Page 94 of Heart Sick

“Luna, don’t,” Dutch pleads, but this just spurs me on all the more.

I turn the picture over and who I see has me dropping to my knees.

It’s me and a young man whose eyes I’ve seen before. They are kind and provide me comfort which breaks my heart because I miss it so very much. We are hugging and there’s no question that we know one another well.

“Jack,” I mumble under my breath, running my finger across his face.

But this name feels wrong, like this name isn’t his. But it must be because he looks familiar and it’s me with him in this photograph.

Nothing makes sense.

“What did she say to you?” I ask Dutch, lifting my eyes to meet his.

He’s torn, and I know that’s because whatever he’s about to say will change me forevermore.

“That woman, her name is Joy…she’s your best friend,” Dutch reveals, walking toward me slowly, as he would approach a rabid animal. “Jack was her son. You were neighbors. You helped raise Jack. You loved him like your own.”

Dutch swallows past the lump in his throat because this doesn’t end in a happily ever after.

“She doesn’t know when you and Jack…started seeing one another. But she suspects when he was seventeen. That’s when he started to change. He got mixed up with a bad crowd. He stopped being the son she knew.

“She knew he was hiding a secret. That he was seeing a woman, but when he ended things, she didn’t handle it well. She became infatuated with him, he shared with his mom.”

I can’t breathe. I don’t want to accept this as truth, but what she says confirms what Dutch has told me. It confirms what he’s seen; what he’s felt.

“She said you became obsessed when Jack tried to live a life away from you. He went away to college to play football, and that’s when she noticed your behavior changing too. You hardly left the house, and when you did, she said you didn’t acknowledge her.

“She tried to help you, but you didn’t want help. You told her there was no reason left to live if you couldn’t have the man you loved. You never told her it was Jack, but she soon discovered it was him when she walked in on you and him.

“She said the way you touched him, the way you looked at him, was that of a lover. Jack never told her it was you when she asked. She said he was trying to protect you. But he did tell her he was trying to end a relationship, but the woman wouldn’t let him go.

“He was scared for her. It was apparent he loved her very much. But it was done.”

I wade through the sludge in my mind, desperately trying to connect to these memories, but I can’t. There’s nothing but white noise.

“She said the night of Jack’s accident, he went to the pharmacy to get some pills for Joy. He was only supposed to be gone for twenty minutes. But when someone knocked on her door, she knew something terrible had happened.

“The police ruled it an accident, but—”

“But what?” I coax when Dutch pauses.

“But she thinks he was murdered…and she thinks you were the one who killed him.”

Bile rises and I want to be sick because this is what Jack “showed” Dutch.

“She believes in a fit of jealousy, you ran him off the road because if you couldn’t have him, then no one could. He started seeing a young woman, Trista. You hated her. Joy never understood why, but she started piecing it all together. She had you committed for your own safety because she’d rather that than the police investigate and confirm her worst fears.”

Tears roll down my cheeks. I am a monster. And I’m also a murderer.

I don’t want to believe it, but everything Dutch says confirms what he felt before he spoke to Joy. How would she know this if it wasn’t true?

“And you believe her?” I whisper, begging Dutch tells me this is all a bad dream.

His silence is all the answer I need.

“It’s your eyes I see behind the wheel,” he confesses with nothing but sorrow. “I don’t know what that means, but Jack, his heart, it’s always recognized you. I don’t want to believe it, but—”

Dr. Norton decides now is the time to intervene. “I know this is a lot to stomach, but here, this might help.”

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