The Good Listener (23 page)

Maybe Blake was right.

Maybe I wasn’t as good as a listener as I thought I was.

“That didn’t give you the right to step out on me.”

“No, it didn’t give me the right. But it gave me the courage, the want to find someone that appreciated me.”

“She appreciated you?”

“More or less. I didn’t feel worthless in her presence or less than a man.”

“If she made you feel like that then why did you kill her?”

“I didn’t kill her,” Joel said.

I thought I would throw that in there, but he denied it with no hesitation.

No one admitted to killing her.

No one knew where she was.

But maybe it wasn’t one of us.

Maybe it was someone else, or she could just simply not want to be found.

Maybe she had just left and decided that she never wanted to look back.

“So I was just a horrible wife,” I said.

“No. You weren’t. Somewhere along the way, you just forgot about me. We used to be best friends. We could talk for hours and never run out of things to say. When I wasn’t around you, I would think about you so much that it made me feel sick. I couldn’t wait to get back close to you. I couldn’t wait to get near you. My love for you made me weak. But over the years. The more patients you saw. The more newspaper articles that were written on you. The more recognition you received, you forgot about me.”

He’d never said all of this before, and the sad part was that he was right.

But being that I was in the position to lose everything, I guess I saw things a little differently.

I was consumed with work.

I wanted to be the best.

Part of all of that was the reason that I was going through everything that I was going through right now.

That was the reason that I agreed to try to help Blake.

That was the reason that my husband had an affair.

“If it means anything, I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I forgot you. I’m sorry that I neglected you.”

Joel looked at me.

“I’m sorry for my affair. I probably contributed to pushing you away. Especially when I lost my job. The question now, is can we fix it?”

I shook my head.

“I don’t think so. Especially with this Summer situation hanging over my head.”

“When it goes away because it will, can we try again?”

I looked at Joel just as my phone started to ring.

It was Blake.

“I don’t think so, Joel. I’m not even sure that I want to.”

I let Blake’s call go to the voicemail, but he started to call again.

Considering all that Joel had just said, I didn’t want to be rude and answer the phone, but with the sudden knock on the door, it didn’t matter anyway.

“Blake?”

“I need to talk to you.”

Joel stood behind me, and I could feel that he wasn’t too fond of Blake popping up.

Blake spoke, but Joel didn’t.

I walked outside, and Joel just stood in the doorway as I headed with Blake towards the end of the driveway.

“I thought I told you not to come to my house.”

Joel slammed the front door, just as Blake responded.

“If you had picked up the phone…I would’ve kept driving,” he said and immediately started talking about something else.

********************************************

Chapter EIGHT

I stared at the phone.

I waited for it to stop ringing and then it started ringing again.

Summer’s name and number flashed, and it was as though I couldn’t believe my eyes.

I was stuck.

So she was alive?

Finally, able to move, I answered it in a hurry.

“Hello? Summer?”

No one said a word.

“Hello? Hello? Summer are you okay?”

They breathed hard as though they were running.

“Hello? Please say something.”

But they didn’t.

They hung up instead.

I hurried to the spare bedroom, but Joel wasn’t there.

I called him, but he didn’t answer.

I dressed in a hurry and headed to the police station.

“Officer Parks,” I stated and waited around until he appeared.

“Mrs. Lewis, are you ready to confess?”

I shook my head.

“Look, she called. It’s Summer. She’s alive.”

He looked at my phone.

“Her phone could be anywhere. Anyone could have her phone. You could have it. You could have called yourself.”

“No. Someone called me. Someone called me from her phone.”

“Did they say anything?”

I shook my head.

“Of course, they didn’t. You better get to work with your plan. Time is one thing that you don’t have on your side, Mrs. Lewis.”

“Tell me about it.”

I headed out of the police station, calling Summer’s phone over and over but no one picked up.

Someone was trying to drive me crazy.

Speeding home, I saw that Joel was now there.

“Where were you?”

“At the store. Why?”

“Why didn’t you answer the phone?”

“I left it in the car.”

“Why didn’t you call me back?”

“Because I was on my way back here.”

I stared at him.

“Someone called me from Summer’s phone.”

“What?”

“They called me. I answered, and no one said anything.”

“So, she’s alive?”

“If it was her. Like the police said, anyone could have her phone.”

I’d tried calling her once before, but it had gone straight to the voicemail that time, so someone must have turned the phone off.

Things just weren’t adding up.

“She probably just left on her own. Maybe she was ashamed.”

“She didn’t seem ashamed to me. And if that was the case, why was she bleeding?”

“Maybe the blood was old from a cut or something.”

“What about her attempting to spell my name with it on an envelope?”

“Hannah, I don’t know. I’m just trying to make you feel better about all of this. I’m just throwing out possibilities. I’m worried about you.”

“This is all you fault. All of it. It’s all your fault. Had you not had sex with Summer, I wouldn’t be a person of interest in her disappearance. But no, you just had to have her. You just couldn’t keep your penis in your pants could you?”

“Here we go again with the blame game. I’m sorry. I really am. But I can’t change it. I can’t change the past Hannah. I can only change the future.”

“If she weren’t missing you would probably still be sleeping with her.”

“Do you really think that?”

“I don’t know what to think.”

“I’m on your side, Hannah. I know that you didn’t do anything, and I just want to be here to help you get through this. I’m all that you have.”

“That’s the sad part.”

Without saying another word, he headed to the spare bedroom and shut the door behind him.

I sat there in a daze, and then I decided to call Summer’s phone just one more time, but it was no use.

The voicemail came on immediately.             

Something just isn’t right.

~***~

“Do you resemble your mother or your father?” Blake asked.

“Hmm, I probably look more like my dad; just a prettier, feminine version of course. Folks would tell me that I looked just like my mother, but I don’t see it. Who do you look like?”

“I think I’m a mixture of both. My father’s eyes and ears. My mother’s everything else.”

“You still remember how they look?”

“How could I ever forget? It’s because of them that my life has been hell. I dreamt about them all the time. Their images were always in my head. I always wondered what it would have been like to have normal parents and a normal life. Is it really all that it’s made out to be?”

“For me it was. I had a great childhood. I was the only child, so I didn’t have to worry about much. Whereas in my husband’s case, there were way too many of them, and there never seemed to be enough to go around. He had a hard childhood even though both of his parents were in the picture. So I guess it just depends.”

“I don’t think that I would be like this if my childhood were normal,” Blake concluded.

“That’s not true either. I’ve had some patients that have had it all. They have lives of luxury, two successful parents, everything they have ever wanted, but still needed therapy. They still turned out all wrong.”

“But you’ve never had a patient as messed up as I am.”

“Maybe they weren’t murderers but some were still pretty messed up.

“So, you’re suggesting that my childhood and my bad experiences didn’t make me this way?”

“It’s a possibility. Maybe. Or maybe not. Everyone handles different situations in their own way. What may have done permanent damage to you, mentally, may not have had the same effect on me had it happened to me. It really just depends.”

“Interesting. So, in your professional opinion, I could have had great parents, an outstanding childhood, and still turned out to be this way?”

“It’s a possibility.”

Blake was quiet.

We were back at the park again since I couldn’t go in to my office.

I still agreed to see him since he stated that he would confess to Summer’s disappearance if all else failed and if she never showed up.

I didn’t know if he was really going to do it or not, but I didn’t really have anything to lose.

Either I helped him, fixed him, saved a life, and possibly save my own.

Or I didn’t, he killed and went away, and I still possibly go down for a crime that I didn’t have anything to do with.

“Some people just wait too long to get the help that they need and by then it’s too late. The mind is tricky. The slightest thing can trigger a psychotic breakdown or cause someone to do something that they know is wrong and that they wouldn’t normally do.”

“I’m not normal.”

“At some point you were.”

“A long time ago. You wouldn’t understand because you haven’t been in my shoes or the situations.”

“That doesn’t mean that I can’t relate.”

“Experience is the best teacher.”

“Maybe. But someone that has been through the same things that you have and maybe even worse is walking around, right now, just fine. People deal with life, heartache, trials and tribulation, completely different.”

He was listening to me.

I could tell that he was taking everything in.

“A normal life…”

“Start right now.”

“I want to. It’s just,”

“What?”

“I still have the urge. I still want to kill.”

“Then fight it. People want to do things all the time. But they don’t. It’s like an addiction. You get the urge, but you don’t do it. And after you have resisted for so long, eventually, you no longer have the desire to do it anymore. Killing is your addiction. You’re addicted to murder, but you don’t have to be. You can start over. You can start brand new. Fresh. No killing.

“Okay. After him.”

Him?

“What do you mean him?”

“I meant her.”

“Or did you really mean him?”

“No. I meant her.”

I wasn’t buying it.

So he wanted to kill a
him
?

Not a
her
?

After leading me to believe that it was a woman all this time?

“Where is your father?”

“Dead. I told you that,”

“How do you know that? If you haven’t seen him since you were a child and since he left, how can you be sure?”

He didn’t say anything.

Was he planning to kill his real father?

For abandoning him?

My mind was going a hundred miles per minute, and all kinds of ideas were popping into my head.

Or had it been a her, and he already killed her, probably Summer, and now he was looking to kill a him; maybe his real father.

Or maybe Joel

I was confused.

But something told me that he’d just made a mistake.

One that wasn’t meant for me to hear.

“Do you want to kill your father?”

“My parents are dead.”

“How do you know?”

“I have the resources to find out you know. He’s dead Hannah and so is my mother.”

“Then why don’t I believe you?”

“Because you have finally listened to at least one thing that I have been saying all this time. You’ve gotten it into your head, and that alone will come in handy one day with your other patients and even in your own life. People and papers lie.”

He had definitely taught me just that.

“What about your foster parents? All of them?”

“I don’t know. They were from all over the place. I never bothered to look them up or see if they were still living. Surprisingly, I never went back for any kind of revenge. Despite how awful they were to me.”

“Then who is him?”

“It is a her.”

“The identity that you plan to use, when you disappear, whose is it?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Aren’t you going to kill to get it?”

“No.”

“But you did before.”

“Are you and Joel going to work it out?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you think that he really loves you?”

“Maybe. I think he made a mistake.”

“Do you think that he tried to fix that mistake?”

Was he trying to tell me something?

“What do you mean?”

“Do you think he tried to fix his mistake? Summer was his mistake.”

Uh oh.

“I’ve been wondering that myself.”

“If he was, responsible for whatever has happened to her, could you forgive him?”

“Could I forgive him for murder?”

“No. Could you forgive him for murdering Summer?”

“Honestly, yes. I would. But none of that would matter.”

“Would you turn him in knowing that he had gotten rid of the problem?”

“Well, if I didn’t turn him in, all roads would lead to me. But the more and more I think about it, Joel wouldn’t do that.”

“Why? Because he’s normal?”

I didn’t know how to answer him.

“If he made Summer pay for ruining his life and marriage, then who was going to make him pay for the part that he played?”

What?

“Are you trying to tell me something?”

Was he trying to tell me that Joel killed Summer?

Was he trying to tell me that Joel had to pay for what he’d done?

Was he going to kill Joel?

I hated Joel.

For what he did to me, I really did hate him.

But I didn’t want him to die.

Right?

Just like I didn’t technically want anything to happen to Summer.

“I’ve been trying to tell you plenty since we have been meeting but,”

“I know, I know, I’m not listening.”

“Exactly.”

He started to walk away but little did he know, I was listening to him now, more than ever.

Now I had to figure out just what I was going to do with it all.

But I couldn’t, I wouldn’t let him kill my husband.

Or would I?

“Some people just don’t know how lucky they are. Some people just don’t know that they were a step from becoming someone like me.”

We ended the conversation and headed on our way.

I waited until he pulled off to head to my car.

My plans were to sit there for a while just to think but Joel called me, and though I didn’t want to, I answered.

“The police are here again. With another warrant.”

“For what?”