Unspeakable Truths (8 page)

“It’s easier to fall apart when there’s no one there to witness it. Tyler was gone, and I guess a part of me went with him. I don’t know, I just checked out.”

“And now?”

“Now… I’m still checked out I guess but I’m getting a little bit better. I mean I’m here right?”

“Yes you are.” She smiles.

We chat a bit longer and make our way into the dining room where she’s served dinner. I’m surprised at how easy it is to pick up with her after all this time. We eat and chat as if though we’ve been doing it every week for the past four years. She was always the best person I knew—better than me, kinder, gentler.

We finish dinner, and Morgan pours us both a glass of wine. We sit back down in the living room and continue our nonstop chatter. It feels good being with her again.

“So have you heard that Luca is back in town?” she asks softly, almost as if she’s afraid to tell me this piece of news.

“Yeah I know. He’s an attorney at the firm where I work now.”

Her eyes go wide with surprise. “Holy shit. I knew he was back, but I hadn’t realized that you were working together. How’s that going?”

“It’s different.” I shrug. “I still pretty much hate him, but I can at least tolerate being in the same room with him now.”

“Well that’s something at least.” She looks down at her half empty glass and I can tell she wants to say something but she’s afraid of how I might react.

“What Morgan?”

She looks back up and gives me a sad smile. “He’s really not so bad you know?”

I think about it for a minute, my arm propped up on the back of the couch and my head resting on my hand.

“He came to see me the other day, because he said he wanted to tell me something. He said I needed to know the truth about what happened with Tyler.”

“Oh my God Ev,” she says on a breath. “What did he say?”

“Nothing,” I reply, shaking my head. “I didn’t want to hear it. I threw him out, but it’s been bothering me ever since Morgan. I’ve thought about it, and I think I want to know.”

“Everly…”

“Do you know?” I probe quietly, hesitantly. “Do you know what he was trying to tell me?”

She says nothing just stares at me debating whether to say what she wants to say.

“Please,” I whisper. “If you know what happened…”

“I don’t know all of it, just bits and pieces.”

“Will you tell me?”

“All I know is Tyler was in trouble. I think that he got into something with some bad people. I know that Luca tried to help him.”

I wipe a stream of tears off of my cheeks. I really didn’t want to cry but how could I not. We’re talking about Tyler and the possibility that… “It wasn’t random was it? Was he murdered?” I ask already knowing the answer.

“I think so. I don’t know for sure, I just know what Luca told me years ago. Right after Ty died, I went to see him to make sure he was okay. He got wasted, and he started talking but Ev, I don’t know the whole story. I just know that Ty was in over his head.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I didn’t know for sure, and you were so far gone. I could never reach you, you were so sad and broken, and so I just couldn’t. I didn’t know if telling you would make it any worse, and I was just scared for you. Then I thought over time you’d get better, that you’d want to go back to being normal.”

“There is no normal after losing your husband the day after you got married.”

“Oh God, No.” She reaches out and grabs my hand. “I know. That’s not what I meant. I just meant that I thought you’d eventually go back to school, I thought that you and I would go back to being friends like always. I thought you’d need me, and I wanted so badly to be there for you, but you wouldn’t take help from anyone. After a while I just figured that maybe it was better that you didn’t know. It was only speculation anyway. I had no proof, just the ramblings of a drunk guy who’d just lost his best friend.”

“I need to know, I have to know what really happened.”

“Luca’s the only person who can fill in the blanks for you. He was closer to Tyler than anyone. If anyone knows the whole story it’s him.”

“Yeah.” I nod my head in agreement. Luca is the only one who can tell me what really happened to my husband. I just hope that I’m strong enough to hear what he has to say.

I got Luca’s cell phone number from Morgan and debate whether or not to call him. Maybe I should sleep on this and call him in the morning, but I’m kidding myself if I think I’ll be able to sleep after the bomb that was just dropped in my lap. I need to hear it all, not just random pieces that may or may not be true. I pull up his name on my cell and decide to text him instead.

Hey Luca it’s Everly. I really need to talk to you are you busy?

I hold the phone staring at the screen until he responds.

Everly what’s wrong? Are you okay?

I’m fine. I just need to see you, do you think you could come by my place.

It takes him a few minutes but he finally responds.

Gimme 30 mins.

I put the phone down on the coffee table and wait. Wait for Luca to deliver a truth that might just leave me more damaged than I was to begin with.

Forty-five minutes later I’m opening the front door for Luca. He looks dressed to go out in a pair of dark jeans and green button-down shirt. Why wouldn’t he be going out, it’s a Saturday night, and he actually has a life.

“Thanks for coming; did I take you away from something important?” I don’t know why I’m asking, my nerves are getting the best of me. What he tells me tonight can change everything I thought I knew about my life.

“I was just out with some people from work when you called.”

I nod as he passes through the open doorway. In the four years that I’ve worked there no one has ever asked me to hang out after work. Alright, that’s a lie, they asked me a few times in the beginning, but I always turned them down. I’m sure that I come off as being unapproachable and even now I would have said no, but it may have been nice to get an invitation every once in a while.

“I’m sorry, I should have waited till tomorrow it’s late.”

He juts his chin out, nonverbally communicating that it’s okay. “I was surprised to hear from you. Is everything alright?”

“I don’t know.” I reply walking back in the living room and tagging my wine off of the coffee table. “Can I get you a glass?” He’s probably shocked by how polite I can actually be.

“No. I’m alright. What’s going on?”

I take a sip of my wine before taking a seat back on the couch. “I need you to tell me the truth about Tyler.”

He sits down across from me not saying a word. I can see an array of emotions playing across his strong features, and there’s indecision there. I’m afraid he’s going to get up and walk away leaving me with no answers at all.

“Look it wasn’t easy for me to reach out to you, but you obviously know what happened and you’re the only one I know who would actually tell me anything.”

“Why do you want to know now? I came here before to talk to you about this and you shut me down.”

I look down at my hands not wanting to show him any more vulnerability, not wanting him to see just how affected I still am. “I was scared. I didn’t want to hear anything that might ruin my memory of Tyler and especially coming from you. But I can’t go on like this, if there’s more to the story then I need to know it.”

I look back up, and he’s scrubbing his face with the palm of his hands, likely trying to figure out what to do. When he looks back up at me, he seems to have made his decision. He takes another moment before finally speaking.

“Tyler liked to gamble, he liked to bet on sporting events, anything really. Baseball games, football, horse races, if you could place a bet on it he did. It started out innocently enough a game every now and then, a few hundred dollars here or there…but as time went on, as he got older, it got worse.”

“Worse how?”

“Higher stakes, bigger bookies. In the beginning he’d find low-level college bets, but when he felt like he wanted larger winnings, he went off campus and found a real bookie, someone who takes it very seriously.”

I close my eyes, resting my forehead in the palm of my hands. How didn’t I know this, how didn’t I see this happening? Was I really that oblivious, caught up in my own little fantasy world that I couldn’t see that Tyler was living a double life right under my nose?”

“Ev.”

“No,” I say, lifting my head. “It’s okay, go on.”

“It got out of hand, he did well at first he won a lot of money and then he’d lose some big ones here and there. He’d bet on another game trying to dig himself out of the debt until it became too much, got out of control.”

“Did you do it too?”

“No. I thought it was stupid, and I tried to get him to stop. I saw him getting in deeper and I tried, I swear to you I did, but he was obviously addicted to it.”

“What was he doing with all the money he won?”

He lets out a sigh and shakes his head.

“Oh my God,” I breathe out, realization dawning on me. “Was that how he paid for the construction of this house?”

“Yes most of it.”

“He told me he’d used the money he inherited from his grandparent’s deaths.”

“He had some money, but not a lot; he gambled away a lot of that inheritance,” he explains.

“Why? Why would he do that? The house could have waited, I never pushed him for it, I swear. It wouldn’t have mattered to me.”

“I believe you, but he wanted it for you, and when he wanted something he got it.”

I look at him stunned, my body frozen, unmoving and more than anything sad. Sad for what Tyler felt he had to do to get ahead. I sit here wondering if I played a part in that belief, wondering if I ever did anything or said anything to make him think I had to have whatever it was he was trying to provide me, when really all I ever needed was him.

“In the end he owed over a hundred thousand dollars Ev. He called me the morning after the wedding. He told me he was taking all of the cash you guys had received for wedding presents and he was meeting with the bookie to pay him something as a sign of good faith.”

“He took our wedding money?” I question in disbelief. Would he really have done something like that? Did he think I wouldn’t have questioned him about that at some point?

“Didn’t you ever notice it was gone?”

“I never even thought about it Luca,” I answer honestly. Money was the furthest thing from my mind at that point. “My husband was dead. I just assumed my parents or his went through it and took care of it. There was money in my bank account, I just assumed. I guess I just didn’t care.”

“I told him not to go,” he tells me, leaning back in his seat. “That it was a bad idea, I told him to get on the plane with you, enjoy the honeymoon, and worry about it when he got back. But he was afraid it was going to somehow spill over onto you, that they were going to come looking for him and get to you. I couldn’t convince him otherwise, and I’m not so sure that he was wrong. It got to the point that I was a little scared for your safety too.”

Chills run through my body at the thought of how I could have possibly gotten caught in the crossfire. I might have been in danger too, and I guess I can understand why he felt like he had to at least try to go and smooth things over. I remember the conversation that we had that morning at the hotel.