Page 58 of Wreck Me

“Who’s Lucy, Mr. Hart?”

I watched as my father’s jaw locked and his nostrils flared.

“My estranged wife.” His hands curled into tight fists.

“Estranged wife, or deceased?”

Again, my dad said nothing. He stared straight ahead at the beige windowless wall, as the officer pursed his lips behind him as though he were settling into a long debate.

“When did she leave you, Mr. Hart?”

“Sixteen years ago.”

“Have you spoken to her since?”

“No.”

“What about your son? Has he spoken with your wife since she left?”

“No.”

“Hmm,” the officer mused, circling back around to face my dad.

For three hours, I stood just inches away from the window and watched, completely on edge, as the officer and my dad went back and forth with their questions and answers. My stomach churned the entire time, hating not knowing whether the officers would be able to extract any concrete information from him. All I wanted to know is if he actually killed my mom.

By hour four, I could recognize the signs of my dad readying to explode. As the officer continued to ask him the same questions in different formats, my dad’s skin began to redden–a telltale sign he was about to completely lose his shit.

In the end, it was the simplest question that tipped him over the edge, setting him off like a firework.

“What happened to your wife, Seth?”

“I fucking killed her, okay?!”

Using the momentum from my dad’s explosion, the officer leaned in, prepared to pick out every bit of his confession. “Why, Seth? Why would you kill your own wife? The mother of your child.”

“Because she was a stupid fucking bitch who was about to leave me. I couldn’t fucking handle that, okay?”

“Why did she want to leave you?”

My dad glared daggers at the officer, shaking visibly in his chair. “She didn’t like my drinking.”

“Did you ever physically harm her?”

“I might have tossed her around a little from time to time, but it’s nothing the bitch didn’t like.”

“Why kill her? Why not just let her leave?” the officer prodded, looking at the one-way glass and giving a slight nod.

I looked over to my right and saw another officer taking notes, and to my left, Chief Collier stood with his arms crossed, one hand bracing against his mouth as he listened intently.

“What kind of man would I be if I let her fuckin’ go? She was going to take all the money we had—which wasn’t much—and bleed me dry. She was going to take our kid too.”

“So it was easier to take her life, instead of watching her take everything of yours?”

“I hadn’t planned it, alright? I meant to smack her around—maybe knock her out. When I smashed the bottle to her head, I thought it’d knock her out. I didn’t think she’d hit the side table. I tried to catch her—I almost had the collar of her shirt, but it ended up being her necklace—and she fell fast. There was so much fuckin’ blood. I didn’t even know she was dead right away.”

“Tell me what happened next, Mr. Hart.” The officer pulled out the metal chair across from my dad and sat, placing the clipboard in his lap before folding his hands together on the table.

My dad rubbed his hands against his face again and inhaled a deep breath. “I called my pops. I panicked. I didn’t know what to do.”

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