Alone (11 page)

Heart thumping in her chest, Serenity went
upstairs and started pulling bags from the closet. Her hands shook
and her stomach cramped in a ball knots. They owned a set of large
silver suitcases but she didn’t want to pack anything big to be as
mobile as possible. Instead, she found a black canvas back pack;
one Jackson bought at the airport when his hand luggage had been
overweight. She wouldn’t be able to fit much into the bag but
enough for her to survive.

Serenity sighed. Beautiful things filled
the house, items she had worked hard for; stupid little trinkets to
make her miserable life happy—pretty picture frames, delicate wine
glasses, embroidered cushions. She shouldn’t get sad about such
frivolities, but she couldn’t help it.

They’re just things,
the little voice
whispered to her.
They can be replaced.

T
he voice spoke the truth. Material
belongings didn’t matter. What mattered was getting out of her
present situation with her dignity, soul, and most importantly, her
body still intact.

Somewhere, at the back of her mind,
Sebastian lurked. Two days had passed since they’d visited the pier
together. She knew he wouldn’t come to the house with her husband
home. The two days felt like a lifetime. Serenity wished she could
tell him she was finally leaving Jackson. She wanted to see the
look in his eyes, knowing how proud he would be of her.

But s
he wasn’t doing this for Sebastian.
Serenity was leaving for herself, for her life and sanity. He had
opened her eyes to the possibility of another life but that didn’t
mean she was leaving her husband for him.

Did it?

Serenity sighed again. She didn’t want to
be a woman who couldn’t stand to be alone, always jumping from
relationship to relationship.

No, it wasn’t like that. She had no idea
if she would see Sebastian again. She had no way of getting in
touch with him and didn’t know where he lived or worked. Tomorrow
she would leave the city and never come back.

She wasn’t only leaving
Jackson, Serenity
realized. She would be leaving Sebastian too.

A hard lump tightened in the back of her
throat and her eyes flooded with tears. She reprimanded herself.
She needed to focus; she had bigger things to worry
about.

Filled with
sadness
, the
thrill of possibility gone, she pulled open her top drawer and
pulled out a selection of underwear. From the other drawers, she
took out t-shirts and sweaters and stuffed them into the bag. She
packed her toiletries and then wondered what else to
take.

Serenity looked around the bedroom she had
shared with her significant other for the last ten years. Bad
memories lingered everywhere; the dresser he had pushed her up
against when she knocked over a glass of water in the middle of the
night. The door he slammed her fingers in when she’d been late home
from work. The wall he threw her against because she dared to ask
how much money he’d spent at the bar.

This place held nothing but bad
memories

She was nearly thirty years old and, once
she left, wouldn’t have more than a few hundred dollars and some
old clothes to her name.

T
he threads of depression threatened to
bind her heart and drag her down.

Jackson had done this and she’d let him.
If she didn’t get out of her marriage, she would look back when she
was forty, fifty, or God-forbid, sixty and realize her life had
amounted to nothing and she could never get the time
back.

She glanced at the clock. Almost five.
Jackson wouldn’t be home for hours but she had no reason to hang
around.

Except
this is the only place Sebastian
knows where to find you.

Serenity shook her head.
She needed to stop
thinking about him. This was her life now and she had to take
control.

She remembered a photograph of her mother
as a teenager, which she kept in her nightstand. Despite Serenity’s
feelings about the woman, it felt wrong to leave the photo behind,
so she fished it out of the drawer and added the picture to her
bag. She didn’t have a passport, but kept her birth certificate in
the same drawer and stuffed the slip of paper into the side pocket
of her bag.

She picked up the pack and slung it across
her shoulder. A compulsion to say goodbye to her bedroom, as though
the room was a person, swept over her.

From downstairs, came the
sound of the front
door slamming open.

Oh God.

Serenity’s breath caught in her
chest, every muscle in her body tensed, ready to run.
Her head swam with
the sudden rush of blood and she forced herself to
focus.

What the hell was he doing back so
soon?

Her heart pounded and her eyes darted
around the room, searching for somewhere to stuff the bag. He would
notice something was wrong, he would see it in her face.

“
Serenity?” he called up the
stairs.

“
I’m here, just putting away
some laundry.” Her voice was unnaturally high and she cleared her
throat. “You’re home early.”

“
I forgot my pills,” he said, his
voice growing louder as he started to climb the stairs. “Figured I
would have more fun with them.”

“
I’m coming down!” she
shrieked. “I’ll bring them with me.”

H
is footsteps paused and then, to her
relief, he turned away and she followed the sound of his progress
as he headed into the kitchen instead. Her palms were slick with
sweat and she pulled open the closet door and shoved the bag into
the bottom, quickly covering the hold-all with a pile of shoes and
an old golfing jacket Jackson had never worn.

Her legs almost gave way as she raced to
the bathroom and grabbed Jackson’s bottle of pain medication,
knocking his toothbrush and some hand wash into the sink in her
haste. The items clattered against the porcelain, the noise echoing
in the confined room.

“
Serenity?” His voice had
changed; cold and hard. “What the hell is this?

He knows you’re leaving
him!

P
anic made her head swim and the room
blurred around her. Totally irrational thoughts raced through her
head. Did she leave something out—something to give herself away?
Did she write him a ‘Dear John’ letter?

Slowly, she walked down the stairs, the
bottle of pills held against her chest as though they could protect
her.

Jackson stood in the kitchen, leaning up
against the table. In his right hand he held an opened piece of
mail.

I did write it,
she thought.
I wrote him a
goodbye letter!

He held
the paper out toward her.

“
What the hell is this?” he said
again, his voice even.

“
I don’t know,” she said,
honestly. She reached out for the letter but he snatched the paper
out of reach and her fingers grasped nothing but air.

“
Shall I tell you?” He started
pacing, a restless, caged animal pacing he did when he was building
up to something really bad. Serenity tried to back away, to retreat
out of the door she’d just entered through, but he quickly blocked
her only escape route with his body.

“
It’s a bill from the
hospital.”

“
What?” Her heart picked up the
pace. “There must be some mistake!”

He flicked the letter out in front of
him as though reading from a scroll.

“
Dear Mrs. Hathaway, I regret to
inform you that due to your recent change in employment you are no
longer covered by Stanton Medical Insurance, therefore, please find
enclosed a statement for your husband’s recent stay. We will expect
payment as soon as possible.”

He didn’t even look up at her but she
recognized the signs, how he focused on the boiling anger,
concentrating on the emotion as though channeling it into his
fists.

“
So when were you planning
on telling me about your ‘recent change of employment’? Is that why
your boss was so good about giving you time off, because you don’t
actually have a job to go to?”

Desperately she shook her head. “It’s a
mistake,” she begged. “Please, Jackson, I’ll sort this out in the
morning. Someone must have made a mistake.”

He finally looked up and studied her face,
brown eyes boring deep into hers as though he saw straight through
her, reading every single thing etched on her mind.

Why now? She had been so close, so
damned close.

“
Don’t lie to me, you little
bitch.” He spat the words in her face.

She backed away, her lower back hitting
the metal of the sink. “Please, Jackson, please…” she whimpered,
cowering against the onslaught of blows sure to follow.

I can’t do this
again
! I
can’t let him do this again
…

“
I’ll teach you,” he stepped
toward her. “I’ll teach you what happens to bitches that lie to me
in my own home.”

As if someone flicked a switch
in her head, all of the fear turned to anger. S
he wasn’t going to let him
frighten her any more.

“
I’m leaving you!” she
screamed. “I’m leaving, you son of a bitch!”

Her words
stopped him for a moment, made
him stand up straight, astonished. Then a smile spread across his
face and he started to laugh, a full bodied, belly-ache laugh,
doubling him over and leaving him, red in the face.

The fire burned inside of her, an
anger so strong she could barely see. That the idea of her leaving
him was so ludicrous made her furious.

Jackson
managed to get hold of himself. He
stood up straight, a smile fixed on his face, though it didn’t
reach his cold eyes.

“
You stupid, fucking bitch,” he
said, shaking his head. “You could never leave me. You
will
never leave
me.”

B
lind with anger, panic and fear, she
squashed herself up against the sink. She reached back, scrabbling
around in the metal bowl, trying to find something to protect
herself.

Her fingers closed around cold
metal and she threw herself forward, screaming, her mind blank. She
wanted everything, all the pain and torment and fear, to
stop!
She lunged at him,
swiping with the hand holding the metal object.

There was a
strange sinking sensation and a
resistance against her arm. Then the resistance was gone and
Jackson fell to his knees, clutching at his throat. Blood
spurted
everywhere.

What was happening? What the
hell happened?

She
’d never seen so much blood; it covered
her arms, splashed across her chest, but Jackson was worse. Blood
spilled down his chest like an apron.

H
er mind detached itself, as if she watched
everything from someone else’s point of view.

Oh
God, what have I done?

Jackson reached out toward her,
his
bloodied
hands grasping for her throat. Paralyzed with shock she stared,
waiting to be strangled. He only managed to hook his fingers around
her silver ‘S’ chain, eyes looking up at her with a mixture of
confusion and fear.

Then the paralysis broke and she gave a
little shriek of fear and leapt away. Her chain broke in his hold
and he looked at it dumbly, hanging off his fingers, as though not
understanding where the jewelry had come from.

Slowly
, Jackson slumped to the floor, the
knife sticking out of his throat. Not thinking, she reached out and
pulled the blade from his skin with a deep sucking, slurping
movement. Jackson’s eyes went blank.

Serenity dropped to her knees and
screamed.

Around her, the air
moved
, but
Serenity didn’t notice. In the next moment, Sebastian stood beside
her.

He stared in shock at the scene before
him.

Serenity’s husband lay dead on the floor.
His glasses skewed half off his face, blood smeared across the
glass. More blood pulsed weakly from a gaping hole in his throat.
The sight of the blood stirred the dark part Sebastian tried to
keep hidden and he clamped down on the instinct, not wanting to
lose control.

B
lood slicked the kitchen floor and
Serenity knelt in the middle. As Sebastian watched, the knife she
held dropped loosely from her fingers, hitting the floor with a
clatter.

Blood covered most of her
torso;
all
down her arms, all over her clothes.

As though she had only just seen the
blood, she held her hands out in front of her, and let loose an ear
piercing shriek of madness.

“
Serenity?” he said, gently
touching her arm.

She jumped at the contact and twisted
around to face him. Her eyes focused on him, but no recognition lit
in their dark depths. She blinked twice and then took a short gasp
of breath before bursting into tears.