Page 31 of What Happened Last Night

“As you wish, Mr. Alden. I just need a signature from you to confirm that you’re leaving the facility of your own free will against the advice of a medical professional,” she said.

“Fine,” I agreed. “But make it quick. I’m calling an Uber, and if it gets here before you bring the form to me, then I won’t be here.”

She scuttled away, glancing back at me over her shoulder as she went. I called an Uber and paced the hallway nervously. The nurse came back within a matter of minutes, and I scrawled my name on her form. I hurried to the elevators and made my way downstairs and outside. I didn’t have long to wait before my Uber pulled up. I got in and sat there stupidly for a moment with no idea where to go.

“Where to, mate?” the driver asked.

“Anywhere. Just get me out of here,” I said.

He looked at me in his mirror and raised an eyebrow. I sighed.

“The airport,” I said.

He held my gaze a moment longer as though he was going to question me, but then he shrugged his shoulders and pulled away. I watched out the window as the familiar scenery zoomed by. I wondered where I should go. I could only take domestic flights without my passport, but I could still get a long way away from here. I could go to Alaska. No one would think to look for me there.

I nodded my head, the decision made. I leaned back in the seat and closed my eyes for a moment, trying to shut out the world. We had been driving for about twenty minutes when I opened my eyes again. We were almost out of town. We should be reaching the airport soon.

What the fuck are you doing, William? a voice asked inside my head. I tried to ignore the voice, but then I started to really think about what I was doing. Running away like this was only making me look guilty. The only thing that DNA test could prove was that I had lied about how well I knew Candy. And that was easy enough to explain away. I could just say I didn’t want to hurt Carlotta by having her find out about the affair and the baby. I nodded to myself, calming down slightly.

“Driver? There’s been a change of plans,” I said.

I gave him my address and told him to take me there instead. He was still looking a little wary, like he was unsure whether to take me there or not, but he sensibly kept his mouth shut and turned the car around.

I called Carlotta and told her I had signed myself out of the hospital and that I was on my way home. She raised holy hell about my discharging myself from the hospital, but I calmed her down, explaining that I was fine, and my broken wrist could heal just as well at home as it could in the hospital. She still sounded a little unsure, so I tried a different tack. I told her I was sorry about the way I had bitten her head off yesterday and that I missed her. It worked, and she told me she would have breakfast waiting for me when I got home.

I ended the call and began to consider how I was going to handle this with Carlotta. I had seen enough in my dream or memory or whatever it was to know that the knife Candy had been holding wasn’t one of ours. And it hadn’t been in the bedroom when I woke up. I didn’t think it had been found at all because I’m damned sure the police would have had plenty of questions about it if they’d found it in the garden with Candy’s body.

I wish I knew exactly what Carlotta had done, but I was only getting the events in snippets. She had to have killed Candy, though. And then she had taken the knife and hidden it. I had to find out where she’d put it so that I could make sure it was somewhere it couldn’t be found.

But why would she have hidden it in the first place? Surely, a knife that could be traced to Candy and not us would have been useful to Carlotta. It would have left an opening for her to say that Candy came at her with the knife and she pushed her away in self-defense. Hell, maybe that’s what did happen. But no, Carlotta wouldn’t have hidden the knife if that had happened. She had killed Candy because she was angry about the baby, angry about me.

I couldn’t keep thinking about this, going around in circles like this. I was driving myself crazy. By the time we eventually arrived at my house and I paid the Uber driver and approached the door, I was no closer to knowing how to broach this with Carlotta than I had been when I asked the driver to turn around.

I stepped into the house greeted by the smell of food. True to her word, Carlotta had prepared a delicious-looking breakfast. She had even put a candle on the table. I would have said I was sorry sooner if I had known she would start treating me like this.

I smiled at her as she appeared from the kitchen with two steaming mugs of coffee in her hands. I kissed her cheek as she set them down on the table.

“This looks great, love.” I smiled.

“Well, sit down and eat up then.” She laughed.

We sat down and began to eat. For a few moments, I allowed myself to believe that we were just a normal couple having a normal breakfast with no dark cloud hanging over us. It didn’t last long, though. I had to know what had happened to that knife.

“I had a dream earlier,” I said, finally broaching the subject. “Only it wasn’t really a dream. It was a memory. I think what happened the night Candy died is coming back to me.”

Carlotta’s head flew up and her eyes met mine for a half-second before flitting away again. She looked awfully nervous all of a sudden. She reached for her coffee cup, her hand shaking enough to make the surface of the coffee appear wavy. She sipped the coffee and put the cup back down.

“What do you remember?” she asked me, seeming to choose her words carefully.

I shrugged, playing it cool.

“I don’t remember everything. But I know Candy had a knife. What happened to the knife, Carlotta?”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember anything about that night, remember?” she said. “The police probably have it.”

“Don’t you think they would have mentioned it if they’d found a knife?” I said.

“I don’t know. You’re the one who suddenly remembers everything. Why don’t you tell me what happened to it?” she said.

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