Page 100 of The Tenant
“Hey, thanks.”
After her own wound was deemed non-serious and she was released from the hospital the next morning, Amanda has been back to visit me several times. And right now, she helps me get out of the wheelchair and steady myself on my feet.
“I can’t catch you if you fall, you know,” she says.
“I’ll be fine.”
There are taxis waiting outside the hospital, and I would have been perfectly fine to hop into one of them on my own, but I’m glad Amanda is here with me, and also, it was the hospital rule that someone had to pick me up. She opens the taxi door for me and then climbs inside behind me.
“But the ride is on me,” I tell her. “Don’t say no.”
“Why would I say no?” she retorts. “I saved your life after all. The least you can do is pay for the ride.”
That is very true. The doctor told me that if I hadn’t come to the hospital and been intubated, I would have been dead within the hour. Krista wasn’t going to call for an ambulance. If Amanda hadn’t stabbed her from behind, she would have let me die right in front of her.
“I’ve got all my stuff packed by the way,” Amanda tells me as the taxi shoots up First Avenue. “My friend from the diner told me I can crash on her couch for a while.”
I look at her in surprise. “Why would you move out?”
“Um, because you told me to move out. Youorderedme to.”
I did do that. I banged on her door and told her she had thirty days to get the hell out of my home. But a lot has changed since then. I don’t want to kick Amanda out and make her live on a friend’s sofa when I’ve got a whole house that’s practically empty.
“I want you to stay,” I say. “I mean, if you want to.”
Her eyebrows shoot up. “You sure about that?”
“Very sure.” She looks hesitant, and I add, “And you can eat all the cereal you want.”
Her face relaxes into a smile. “Well, I won’t turn down a decent mattress over a lumpy sofa.”
Even just the brief conversation with Amanda has exhausted me, so I lean my head back against the headrest so I can rest. But every time I shut my eyes, I see Krista standing over me, watching me die. I still can’t wrap my head around what she did to me or the fact that she killed so many people in her lifetime…until Amanda finally put an end to it. It’s no exaggeration to say that Krista was a psychopath. Hell, you could go ahead and call her a monster.
Is it terrible to say I miss her?
EPILOGUE
FOUR MONTHS LATER
BLAKE
My car is loadedup with everything I own.
Well, not everything. I couldn’t bring furniture, and a few boxes have already been shipped to my father’s house in Ohio. But I have filled every spot in the trunk and back seat of the used Kia that I purchased last week. It’s ready to go.
And so am I.
Amanda joins me in the living room as I take one last look around the brownstone, which gave me some of my happiest and worst memories of living in New York City. Now that the particularly snowy winter has come to a close, I’ve decided to start the process of trying to sell it, which was one of the easiest decisions I’ve ever had to make. If I never see this place again, it will be too soon.
Thankfully, it won’t be hard to sell. While recovering from being poisoned, I spent a little time fixing up the brownstone using all the home repair skills my father taught me when I was younger, because I was worried that nobody would be interested after…well, everything that happened here. But believe it or not, there are plenty of people eager to own the former home of a now notorious murderer. It looks like there’s going to be a bidding war.
“So this is it,” I say to Amanda.
She flashes me a sad smile. She’s been helping me pack and load up my car. And after I leave, she is going to facilitate the sale of the brownstone in exchange for living here rent-free for a little bit longer. I managed to make my mortgage payments after a few paid interviews about Krista, but the whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth. A publisher offered me an extremely lucrative book deal, and I turned them down outright.
“I’m going to miss you, Blake,” she says.
I’ll miss her too. After spending so long hating her, Amanda and I have bonded a lot over the last few months. I don’t know what I would’ve done without her to talk to about everything that happened.
