Twenty-Four Years

It had been twenty-four years since she’d last seen it, but the place looked exactly the same: peaceful. Peaceful was the perfect word to describe how she felt as she got out of her car and walked along the asphalt path toward her destination. She couldn’t help but take in the well-manicured grass, the flowering trees, and the beautiful blue sky.

As she came around a curve in the path, the reason for her visit to this place came into view. She stopped. The growing tension in her abdomen felt like an invading army, attacking and destroying the peace she had felt just moments before.

After a few deep breaths, she willed her legs to move and, one slow step at a time, she drew closer even as her destination seemed to move away from her into a narrow, dark tunnel. To see what she was about to see was exactly why she had come here. She could not turn back now. Lowering her gaze to the path directly in front of her seemed to help.

She took the last few steps and, after twenty-four years, she had finally returned. Still keeping her eyes on the path, she steadied herself. She took a deep breath then slowly raised her head until her eyes came to rest on his name, carved into the black granite gravestone.

She had met him twenty-six years before at a party thrown by a mutual friend. Her friend later had sworn that the party had not been a setup for the two of them to meet but everyone else at the party had been couples. When she was introduced to him, she made sure to give her friend the evil eye. Her friend just grinned then walked away, leaving the two of them alone. 

She had been divorced for less than a year and her friends had been pushing her to start dating but she wasn’t sure if she was ready. Being the good sport that she was, however, she had decided to play along. He was rather handsome after all and immediately made her laugh. So far so good.

They had indeed hit if off but, after a few dates, he began buying clothes for her and insisting that she wear them when they were together. She tried to tell him that she was comfortable with her own wardrobe but he became irritated and told her that he liked being with the beautiful woman that she was but, also, the beautiful woman who dressed beautifully. 

Even though the outfits were not really her style, in order to keep the peace in this new relationship, she agreed that maybe it was time for a change. After all, he was paying for the new clothes. 

A short time later, he surprised her with a spa day. He told her she would be enjoying a full-body massage with a seaweed wrap, a facial, a mani-cure, and a pedi-cure. He definitely had her attention at this point. She had not been to a spa in several years. Then, he reached out and took a lock of her hair in his fingers, looked her in the eye and added to the list: an entirely new hair color and style.

She took a step back and told him to go to hell. He back-handed her across the face then immediately grabbed her by the shoulders and began apologizing like a repentant sinner. He begged her to forgive him and made the excuse that he felt insulted at her reaction to his generous gift and had overreacted.

Her thoughts immediately returned to a voice-mail that had been left on her phone right after she had separated from her first husband. By his mother. Her mother-in-law told her that she was a weak and pathetic woman and that, if her husband’s eyes were wandering to other women, it was her fault and she needed to work harder to save her marriage.

So, she decided to forgive him but she was not going to change her hair style and especially not her hair color. He apologized again and offered to take her to their favorite restaurant for dinner. She told him she would take a rain-check.

That was only the beginning. He would go away for weekend golf trips with his friends but return and tell her he needed to borrow money. Not much at first but in ever increasing amounts. 

Although he began accusing her of cheating, she would catch glimpses of flirty text messages on his phone. If she asked about them, he would accuse her of spying on him and not trusting him, making her feel like the guilty party. 

Months and months of stress from dealing with ever-increasing suspicions, arguments, break-ups and reconciliations and the inner turmoil of wanting to prove she was strong enough to deal with anything took its toll. Her new business was suffering. She wasn’t sleeping. She needed a break. She discussed the idea of a short break with him and, in order to appease her, he agreed.

Immediately, he began sending text messages and leaving voice mails that flip-flopped between anger and apology. After a week of ignoring him, he finally stopped. The stress, however, from the anticipation of that next call or text message would not subside for several more days. 

After a couple of weeks of radio silence, she received a text that simply said, “Great news! I’ll call you. Please pick up.” Before she had any time to process this, her phone rang. She picked up.

He suggested that, since they had taken a break, and had had time to think, they should go out for dinner and talk things out. He had some exciting news to tell her. Would this just be one more in a long string of talk-things-out dinners? She had decided that it would not. This would be the last one. No matter what he said to her, she was going to end it.

But as he talked about how he had learned a lot from his new therapist and as he presented his plan for how he would become a better person, a scene of her ex-mother-in-law wagging her finger at her and lecturing her like a child for being weak and telling her she should give him one more chance, kept playing in her head in an unending loop.

Maybe she should give him one more chance. After all, this conversation had seemed different, had it not? He had seemed different. He was getting help. He had seemed sincere as he laid out his plan to change. Could she believe him? Did she dare believe him?

As the argument raged inside her head, they looked around to discover that they were the only diners left in the restaurant. He paid their bill then asked her to get the car so he could hit the restroom before they drove home. She told him she could wait but he insisted. 

She backed the car out of the parking place and shifted into drive, but hesitated. She wanted so badly to step on the gas and leave him behind; to keep driving toward a new life and not stopping until she found one. 

She looked toward the restaurant. He was standing at the door with their waitress. The waitress typed something on a phone then handed the phone to him. His phone. As the waitress closed the door, he lingered for a moment as if he were watching her through the door.

He turned, stepped away from the door, and began walking across the empty parking lot. Her knuckles turned white as her grip tightened on the steering wheel. She was a fool. Embarrassment flooded over her like a torrential downpour. “You’re weak! You’re weak!”

Something snapped inside her. 

She slammed the gas pedal to the floor. 

At the last moment before impact, she turned her head away, and closed her eyes. 

She hadn’t seen what would be the last, horrified expression on his face, but she had heard the sickening crunch just before his body flew across the parking lot, dead before it even hit the pavement.

They called it a crime of passion and sentenced her to twenty-four years. Just before being locked away for those twenty-four years, she had watched the casket as it was lowered into the ground, ending her nightmare. So, on this day of her release from prison, the first day of her new life of true freedom, she had come here to make sure the son-of-a-bitch was still dead. 

He was and that was all that mattered.