One starry night

She closed her eyes and shed a tear then opened them back up to the glowing, starry sky. Lying flat on her back, her ginger hair intertwined with the grass, she stared straight up trying to connect the twinkling lights above as if they could change the past. If she squinted they almost looked like the plastic glow-in-the-dark ones her mom put up in her childhood bedroom. If only she could go back to that tiny, pink room, hug her Dora the explorer pillow and truly believe that everything was okay. 

It's been a whole month since Tabitha went into hiding and for so long she’s had no one to talk to except for the rabbit that occasionally visits. Even if she wanted to make a friend she could never tell them about what she did. Sometimes, on these lonely evenings, she almost convinces herself  that this might have been entirely her fault but that couldn't be true, could it?

~One month earlier~

“Hey Tabs, have you seen my phone?” Said Jess, Tabitha’s roommate.

“No, I just got home.” Tabitha answered

“Oh, never mind I found it.” She said as she pulled her arm back from underneath the torn leather sofa. “What time are you and Henry going out tonight?”

“Not until eight. He works late.” Tabitha said with a hint of disappointment in her voice.

“Oh, well I’m going to be out for a while but have fun when he gets here” As Jess shut the door Tabitha’s heart sank and was overwhelmed with the intense feeling that maybe Henry wasn’t going to show up at all, again.

Tabitha sat her brown, leather bag on the entrance table, made her way to the kitchen and cracked open the fridge. As the cool air kissed her face she let out a sigh feeling as though it's been trapped inside her all day. She stared at the leftover Chinese food and wondered how many more nights she could do this. How many more evenings she would get excited about seeing him for once and then get that dreaded text that there was no time in his schedule for her. Maybe there was just no time in his life for her anymore. 

Stumbling over to her bedroom, she tried to remind herself of how great Henry really was despite his lack of planning skills. Tabitha and Henry had been together for three years and he loved her so much. Whenever she would gaze into his hazel eyes her stomach would fill with butterflies and reassure her that loving him as genuinely as possible was no mistake. He loved to spoil her every year on her birthday and even just sometimes for fun because his greatest joy in life was being with Tabitha. She had never been so sure that he was the one she was going to spend the rest of her life with and a couple weeks of spending time at work was not going to change that.

She walked through the hall and stepped onto the cold hard wood sending a chill up her legs that tickled her spine. She went over to her white dresser and rummaged through the drawer. Pulling out a pair of yellow woolen socks, her mind was flooded with old memories. Henry had attempted to knit them for her as a present for her twenty-eighth birthday. She let a quiet chuckle escape her lips as she slipped them on feeling every hole and pulled thread created by his lack of knitting skills. As she turned around to leave the room something caught her eye. It was a picture on a shelf almost too high to reach. Standing on her tiptoes she grabbed it for a closer look. It was a scruffy middle aged man holding a baby. Her eyebrows lowered as she tried to decipher who the man was. After a minute of confusion her eyes widened and jaw dropped. It was her father. He had left her and her mother when she was four and had never seen him since. She could feel the heat of tears building up behind her eyes. He was smiling so big. Her body trembled as the tears streamed down her cheeks. I thought he loved me. She looked down at the photo and watched her tears collect on the glass.

“That bastard.”  She whispered. “Why did he leave?”

Suddenly she was overwhelmed with the intense anger that had consumed her days as a teenager when her mom told her what her father had done. She wanted to smash the picture against the wall and watch the glass shatter. Instead she removed the picture from the frame, tossed the picture into the garbage, and threw herself onto the sky blue duvet. Jess must have found the picture somewhere and put it in her room by mistake but it doesn’t matter how it got there all that matters now is that she will never have to see it again.

Two hours later Tabitha was rudely awoken by a loud knock at the door. A bit startled, she sat up off the bed, rubbed her eyes, and sprinted down the hallway to the door. When she opened it she noticed Henry smiling on the other side. Her heart skipped a beat.

“Henry!” Exclaimed Tabitha. “You’re early.”

“Yeah, I just couldn’t wait to see you.” Henry replied. “It’s been too long since we last spent time together.”

“Come in.” She waved him inside and shut the old wood door behind him.

The couple made their way to the couch and sat down with no space between them. Tabitha’s smile was bright and childlike as she stared at Henry going on about his day.

“We better get going.” Henry interrupted. “Our reservation is in a half hour and traffic is pretty bad out there.”

“Okay, I just want to fix my hair in the bathroom before we go.”

As Tabitha made her way to the bathroom she felt on top of the world. Henry was right there, with her. Any fear she ever had of him choosing work over her was out the window. She flicked on the bathroom light and combed through her hair with her fingers then let it fall back to her shoulders. Looking into the mirror she saw herself glow brighter than ever. She took a deep breath then reentered the hall. Just as she was about to turn the corner she saw Henry on the phone. She was about to take another step when one word stopped her dead in her tracks. 

“-baby,” Henry spoke softly.

Who the hell was he talking to? She was the only one he would call that.

“Not tonight, i've got a lot of work to do at the office.” He looked down at the ground with a sly smirk on his face.

Why did he lie! Was he cheating on her? Tabitha continued over to the couch and sat down next to him.

“Hey,” Tabitha said.

“Hey.” Henry responded sweetly.

“Who was that?”

“Nobody.” He waved his hand reassuring her. 

Tabitha looked down at her lap, rubbing her sweaty palms together, then looked back up at Henry who was smiling innocently.

“Why did you lie?”

“What?” His voice got higher.

“Why did you lie and say that you were at the office?” Her voice was stern.

Henry stared down at the shag carpet, rubbed his forehead, and sighed accepting defeat. 

“I’m so sorry, Tabby.” His eyes remained glued to the ground.

“How long?” There was no response. “I said how long!”

“Four months.”

Tabitha stood up and walked to the kitchen. 

“Four months.” she muttered. Feeling as though she was going insane she gripped the edge of the marble island and shut her eyes tight.

“I'm sorry!” Henry shouted incencerly as he jumped up off the couch.

“How could you do this to me.” she spoke in an almost inaudible tone. I thought he loved me. A single tear escaped her eye and stung her face. Just like I thought my father loved me.

“Tabby.” Henry was waiting for her response.

She opened her eyes and found them staring right at a shiny, steel kitchen knife left out from Jess’s lunch.

“Tabitha!” His eyebrows were narrowed and his eyes were sharp.

She reached out and grabbed the knife firmly and lifted it up off of the counter. Looking up, she saw Henry shouting in slow motion and threw the knife. She watched as it sliced through the air and broke through the skin on Henry’s neck leaving a giant gash. His eyes bulged as he dropped heavily to the ground smacking his head on the coffee table. Tabitha walked over to him slowly and found him lying in a pool of blood, lifeless and still. She backed up and hit her back on the island. Her mind was racing as she breathed heavily and pressed her hands on her head. 

After a few minutes she collected herself, grabbed her brown leather bag, and walked out the door. She mindlessly made her way down the stairs, through the lobby, and out into the parking lot. Finding her beat up, black, SUV she climbed into the driver’s seat and started the car. As she pulled out onto the road she could feel her heart pounding. She soon came to the realization that she could never go back to that old apartment and she certainly couldn’t stay in town. She just killed someone. She would have to go somewhere far away.

Just as Tabitha was about to pass the seven eleven on the edge of town she remembered that her grandma used to live in an old house in the middle of a field about two hours from here. When she died no one wanted to sell the house because of how old it was. The last time Tabitha was there the walls were boarded and the ceiling was always leaking but it would be a better place to live than the apartment she just came from.

It was almost midnight by the time she reached the narrow dirt road that led her through the hills into a quiet valley. She parked the car on the grass and approached the old yellow house the size of two sheds. When she walked up the concrete steps she could feel the nostalgia wash over her. She turned around and could still imagine her brother chasing her in the field and laughing so hard they couldn’t breathe. Turning back she brought her sleeve to her eyes and knew that she would be doing that quite often. She tugged open the peeling white door and stepped inside a dark, dingey house. It was cold, wet and had cobwebs in all of the corners. She wandered to the kitchen and found a candle and some matches in a drawer. As she lit the candle she sunk to the dusty, wooden floor. All she wanted to do was sleep. She curled up and layed on her side letting her head rest on a creaky board. Tomorrow she would wake up to the reality of the rest of her life.

After a month of living there she adjusted to lighting candles at night to keep away the darkness and driving to a small town to buy groceries a couple times a month but she never got used to being alone. She had almost no interactions with anyone and felt the depression creep into her mind when the sun faded. Every night, just like this one, Tabitha would walk outside, lay in the grass, and look at the stars until the pain of being truly alone hurt a little less.

She closed her eyes and shed a tear then opened them back up to the glowing, starry sky. Lying flat on her back, her ginger hair intertwined with the grass, she stared straight up trying to connect the twinkling lights above as if they could change the past but they never could. After a moment of thinking, Tabitha lifted herself from the earth and started to walk farther from the house. Soon the little yellow house was no longer visible, all she saw was a river straight ahead. She walked up to the edge, took off her black, lace up, boots and walked right in. The water was freezing but she didn’t care. It was just nice to feel something other than the emotional pain eating her away. Soon her head was almost below the water. Tabitha looked up at the stars watching them shine brighter than she ever could, then closed her eyes and let her body sink down until she hit the bottom never coming back up.