Behind Her Smile (7 page)

A
drenaline courses through my veins, fueling my race to the staircase. Moonlight streams through the windows, casting eerie shadows along the hallway. The light helps to lower my skyrocketing anxiety, but I’m not able to move fluidly. The zip ties keeping my hands pinned to my back throw my equilibrium off kilter. I stagger down the hallway, not for the first time damning the house for its size.

The handrail is in my sights. I’m close enough to see the staircase landing when a bulldozer crashes into me, slamming me into the wall. The jolt sends my head crashing against the drywall with a dull thud. Stars flash before me, and I’m wobbling, wobbling . . . but not ready to give up. The man latches his hands around my wrists and yanks me to the steps.

“Let me go,” I grit, twisting in his grasp.

The grip tightens, but the man doesn’t speak. He shoves me down the steps, my movements uneven and jerky from the awkward stance. At the bottom of the staircase, he drags me in the direction of David’s office without so much as a pause. The man knows the layout of the house as if he’s been here hundreds of times in the daylight.

A hysterical bubble of laughter builds in my chest. It
would
take a criminal breaking into our home to allow me access to my husband’s private sanctuary. I’m hardly ever allowed in unless David is there to supervise my visit. It’s almost unthinkable that this place might be a refuge. At one time, I believed David to be my savior. Now I know better, but I’m still praying he’s behind the closed door of the office. If he’s there, maybe we can figure out some way to escape this living nightmare.

The man twists the doorknob and pushes me through the threshold roughly enough to send me stumbling to my knees. The man palms the back of my skull with his gloved hand, shoving my face down and knocking my chin to my chest. There isn’t enough time for me to survey my surroundings, so I don’t know who else is in the room.

“What the fuck happened to you?” The new voice has a heavy Latin accent.

“Bitch has some fight in her.” This comes from the man forcing me to stare at the carpet.

“David,” I cry, deciding he must be in here with this Latin man. This is not the first time I’ve found myself in a submissive position in this room, but that was from a punishing hand I know. Even at the worst of times, I didn’t fear death then. These two maniacs could be minutes away from killing us.

“Don’t say anything,” my husband says sternly. He sounds sure of himself, steady. His voice doesn’t betray the fear raging inside of me.

“Listen to your husband, bitch,” the Latino cackles.

Something immovable and metal is shoved into the center of my spine, startling me. Instantly, I know the object is a gun. The reality of the situation crashes down on me at that moment. My lungs tighten; my heart seizes and then takes off at an erratic pace, thumping against my ribs. An overwhelming urge to cry threatens. It wouldn’t be the first time I begged for mercy in this room. Humiliation washes over me when the first tear slips from the corner of my eye.

I don’t want to die.

“P-please don’t hurt me,” I whisper.

“Bitch! What did I say?”

It all happens so fast I don’t have any time to protect myself from the impending blow. The man holding me down rears my spine rigid and tilts my face up. There’s enough time for me to realize David’s secured in a chair, a man holding a gun to his temple.

I hear the sound first. The brutal kiss of metal against my temple sends me reeling. The world goes black before my cheek connects with the rug.

Z
zz. Zzz.

Incessant vibrating pulls from a
Fantasia
-esque dream about dancing sewing needles. With disoriented confusion, I stare at the light animating from my cell phone. The vibrations make the device do a shimmy along the bedside table. With a frown, I glance to the alarm clock. Who would be calling me at midnight? David and I had spoken before I turned in for the night, but I find his name flashing on the screen.

“Hey.” My voice is hoarse with sleep but still tinged with urgency. David’s never called me this late. Something must be wrong.

“Karolina.” He gasps my name like a lifeline.

I shove the blankets off my legs and start climbing out of the bed. “What’s going on?”

“My family . . .” David’s voice cracks on the second word, bending under the weight of his emotion. The sorrow is unmistakable.

“Talk to me,” I plead as I change out of my tiny sleeping shorts and into a pair of grungy sweatpants. “Tell me what happened.”

“Turn on the news,” he mutters.

I grab my purse when I race out of the room, preparing to rush out the door to my boyfriend as soon as I figure out what’s going on. Still standing with my phone pressed to my ear, I click on the television and flip to one of the twenty-four-hour news channels.

“Oh . . . No.
No.
This can’t be true.”

A fiery mass dominates the screen. It’s unclear what’s burning, but the breaking news text at the bottom of the screen tells the story.

Morgan family jet crashes in North Carolina

“Tell me they survived,” I plead.

The low moan on the other end of the line is enough of an answer for me. I bang my finger against the remote and shut off the television.

“I’m leaving my place. I’ll be there in twenty minutes. Do you want to stay on the phone with me while I’m driving?” I hurry into the hallway, closing the door quietly behind me so I don’t disturb Dora.

“No, driving while you’re on the phone is dangerous. Get here safely. And . . .” David’s voice wobbles.

“Yes?” I jam my thumb into the elevator call button.

“I—thank you.” The trembling in his voice nearly undoes me.

“Anything, David,” I whisper and step into the elevator car.

In a daze, I make my way from the building to where I’ve parked my old, beat-up Saturn. The moment after I click my seat belt into place, I push the key into the slot, ignite the engine, and shift the car into drive.

Two weeks have passed since that dreadful first meeting with David’s family. He continued to attend their weekly Sunday dinners, telling me that it would take time for them to adapt to the idea that he and I were seriously date. It thrills me that David considers us to be in a serious relationship, but I am—
was—
still smarting over his family’s rejection. David kept promising it would only take time . . . and without warning that promised time is gone. Even though the beginning of our relationship was rough, I still held on to a nugget of hope that his parents and I would get through the initial distrust.

All of that history is meaningless now. William, Georgia, and Chandler are gone, and I’ll never have the chance to build a strong relationship with them. Those Sunday dinners are a thing of the past. My heart squeezes painfully in my chest, thinking of David’s loss. I’m no stranger to death in the family, and I remember how it feels to have a gaping hole left in your chest where your heart is supposed to pump life through your body.

When my father died, I was ten years old. He’d drank himself to death. And though he was certainly not the best provider or even a doting father, I mourned the physical loss of him in my life and the dad that I would never get the chance to have. His untimely death robbed him of the chance to redeem himself. After he had left us, my mother had the choice to pull our family together or close herself off. She chose the latter, becoming hardened and furious. Her no-good husband left her with a pregnant eighteen-year-old daughter and a lonely ten-year-old. She didn’t want to be a grandmother, and she certainly didn’t want the burden of keeping all of us fed and clothed.

The tears swimming in my eyes blur my vision. I swallow down the lump in my throat. Thinking about my own losses won’t fix anything. The memories of my fractured family are in the past. Before I left my mother’s trailer at the end of summer vacation, she had told me I was on my own now and not welcome to stay in her home any longer. In a way, I see myself as an orphan. The remainder of my family wants nothing to do with me, and I wanted so badly to fit into David’s family. Maybe they could accept me. Maybe I could be weave into their close-knit bond. It’s as if my heart is cracking open in my chest for the death of that dream.

There’s only one Morgan left.

A valet outside David’s mirrored condominium building in Brickell opens the driver’s side door of my car. He doesn’t hide his surprise at the car that doesn’t fit in with the swanky zip code, as well as my baggy sweatpants and sloppy sleep t-shirt. This is not the typical attire of the residents of this upscale, towering building, but I don’t bother to explain. As soon as he hands me the pink ticket for my vehicle, I rush inside. The doorman sends me straight to the elevators; apparently, David called down to let him know I would be arriving leaving no need for me to get permission to enter the building.

There are two units on the thirty-first floor of the building, meaning the condos are enormous and provide significant privacy. David hardly sees his floor mate. Tonight, I’m extra thankful for the quiet hallway in my harried state. I use the knocker to tap a few beats on the wood. Not a moment later, the door whisks open and David is standing before me.

I don’t know what I imagined he’d look like, but I never dreamed it would be this bad.

Tears liquefy his blue-green eyes. They’re red-rimmed and swollen, as though his tear ducts haven’t stopped flooding since he heard the news. Like me, he’s wearing pajama pants and a baggy shirt. The clothes are normal sleepwear for David, except for the stains dotting his shirt. One sniff and I know he had retched before I arrived. Grief slumps his proud shoulders. His blond hair stands on its ends from his fingers toying with the strands.

I rush to him and press my cheek next to his heart. My hands grip him tight around his waist, hands fisting his shirt. “David,” I whimper. “I’m so sorry.”

He drops his cheek to the top of my head, shaking with each breath. Silent sobs wrack his body. David clings to me, swaying on his feet. Gently, I guide him backward, kicking the door shut behind us. I lead him to the sofa and put my hands on his shoulders to press him into a seated position. The large, flat-screen television blares with the news at deafening levels. David collapses into a seat, tilting his head back until he stares blankly at the ceiling. I grab for the remote, muting the noise.

“How could this happen? This doesn’t make any sense,” he chokes out.

David’s hand is icy to the touch. I grab one and sandwich it between my hands, rubbing the chalky skin to get circulation back.

“The three of them were flying to New York. Mother had a dress fitting—something custom for the Christmas party. Father and Chandler had business. They wanted me to go with them, but at the last minute I had a conflict . . .” David recounts the facts dully. “The plane burst into flames. The NTSB and FAA are investigating. This is completely surreal. Tell me this is not really happening.”

I drop his hand and fold myself into his lap. The top of my head fits under his chin, like two puzzle pieces snapping together. His arms wind around my waist again, massaging his hands up and down the length of my spine as if to ground himself.

“I’m so sorry,” I whisper against his skin. Normally warm and welcoming, the flesh is icy here, too.

Next to us, David’s cell phone buzzes intermittently as we sit there silently, clinging to the other as life preservers in the tumultuous sea. At one point, I doze; my eyes grow heavy with emotional exhaustion.

“Karolina.” David jostles me in his lap, jarring me awake.

“Yes?” I respond drowsily.

“We need to talk,” he says urgently. He moves me out of his lap and turns me sideways on the cushion. We sit face to face, David illuminated by the flicker of the television. The depressed, sludge in him is gone. His eyes dart around rapidly, cataloguing my features.

“Of course. What is it?”

“I love you.”

All of my muscles clench in shock. I’m stunned silent. Of all the things he could say, that’s what he’s telling me? Now, of all times? I thought he would bring up funeral arrangements or disbelief—anything but love.