Life After Taylah(75)
“Avery,” Maggie cries, slapping my cheeks.
Why did he look like that?
“Avery?” Lyn demands. “Look at me.”
Why is he crying?
“Avery!”
Why did Liam run?
I force myself to my feet almost robotically as I move towards the exit. I hear Lyn and Maggie’s cries but I don’t stop. I push through the backdoor and step out into the cold, my outfit barely covering enough to protect me from the weather. I round a corner and see Max and Kelly rushing towards me. Kelly’s face, oh his face, it’s telling me everything I need to know before I even get to him.
Something bad has happened. No, not just something bad, something horrible. Something life-changing. I stop in front of them and I lift my eyes to Max, still feeling nothing.
“Avery,” he rasps, “tell me you’re okay?”
“Why were you crying?”
Is that my voice, that monotone, empty sound?
“Avery . . .”
“Tell me why you were crying?”
“Max, not here; not now,” Kelly pleads. “Look at her, she’s not even there.”
“Tell me!” I scream, shoving Max’s chest. “Tell me.”
Max looks desperately to Kelly, who sighs and wraps his arms around me. Why is he holding me? Why is he telling Max not to tell me?
“Avery, honey,” Max begins, “I got some news tonight about your mother.”
My head begins to spin and my knees wobble. Now I know why Kelly is holding me. He’s holding me because he knows I’ll fall.
“You remember,” Max whispers, his voice broken, “how I told you she was having an affair? It turns out she wasn’t as secretive as she thought. That particular day she went out, she was followed. When she left, that person followed her and when she realized, she pulled over and got out of the car. She . . . recognized the car.”
Was it his wife? Oh God. Did she find out about the affair? Did she kill my mother?
“Avery, baby, the person who pulled over and followed her was your father.”
What? What?
“We questioned him a week or so ago, but he gave us nothing. He denied stopping. We finally gathered enough evidence and tonight we arrested him. He confessed everything, Avery. He told us that . . . he killed Taylah.”
My knees go and not even Kelly is enough to hold me up. His body crashes down with mine. I scream, I scream so loudly my ears burn and begin to ring. My mind crashes closed and my entire world begins going black as grief, shock and heartache rip through my body. I hear voices but I can’t make out any words. All I can hear is the last three things he said to me: “He killed Taylah.”
Then I am swallowed into darkness.
~*~*~*~
He was suspicious.
He followed her.
He got angry and he strangled her.
She died.
He buried her body and left her car.
His DNA not suspicious at the scene, because it was all through her car. Of course it was; he rode in it all the time.
This information swims in my mind as I sit in the police station hours after the news of my mother’s death was broken to me. I haven’t shed a tear, not a single tear. My entire body is numb. I feel no emotion. I’m completely broken. When the officer comes out and tells me I can see my father, I stand on trembling legs and I follow him down the halls.
The minute I reach my father’s cell, the officer turns and mutters, “Five minutes.”
I stare at my dad, his head between his legs, hair disheveled, and his body shaking. He should shake. He should shake for every breath he took from her body. I step forward and I slam my hand against the cell, causing him to look up. His eyes are bloodshot, red, and frantic. He leaps up and rushes forward. “Avery,” he cries. “I didn’t mean to. It was an accident.”
“An accident?” I say, my voice so empty it scares me. “It was an accident that you put your hands around her neck and took her life?”
“She was having an affair!” he yells, gripping his head. “I worked so hard, gave her everything, and she was having an affair. She didn’t care about me . . . about you or Liam. She only cared about that man.”
“So you killed her.”
Empty. Emotionless.
“I didn’t mean to take it that far, I was just so angry. When I realized what I was doing it was too late. I only meant to scare her.”
Scare her.
“She was beautiful, perfect and amazing,” I say, my voice a low hiss. “Her life was not yours to take.”
“Please, Avery. Please don’t hate me.”
I look up at him and I know my eyes are cold. “Hate doesn’t even cover what I feel for you, Father. What I feel goes so much deeper. It burns in my soul so much more furiously. I hope you rot in hell. I hope you pay every day for the rest of your pathetic, lonely life. You are nothing to me. You are no longer my father.”