THREE DAYS AGO
I’m not sure how I convinced myself to stay away this long. I’ve done so much evil in my life. I thought I was done with it. There in the hospital, two-and-a-half years ago, I was ready to make amends, or at least come to grips with things. Told everything to that doctor. Confessed. Opened up about the girls, and what those assholes did to them.
What I helped do to them.
That’s still hard to accept. I don’t know how I’ve lived with it all this long. And I don’t fucking get why the docs in the ward chose to let me. Just to walk away, after all I told ‘em. Hell if that ain’t as criminal as what I did.
No, it isn’t. Shit. But it still wasn’t right.
But, fuck. I don’t have to let someone else torture a person I already screwed over.
I knew something was wrong with that second doc at the hospital. Not the main one, but the meds guy who was always with him. The way he looked at me, the way he talked to me when his boss wasn’t in the room. Creepy. No other word for it. Way too fucking intense, and too many damned questions.
Then, to take everything I told him, and just keep it to himself? No, something definitely wrong with that.
I couldn’t just sit on it.
I tried. God, they let me go, and I wasn’t going to slap back at that. Wasn’t sure I’d ever see the outside of a mental hospital or prison again during those days; but when they let me walk, hell, I was going to take freedom.
Guilt follows you around, though. I guess I’ve known that most of my life, but it’s taken the whole of life to sink in.
I wasn’t ready to be a part of more evil.
So I started to explore. Two years after I was out, I got to work. Got the name of the doc who’d handled the meds and I started a little … I guess on TV they’d call it an investigation. My little spy game. And what’s a girl supposed to think when you discover a man’s left his job and changed his name? Does he not know there are records of such things, if someone’s really looking?
Is there a good reason for a person to do something like that?
It’s how I knew he was up to no good. From there, I had to track him down. Took some doing, but I found the CVS Pharmacy in San Francisco where he works, and snuck in one day to have a peak. ‘David Howell’ was there, white lab coat just like in the hospital. Living a new life. Fucker.
I didn’t let him see me, but that was all the proof I needed that something was wrong. So I kept up my search. Found out he lived in Windsor, up past Santa Rosa, and was … married.
Can’t really describe how it made me feel to learn that piece of information. Because I knew, I just knew, right from the first second, that the woman, the ‘wife’, was going to be Amber Jackson. The look on his face when I’d talked about her, it was … obsessive. Possessive. And then he vanishes from his job, his name, and reappears up north with a new wife?
Amber Jackson was being abused again. I could feel it in my bones. And I’d led her to him. Fuck! Just like when we were kids, only this time I hadn’t known what I was doing.
She’s haunted me my whole life, that bitch. But then I’ve gone and sent her into hell another time.
So there was really only one thing to do. I had to go to Windsor, find Amber, and tell her what was happening. Tell her who her ‘husband’ really is. And set her free. One good, decent, act to maybe redeem some corner of my life.
And so I’m here. Sun’s nearing the middle of the sky, nice and warm after a night spent alongside the river, just out of town, for lack of any better option. Stars ain’t a bad roof if the weather’s okay, I gotta admit. I’ve been here almost a week, watching Amber’s movements, getting a sense of the patterns of her days. I want to approach her when David isn’t there, when I can talk to her openly about everything, without his influence. I think I’ve got their routine worked out.
So I spend one last night of calm under the stars before I meet with her. Because it has to be today. No more delaying. I’ve learned all I’m gonna learn. Gotta act before I lose my resolve.
Then maybe, maybe, I can bring some good to the woman I ruined all those years ago.