A few days later, Huck and I were hanging out at the cafe after hours, having a snack and gossiping. It was something we did often, with the cafe owner’s blessing. She was a sweet woman, in her 70s probably, and I think she thought of Huck as the grandchild she never had. I had met her on several occasions and she even gave me some things for the baby. I never told her I wasn’t keeping the baby. I didn’t have the heart to try to explain why. She told us she didn’t mind if we hung out there and kept an eye on the place. She was so sweet to us.
We were right in the middle of a deep conversation about our future, and trying to come up with a name for the baby, when there was a knock on the door. We both turned to look at the same time and were shocked to see Teresa standing outside watching us. It was locked, so she couldn’t just barge in, thankfully. Huck turned to me as if to ask if he should let her in. I just shrugged my shoulders. I was a bit afraid of her, but technically she didn’t do anything wrong. She was found to have stabbed Violet in self-defense. I think any of us would have done the same thing if that crazy lady was coming after us with a knife.
Huck walked over and let her in, locking the door behind her.
“Why are you here?” he asked her.
“I want to talk to you,” she said, looking over at me a couple of times. “Alone.”
“No. Abbey and I are here hanging out. I’m not going to kick her out because you showed up. What do you want?”
He sounded impatient and I could see that he didn’t want Teresa there. She either didn’t notice or didn’t care.
She looked at me one more time, and motioned with a wave of her hand for Huck to come closer, over to a corner table so they could talk without me hearing. He looked over at me with an apologetic look on his face. I just smiled and went back to my snack. Hopefully she would say what she needed to say and not hang around. I could hear whispering, but not what they were saying.
About three minutes into their conversation, they started getting louder and I turned to look at them, curiously.
“Are you serious?” Huck asked her. “You can’t really expect to tell me that you stabbed someone and me not to tell the police. Besides, it was self-defense anyway. So, what’s the problem?”
“The problem is that I don’t like talking to the cops. Besides, it wasn’t really an accident.” She looked my way and lowered her voice, but I could still hear her. “The truth is that I went over there to get money out of her about Adam and you know who.” Her eyes cast my way and I quickly looked down at my feet. Who was I fooling? “Violet just laughed at me and told me to get out or she would have me arrested for blackmail. That’s when I just lost it and stabbed her. That stupid bitch, it was all her fault.”
Her voice was getting louder and angrier as I watched the two of them. I couldn’t believe that I just heard her confess to murder. I didn’t know what to do. Should I call the cops or just wait until she left to do so? In the end, it didn’t matter.
“Let me see if I got this right,” I heard Huck say. “It was Violet’s fault that you tried to blackmail her and then stabbed her? Oh my god, you are delusional!” he yelled. “I’m calling the cops.”
As he turned to walk back toward where I was sitting, I saw her pull a knife out of her pocket and run at Huck. I screamed. Before he could even turn around she plunged the knife into his back. He lurched forward and they both hit the floor. She pulled out the knife as he struggled and stabbed him three more times before I hit her hard in the back of the head with a heavy bowling trophy that had been sitting nearby on the cafe’s counter. Teresa was out cold. Huck had been so surprised by her attack that he didn’t even have a chance to turn over and defend himself. All of the stab wounds were in his back and he was bleeding profusely.
“Oh my god, Huck, are you okay?” I said as I kneeled down beside him. Stupid question. Of course he wasn’t okay.
“Call 911,” was all he said before he passed out.
I jumped up and ran for the phone. While I waited for the police to arrive, I unlocked the front door for them. I also kicked the knife away from Teresa, in case she woke up before they arrived. Good thing I did. She woke up a couple of minutes later and tried to get up. I just let her. I didn’t need to get into a fight with her, not in my condition. I held tight onto the bowling trophy though, just in case she got the bright idea to come at me. It wasn’t necessary though, because she just put her hand to the back of her head, obviously in pain, and walked out the front door without saying a word to me. She didn’t even look my way.
As I was watching her leave, I heard Huck start mumbling.
I put my hand on his head to comfort him. “It’ll be all right. The ambulance is on the way.”
“Abbey.” He was a bit slurry. Of course he was, he had lost a lot of blood.
“Yes?” I asked him, while rubbing his head.
“I love you.”
“I know, Huck, I know. I love you too.” I burst out crying.
“Don’t cry. I’ll be fine.” He was starting to drift off.
“Huck. Stay with me. Huck? Please. Huck wake up!” I yelled.
I checked his pulse, but it was too late. There was nothing I could do. Huck was gone.
That’s when the tears started flowing, more than ever. Then I started sobbing. It was the worst moment of my life and I could barely breathe from the gut wrenching sense of loss. I knew at that moment that I blew it. Adam was no good for me. Huck was the one that I really could have loved, if I had given him half a chance. I knew that he loved me. He even said so as he was dying. I had been so stupid. I didn’t see what was right in front of me. Huck could have been the love of my life. He would have been a wonderful father to my baby. Now that will never happen. I was the one to blame for that. I should have seen what a mess I was making of my life, pining for a married man that didn’t even love me, when I had the most wonderful man right there in front of me.
As I heard the sirens getting louder and louder, getting closer, I suddenly felt a strange sensation in my abdomen. I just dismissed it as stress, or the baby reacting to all the trauma of the night. A couple of minutes later, as the paramedics were running through the front door, I felt it again. I tried to stand up and doubled over in pain. As one of the paramedics checked on Huck, the other came over and asked me if I was all right.
“No, not really. My best friend just died and I’m pregnant. This baby isn’t happy about any of it,” I wailed.
“Sweetheart, I think you are in labor,” he said. “You need to get to the hospital to get checked out. I’ll call another ambulance for you.”
“I’ll take her. It’s not an emergency, is it?” a nice looking man, definitely police, but not wearing a uniform, said as he walked into the cafe.
I looked at the man and back to the paramedic. “That’s fine, you can go with him. Perez will take care of you,” he told me.
“Come on. I’ll drive you over to the hospital. I have a few questions to ask you on the way.” It didn’t seem like I had much choice in the matter.
“Okay.” I followed dutifully. I thought that he looked really familiar. Then I realized that he was the same man that Huck and I passed on the street one day. He was the detective that had his son with him.
As we drove out of the parking lot, he started talking. “What’s your name, dear?”
“Abbey,” I said quietly.
“How old are you Abbey?”
I thought about lying. I really wanted to say 18, but didn’t think he would believe me. Besides, I had no ID to back that up and it would be stupid to lie to the police.
“I’m 16.”
“I have a son at home not much older than you. Name’s Sam. Where are your parents Abbey?” He was very nice and his questions were friendly sounding, if that’s such a thing.
“Um, I’m staying with friends right now.” I really didn’t want him to call my parents.
He thought for a moment. “I see. Well, we’ll get back to that later.”
He then proceeded to grill me about Huck and what had happened. It almost sounded like he thought I did it. But, I told him everything about Teresa, Violet, what Teresa confessed to, all of it. I was still having pains all the while, and realized that I was in labor, like the paramedic said. I didn’t know if Perez believed me or not, but we arrived at the hospital about that time, so I was through answering questions for a while.