist to try and remove my hand.
“I didn't. . . .”
“Why were you at her house?” I asked as I released her neck but snatched her forward by yoking the front of her tunic in my enclosed fist.
Tears fell down beneath the sunglasses as she looked up at me.
“Why are you doing this? You love her enough to come home and put your hands on me because of her? I'm still your wife Aric . . .”
She was talking but at the moment all I cared about was her telling me if she had been the one to attack Chyanne.
“Stephanie, you'd better answer my questionâ”
“Or what?”
I shoved her face. Her neck snapped back and she fell violently back into the chair causing it to topple under her. Her glasses fell off of her face and the skin on her hand raked the concrete to try and break her fall. Her eyes were fresh with blood and looked as if she'd taken something to them and tried to dig them out. That told me all I needed to know which only incensed my viciousness. She cried out and quickly backed away from me. I followed her like I was a wild animal stalking prey until she had backed all the way against the brick wall. She threw her hands up to shield her face and begged me not to hit her. I quickly stopped myself and just stood in front of her needing a minute to get my senses back in order. In the mood I was in I was liable to do something that I would regret later. So I chilled and once she realized that I was only standing there, she slowly stood. The blood on her hands leaving prints on the wall as she used it to hold herself up.