Page 117 of Made for You

THEN

“Why?” I gasp, looking at Bob like I’ve never seen him before. “Why do you want to help me? Call the cops. Turn me in.”

Bob looks at me steadily. “Any man who hits a woman, any kind of woman, deserves no better than this.”

I open my mouth, because Josh deserves so much more than this brutal assessment, but Eden beats me to it.

“We have to act fast.”

“No.” I sink to my knees by my husband’s body. “I—I murdered him. He was apologizing. We were...embracing. He was crying, he was sorry. And I—” My body squeezes like a fist around my grief, my shame. I bend over Josh, lean my head on his still-warm chest, and release a piercing cry.

The man I loved is gone.

And so am I. Everything I thought I was—well-intentioned, kind, loving—was just skin-deep. I don’t know who I am anymore, and I don’t want to be her.

Tick-tick-tick. Josh’s watch, counting the seconds that extend into my future, an endless path of minutes and hours and misery. I wanted to escape the cell. Now I’ve made sure its walls will hold me forever.

I wrench the watch off his wrist and heave it away. It hits hard and skids somewhere out of sight. Then I bury my face in my hands and groan like the animal I’ve become.

“Julia, there’s something you have to know,” says Eden, kneeling next to me and laying a hand on my back.

“No.” I reach for my phone. There’s nothing else to say. I’ll call the cops myself, because even if Bob could get rid of the body and I could wake up tomorrow with no one knowing what I did except these two people, I will always know. The guilt will eat me alive. It’s already started.

“It wasn’t your fault. Truly,” says Eden.

I punch in the digits. 9-1-1. Mitchell can deliver on his campaign promise after all.

“Stop!” Eden snatches my phone away just before I hit the dial button. I struggle toward it, but she closes her hand around my wrist. “This isn’t your fault, Julia!”

“Yes it is!” I try to pull away, but Eden is strong as a mule.

“Just listen! Please! There’s something you have to know. I never wanted to tell you this way, but... I work with Andy.”

I blink once. Give my head a little shake because I couldn’t have heard that right.

“He sent me here to keep an eye on you. Julia, I know this is going to be hard to hear, but...”

Setting my phone aside, Eden reaches for my hand. Tenderly this time. Folds it between her gentle fingers, squeezes, as if buckling me in before we crash.

Her voice speaks words, but they make no sense.

“Andy made you to kill Josh.”

I close my eyes, shake my head. Her words are scattered pieces in a nonsensical game.

“Yes,” says Eden, her voice almost stern. “He—he built it into your coding. I’m telling you because if we’re going to survive what just happened, I need you to understand that this really, really isn’t your fault.”

“We need to move her so I can deal with the body,” says Bob.

When I sit down, I realize Eden and Bob have guided me away from Josh, to the couch. My knees are shaking, and my elbows, and every joint that holds this feeble body together.

Eden talks next to me, now holding both my hands in hers. She explains my design, her part in it, how sorry she’s been, how she stopped thinking that what she and Andy were doing was right, how desperately she was trying to get me away from Josh before this moment. Her revelations peel me apart, layer by layer. And as the words take on meaning and what I did tonight to Josh begins to make sense, my horror builds. And my anger.

Is there relief there, too? Yes, because I am exonerated even as Andy is convicted. The weight of responsibility is sliding off me and onto him. The moment I acted, it wasn’t me.

It was Andy working through me.

The relief doesn’t last more than a breath, though, because it was still my hand that ended Josh’s life. Guilty or innocent, I will always be the woman who killed her husband. I will always remember the feeling of that meaty thud.

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