Discontent

   CW: physical violence, suicide

       Juror Number 1 rose, ready to deliver the verdict I’d waited for for a year but suddenly didn’t want to hear. Beside me on a bench that seemed to have sprouted thorns, Adrien patted my shoulder as if to reassure me a final time that what I needed would happen—that the monster who had stolen my little girl would face as much punishment as the system had to offer.

I could see why he thought so. As he’d told the support group through which we’d met a year ago, the man who had taken his daughter had received a “guilty” verdict and a lethal injection. Four months after that, when he’d caught me on that bridge, looking down at turquoise water crashing against the rocks, he’d talked me down, in part, by telling me that, once the system had carried out that punishment, he’d felt content. Though not perfect, that had sounded like Heaven, and, eventually, it had convinced me to give the life that had betrayed me another shot.

           Now, it may squander it.

           I pulled a breath into lungs as stiff as baseball gloves, sweat trickling down my neck and back, heart racing. The juror, too, took a breath and said, “Your Honor, we, the ladies and gentlemen of the jury, find the defendant, Payton Emery Vinyard, not guilty.”

           The words impaled me, twisting and turning, flaying my innards, ripping bone from muscle. I gripped the bench so tightly that my knuckles blanched—the only way to avoid melting onto the floor. This couldn’t happen, my brain screamed. They couldn’t possibly have heard all of the testimony, confronted all of the evidence, and still thought Vinyard innocent. I wanted to jump to my feet, to scream at the top of my lungs, “What the hell is wrong with you people? Don’t you see it? Don’t you see it?” Instead, I bit my tongue, shaking.

           “It’s all right, Jamie,” Adrien said. “We’re gonna—“

           “All right?” I repeated, eyes nearly popping out of my skull. How could he possibly think this “all right”?

           He couldn’t. He was just desperate for something to say, some way to calm me down, and he’d blurted the first thing that came to mind. He had nothing better, because he didn’t understand—the one person I’d previously considered a kindred spirit didn’t understand, leaving me as alone as I’d felt the day Maiya’s body had washed up on the shores of the Agnes River.

           So what options did that leave? I wracked my brain as I stared straight ahead, at the rectangles suit jackets had made of the backs of the monster and his henchman. Then, they rose and turned toward one another. I could see now that they’d broken into smiles, and they shook hands with a celebratory jerk. They didn’t care that Maiya would never achieve her dream of working as a pharmacist; never visit Big Ben, a wonder that had always fascinated her; never enjoy the new iPhone she’d begged for and I’d bought her for Christmas three months hence; never even celebrate her fourteenth birthday. A rage the likes of which I’d never felt before exploded within me. It scalded my guts, every atom flaming, every synapse sizzling. My fists clenched so tightly that my nails pierced my palms. I knew what I had to do.

           But I could not do it here. I had to get away, had to plan, had to choose somewhere secluded, somewhere where his blood would not splatter on an innocent individual’s t-shirt or jeans or purse. I could think of only one such place.

           I’d do it as soon as I could get him alone.

*         *         *

           I caught him outside, fetching his mail. I snuck up behind him, pulled out the gun I should have but had not gotten before he’d barged into our lives, pressed it to his back, and nudged him to the car, where I bound his wrists and ankles. By then, he’d begun babbling, telling me that he hadn’t killed Maiya and that, if I let him go now, he wouldn’t talk, and we could pretend that this had never happened. I told him to shut up before hauling him into the trunk and slamming it shut.

           I drove, pulse a bass drum, sweat plastering my shirt to my back despite the brisk temperature. The gaps between the houses flitting by outside the windows deteriorated, the gaps between them lengthening. Finally, we reached our destination, little more than a shack, whose chipped siding and cracked windows stood with about as much surety as a Jenga skyscraper. I pulled into the driveway, its churned gravel crackling beneath my tires, and turned the car off.

           I’d expected something profound by now—tingling in my chest; a smile tugging my lips; electricity coursing through my bones; the satisfaction that the justice system had refused to provide. I felt none of that. But plenty of time remained, I told myself. It would come when I did what I’d set out to do, when I watched the life drain from his eyes as his screams faded into silence. So I continued, climbing out of the car, walking to the trunk, opening it. Vinyard resumed pleading. I told him to shut up. He didn’t. I shoved the gun in his face. He bit his tongue.

           I hauled him into the house, into what had once functioned as a living room, and deposited him on one of the dusty velvet sofas bleeding stuffing positioned in an “L” around a caved-in coffee table. I aimed the gun, hating myself for letting him see it tremble in my hands, and forced a breath into rigid lungs. I’d rehearsed what I’d say to him, over and over, but, now that I actually stood before him, it didn’t seem good enough. Nothing seemed good enough. Words could not convey what he’d done to me, what he’d done to her, or the horrors I hoped he’d face in the pit into which this final act would cast him. I’d just have to do my best and hope, against all logic, that something, somewhere in the midst of what I did say, would get to him.

           The door burst open. I nearly hit the ceiling.

“Don’t do it, Jamison.”

I turned toward the culprit. “Adrien. What’re you doing here?”

           “Stopping you from making a mistake.”

            I shook my head, brows furrowing. “How’d you even know I was—“

           “I saw you at the trial. It was written all over your face that you were planning something like this, and you wouldn’t answer my calls, and then I saw you speeding around, and I had a feeling this was it, so I followed you.” He waved dismissively. “But that doesn’t matter. Point is, you can’t do this.”

           “It’s the only way.” He had to know that. If in my shoes, he would’ve done the same thing. Wouldn’t he?

           “It’s not gonna give you what you want.”

           I shook my head, guts twisting. “You said this’s how it works. See ‘em go, and you’re content…”

           Adrien nodded, eyes flashing like those of one in a tornado’s path. “Yeah, yeah, I know that’s what I said, but that’s not how it works.”

           My stomach twitched. “What do you mean?”

           “You’ll never be content.”

           I felt as if he’d dropped a grand piano on my head; all breath left me, save for enough to eke, “What?”

           “Whether you do this or not—it doesn’t make a difference. You’ll never be content.”

           I shook my head, mouth as dry as a cactus. He’d lied to me. He’d stood before me, looked me in the eye, and lied to me. He didn’t care that he’d given me false hope, set me up for disappointment, manipulated me as one would an adversary rather than someone one viewed as his brother. All fine with him, as long as he got what he wanted.

           “It does get better, though,” he persisted, fixing me with a glare so earnest that my retorts died on my lips. “It hurts less and less when you think about her, and, eventually, it gets to a point where the good that comes out of it outweighs the bad. But you won’t get to that point if you spend the rest of your life rotting for the sake of this loser.

           “Let him go, Jamie.”

           I froze, staring at him, not knowing whether I could believe him. I couldn’t imagine it ever hurting less, or the fury ever cooling when I thought of him roaming free while Maiya lay in her grave. Adrien had lied to me once. He could lie to me again.

           But I could see in his eyes, hear in his voice, that this was not the case. Whether I could picture it or not, what he’d said would happen—or at least, it had happened for him.

           I took a breath, swallowed, and, slowly, lowered the gun.