A High Price

TW: Suicide/self harm and physical violence 

“Mommy’s always sad,” Nolan had said, nestled against Julian as they stared out the window into the backyard. Though he hadn’t been to Julian’s house in almost nine weeks, perhaps the two-year relationship they’d had before hadn’t been totally uprooted.

He had told Julian many other things, too, and though Julian didn’t push him to say more than he was comfortable, he read between the lines. Now he double-checked to make sure his gun was loaded as he strode out to his car. 

It had been three days since Emilia had dropped Nolan off, at midnight and in tears, unwilling to listen to Julian’s pleas for her to stay. Only a few minutes ago she had come back to pick him up, her mascara smeared as though she’d had it on for days and done several touch-up jobs. A black sedan idled on the street behind her. She hadn’t had time to wait for Julian to grab Nolan’s blankie. 

“He knew I was here,” she had murmured, her eyes dry but voice shaking. “He had my location—I didn’t know. He realized that I was going to try to leave.”

And then Julian had begged her to stay. He would protect her. He would help her go wherever she wished. But she had refused. Her emerald green eyes told a story of resignation rather than fear. She’d barely finished buckling Nolan into his car seat and slipping into the passenger seat before the sedan squealed and sped off.

The devil in the seat beside her might hold her hand. Might reach over the console to rest his hand on her thigh. Perhaps he would even force her closer, kiss her, his blood-stained lips on her bleeding ones. He didn’t deserve her.

“Everyone’s better off without me,” Emilia had said that night when she brought her son. “Especially Nolan.” The porch lights gave her face a sallow hue. Despite the humidity, she trembled slightly. He’d argued with her, cursing the parasite that had made her feel this way. For it hadn’t always been like this. She had lost herself and was more unhappy than she used to be.

But she left, walked away with a last entreatment to take care of Nolan. And then he’d lost her, lost her between raindrop and darkness.

Now he had a chance to find her again, for he, too, had her location. They’d exchanged long ago when she lived with him. He rarely checked it then, and he hesitated to check it now. It was an invasion of privacy. What if she felt like he betrayed her? Or she was angry at the breach of trust?

He had an excuse, if it came to that. Nolan wouldn’t ever sleep without his blankie. His decision might have been unreasonable, but he’d already lost his mind. He was close to losing his job, too, as his boss had made clear when he called out for the third time that week. But damned if he was going to let that devil control her for another day.

The apartment was in the heart of the city, and traffic dragged the 9 miles into 25 minutes. The small parking lot outside the apartment boasted barely visible lines, but the hedges lining the front walkway were carefully manicured, if a bit brown. The beige and brown cement stretched upward for five stories, every window peering into a dark room beyond. Or perhaps the sunlight just made it appear that way.

The lobby and front desk were empty. He walked past them to the stairwell. It smelled musty, like a closet full of old furniture and moth balls. The door slammed behind him and his footsteps echoed on the rubber steps. A window at each turn of the stairs let a little sunlight inside, but it was more of a mockery than anything—too high to point toward anything but the sky, giving an illusion of freedom in the suffocating space.

She was on the second floor. Six rooms from the stairwell. The door’s peeling white paint revealed plywood beneath. 

The silence from within conflicted the clear signal that Emilia was in there. Or…no. Perhaps she hadn’t brought her phone with her at all. Perhaps it had been in there the whole time and she was elsewhere, still in the car with Evan, submitting to wherever he dragged her. 

When he tried the knob, the door slipped open silently. The hinges must have been recently oiled.

A red—or perhaps brown—patterned rug ran from the door to the center of the room. A faux fireplace flickered in front of a leather couch, and between them stood a mahogany coffee table. The overhead light, attached to five slowly-moving fan blades, bathed the room in mild color, with only one light bulb working out of three.

To his left, a door led into another dimly lit room. He pushed it open. There was a bed…a lamp…a dresser. 

Nolan stood in front of another doorway to the right, so transfixed on something that he paid no attention to Julian’s approach. A sound came from the room beyond, like a hoarse cry.

Emilia was there. In the bathroom. Her eyes were half-shut, her face blanched of all blood, more gray than white. Her lips matched the color. With a belt around her neck, she hung from the shower rod a foot from the ceiling. An overturned stool lay a few feet away.

Julian brushed past Nolan and clasped her legs, lifting her up until the belt ceased to choke her. But he still had to cut it off. Where was his pocket knife? Not in his pockets. Maybe in his car. Too far. 

He breathed. She wasn’t heavy, but it felt like she was slipping. He couldn’t let go.

Nolan could help. The child surely knew how to safely carry a knife. And there was no danger from Evan. If he was there, he would’ve been in the room already. “Nolan, go get something sharp. Go get a knife.”

The child returned in a matter of seconds—the urgency in Julian’s tone probably frightened him. His little arms shook and he backed against the bathroom wall, staring at his mother.

Julian sliced through the belt and Emilia collapsed into his arms. He sank to his knees, cradling her head. “Emilia, darling.”

As he dialed 911, Emilia struggled to speak. Her voice was raspy and slurred, almost too faint to hear. “I’m sorry.”

“Shh. It’s going to be okay.”

“I told you everyone was better off without me.”

“It wasn’t true then, and it isn’t true now.” He stroked her forehead, then held out his arm to Nolan. The child’s eyes were wide but without tears. He pressed himself against Julian.

Julian answered the emergency operator’s questions mechanically, hopefully correctly. He had no idea what she asked, nor what he was saying. Where was Evan? Had he known she was going to kill herself? Would he have cared?

He’d just begun to lift Emilia into his arms when she gasped. Julian didn’t have to look up to know who it was. He grasped Nolan’s arm and pulled the child behind him, then drew his gun.

A few feet back from the doorway stood Evan, a small man—no taller than 5’4”—but with muscles bursting from his oversized tank top, as though the physique of Hercules had been stuffed into the body of a toddler. He looked ridiculous, and more so with his mouth stubbornly set. He exuded arrogance, a false sense of power.

He had his gun drawn and pointed at Emilia, his finger on the trigger. “You’ve always caused more trouble than you’re worth,” he muttered, so indistinctly that Julian questioned if he’d heard correctly. But he had little real doubt.

The rounds from Julian’s gun echoed beneath the low apartment ceiling, breaking the silence like thunder rupturing clouds. Footsteps would come now. People would be curious, horrified. They would try to aid the villain, but he was already beyond help. But no sound came from outside.

Evan fell to the ground, the slam shaking the room. Glass rattled and then shattered from a different room in the apartment. 

He was dead. Julian had killed him. He forced his gun back in the holster. Emilia watched him, but he couldn’t read her expression. Fear? Sorrow? Disbelief? “I’m sorry, darling.” But he wasn’t, not really. Only for the pain it might cause her, and her son, did he feel any regret. 

Evan had deserved it. There was no question in Julian’s mind. Indeed, he had deserved a much more painful death than that. If Julian could do it again he would, and he would do it with less provocation, too.

Evan’s ring on Emilia’s finger had never looked right. The diamond was as fake as his love for her. Julian slipped it off but resisted the urge to cast it away. It wasn’t his to cast. He held onto it for a moment, then zipped it into her jacket pocket. She would have it if she really wanted it. At least Evan could have her no longer.

He held Emilia and Nolan until the sirens came, until the uniformed men burst into the room, until they wheeled Emilia out on a stretcher, carrying Nolan in their arms and pushing Julian ahead of them with his hands cuffed behind his back.