The Sordid Promise (36 page)

Kifo nearly bowled me over when I came inside the house. She slobbered on the side of my face, making me giggle and elicited an ‘Ew’ from Janet.

“She definitely missed you. Sorry, I couldn’t keep her from scratching up the front door, among other things. She left a few presents on a few of the area rugs, and chewed up a pair of shoes. But…we’re good now.” She looked behind me. “Where’s Eric?”

“He had to get back to work. Double shifts today.” I glanced back at the door. “It’s okay. It can be fixed.”

She folded her arms with a broad smile. “Looks like the vacation in Colorado did you well. We have to have lunch, so you can give me all the details.”

“Okay,” I said with a nod.

She gaped at me in shock. “Really? Just like that? Y-you’re going to have l-lunch with me?”

“I have to check my e-mails…see what projects I’m going to take or not, but—yeah. I can do lunch.”

“Great,” she beamed dramatically.

“Thanks for watching Kifo and the house.”

“No, problem, Nikki,” she beamed again.

After Janet left, I gathered Kifo’s things, and took her for walk. As I walked along the sidewalk, I glanced at Mrs. Hobbins’s house. It felt odd to not have her around, pestering me with her ridiculous theories.

I shook off the sadness and continued towards the trail.

“Hello, stranger.”

I turned, startled by the voice that I heard: Estelle. I grabbed Kifo and turned to leave the trail.

“Relax, Nikki. We just want to talk to you.” I stopped short upon hearing Melonie’s voice. “We’re here to help you,” Melonie assured me with an uneasy grin.

“You’re here to help her, but I’m not.” Estelle folded her arms, tossing out her foot. “I want that psychotic asshole to get his just deserts.”

Melonie shook her head, seemingly of annoyance and sighed. “Estelle, you’re not helping.”

“Then, you shouldn’t have invited me here,” Estelle snapped.

“You said you feared for your life. This has to be done. Especially after—” Melonie’s eyes whirled. “—the news you received.”

“Who are you kidding? You nor I will tell on Eric. We hate him…but not that much.” Estelle eyed me from head to toe. “Not sure about this one. She might get all moral and tell. Good. Do the fucking job for me.”

“Am I needed for any of this?” I asked, increasingly perplexed.

Estelle sauntered to a bench on the trail, retrieving a long white box. She rolled her eyes, like she was bored, and straightened out her blazer while fluffing her perfectly curled hair.

Melonie stepped forward, moving her arms awkwardly about. I’m not sure if she was fighting with the urge to hug me, or something else. “I’m sorry about, Maisha. I know I never got a chance to tell you that.” She looked down at Kifo with wide eyes. “I see you got a new puppy.”

I began to stride past them.

“Nikki, wait,” Melonie pleaded. “I’m here as a favor. I feel like I owe it to you to warn you. To tell you what I found out. To tell you what Estelle told me, things I had no idea of. Things I didn’t want to see in Eric. Things I pretended I didn’t see.”

“Are you kidding?” I asked incredulously. “After the beating I took that suspiciously read like you set it up, you think I’m going to hear anything you have to say against Eric?”

Estelle guffawed, “I fucking knew it. I told you this would happen.”

“Nikki,” Melonie began, “I would never do that to you. I have no idea how Tamala knew where you were. I’m here to help you before what happened to Tamala…happens to you.”

I lifted a brow, glancing between her and Estelle. “What are you talking about?”

“He has this way…” Estelle purred as she stepped closer to me. “…of making you want to please him all the time. Even if you lose your fucking dignity in the process. Man has a gift with the mental fuck. He says things. He makes you think you need him. He makes you think that no one else can replace him. Tamala got off on that shit just like I did. I’m betting a million damn bucks that if she hung herself, it was because Eric told her to.”

Shock, wasn’t the right word. “T-Tamala is dead?”

“Don’t look so dramatic,” Estelle scoffed. “You knew he was a killer. He’s doing what he does. You better leave him before you end up like her. Fuck…I might be next.” She clutched her chest and looked around in paranoia. “Which is why Preston and I are getting the hell out of the country before Eric can think about hurting us.”

I didn’t know what to say or to think. The little things he said to me. I knew what Estelle said was true, and it frightened me. “W-when?”

“About a week after she attacked you,” Melonie answered solemnly.

“I’m getting help for my issues, because I have to get help.” Estelle rubbed her perfectly flat stomach. “For my fiancé and my baby. Father is seeing to it. He’s a very important guy in Ohio. With him seeking bigger things, he needs his daughter to be clean and flawless, or at least pretend to be. If I don’t—well sure you don’t care.”

“You’re right,” I snapped. “I don’t.”

Estelle’s eyes narrowed as her face dropped. She stepped closer to me—too close. “Did he ever tell you what he and I really were?”

“A girlfriend. I get that you owed him something, either way it’s done. He released you from your debt. I watched it happen, remember?”

Melonie grabbed Estelle’s arm and shook her head. “Don’t. You’ll destroy her.”

Estelle yanked her arm back from Melonie as cut her eyes at me. “It was a show for you,” she muttered and shook her head. “Sadistic bastard will never change. Nikki…Eric and I are married. Have been for three years.”

I stopped, frozen. I couldn’t feel a single thing on my body. “W-what d-did you just say?”

“As in husband and wife. As in had a huge wedding with the whole nine. How else do you think he got conservatorship? He helped me, so my parents wouldn’t put me in rehab. But that’s the thing, he made it seem like he was helping me, but he really just gets off on breaking women. He had to have me need him, because he couldn’t break me the way he wanted. Even though he fucked other women around me, he wouldn’t grant me the divorce I wanted…just to fuck me up. So…I fucked him up. Had Preston ask for me, because it’s the only way he would allow it. He had no idea that Preston and I were seeing each other on the side. He hated it. But I wasn’t under his control anymore. What could he do? Eric. He doesn’t exactly compute like a neat little formula.”

I felt like I was in the middle of a nightmare. None of it could be true. It couldn’t be. “I-I don’t believe you.”

“It’s true,” Melonie said with a reluctance. “I was…a bridesmaid in their wedding. I really didn’t want you to find out this way. I hoped he’d be the one to tell you the truth.”

Melonie looked at me with watering eyes. “I just don’t want to see you get hurt any more than you already have. You deserve better.”

“I have a present for you,” sang Estelle.

“F-for the record…” I shook my head in shock and complete disbelief. “I’m not accepting anymore presents from the whore ghosts of Eric’s past. I didn’t like the last one. It caused a lot of unnecessary drama for the both of us.”

“God. He’s gotten inside that thick skull of yours already, hasn’t he? I was wrong about you. I didn’t think he would get to you. Eric is fucking talented, I give him that. It’s what he does. It’s what he’ll do to you; saves you, remakes you, breaks you. He also has a sick tradition of making you watch as his previous whore is being broken for the last time. The sick bastard thinks it’s a grand romantic gesture, a gesture to show you that you are the center of his world.”

Her words made me falter. They made me feel like a sinking mass on the verge of becoming swallowed whole. I remembered what I saw on the DVD Tamala gave me…I became Estelle when he attempted to break Tamala for the last time by having her killed. The cycle began again with me. I clutched my chest, hoping to alleviate the crushing weight. I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry. I wanted to wake up from the horrible nightmare. “Please, say it isn’t true,” I quavered.

She shoved the box at me with a smile. “Sorry, you’re not so different after all, sweetness. It’s his talent. He makes you think and believe everything he wants you to. If you thought you were the one to change his sadistic heartless soul, you were dead wrong. I couldn’t do it as his wife. You can’t do it as the whore on the side. Open it. I would do it now if I were you.”

I shifted Kifo’s leash from one hand to the next and slipped the top off the box. Whatever it was, it was in over a dozen pieces with something in red written all over it.

“Why don’t you take that home and put the puzzle pieces together. It’s really Eric’s present to me, but I don’t mind sharing. I left you a little something underneath it. Something I’m sure a girl like you could use once you fit all those jagged little pieces together. You’re fitting them together now, aren’t you?” She moved forward and lifted my chin, regarding my tears with a smile. “Awe, sweetness, he’s done the same things to you that he’s done to dozens of others to the letter, hasn’t he? He tries to wash the dirty by healing the sick, but even that has mud all through it. Killing dying patients and thinking he’s their special little angel of death. There is no pretty word for it. He’s a murderer.

“I’m sure he’s told you that he loves you. That he would always be there for you. That he would…die for you. Same thing he said to Tamala, me, and a whole lot of others. It’s a game to him. It’s all a game to him. When he gets tired of the game, he’ll move on.”

“Estelle, you’ve said enough. More than you promised me you’d say.” Melonie touched my arm. “Go over whatever it was she gave you. If you need help getting away from him, or a shoulder to cry on, you have my number.”

“Don’t let him divert you with sex when you confront him either. Just another trick in his bag. When you put the pieces together and get a hold of my gift—” She gave me a slow smile and grabbed my arm, taking me out of Melonie’s hearing distance. “—make sure you to cut deep and vertical. Don’t get me wrong, I’m trying to save you. ‘Cause the only way the game ends is when he says he’s done. You can end the game by bowing out.” She looked at my wrists. “That is, if you’re not too chicken shit to actually die this time. He won’t let me go. I think…after you do what needs to be done—” She stroked my hair with a sneer. “—the game will finally be in my favor. By the way…I’m the one who called Tamala.” She continued to touch my hair with a sick smile on her face. “I was only trying to help you. Tamala was supposed to finish you, but the bitch was too scared to do what needed to be done. That leaves you to do what needs to be done.” 

I gaped in anger at her as the tears continued to flow. 

“Oh, don’t give me that look. I’m doing you a favor. Don’t you see, sweetness? There’s only one way out of your heartbreak. He won’t stop until you do what you’ve always wanted to do.” She playfully pouted through her smile as her eyes sparkled. “So…do it and finally be free from this horrible, horrible world.” She puckered her lips, kissed the air, and walked away.

Melonie gave me an empathetic look, obviously oblivious to the live grenade that Estelle placed in my hands. She mouthed, “Call me.”

No longer in the mood to continue my walk, I went home.

I unhooked Kifo, without a care that she immediately went to the leather sofa and began gnawing on the arm. I slid the box open, carefully pulling out the various papers on the kitchen counter and spread them out. There was a lining of tissue paper on the bottom of the box. Peaks of something silver and straight showed through the transparencies.

I tended to the jagged pieces of paper, putting them together.

It was a divorce petition, initiated and signed by Estelle, left unsigned by Eric. The note in red stated: “You’re still mine. You still owe me.”

I stared at it, hoping I imagined what I saw—hoping the ‘r’ and the ‘i’ weren’t similar to the way Eric signed his name. That he hadn’t lied to me. That everything he told me was true.

I ruffled through the box and found the other gift she left me—a sharp shaving blade. I slid to the kitchen floor with the blade in my hand, landing on the floor with a hard thud. Kifo came over to me, nudging my hand to pet her. I shoved her away by the shoulders as the tears fell.