Blood in the Past (Blood for Blood Series) (4 page)

Calvin’s wife answered with pressed lips. Jillian took in her appearance, seeing the woman clearly for the first time. Her alabaster skin, barely flushed at the cheeks, contrasted sharply with Jillian’s maple-colored skin. Even the woman’s hair was the exact opposite of Jillian’s: pure golden sunshine that flowed well past her shoulders, encasing her in a gilded halo. Jillian wondered if the woman also noticed the differences, if she thought her husband just wanted something different.
Someone
different.

Jillian expected a defiant speech, but Susan invited Jillian in and offered her tea. Jillian sat and watched the waif-like woman glide out of the living room, curious to know if Susan always served as the hostess in her little stay-at-home world. Jillian squirmed in the cushioned chair while Calvin’s wife tinkered away in the kitchen. She returned carrying a red, bone china tea set assembled neatly on a serving tray. The gold filigree matched the sunlight’s glint off her hair.

The tea’s warmth inside the delicate teacup radiated through to Jillian’s fingertips. She found comfort in that and used it keep her voice steady and resolute. “I will not stop seeing Calvin.”

The woman had made no efforts at introduction or other pleasantries other than offering tea. She sipped from her cup. “As I told you last night, you’ll be sorry. I can’t say it any plainer than that.” Another sip.

Despite the steaming tea, the room felt cold, subzero even. Things felt wrong. Susan’s words did not feel threatening; they felt like a warning. An oddly compassionate warning. Jillian’s fingers itched to squirm beneath the saucer she held.

“If it weren’t for our daughter, I’d gladly hand him over to you,” the woman continued. “But Lyla would hate me if I divorced him. She idolizes him. She was crushed when I told her Calvin had cheated. She almost didn’t believe me.” She paused to sigh at the memory. “Regardless, I’m telling you, you’d end up about as happy as I am.” Susan gestured to the whole of the room with her teacup before raising it to her lips. She lifted her eyes and peered over the teacup to catch Jillian’s response. Met with neither words nor eye contact, she continued. “Oh, you thought you were the only one?” She stifled a snicker. “No, honey, not only are you
not
the only one Calvin’s cheated on me with these past twenty-seven years, you’re not even the only one right
now
.”

Jillian’s eyes stung with humiliation. Tears of burning, searing hatred built up and teetered, clinging desperately to her eyelashes. She failed to dam the waters. She cried. Not for the man who cared nothing for her dreams of being together anywhere in the country. For some reason, that fact had yet to register. When it did, she dismissed it. Instead, Jillian was infuriated by the fair-haired woman spouting off things that couldn’t be true.

Calvin’s wife rose from her seat. “More tea?”

Jillian still failed to find her words.

Susan shrugged, disappeared into the kitchen to put her cup and saucer away, and crossed back through the parlor before sulking up the stairs. “You can let yourself out,” she called over her shoulder with a voice so drenched with melancholy, Jillian hoped she slipped on it and broke her neck.

Jillian sat still for an endless period of time. Then she stood, but not to let herself out. At first, she entered the kitchen to put away her teacup and saucer. Instead, she scanned the room. Next to a rotating wooden spice rack stood a knife block. The matte-red handles matched the crimson appliances and accents—and Jillian’s own rage. The knives called to her, fanning the flames of her fury. Absentmindedly, she dumped the bone china items into her purse and grabbed the chef’s knife from the block. Without even realizing where her footsteps fell, she went up the stairs after her lover’s wife. The stairs creaked under her every step in protest, as if they knew how the early afternoon would unfold.

But how could they?
Jillian didn’t even know what would happen next. She didn’t know she would lunge at the woman at the end of the hallway. Didn’t know the hardwood floor beneath the carpeted runner would croak, warning Susan of her movements. Jillian also didn’t know one of Susan’s pastimes included kick-boxing cardio classes with her daughter at the gym on Saturday mornings.

Calvin’s wife ducked at the noise and spun around with surprising precision.

Still, Jillian’s body kept up the assault without the consent of her mind. A bony fist flew into Jillian’s jaw; her teeth pinched off the tip of her tongue. She realized then she’d only been struck because one of her arms instinctively protected her abdomen.

The two women tumbled into the bedroom, caught in a knot of arms and legs, thrashing and screeching and grunting. Still clutching the kitchen knife, Jillian lashed out as soon as she found ample room for her arm to arc.

Susan blocked with her right forearm and immediately cried out. The blade had caught near her wrist and slid through her flesh easily, parting her skin all the way up to the inside of her elbow. The blow brought her to the floor.

Blood painted the world red. The walls. The floors. Them. Their journey was punctuated in splatters and smears. A stunned Jillian, still tasting her own blood, backed up. Susan slumped down, propped up against the bed, bleeding steadily at Jillian’s feet.

Badly injured, but not out of the fight yet, Calvin’s wife staggered to her feet. At that moment, Jillian snapped to the present just long enough to admire the woman’s spirit. Susan looked at her wound, and instead of pressing it to staunch the bleeding, she stared intently at the dribbling flow of red for a second. Her shoulders went slack, her defiant spirit broken. Jillian thought Susan may have conceded her fate, resigned to die.

They stood for a single, fleeting second, glaring into each other’s eyes. Susan’s were a mottled blue, like a roiling, storm-strewn sea, Jillian’s a glittering, bright chestnut. Then Susan crumpled and her already fair skin faded to white. The fight Jillian had admired in her eyes faded as well. Life left her.

Jillian left soon after.

***

Jillian retreated to her apartment and sat on the floor. She backed into the darkest shadow with her knees pulled to her chest. Covered in the blood of her lover’s wife, Jillian was all alone to process what she’d done.

Days passed beyond the windows of her room. Eating never entered Jillian’s mind, and her lips crackled from dehydration. The carpet beneath her grew damp and foul with waste. Jillian’s mind fell quiet and empty, overcome by shock. She thought of nothing except for the blood. She would never forget the blood. She could still taste it.

The intercom by the apartment door buzzed.
How many days had passed?
Static and distance prevented Jillian from making out the voice, or its words, from her bedroom. Certain her visitor wasn’t anyone concerned with her well-being, she ignored whoever rang the doorbell. She forced herself to unfold from the fetal ball she’d formed in the corner. In a trance, she peeled her stiff clothes from her body. Blood had soaked through to her skin and thoroughly dried, leaving deep crimson lines from the folds of the fabric, and giving her coffee-colored skin the appearance of a tattered map.

Jillian sat on the floor of the shower, mesmerized by the water swirling around the drain. The steam only slightly defeated the cold of the ceramic surface beneath her. Hot water hit the crown of her head, plastering her thick hair to her shoulders. She had killed someone. An innocent woman. Someone’s daughter. Possibly someone’s sister. Lyla’s mother. Calvin’s wife. She’d killed Calvin’s wife. Her name was
Susannah
, not Susan, as she’d originally presumed. Jillian had learned her name from Channel 6 news. She’d left her TV on when she rushed to Calvin’s house and hadn’t had the presence of mind to turn it off when she returned. Only one other piece of information had managed to get through the haze and fog of the last seventy-two hours: the police were calling Susannah’s death a suicide. That was good news for Jillian. Apparently, pocketing the teacup proved practical. So she asked herself,
Why don’t I feel relieved?

Jillian exited the shower, dressed, and plugged in her phone to call her family and close friends. Then she laughed hysterically. She had none of either. Longing for someone she could assure of her well-being—though she most decidedly was not well—she dialed Mel’s number. Mel had moved back to Ohio right after graduation, about a month after the mugging. So entrenched was Jillian in her relationship with Calvin that she’d barely lifted her head to say goodbye. Jillian regretted that. They could hardly be considered close friends, but they had bonded enough after the mugging that Mel had practically become the only friend Jillian had.

“Where the hell have you been?” Mel screeched. Jillian still hadn’t eaten and her head throbbed with its own pulse, palpitating in her ears. She held the phone a foot from her face, but she could still hear her former roommate clearly. “I’ve been calling you. Your phone just kept going to voice mail. I didn’t know what happened to you in that fucking city.”

“Relax, Mel.” The irony was not lost on Jillian that she had contributed to the city’s swelling crime rate, even if Susannah’s death had technically been ruled a suicide. “I’m fine.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing.” Although her phone was nowhere near fully charged, Jillian unplugged it, allowing her to pace throughout the apartment.

“Don’t tell me nothing.”

“It’s...Cal.”

Mel sighed. “You’re still seeing that piece of shit married cop? Really, Jill, you can do so much better.” Mel had found out about Calvin when he showed up at graduation, and she never held back her disapproval of the relationship.

“Spare me right now, okay? It’s something else. I don’t want to talk about it over the phone.”

“Oh my God, he knocked you up. You didn’t tell him, did you? Don’t tell him. You’ve seen those Lifetime movies, right? Dudes get crazy when their mistresses get pregnant.” Mel placed an awkward emphasis on the word “mistresses” as if it were foreign to her vernacular.

Jillian chuckled nervously. “I’m not pregnant, Mel.”

“Well, what is it then?”

“Nothing. Never mind. I shouldn’t have called you. I gotta go.” Jillian listened to Mel’s garbled voice for a few more seconds before hanging up and reconnecting her cell phone to its charger. She’d thought she craved human contact, but her rapid breathing and blurry tears proved she wasn’t ready yet.

The next day, Jillian’s bedroom door swung open. Mel ambled in carrying several bags of groceries and clutching a bottle of vodka by its neck. Jillian would have preferred something she could actually drink, but she should have expected nothing less from Mel.

“Still have your keys, I see,” Jillian said. Despite the late afternoon hour, she remained buried under the covers. Their weight bore down on her like a physical manifestation of her guilt. She kicked at them and, once free, sat up against her pillows. “What’d you do—drive all night after we hung up?”

“Of course not. I flew out this morning. And
we
did not hang up.
You
hung up.
I
was still talking. I don’t know what the fuck’s wrong with you, but I felt like it might be serious.” Mel searched the room, and her gaze fell to the dark stain in the corner. A scrub brush and a canister of foaming carpet cleaner lay near it. Neither had done much for the stain. Mel wrinkled her nose. “Looks like I was right. Besides, I needed to ship the rest of my stuff out to Ohio. I see you boxed it up for me. You should move them away from the door though. I almost tripped and broke my face.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Yeah, yeah. Get up. Outta bed.”

Jillian followed Mel to the living room and told her everything about her affair with Calvin, her subsequent mindless obsession with him, and confronting Susannah. Killing her. Jillian shuddered when she heard the words spoken aloud.

Shocked by Jillian’s story, Mel practically poured the vodka down her throat and cursed herself for only bringing one bottle. When Mel wasn’t drinking, she sat on her hands to keep them from trembling. Jillian had only seen her do that once before: the night of the mugging. She started to question whether she’d confided in the right person.

Finally, Jillian said, “I think I should turn myself in.”