He slowed. “Is there something interesting about your plate?” Sean asked, swallowing a bite.
She looked up at him, but couldn’t keep the tear from forming along the edge of her eye. “Just thinking.”
“About?”
About you dying. About the grand sin I’m committing. “About things.”
He nodded. “About things.”
“I don’t want to ruin the moment.”
He took her hand and came around the coffee table. This was it. What had to be done. Her heart hastened, and she sensed her calm exterior withering. It wasn’t just about what she would do, but what came after. How this was the last time. She had thought it would be easier. He was murderous. He was a monster.
And she loved him.
So she relaxed into his arms and kissed his mouth. A few minutes later they were naked, bodies pressing against one another under the thick blankets. When he entered her, she couldn’t stop the tears. He paused, said: “You okay?”
“Yeah.”
“You sure?”
She nodded a bunch, and they kept going. She rocked on top of him, Sean asking a few times if she was okay because the tears wouldn’t stop. He had no idea what was happening, what she was doing. That feeling, of betraying him in the most intimate of ways, stuck in her gut like a barb, clinging to her intestines, pulling, digging. When he climaxed, the look in his eyes. She would never forget the love there, the lust, the pleasure. No fear of death. No sickness. She lay still on him, wanting to keep him inside for as long as possible, kissing his cheeks while tears coursed down her own.
He whispered, “I love you,” and she told him the same. And she meant it. She meant it so much.
They lay afterward together under the blankets, Sean putting on a pair of long pajamas and socks beforehand. When he returned to her and yawned, she knew the pills were taking hold. She swallowed and nuzzled up against him, absorbing his heat, the tingle inside herself still lingering, remembering what he felt like inside her, cherishing it and storing it for the long, lonely nights to come.
Fifteen minutes later he was asleep. She rose and put a hand on his chest. Said his name, but he didn’t reply.
She waited, watching him breathe in and out slowly. Stayed that way forever. Then she dressed herself, listening for Aidan upstairs, for Sean waking up. Nothing happened. She would go through with it. She had to. She had to.
The shotgun was filled with duds, knowing Sean, so she grabbed the gun, still holstered on his jeans. She attached it to her own hip, feeling the weight of it there, its bulk. Removed it from its holster and held onto it, now feeling its power. She had shot this very weapon countless times, knew the damage it could do. A sickening sensation bubbled up from her legs through her whole body. She re-holstered it.
Sean didn’t wake. So she looped her arms under his armpits and dragged him backward. He was heavy. Heavier than she was expecting. She moved him in slow, deliberate sprints followed by a few seconds of rest. He kept sleeping.
When she unlatched the door to the garage, he groaned. She stopped. He muttered to himself and then a stream of drool ran down his cheek, but his stirring went no further. She blew a rogue hair away from her eyes and bowed her head. This was wrong. This was all wrong. Dragging her husband outside to freeze to death. She looked over to the staircase and imagined herself going up those steps to Aidan. To deliver the news. Aidan’s face when she said it. How this would crush his soul.
She shook her head. Just get it done, she thought to herself. It’s the only way. It’s the only—
Her hand was already turning the doorknob, cracking it. She threw on a heavy coat, hat and gloves, and opened the door. The chilled air from the garage rushed over them. Sean didn’t move. “Please don’t wake up,” she whispered to him, a little because she feared what he might do, more because she didn’t want to have to explain herself.
She dragged him into the garage, waddling back and forth with his weight in her arms, his feet dragging against the frozen concrete, his head bowed downward, body like a dead fish. She reached the door leading to the backyard before she had to take a break. Her lungs felt constricted, like there was scarcely any oxygen in the air. She laid his head against her feet, put her hands on her knees like she had been punched in the stomach, gnashed her teeth together, and allowed a painful, subdued moan to escape from behind her teeth. She wanted to scream. Wanted to cry out and curse and stamp her feet. None of this was right. Leaving her child without a father. Leaving her hopes and dreams of dying at a ripe old age with her husband out in the freezing cold. Life was never meant to be like it was, so painful and filled with tears. Life was never supposed to be where survival meant killing the person she held most dear. It wasn’t supposed to end like this. Not like this.
She knelt and held his head in her hands and kissed his forehead and stroked his hair, her wet hot tears dripping onto his neck. Her husband of almost twenty years, the love of her life, the only man she had ever really wanted to be with. She whispered over and over that she was sorry, asking for forgiveness she would never get, then she took him back into her arms and dragged him toward the backyard.
There was no holding it in anymore, her groans now became full-blown sobs. She got the backdoor open and started out into the backyard as the light receded from the clouds. Her arms grew weaker as she pulled on his body. She prayed. Prayed hard for forgiveness, not sure if she would ever get it. Not sure if God was even listening anymore but praying regardless. Halfway through the backyard now.
When Sean opened his eyes.
She hopped backward and dropped him, the back of Sean’s head smacking against the hardened frozen soil, Sean screaming out in pain. Elise backtracked into the snow, her hands slapping around her hip for the gun but not finding it.
He rubbed his head and looked around at the dark snow piles, at his scarcely-dressed body, at his wife, and then back at himself, his face flashing confusion. “Elise?”
She had the gun out now, standing between Sean and the home.
He blinked, and it was as if he knew what was happening. “Elise.”
“Please, Sean, don’t.”
“Elise,” he said, still on the ground, his hand over his forehead, sounding confused. Acting confused. It had to be an act. Playing her. “What’s going on?”
She settled the pistol’s bead onto his chest. Everything inside her screamed for her to stop. This was rule number one: don’t point weapons at people, particularly those you love. And never point a weapon unless you’re ready to use it. But she wasn’t ready. “You weren’t supposed to wake up.”
He had one hand raised toward her. “Just calm down, okay?” Consternation spread across his face. All his planning—all his violence and the death he had caused—meant nothing facing down the barrel of his own gun. “Let’s just calm down, okay?”
“You weren’t supposed to wake up.”
“I don’t know what you think you’re—”
“You killed him. You killed Andrew.”
He said nothing for a while. “Elise—”
“I found the pill bottle.”
“You’re not thinking straight.”
“Stop it,” she yelled. “Stop it. Don’t try. You killed him. And you sent Kelly out to get shot. And then you killed Michael.”
Sean said nothing.
“Try to deny it. Go ahead.”
“You’re right.”
Elise lowered the weapon an inch. The bitter cold wind kicked up against them and settled. For the first time Elise noticed the snow falling around them—bright white, fluffy snow. She raised the gun again and took two steps back.
“I did it. All of it, okay? All of it.”