My husband betrayed the wrong woman

Chapter2

"Aunt Bea? Aunt Bea, pick up. Please pick up."

I drove with one hand on the wheel and the phone pressed against my ear, my eyes flicking between the road and the screen at every red light. Voicemail. Voicemail. Voicemail.

My heart was pounding so hard I could hear it.

Stevie, please help me.

What did that mean? She was in a hospital. There were nurses and doctors and call buttons. Why was she asking me for help? Why didn't she just ring the bell beside her bed?

I tried her again. Voicemail.

I pressed harder on the gas.

The hospital was twenty minutes away. I made it in twelve. I parked crooked across two spaces and didn't care. The automatic doors opened for me and I almost ran straight into a man in a black suit standing just inside the lobby. He didn't move. He didn't apologize. He just looked at me. Slowly. Like he was checking my face against a photograph in his head.

I sidestepped him and kept walking.

The fourth floor smelled like bleach and bad coffee. I knew the way to my aunt's room without thinking. Room 412. Right at the nurses' station, second door on the left.

Except the second door on the left was open. And empty.

The bed was stripped. The flowers I'd brought last Sunday were gone. Even the little card with my handwriting had been cleared off the side table.

"No." I backed out into the hallway. "No, no, no."

"Can I help you?" A nurse with kind eyes and a clipboard stopped beside me.

"Beatrice Hollis. Room 412. Where is she?"

The nurse's face did something I didn't like. A small flinch. A pull around the eyes.

"Ma'am, are you family?"

"I'm her niece. Where is she?"

"Let me get the doctor."

"No. Tell me now. Please."

She hesitated. Then she said the words I already knew were coming, even though I'd been refusing to hear them since the second I saw the empty bed.

"I'm so sorry. Mrs. Hollis passed away about forty minutes ago."

The hallway tilted. I reached out and grabbed the wall. My hand made a wet sound against the paint and I realized my palms were sweating.

"Forty minutes," I repeated.

“She went into cardiac arrest very suddenly,” the nurse said softly. “The doctors did everything they could.”

Forty minutes ago, she'd been alive enough to dial my number.

"Did anyone come to see her? Before?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Visitors. Did she have visitors today?"

The nurse glanced down at her clipboard, then back at me. Carefully.

"Two men came about an hour ago. They said they were her sons. They were only in there a few minutes."

I gasped. "My aunt didn't have sons."

The nurse's mouth opened. Then closed.

The nurse asked softly if I wanted to see her.

I nodded before she even finished the question.

The nurse led me to a small quiet room at the end of the hallway.

Aunt Bea looked smaller on the narrow hospital cot.

The blanket was pulled up to her chest. Someone had brushed her gray hair back from her forehead like they were trying to make death look neat. But there was nothing neat about this. Nothing peaceful either. She was just… gone.

I walked to the bedside on shaking legs and took her hand.

It was cold.

That was what broke me.

“No.” The word tore out of me before I could stop it. “No, no, no… Aunt Bea…”

A sob climbed up my throat so hard it hurt.

“You weren’t supposed to die like this,” I cried. “Who am I supposed to call when I burn the rice now? Who’s going to pretend your terrible peach pie tastes good just because I made it? Who’s going to remind me to take my umbrella every time it rains?”

My tears hit the blanket over her hand.

“You were supposed to tell me,” I whispered through the sobs. “You were supposed to stay.”

The room stayed silent.

Just fluorescent lights humming overhead and the smell of antiseptic and flowers starting to die in the vase by the window.

I kissed her forehead anyway.

Then I walked out before my legs gave out under me.

"Excuse me," I said. My voice didn't sound like mine. "I need some air."

I walked. I didn't run, because if I ran I would scream, and if I screamed I wouldn't stop. I walked past the nurses' station, past the elevators, down the stairs because I couldn't stand still long enough for an elevator to come. My heels clicked against the concrete and the sound bounced off the walls until it sounded like ten people were chasing me.

By the time I pushed open the door to the parking garage, I was shaking so hard my teeth were knocking together.

I made it to my car. I got the door open. I sat down.

And then I broke.

I cried the way I hadn't cried since I was twelve years old and a police officer sat me down on a couch and told me my parents weren't coming home. I cried until my throat hurt. I cried until I couldn't see. I cried for Aunt Bea, who'd raised me on a librarian's salary and never made me feel like I was a burden. I cried for the secret she'd died trying to tell me.

When I finally stopped, my mascara was halfway down my face and the parking garage was almost empty.

Almost.

A black car was parked three spaces down from mine. Engine running. Windows tinted so dark I couldn't see in.

It hadn't been there when I parked.

I stared at it. It stared back. Or maybe it didn't. Maybe there was no one inside at all and I was losing my mind from grief and fear and the kind of bone-deep tired that comes from finding out everyone you trusted was already gone.

I started my car.

The black car didn't move.

I pulled out and drove away slowly, watching it in my mirror.

The black car still didn't move.

But when I turned out onto the main road two minutes later, I could have sworn I saw the same tinted windows two cars behind me.