Emily

In the two minutes I wait in bed every night for my husband as he brushes his teeth, a million thoughts run through my mind. Too many thoughts for me to act on in the small time allotted in his simple night routine. Do I stow a kitchen knife under my pillow to protect myself? Do I take this moment of distraction as the sound of the electric toothbrush fills his head and make a run for it? Do I call the police? Reach out to a friend? Will anyone believe me?

It’s been three weeks since our daughter Emily’s disappearance was dismissed as a runaway case after the evidence - or lack there of - ruled out foul play. But I think my husband is a murderer. In fact, I know. At least on most days I trust what I saw. But he has a special hold on me, a way with words, some long used tactics that make me doubt myself. And this in conjunction with my long-standing diagnosis of Schizophrenia is enough to render me actionless - if not for my own shreds of doubt then certainly for the fact that no one would believe me if I came out with the truth. 

But three weeks ago when I awoke in the middle of the night from a panic filled dream, I found my husband Josh’s side of the bed deserted. Suspicious, I walked gingerly down the hall to the cracked door of Emily’s room and heard her desperate gasps and muffled screams coming from under her pillow and Josh’s unmistakable silhouette pressing his weight down onto the pillow, and her. Instinctively I ran, almost flew down the hallway, back into the master bedroom and into the bathroom, locking the door behind me. As I recall it I feel shame that in my daughter’s last moments, unable to fight for herself, I chose flight. But over the twelve year’s I’ve known Josh, my own sense of identity has irreparably shifted and cemented itself as a weak person. My fear and the awareness of my own mortality in that moment met my weak sense of self, and I was and not the hero I wished I could be in that moment.

I stayed very still and quiet in the bathroom to see if I could make out what was going on in my house through any auditory clues. Eventually I heard the front door swing open and the sound of the car door unlocking. Looking outside the small bathroom window I saw Josh carrying Emily’s limp body to the car. 

My daughter Emily was diagnosed with Titin’s Muscular Dystrophy at two years old, a conclusion that was almost two years in the making after it became very apparent that Emily’s development was not on track at her first doctor’s appointment after birth. At ten years old now, Emily’s body was weak, unable to fight back, and Josh carried her to the car with incredible ease and swiftness. He opened the trunk of the car without a hassle, and tossed her in the back.

The police made the assumption that Emily’s supposed runaway stemmed from her frustration from not being able to live an independent life with her disability under our care. They had reason to believe she had begun communicating with a stranger online about creating a new life away from her restrictions and reputation she was living under at home and in her community. This of course was deduced from Emily’s internet history - something not at all difficult to plant. Should her body ever be found, there is no doubt that the number one suspect would be her craigslist accomplice, whom the police have been trying to locate for the past three weeks.

However, the narrative presented to me by investigators is not only incongruent with what I know of Emily’s personality, but of the evidence I hold in secret, collected with my own eyes. The only question is, what will I do with it?

“What are you thinking about, honey?” Josh asks, emerging from the master bathroom.

“Emily,” I admit, omitting the larger context of my thoughts.

“Yeah, it’s tough,” Josh concedes, with an attitude so blasé I am sure it would cause suspicion should it be delivered on the stand or broadcasted on the news. But Josh is not a person of interest as far as the public or the police department is concerned.

When Emily was born, I had a twenty-four hour labour following a full day of already being awake. After a long labour and a brutal delivery with necessary, though non-consensual intervention, my postpartum experience was even more traumatic. Josh was not present for most of it and as a result I spent over one-hundred straight hours awake. By the time I was able to come home and Josh was consistently by my side, the hallucinations started. Josh reacted out of what I had believed to be care and concern by taking me straight to the hospital, where I was admitted into the mental ward without enough cognizance to give full consent. 

Over the years I’ve questioned Josh’s true motives as I regained memories of the experience, essentially trapped against my will and distraught over the separation from my newborn child. I have hazy flashbacks of screaming and crying out as much as my sleepless, post hemorrhage body could handle - the distress keeping me up longer and the hallucinations still persisting. The result, beyond the trauma, was a diagnosis of Schizophrenia and another hospital bill. 

Whenever I bring up my suspicions to Josh, refraining from an accusatory tone as much as I can, I am only made to believe that these thoughts are as absurd and delusional as I was during those forty-eight hours I spent in the ward - which were justified for my wellbeing in Josh’s point of view. Over this years this narrative has not only been the one that Josh has continually perpetuated, but the one I have absorbed in my own psyche after hearing it time and time again from him. And with each broach of the subject, the emotional temper of the conversation escalates. So I have since decided to leave the topic be for fear of being put in the position to go back there.

Fear rules my relationship with Josh, and over the years we’ve built a power dynamic based on it. I wonder every now and then why he kept Emily’s bedroom door cracked open when he smothered her that night. Was it because he didn’t fear me as a witness? Did he have that much faith in our long but slowly established fear and power dynamic? Equally I still wonder, progressively as the days go on - on mornings when I come down to a ready made breakfast table, on nights where I cry in Josh’s arms and he says all the right things, on days he admits to me how he misses her too and he’s sure she will come back - am I wrong? Was it all just a fever dream? Am I biased, or else delusional, or even just crazy?

It is after waking up again, in a panic, in the middle of the night - the same as I did the night Emily was killed - that I resolve to do something with my truth. I get out of bed, wrap myself in a robe and glide down to the kitchen as swiftly and noiselessly as I can. I pick up the phone and dial, and it isn’t long until I hear a voice pick up on the other side of the line.

“911 what is your emergency?”

“I need to report a murder,” I whisper into the receiver.

“Okay mam, is this something you’ve just witnessed now?”

“No,” I croak, “I saw my husband kill my daughter about three weeks ago now.”

“Okay,” the emergency line operator keeps her composure surprisingly well at this news and I am just relieved that she gives me the immediate benefit of belief. “Are you living with your husband? Can I get your address?”

“Yes, we live at 1722 Willowbrook avenue.”

“1722 Willowbrook?” The dispatcher confirms; but before I can assure her, I see Josh standing at the doorway of the kitchen.

“Jennifer?” He questions.

“Please send someone quick,” I stammer into the phone.

“Jennifer, what is going on?” Josh grabs the landline out of my hand and hangs it up. Now if he kills me there won’t be any recorded evidence.

“Get away from me,” I stand my ground and push Josh away with as much strength as I can muster, but he hardly budges.

“Jennifer, you’re having an episode,” he pulls me in to restrain me.

“I don’t have episodes!” I exclaim. “Get off off me!

“Jennifer, calm down.”

But when the police show up that’s exactly what he tells them - that his wife is suffering with another episode of psychosis. Somehow, my midnight phone call to report my husband for murder ends with me getting restrained and sedated, and I can’t even remember if I got to tell the police that Josh was the one who killed Emily.

I wake up the next morning on the couch, the restraints are off, but Josh is looming over me. His eyes are bloodshot and exhausted as if he’s been watching me all night; as if I couldn’t be trusted if left to my own devices.

“How are you feeling?” He asks me, with, if I didn’t know better might actually be a tone of concern.

“Unwell,” I admit.

“How? Are you still experiencing paranoia?”

“I have every right to be.”

I’m almost fuming again, and I can see that Josh is worried. His worry is heavily tinged with irritation, like he can’t believe I haven’t put the issue to bed like the police did with me, with a quick and painless tranquilizer. But underneath his irritation is certainly a heavy dose of worry. Maybe he’s realized what this means - maybe the power dynamic has finally flipped and I have made Josh my fearful subservient. In fact, I find that I’m full of a newfound confidence.

“To be honest, I don’t think paranoia is the right word for it at all,” I go on. “I know what I saw.”

“Jen,” he coddles, “We need to remember that sometimes you don’t always see things that are there.”

“That’s what you’ve made me believe,” I retort, my confidence swelling to the point where I’m almost unrecognizable, and I like it.

“Jen, we’ve made so much progress. I don’t know where this came from where suddenly you can’t trust me.”

But before I can make my case as to why Josh cannot be trusted, the doorbell rings.

Josh stares at me fearfully, although I have as little of a clue as he might about who is at the door. To both our surprises, and to Josh’s apparent relief, it’s a neighbor. She’s carrying something I can’t quite make out, almost like a purse but more so like some sort of crate.

“I have some good news for you,” the neighbor says beaming.

“Oh thank God,” Josh says, and they seem to have a rapport that I’m not in on because he reacts as if by that coy statement alone he understands exactly what she means. He goes to take the bag or crate, whatever the mysterious carry on item is that she has with her.

“If I’ve read the posters correctly, this must be your missing cat Emily.”

Your missing cat Emily.

“Oh thank you so much,” Josh is beside himself with relief. “We’ve been so worried about her.”

“It’s been raining pretty heavy for the past few days,” the neighbor notes in her neighborly way. “Good thing for little Emily we have a dog flap. Of course, she wasn’t too thrilled when she came in and found herself up against two dogs much bigger than her. I found her, soaking wet, under my bed.”

“Well aren’t you a trooper?” Josh is now addressing, this frail little cat, who, with the carrier set on the floor and the top zipped open, has just shyly poked her head out.

“She sure is,” the neighbor agrees.

“She’s ten years old and we’ve been needing to give her some medication because her legs are getting pretty weak. I think she was sick of it and she ran away one night just as I was loading the syringe.”

“Yeah, animals are smart. She knew what was coming and she wanted no part in it!”

Emily, the cat, makes her way fully out of the carrier and begins to explore the entryway, taking in the smells to make sure she is in the right place.

“Go on Em,” Josh coos. “Go say hi to Mommy. She’s been worried sick about you.”

I guess I have been.