Page 3 of I Would Die for You

“You need to leave,” I seethe, with my hand on the open door.

“I understand your reticence,” she says, cocking her head to oneside in a hollow attempt to impart sympathy. “You and Ben were close, and I get that you don’t want to relive it all over again, but…”

I lean in close, the tip of my nose just a few inches away from hers. “Whatever you think you know, you’re wrong. There’s no story here, no conspiracy theory; it was what it was, and justice was served.” I stand tall and take a deep breath. “Now get out of my house.”

She smirks, as if to let me know that conceding defeat now doesn’t mean she won’t try again. “Well, as long as you haven’t spent the past twenty-five years picturing his face and wondering what might have been.”

I don’t wait for her to cross the threshold before forcing the door shut and sending the bolts across, as if it will somehow stop those very thoughts from infiltrating my beleaguered brain. I wait to hear her footsteps on the path, forgetting to breathe as I imagine every flowering rose on either side of it wilting as her dark shadow deprives them of sunlight.

I suck in a breath as I collapse onto the bottom stair in the hall, my eyes desperately scanning my surroundings, looking for something familiar—to prove that nothing has changed. Yeteverythinglooks different. I don’t recognize the coats on the stand, and I can’t reconcile who they might belong to. Even the photo of me, Brad, and Hannah that sits proudly on the sideboard doesn’t jolt my paralyzed nerve endings into action, our faces suddenly seeming alien to me.

I close my eyes, willing myself to still the pounding of my heart—to stop it from beating through the wall of my chest. But the darkness only makes the light shine even brighter around Ben, who’s smiling down at me in my mind’s eye. I try to ignore the image, if only to prove to that woman that she’s wrong, that Idon’tspend every waking moment thinking about him, and every sleeping one dreaming about the two of us together in another lifetime.

“Fuck!” I cry out with frustration as I clench my fists and slam them into the unforgiving wooden banister.

I thought I’d left that world far behind, if not from an emotional standpoint then certainly from a geographical one. I’ve ensconced myself so completely in this place I call home, buried my old life within its foundations so deeply that I thought it could never be found. So how come a stranger has managed to uncover what I’ve spent years hiding?

As I pull myself away from the image of Ben and the pain and sorrow he always evokes, I’m suddenly blindsided by the thought of Brad. The guilt jolts me out of my reverie, the here and now perpetually in conflict with the past I’ve forced myself to forget. I ask myself for the millionth time what my honest and loyal husband would make of my betrayal if he were ever to find out who Ireallyam. Would he be able to overlook my tumultuous former life in favor of the peaceful harmony we’ve since created together? Or would he be unable to see past the deceit, no longer able to trust the wife he thought he knew?

Sometimes, evenIwonder whether she’s a figment of his imagination, invented to stop the rot of grief and the bitter regret of lost opportunities that had befallen her. But on those days, when I question myself more than anyone else would dare to, I can’t help but feel proud of how well that imposter feigns normality. Of how she’s able to reconcile losing the love of her life in such horrific circumstances, and then subsequently losing everything else she ever cared about as a result.

But it seems you only need to scratch the surface to find that the old Nicole Alderton is still very much there. Zoe’s appearance has unleashed her from the cage she’s spent all these years thrashing around in. And I honestly don’t know how I’ll get her back in.

3

“Hey, Jared,” I call out to the driver of the school bus as he opens its folding doors. If I were of sound mind, I would notice the questioning look on his face. But my brain is so frazzled that I can’t see anything, the past hour of overthinking doing nothing but clouding my vision even further.

“Hey, ma’am, no Hannah today…”

I can’t tell if it’s a statement or a question, but either way I can’t compute what he’s saying. I force a deep breath in, willing myself to calm down so I can put his words in the right order, so that they make sense.

“Hey, Mrs. Forbes,” says Olivia, our neighbor’s daughter, as she bounds down the last two stairs of the bus.

“Hey, Olivia, Hannah last off as usual?”

“She’s not on today,” she says, as if it means nothing. “Her aunt picked her up.”

Olivia’s mom gives me a wave from the other side of the street, as a rancid heat infiltrates my bloodstream.

Absurdly, I laugh. “Jared?”

He shrugs his shoulders, but a flicker of alarm momentarily clouds his chubby features. “She’s not on my list for this afternoon’s drop-off.”

“But of course she is,” I say, losing the moisture in my mouth. “She always is.”

Jared shakes his head as he consults the clipboard hanging from the dash. “Nope, she’s not on it.”

“But…” I start, as the turmoil of Zoe’s presence returns to haunt me. The shock, the panic, the terror, has rendered me useless; unable to function at the most basic level.Think, Nicole, think.

Was Hannah going to track and field after school? Have I missed an email inviting her to an afternoon tea to reward her effort grades? Did I prearrange a playdate with one of her friends? I can’t separate the myriad of possibilities that are crowding my brain. All I know is that she most definitely didn’t go home with her aunt.Because she doesn’t have one.

I almost fall over myself as I run back to the house, the adrenaline turning my legs to jelly.

“Brad! Brad!” I scream, even though I know he’s not there.

The house is exactly as I left it, which seems odd when everything else has changed.

As my trembling fingers hover over the phone, I don’t know who to call first. My instinct is Brad, but he’s going to know even less than I do, so I opt for the school office, praying that they can offer a perfectly reasonable explanation as to why an eight-year-old in their care has failed to reach the safety of her mother’s arms.

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