Seven Years

Warning: This story contains references to physical violence, death, and offensive language.

Gina, 34, a daughter

Some breakups turn women into girls’ girls. Pink gets pinker. Girly pop becomes chicken soup for the scorned. And Gina, like a Christian who only prays in desperate grief, she takes out her fine-china femininity only for special occasions of man-purging.

This is the vein of Gina’s thoughts on her morning run. The sleek blacktop beneath her sneakers blurs, its monotony serving her dissociative mind well.

She hadn’t wanted to move back home, least of all at this age, least of all indefinitely. She might have lied, to save face, “Oh, I’m just here to take care of my mom,” if she weren’t so seriously spry and healthy. The ugly truth is that Gina built a life dependent upon an independent man’s fickle promise.

When Gina approaches the familiar cul-de-sac of her childhood home, she checks her watch. 11:58. What a boring route (in boring suburbia) and nothing like the rollercoaster hills she used to brave in San Francisco.

She’d prefer to change into more sensible clothes before walking the neighbor’s dog, but something tells her Florence might care more about punctuality than prudence. So she strides past mom’s house and heads straight for the Patterson's.

Still jogging mostly in place at the base of their driveway, Gina shakes off the memory of the last time she was inside her neighbor’s home. The fact that they willingly hired her for this was surprising. Was it an olive branch? Or just a good way for Florence to keep an eye on her this time?

She hastily gets the dog ready and out the door. Any lingering inside would spark controversy Gina doesn’t care to endure. It doesn’t occur to her, when she neglects to dress tiny Fiona in the sweater her human laid out, that she’ll get chilly. What does it matter?

Dog owners, especially the Florence Patterson type, tend to fuss over the silliest things. Like sweaters, and homemade organic vegan treats. And husbands.

“So, where to Fi Fi? Can I call you that?” she asks. Fiona answers, in her own way, by reeling against Gina’s left turn.

Right it is. “Lead the way,” she chuckles, settling in for a not-so-boring route. The cloud-white furball gives her the grand tour of a neighborhood she knows like the manicured pads of her paw.

Strolling down a dead-end street, Gina spots a lone park bench in the distance. A simple refuge in an unremarkable place.

When they reach it, she bends down to scritch behind Fiona’s ear, delighted by the silky soft fur as the dog’s jaw breaks into a jovial expression.

This is nice. Gina widens her own smile and stands up. I should get a dog! Or maybe a—

Florence, 41, a mother

That ungrateful bitch.

The phone screen crunches against black Marquina marble when she slams it face down. She tried calling the little slut three times before dinner, twice again now.

Florence keeps her hand on the phone, unwilling to face the damage. It’s a familiar feeling, not wanting to inspect a phone for fear of what it will reveal.

With a deep breath she summons the composure she keeps wound so incredibly tight it might as well be rigidity. But her face cracks and water threatens to burst through it like a broken dam.

Florence worked hard for what she has. Worked hard for him. But with Gina sleeping right next door again, Florence is devastated. She’s riding this fresh earthquake the only way she knows how: interminable dwelling.

After nine years, Florence understands her marriage to be one without changes. No kids, though Todd wanted them. No dignity, respect, or loyalty. She wanted those.

She meditates on her self-designed purgatory, dedicated to all the women who stay. Who catch their husbands bed-handed, and stay.

Wives like Florence are bound to a labyrinthine kind of torture: a daily toil of forgiveness with humiliation hidden at the center. She jumps at every sound his phone makes. She pays closer attention to pronouns than any self-respecting woman would. She folds the clothes, cooks the food, makes the bed, and lies in it. Florence prefers to think she’s not alone in this maze, though it is solitary by design.

Lost in the onyx sheen of her countertop, she catches her reflection and flinches. Even the mirror is a reminder of her. My man has a type. Gina might as well be her younger twin. Much younger.

Florence routinely dyes her hair to shine in sunlight with the fiery copper she knows he adores. You’re like the sunset, my love, he recites often. Florence doubts that Gina’s redheaded hue is natural either, but the resemblance is potent.

What a stupid time to fall apart, she thinks.

Fiona is missing. She must be so cold out there in the dark.

Nobody expects their blood to boil, but when Florence feels the violent bubbling of her veins, she just sighs, snatches her phone, and slinks to the ground.

Florence’s face is hot to the touch, probably flushed again. She reaches for her phone’s camera, ignoring the splintered screen. Ugh, gross. No amount of makeup ever conceals the embarrassing cherry red of her emotions. At least no one is here to see it this time.

She scrambles up. Wrath rises with her as a thought occurs.

I’m missing something.

Florence stopped caring about Todd’s secrets long ago. Learned to keep a few of her own. Even now, a new secret, to feel powerful in a powerless situation. But a diminished interest in truth shouldn’t matter with her baby at risk.

It’s too odd for their new dogwalker, who happens to be Todd’s previous lover, to disappear with Fiona on the same night Todd whisks her away for a random weekend getaway. Lures her away, more like.

Without consulting her better senses, Florence barges into Todd’s office, immediately offended by its unfamiliarity. She’d rarely intruded or interrupted Todd in here, but she never once dared to enter on her own.

She aches to comb through every book, folder, and notepad. The taboo of this room preserves both their dignities, but she always secretly thinks, if she ever goes looking, she’ll find something worth leaving for.

Her fingers twitch, grazing the edge of his desk. It’s the most exquisite room in their home, though she’ll never admit that to him. Unkept and tacky, but Florence isn’t blind to its charm. Todd’s personality thrives in this space. With lively shelves and piles of books that might carry on affairs of their own, given any amount of privacy.

She approaches her target, a large monitor not-quite-centered on his desk of exquisite purple heart wood. She knows his passwords (transparency, and all).

Todd is the only one with access to their entrance security camera. Florence deleted her app after a bout of heightened suspicion some time ago. When she checked the front door daily, sometimes hourly. Addicted to reassurance and unwilling to feel safe without it.

She must breathe to refocus. In. Out.

Florence spots the camera feed and clicks there before her twitchy fingers can twitch anywhere else. She drags the video to 12 noon, sharp.

Florence’s chest tightens as her dog walker trots, practically bouncing, up to the door. Gina fumbles through her fanny pack, just past the hemline of her hot-pink spandex shorts. Perky. She reminds Florence of herself just a few short years ago. Maybe with less pep, but certainly a more respectable hem line.

Gina enters the house and Florence waits for an eternity. When she finally returns to the front door with Fiona, and–I KNEW IT! She gasps.

No sweater. It was chilly this morning. Even chillier tonight.

Clueless, careless, classless harlot.

Florence starts to tremble, watching the video of her empty, unchanging driveway. She clicks the red X.

What did she expect to find? Gina laughing maniacally while she hauls Florence’s baby out of the house in a duffel? But no, just another peppy twenty-something making a quick buck.

Is that it…Did Gina plan to sell her baby? Gina isn’t the type to mastermind a heist, though. Unless he was involved. Todd could have simply handed the girl money, but he always despised Fiona, didn’t he?

Florence clicks into his email without apology now. It’s a familiar, exhilarating feeling, this ransacking. Her heart grows wings to beat out of its chest.

Swiftly frozen, then, when she finds an email.

Yesterday. Unknown sender. Unread.

RP 1010 Wallace 1900

- G

G... Gina.

Florence nods slowly. So he did meet her.

Clipped heartwings tumble down, down her chest cavity. She falls with it.

He wasn’t home for dinner last night. Okay. He went to meet her. The night before she took Fiona. Something is very, very wrong. Oh, Rendezvous Point.

The rest of Todd’s inbox is devoid of clues. Florence decides he must have hidden his tracks well. But this one, he missed!

Ha, HA!

She grasps her stomach with all the grace of someone trying, and failing, to catch a ripped grocery bag. Her Fiona, her only sense of comfort, of peace and loyalty and all things good, is gone.

Todd, 48, a father

Todd stalks through his neighborhood streets, sometime after midnight.

Flo snapped at him for going out again, insisting she scoured the neighborhood already. Todd was unable to explain why he knew, with absolute certainty, that Gina couldn’t have taken her far. His insistence may be suspicious.

But Fiona is family and she’s worth the risk.

With no luck yet, Todd’s mind wanders. He made the mistake of being caught with Gina less than a week before their second wedding anniversary. This made each following anniversary an emotional bloodbath. Over the years, the day felt more like an annual visit to the headstone of a loved one. Then Flo lost interest in visiting that marker of time altogether.

Todd secretly compromised by gifting her a non-anniversary pampering around this time of year. That’s why he’d wanted to go away together for the weekend, somewhere new.

Somewhere alive.

Next week will be nine years. Apparently the traditional gift is pottery, mean to symbolize the craftsmanship required of marriage. For Todd, it evoked an image of the shattered vase he’d once swept off the floor. Their feet caught stray pieces for weeks.

The woman he married was soft at first. Her smiling eyes always gave him goosebumps. If her gaze lingers now, though, he knows it’s in scrutiny. Like a cruel child with a magnifying glass, and he’s the burning ant.

Their only solace it seems, is Fiona. With her, Flo is soft again. The damn dog replaced me, he thinks, too grateful to be truly jealous. She can’t hate him if she’s too busy loving something else.

“Fiona!” he shouts through cupped hands.

Flo’s face was severely flushed when he left. Todd smiles at the image, her adorable blushing. In the first year after his affair, her face was almost always red. Back then, they fought like two street dogs over a bone.

But Flo’s rage eventually dissipated and the fighting ceased. Todd never really had any reason to fight but to defend himself. He was perfectly content to just be with her, happy even, but she refused his love. The best he could do was a dog. Todd would do anything to keep her happy. And safe.

So he doesn’t regret what he did. He should, but Todd has always been that dog fighting for his bone and Florence is the whole bag. For better or worse–two years for better, seven years for worse.

Todd might argue he didn’t have a choice, but he did, and Gina’s proximity made it an accessible one. A life for a life is surprisingly easy to choose for the woman you love.

“Fiona!”

Todd’s worry escalates with each passing street light. Whoever they’d sent for his wife could have very well thought to make a quick buck on a somewhat valuable breed.

Nearly ready give up, he spots a Shiht-sized lump of white under a bench in the distance. He scans for onlookers in all directions before rushing to it.

Fiona is trembling underneath. He bundles her in his jacket and gives a gentle squeeze before promptly marching back home. It feels good to put distance between him and the crime scene he shouldn’t be privy to.

But the grisliest part is behind him. Now the only hurdle is to convince Flo to run away with him.

He wonders if she’ll consider changing that obnoxious hair color for something more discreet.

Dominic, 55, a son

Dom sits by the deer trail while he waits, losing track of the hours and days that stretch impossibly between 11 and noon. He itches his clammy gloved hands against his khaki shorts for relief.

There’s no easy getaway if he’s caught. No protection. But Dom, who might be good people still, probably wouldn’t back out even if he could. The cost of mom’s cancer treatments surpasses anything Dom could dream of earning honest in just one lifetime. G knew this when he hired him.

He did research her, first. The target: Florence Patterson, 41, no kids. She looked vacant in her pictures. Unhappy. Unkind.

Dom talked himself into taking this job because he thought he could stomach it. With both her parents gone, who would even grieve this Florence lady? Except maybe the crooked financier responsible for the very target on her back.

According to the missive Dom holds in his hand, the target walks her dog every day exactly at 12. A jogger appears, bouncing up to the target’s front door.

Oh, shit. This must be her. Dom shoves the paper into the front pocket of his puffy vest. He watches closely through his binoculars as she digs into a fanny pack. Finally, she pulls out a key and holds it up in triumph.

A lone key, on a simple ring.

Dom is sure the target lives in this house. She’d have a keychain for sure.

His stomach drops when the jogger opens the front door, leash in hand. G made big money to knowing everything, and probably does, but does he know who’s death he ordered?

Maybe, but the woman leaving the residence now–1404 Patience Lane at exactly 12pm with a tiny white Shih Tzu–is not the target he prepared for. Close, sure. Same build, same height, same hair color.

And a very different face.

Bile rises, itching his throat. All that murderous courage he’d built up, collapsed by a single key.

No time to deliberate the consequences of shooting the wrong person.

You don’t just let G down. Turning back now would be a death sentence for himself and his mother. He conjures a horrendous image of mom lurched over the ironing board in a pool of her own blood. She’d haunt their home forever if only in an attempt to clean the stains off the walls.

Dom begins to hunt.

He stumbles through the deer trail, desperate to keep up while staying out of sight. The target turns down the nearest dead-end street. Thank you, he offers to any eavesdropping gods. Luckier still, she’s stopping there, by a bench. He’s got a shrinking window of opportunity to drop her in a secluded area. Dom readies his silencer.

He takes aim, and swiftly pulls the trigger.

A clear shot to the head, but she drops down to pet the dog. Divine intervention, maybe. Dom wants to take it as a sign, but it was a mistake born from haste. He steadies.

He aims again, following the target’s movements closely this time.

Breathes in, in, and holds.

Then exhales. For mom.

The End

Gina clutches her chest. She takes in the scene on the bluff. All those years she lived here, but never caught this view before. Too many screens in the house, maybe.

She wonders what it might have been like to discover this place back then. Pictures her younger self lounging under the tree to her right, drawing, eyes dancing between her sketchbook and the sky.

Gina approaches the cliff’s edge to admire this tree. Its curvy trunk bends inland, as if to sit beside her. She tightens Fiona’s leash and peers downward to spy exposed roots climbing farther down than she dared to follow. Vertigo and self preservation urge her upright. She closes her eyes to feel the sun on her skin. Takes in the clouds, doing their best impression of Fiona.

She finds herself grounded in gratitude. For the breathing space. And her furry companion, this strange white cloud of fur with beady black eyes that shine with pure joy.

Thoughts of Todd and Flo surface. What happened between them was rotten. She knows that now. Maybe, just maybe, they were too perfect, and that scared Gina. Maybe it scared them, too.

Mom frequently divulged details of the Pattersons’ marital problems over the years. She could understand why she might betray Flo’s trust just a little if it meant teaching her daughter a lesson.

But when mom whispered news of Flo’s pregnancy, Gina thought her mother might just be a hopeless gossip.

Apparently Todd didn’t even know yet.

Gina shudders, but hope blooms.

Seven years ago, she wrecked a family. And somehow they stayed together, all these years. Growing, even.

Maybe the kid will find this tiny park sooner than she did, and sketch or read or cry under this tree.

For the first time in years, Gina wants to paint. She crafts a plan to recreate those sun rays bursting through the clouds, to honor her own echo of abundance.

She steadies. Her mind has a habit of galloping during moments like these. When the path ahead is terribly clear, scary and magnificent. She draws in a deep breath, letting the air expand her lungs.

Her exhale is slow, and sweet.

In. Out.

In–