Chapter 3

A Chapter by KFA

If you believe that inside of every man, there is another man, you can believe that inside of every woman is another woman. A powerful one, who knows what she deserves, and won’t settle for less. I didn’t know she lived in me this whole time, neither that she would gain power, seduce me into letting go of my old self to let her rule, but she did just that -- it’s how I came to such desperate measures. It’s how I came to want my husband on the electric chair.

That afternoon, I decided to go speak to Mrs.Morelli. I repeated the words like a mantra, practiced briefly in front of the bathroom mirror and even fixed my hair into an almost perfect bun. Then I fetched my pie, and in a pleat yellow dress, I knocked at their door and waited with a perfect concocted smile. She swung the door open, her eyes were red-rimmed, screaming exhaustion. I recoiled from the sight, but made up for it by smiling until my cheeks were sore from the effort.
‘Ermm, Mrs.Lowe?’
‘Mrs.Morelli, I’m here to offer you my condolences…it must be been very hard these few days. And I’ve got an apple pie!’
Her gaze swept to my hair, then drifted down to the hot pie displayed in both my hands. She didn’t seem pleased, neither was she touched; her face was of an expressionless sort.
‘May I come in?’ I added, since she was not going to do it for me; in fact, I supposed she wasn’t going to say anything at all.
‘Right. I’m sorry. Do come in.’
She lead me through the hallway and into the living room. The first thing I noticed was the new yellow sofa that replaced the seat where I had found Mr.Morelli. Naturally I found this odd, wasn’t it too soon for a new couch? But I didn’t make much of it. The sheer curtains wafted from the hot April gentle wind, and she offered me a seat after staring at my dress for a considerable amount of time. She’s judging I thought, but I don’t care.
‘Would you like a drink?’ she offered, and I was too polite to decline.
‘Anything you’ve got will do, thanks.’
She strutted to the fridge and swung the door open, each of her movements were rash and brutal, as though she had spent the day drinking. Her mouth drooped in an almost child-like pout; I figured it was the ache of loss that did her that way.
She brought over a glass choked with ice, and a jug of lemonade on a wooden tray. Thin slices of lemon floated over the straw yellow liquid, the jug was coated by condensation, and water droplets ripped across the neck. ' It’s getting warmer and warmer isn’t it?’
‘Sure it is,’ she said, pouring me a glass, without meeting my stare. I decided she wasn’t in the mood to talk, I was going to have to go straight to the point.
‘To be honest, I came here because i am quite troubled about something.’ Her head bopped up, eyes shining with a new light, as though she’d been a walking corpse up until then.
‘Troubled? What’s the matter?’
‘I assume you can keep a secret? Keep it between us?’ Of course I didn’t mean this, I wanted her to take the information I was about to reveal right to Mac and Annaya. It’s what a woman who loved her husband would do, and she loved him.
‘I can keep a secret. What’s the matter,’ she said with a sharpness and urgency that made me uneasy.
‘Well, my husband and your husband " I don’t know how to say this, but my husband really, really disliked yours and I’m afraid I can’t keep it in any longer.’
Her eyebrows rose until they could no longer, her mouth opened slightly and shut to a bar, I couldn’t discern what she was thinking -- that added to the pressure -- but I went right on anyway.
‘He always talked about him in a very distasteful way -- he hated that your husband was more successful, with a ‘better’ family, he once wished him dead " but again, please don’t mention this. I’m just worried--Do you remember when they argued about your old dog Hop?’
‘Sure,’
her response caught me off guard, I had expected her to be more involved, more interested in what I had to say. It quickly became clear that she wasn’t. I could have gone to the police with that false information myself, but I wanted her to make up her own story, I wanted her to suspect him. I wasn’t sure of this plan, but I had to try.
‘Well Mrs.Lowe, I don’t think there’s much to worry about. They are looking for the murderer, but it isn’t your husband. ‘ Her gaze plugged into mine in that perfect silence, I could feel stress dancing all around me, caressing me, and when she let out a giggle thick with malice, that stress penetrated me entirely.
‘What’s --' I paused, licked the dryness from my lips, ‘what’s funny?’
‘I’m sorry,’ she blurted out, erecting slowly and pulling at her pencil skirt, ‘I seem to have no control over my emotions. Sometimes I laugh for no reason, sometimes I cry. I’m running low on sleep and I have this conference to attend tonight. It’s horrible really. ’
I didn’t know if it were true, but I had no choice but to gobble whatever she had just fed me. She then stood, and I told myself that if I couldn’t get through her, maybe it would be easier to play with a young girl’s mind. I was not proud of this, but I needed to do it.
‘May I see Janet? I couldn’t just leave without seeing her.’ She fixed me, without a smile or trace of warmth; and for the first time, I felt fear pouring into my heart. ’Right. Obviously. I will call her.’

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She did call Janet. And somehow I convinced her to let me babysit her daughter until her return from the conference. Right after she left, Janet walked to the open kitchen, inspected the pie, and fled without saying a word to me. Now I’m here, sitting in the place where a man was murdered just a few days ago. Normally I’d be bored, but I’m not, not in the slightest. I’m troubled, is what I am. The sequence of events with Mrs.Morelli replay over and over like a horror movie I deliberately come back to. Something wasn’t right about her behavior, and I could feel it. Besides Morelli, I’m thinking about Michael. I called him earlier but my fingers itch from the urge to do it again; I would be sent to a psychiatric ward if Kevin knew I call our dead son every now and then. But who would understand, that he was the only thing that kept me going, the pillar that kept my foundations stable and the boy that gave me purpose. He was ripped from me too soon. Murdered. A year and two months.
I stand and make for the pictures on the mantelpiece, placed besides a beautiful egg-shaped ceramic vase with wave like patterns. Snub-nosed Mrs.Morelli used to have full cheeks; she’s lost weight, and the smile portrayed on the photograph. Her blue eyes seem to be staring back at me, the long brunette hair flows down in cowlicks. She was happy. She isn’t now. Was she recently?

I make for the hallway, and up the staircase, stopping halfway to reconsider my next move. I’m going to speak to Janet, if she even lets me in her room. What if she finds the old black lady next door boring? She might not even open the door, it’s how teenagers are apparently. I wouldn’t know. Michael loved me, real genuine love. He cared, protected me as though I were a rare jewel. Perhaps because his father’s personality forced him into becoming my keeper, but he never seemed to mind.

There’s the smell of something burning, something like incense. Janet seems like she’d like incense. I don’t know much about it, but they are sticks that release a pleasant smell when burning, though this one isn’t too pleasant.
The door opens by a fraction after some minutes, I haven’t budged. I’m a patient woman.
‘Mrs.Lowe, hi.’
‘Hey, Janet, are you burning some incense?’ Her eyebrows twitch over her bloodshot eyes. They’re so thinned out that I feel as though she could fall asleep right there and I’d have to break her fall.
‘Yeah, that’s---' she motions a spiral with her finger, ‘that’s definitely incense.’
‘Oh okay. May I come in?’
She pushes the door, it opens up wide, ‘come,’ she says softly, pinching at her eyes.

I’ve never seen a teenager room other than Michael’s; his was simple, because Kevin didn’t allow any eccentricities, but I can see that Janet’s parents did allow it. Christmas lights string from one corner to the other, her blue walls are honed with Polaroids and photographs of tattoos, strange faces and airborne skateboarders. Her large bed in a corner of the room shaped in a circle, and the white wood of the dresser in the opposite corner is covered with doodles.
‘Nice, room,’ I say, whipping around to see her wiping tears from her face. I feel my jaw falling to a gasp.
’Janet?’ I rush to her and lower to my knees, cupping her cold wet hands into mine.
‘I’m so, so sorry about your father, he was such a kind man.’ She shakes her head, eyes pinched shut.
‘I’m not crying about my dad. And he wasn’t kind. Not to you.’ I freeze.
‘What?
‘He threw away all your pies.…I wasn’t sure, but when I saw the one you brought. I realized that they were yours.’ My heart leaps, comes back down and jumps again when I register what she said, and what it means.
’Pies? My pies?’
‘I believe they were yours.’
I might have fallen from the shock if I were not on my knees. My heart sets off in a wild race at the thought of Mr.Morelli throwing my pies right after I dropped them. But he smiled at me, and he told me they were the most delicious pies he’d ever tasted. And he took in their smell, told me he shared it with his family, surely she’s lying. She wants to hurt me.
‘You never ate my pies? You never came home to my pies? Ever?’
‘No,’ an apologetic expression is cast on her face, and I know she is telling the truth. And she is. Never did I see him eat my pies, not once. He only invited me in when he needed help with some chores in the kitchen; during that entire time, the pie laid on the counter-top, untouched, going cold.
‘Why? Why would he?’ her hand squeezes mine, she is just as clueless. I don’t know why, but it feels as though I’ve known this little girl for a long time, and that she’s there for me.
'I don’t know, but I supposed it had something to do with the fight they had the night before he died.’
‘An argument?’ I say, recalling the time Kevin told me about it; Mr and Mrs.Morelli had argued the night before the murder, but what about?
‘About you,’ Janet says, gaze taking off from the ground to level with mine. ‘My dad said…. the neighbors are going to hear you. My mother said, they live right across from us, and other things….. I think, I think the fight was about you. And the pies, it’s connected…and I’m scared that maybe…’ silence inflates, and the air I had been inhaling and exhaling doesn’t feel so light anymore, there’s a heavy quality to it, It’s much harder to pull and retain.
‘maybe my mother --’ I grasp her shoulders and shake her gently,
‘no, no, your mother loved your father. I’m sure of it.’ The lie is sour against my tongue, but she’s a young girl, it would poison her mind to go on and believed her own mother stabbed her husband to death.
‘But they were fighting, ever since -- last year -- it changed, the arguments were worse. I’m seeing it now, and its all connecting.’
‘Last year?’
‘On valentine’s day last year, I heard a huge quarrel downstairs. The biggest I’d ever heard, and it’s never been the same since. The tension is oppressive --- ah, was.'
She runs her hands through her hair and shakes in disbelief, as if recalling the thoughts got her head throbbing with pain.
‘But Mrs.Lowe there was another voice, a third voice. And this is the reason why -- this is why I think they were arguing about you.…your family.’
My fingers turn ice-cold, my mouth is dried out like a desert, and my heart has never beat so fast, even when I thought Kevin was about to strike me dead.
‘I thought I heard your husband’s voice, that night.’ I’m swallowed whole. Valentine’s day. Last year. In my brain a spark of electricity flares and travels in a serpentine pattern to fuse with another spark --- and though I don’t understand why I make the connection, I realize that the 14th of February last year is the last night I saw Michael alive.

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