days pass until I’m able to pick up Justine’s envelope again. It’s Friday night, or more accurately Saturday morning, just past one o’clock. I’ve had a few beers, and I don’t want to take my sleeping pill. I’m restless. It’s restlessness that demands action of some sort or another. I’ve paced the living room. That wrapped up quickly because my legs hurt. I watched a movie on Netflix that was so unimpressive I can’t recall the plot thirty minutes after finishing it. I ate the rest of the French onion dip I had in the fridge with the crumb-sized pieces of chips left in the bag in the pantry. The French onion dip expired last week, I’ll probably end up with the runs; it wasn’t my best judgment call. I’m blaming the alcohol.
I need something, anything, to occupy me.
And then my eyes land on it and I’m backpedaling, taking back the word anything and just leaving it at something to occupy me; it’s Justine’s letter.
My name and address are still scowling.
I pick it up from the end table and walk into the kitchen to drop it in the trash. It lands amongst today’s still soppy coffee grounds and the mostly empty dip container. I watch as the stark white paper greedily wicks up the moisture from both, tinting one side deep brown and speckling the other side with spots of creamy curdle.
Satisfied I’ve stripped the letter of all its dignity, I return to the couch and flip through the Netflix menu. The futile act distracts me for about five seconds before I walk back to the kitchen and pull the disgraced envelope from the trash. Wiping the coffee grounds off of it with my hand, I open it over the bin and let the envelope fall back to its fate as compost.
The letter is only a single sheet of paper. Unlined. Each word, just like on the envelope, written purposefully with a heavy hand, as if the pressure used to write the words would translate into a dramatic delivery stressing the importance of the message. The stationary is lightweight, but the slickness in texture notes its high quality. It’s dry and unblemished on the right side, and the left side is a blotchy watercolor of various shades of brown that make the paper translucent, though still legible.
I walk to the sink and stand over it while I begin to read. I don’t know why because the paper isn’t wet enough to drip. Maybe I just need the counter to lean against and prop me, and my sanity, up.
I would say I’m reeling from the news, but to reel you have to feel. And I feel nothing. My blood has gone stagnant in my veins. My heart seized mid-beat and decided function was no longer necessary. All synapses, in a split second, boycotted in unison making thought and action impossible.
Nothing.
Nothing slowly transforms, setting off an insidious barrage of emotion.
The shock and betrayal is staggering as if my entire body and mind have been concussed by the news, and I’m now left to process her actions with a shock-induced, modified conscience. Right and wrong are glaringly obvious in my judgment of her. Right and wrong blur noxiously in my reaction to her. I’d love nothing more than to exact revenge. Revoke her life, for revoking my child’s.
The hate blazing through me is making it hard to breathe. I feel claustrophobic. I need to go outside.
The air outside is considerably cooler than inside, but it does nothing to ease emotion. There’s too much and it feels like it’s gnawing at my insides. Feasting and gorging until soon I’ll just be a shell filled with nothing but rage.
Panic starts to set in, and the only person I want to talk to is Faith. Fuck Miranda if she still has a PI following me. “Fuck you!” I yell as I descend the stairs. “Fuck you!” I yell again as I conclude the stairs.
I knock on Faith’s door. It’s loud, both due to the absence of most other sound because of the late hour, and to my angry, heavy hand.
“She don’t live there no more.” The voice is quiet, meek, but nearby.
So nearby that it startles me out of my solitary focus. It’s the woman from apartment one, Hope. And then her words hit me, and I’m questioning and denying her statement all in one word, “What?”
“The girl, Faith, she left a few days ago.” She sounds mildly sad, but for the most part the words