Last To Leave, page 7
Which is why I have to know exactly what’s under the doormat. There’s a big difference between a business card and a threatening letter.
I finally talk myself into checking the front stoop. If I open my door quickly, I can reach out an arm, grab whatever is there, and I can be back behind my locked door in probably less than two total seconds. Three tops. That’s not enough time for someone to hurt me, right?
I overthink it some more.
If someone wanted me to see them, they would’ve knocked on the door. If someone wanted me to open the door while they were here, they would’ve made more noise. And if someone wanted me to know who they were, they wouldn’t have worn the dark clothes and the hat, right? They didn’t want to be seen. They don’t want to be identified just yet.
So it must be safe now. I heard the vehicle pull away. I’m certain about that. They must be long gone by now.
I find some courage, twist the deadbolt, and fling the door open. I crouch, feeling through the darkness along the edge of the scratchy mat. I’m not sure why the porchlight isn’t on. In fact, I’m sure it was last night when I locked the door. I always sleep with it on. Has it burned out? Is someone else able to control it outside my house? Are these stupid cameras wired in to my electric system? Can Jubo control my lights?
Why does my brain keep going back to Jubo? Is that because of the saggy pants and head tattoos? Am I judging him unfairly? Maybe I am as horrible as Judy and Evie and everyone else who makes snap judgments. That’s not right. Jubo was nothing but kind and professional. Well, other than the lip licking and lil mama comments. But still, those things don’t make him a murderer. Although on the contrary, if I found out he’d served time for homicide at some point in his life, it wouldn’t exactly shock me either. I seemed to come to that conclusion anytime I saw someone with face tattoos.
My hand finally connects with an envelope. I snatch it up and pull my arm inside as if it’s dangling in the open waters of a shark-infested ocean. I slam my door louder than I mean to. The last thing I want to do is alert my prying-eyes neighbors. Judy would have a field day with this. She’d be calling an emergency meeting with the HOA if she knew there was a predator lurking around our neighborhood in the middle of the night like this.
I turn the lock. I used to feel safe in my own house. It wasn’t just Paul’s presence that made me feel safe. He did, for sure. But also, having someone else to look out for me? Having someone who could find and help me if something went wrong? There was comfort in that.
But now, I have no one. No one to keep me safe at all.
A slow tear slides down my cheek, but I quickly wipe it away. I’m not doing this again. I already crumbled in front of William. I’m not going to cry again. Yes, I miss the safety of Paul. But I’ve come so far over these last few months. I am becoming stronger. I need to keep telling myself I can do this on my own. Because there is no more Paul. I am alone.
I check the lock a third and fourth time, then turn on another tableside lamp, as if I’m ever-so-slightly safer with more lights on in the room. It’s as if I’m less likely to be murdered based on how many lights I have on in my house at one time. Maybe that’s why rich people had lights on all the time. Sensor lights, garage lights. That cute little light underneath their stove vents they left on all night long. I couldn’t imagine the hassle of trying to change out one of those bulbs. Which was exactly why I didn’t keep lights on like that all night. Were rich people murdered less because they had so many lights? No, I think rich people were murdered all the time. I immediately wanted to look up that statistic.
No.
I am overthinking all of this. My thoughts are spiraling out of control. I need more sleep. I need Xanax. I need a guard dog and an entirely new life. I am losing it.
Focus, Trish.
I sit down on the couch, sliding my finger along the edge of the envelope. I already know it’s a letter like all the others. The envelope is plain. The paper inside is stark white, and feels just like the others.
Looking forward to the party.
That’s all the note says this time. Not threatening. Not mean. Not scary. Is it…some kind of olive branch? Are they no longer mad at me because they’ve been invited back into my life? Maybe the tables have turned. Maybe I’m no longer in as much danger as I suspected.
I instinctively turn the paper over in my hands, not anticipating to see anything there because the letters have always been one-sided. But this time a few hand-written words at the bottom catch my eye.
Handwriting.
Was it on purpose? Was it the handwriting of whoever left me this note? Or was the note simply typed on a piece of paper someone else had written on?
The handwriting is small, but legible enough for me to read it.
Watch your back.
It’s not centered. It doesn’t look purposefully placed. It almost looks like…an accident?
But nothing else about these letters ever feels accidental. Someone sliding it under my mat at four-thirty in the morning? Definitely not an accident. Unsigned, unscented, unchanged from the others? None of that is accidental. But these three words on the back?
They are clear. Direct. Absolutely intentional.
I should be afraid, as I was just seconds ago at the mere thought of having to open the door late at night to an unknown dark porch. I should be terrified that these letters are still coming. I should be beside myself that this person is still threatening me, while all the while confirming they will be in my house tomorrow night.
But I am not afraid of this note. I am not terrified. I am downright pissed that someone thinks they can mess with me like this after I’ve already lost my husband. I’m livid that they think they can toy with me like this after the grief I’ve suffered through.
What’s that quote? Don’t mess with a woman scorned?
Well, instead I hope someday there is a famous quote that reads: don’t mess with a woman who is about to throw a dinner party.
Especially considering this is a dinner party where I’m more convinced now than ever that not everyone will leave alive.
Chapter Eight
I am still huffing around the kitchen. I thought my nerves would calm by now, but I feel just as fired up as I did when I ran on my treadmill for a half hour before six a.m.
Overthinking has always been a superpower of mine. I’m starting to think, however, that it’s also going to be the thing that does me in.
Can I pull all of this off? I was so certain when I planned this stupid party that it was a brilliant plan. I was sure it would put a stop to these threatening letters. I expected to have all the answers I needed by the time the party was over tomorrow.
But now, I wonder if this is all a disaster. I wonder if the plan will fall apart.
I wonder if I will, in fact, be murdered tomorrow night. It’s a lot to process, you know, wondering whether or not you’re about to die.
As brave as I felt hours ago, reaching out my arm into the darkness? I feel like a coward now, who wants nothing more than to open my wedding album and sob into a gallon of mint chip ice cream.
But I can’t. Paul would expect more from me. If someone was threatening me, Paul would be certain I’d catch them. He knew I couldn’t quit something until I’d solved it. A sudoku puzzle. A Netflix series. A murder, even if it’s my own.
So that’s what I’m going to do. I will solve all of this. Tomorrow night. For Paul. For me.
But in the meantime, I have errands. The couscous wasn’t going to make itself. Literally, I would burn it all if I even tried.
That means one of my to-dos today is to stop by the caterer. No one has to know that by ‘caterer’ I really mean the pre-made heat-and-serve section at my local grocery store. I knew firsthand what was good and what wasn’t. I also knew what was too good, in the way of no one believing it could be one of my own dishes. I tried to pass a few by Paul - some chicken fajitas, some beef stroganoff once - but he could always tell when the food was store-bought. It didn’t bother either of us though. He smiled and ate it anyway, without giving me too much slack about it, and I appreciated that about him.
Speaking of Paul, I also have to pay him a visit. I haven't been to his gravesite for a while. We had some rain. I picked up some extra evening shifts at the studio. I was also obsessing over the letters and wondered if I was safe there at the cemetery.
But, well, since I’d just declared I was no longer a coward? That means today is the day for a visit, unsafe or not. It’s his birthday, after all. There is no time to be a coward on someone’s birthday.
I nod at Judy as I walk out of the house, watching her prune her shrubs like they won’t be buried under snow in just a month or so. What a waste of time. I smile though, like I think it’s a brilliant use of her day, because that’s what we do, isn’t it? Smile when we don’t feel like it? Lead people to believe their ideas are great when they’re not? Visit a grave before throwing a party?
After a twenty minute drive, I finally pull into the cemetery. The fake nylon flowers scattered around from grave to grave are faded. There are tree branches in desperate need of a trim. My mood turns more somber, but maybe that’s to be expected. No one is actually happy while visiting a graveyard, right?
The worst part about someone dying before their time? The arrangements. Paul and I spoke whimsically about dying in our old age like the couple does in The Notebook, as if we were going to also be buried side by side, hand in wrinkly old hand. But we didn’t actually plan out the logistics of it. Not in our thirties. We thought we had a lifetime to make those arrangements. We had nothing planned at all.
The best I could do in my grief, and with my finances, was to pick out a spot too close to town but on the edge of a pine-needle-ridden rolling hill, as if he could see and appreciate the incredible mountain backdrop in the distance. It was a fine spot. Or I told myself it was, at least. I would be okay with being buried here. But you know Evil Evie wanted him cremated and spread around Lake Tahoe. Which was all fine and good in her mind, except Paul never once mentioned cremation to me. The idea of charring someone and throwing them away felt like too great a crime to me, especially when they never asked for such a thing. I couldn’t give her that. Instead I had him buried, like he’d told me he wanted once, and I hoped the view made up for the otherwise ugly hill. The bonus? Only nineteen more payments until this cemetery bill was no longer hanging over my head.
I pull out a small handful of lilac flowers from my bag. I hid them in there because I didn’t want Judy to see them, given they were from her back gate. There was an area behind my garage - a narrow spot, just wide enough for me to fit through if I turned sideways - where I could reach the rogue flowers growing on the other side of her back fence.
I knew Judy wouldn’t appreciate me taking them, but Paul would. His sentiments about Judy were the same as mine, so he would find it funny. These flowers felt like an inside joke between us, and given how long it had been since we laughed together, Paul would agree with me that it was the right thing to do. And if Judy found out about the theft and got pissed? Well, I knew Paul would have a satisfying laugh over that too. It brought a smile to my face. A smile I so desperately needed right now in the midst of everything else going on.
I climb out of my car, walking up the first hillside, then down another. I expect the cemetery to be quiet on a weekday. It’s small to begin with. That’s why I’m so surprised that someone else is already there, sitting next to a headstone in the distance.
It’s not until I get closer that I realize they are sitting in front of Paul’s headstone.
I want to turn back around. I want to respect this person’s moment and not intrude, but it’s too late. He sees me before I can turn around.
“Hi Jim,” I say warmly, hoping he’s in a good mood today. It’s at that moment that I see his eyes are red. He has a Miller Lite in his hand, even though it’s only nine in the morning. There’s another bottle resting up against the stone.
“I wondered if I’d see you here.” He stands up, and although I expect him to be angry with me for interrupting yet another sacred moment between him and his best friend, instead, he hugs me.
It takes a breath from me.
“You brought his favorite flowers?” he says sarcastically as he releases me.
“Yes. Judy’s.”
Jim laughs, and I know that means he gets the joke too. He’d met Judy plenty of times outside of our house while over for football games and poker nights. Judy even called the cops on him once when he’d had a little too much to drink one night and she caught him urinating on her rose bushes while waiting for his Uber.
“I wasn’t sure if you’d be here today.” His tone is somber.
“I don’t know what happens on days like today. I saw William yesterday. He mentioned the same thing. Do you celebrate an important day like today? Do you do that forever? Is there a day when that’s the last time you celebrate someone who is no longer here to celebrate? Is that forgetting them, or moving on? I don’t know how this works.” The emotion gets stuck in my throat and my voice waivers. No matter how strong I tell myself I will be, it catches me when I don’t expect it. It’s unavoidable.
“I think we do exactly what we’re doing now. We take a moment. Say something if we need to say something. And then move on, like we know he’d want us to. I think that covers all the bases.” He takes a sip of his beer. “I’ve had my moment already, so I’ll let you get on with it.”
“No, I can…I can head back to my car. Or come back later,” I stammer. “I wasn’t trying to interrupt your moment.”
“Ain’t that what you been doing since Paul met you?” He tries to say it sarcastically, but I swear I can still hear a hint of pain in his voice. “He’s yours anyway. Always was. Your time with him trumps mine.” He offers me a genuine smile. Despite our differences, we have more in common than we seem to want to admit. We both loved the same man. There’s a connection in that no matter our negative feelings about each other.
“He loved you, Jim,” I begin, but he stops me before I can get out anything else.
“Stop with all that.” He scrunches up his nose and shakes his head. I can’t tell if he has to sneeze or if he’s fighting back tears. I know he doesn’t want me to notice. “He was a son of a bitch most of the time. Beat me at everything. More athletic. Won every argument we ever had. Got the prettiest girls. I only like to show up here to remind him I at least won at something.” He gestures around, as if to say he won at life, because he’s still on this side of the dirt. Jim always uses humor to deflect what he’s feeling.
“I’m glad I ran into you here.” I set the flowers down, still wanting Jim to know I’m happy to walk away if he needs another minute.
“I’m glad Paul found you in that country bar off Seventh Ave.”
“Ride ‘Em,” we say at the same time, referencing the place where Paul and I met.
“Are you in the mood for an embarrassing story? About Paul and me?” His tone changes, and I see the hint of a smile.
I nod. I love old stories. That’s when I miss Paul the most - when other people have nice, sweet, funny things to say about him. I like that other people saw the good in him too. It wasn’t just me. “Of course.”
“I was going to that country bar four, maybe five nights a week,” he begins.
“For the cheap nine dollar beers?” I laugh.
“Exactly, right? No one goes there for the beer. That place was always pricey. I only went for the bull.”
“That stupid mechanical bull in the back?”
“You ever ride that thing?”
I laugh, shaking my head. “No. I’ve never wanted to tear my groin or get rotator cuff surgery.”
“Well, Paul was always damn good at that thing. I swear he only rode it, like, six or seven times in total. When he was really drunk, no less. But we had a stupid bet every time that I could last longer, and I always lost. So I started practicing.”
“Practicing…at fake bull riding?” I can’t hide my amusement.
“Exactly. It’s stupid, right? But I was determined to beat him at something, and it sure as hell wasn’t baseball in college or our fantasy football league, so I thought maybe the bar bull could be my thing. So I practice for, like, a solid month. We go to the bar, and I bet I can beat him that night.”
I’m still laughing. “Okay. What’d you bet?”
He grows quiet for a moment, then locks his eyes on mine. “You.”
I must’ve misheard him. I narrow my gaze, unsure that I want him to repeat what he just said.
“Yeah, I saw you walk in that night. I saw you first, I should add. And I, like a fool, bet on you over that damn bull because I was so sure of myself. Winner got to ask for your number.”
“And you practiced for a month?”
“Yeah, and that SOB paid the operator twenty bucks extra to flip me as fast as possible once he laid eyes on you. So hell yeah, I practiced for a month, paying nine dollars a beer for a month, just to get thrown off in less than four seconds.” Jim laughs, looking up at the sky. “So when I say he won at everything?” His tone softens. “He was a lucky SOB. And I guess he won fair and square, that’s all I’m saying. Because I would’ve spent a hell of a lot more than nine dollars a beer, or twenty dollars on the barback at the controls, or whatever, for that night to turn out differently, but that’s kind of my point, I guess. And I was pissed, for a while.”
I always thought Jim was pissed at me. For interrupting their friendship. For taking away his best friend.
Jim continues talking. “But now I’m finally thankful for it. Because the best man won, right? And I’m happy for you, Trish. Sad as hell at the same time, but happy he at least had a life worth living ‘til he didn’t. That’s all I’m saying. For the longest time, I wanted to take it all back. I wished everything was different that night. But, in moments like these, where I’ve been drinking and I’m not such a selfish SOB, I can be glad that Paul won everything. Because I know he at least had the happiness he deserved while he was here.”
