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I CRAVE NORMALITY. I want it more than anything I’ve ever wanted in my life. I had a perfectly normal existence until a killer took the lives of my parents with no warning in 2006. I was cautiously tiptoeing towards returning to a quiet life when my best friend was murdered the night of our high school reunion a decade later. For the next few years, I mistakenly thought karma was doing its job and rewarding me with a beautiful existence for all that had been tragically taken from me. I had a handsome, smart husband, a beautiful house in my hometown, and a lucrative job that didn’t feel much like work at all. Soon enough, chaos found its way back into my life, and this time, it was nobody’s fault but my own.
After discovering that my mother-in-law was responsible for the deaths of my parents and my best friend, I was confronted with the fact that my seemingly perfect husband had an affair and fathered a child with his former flame. As if this didn’t already sound like the plot of a Lifetime movie, I then killed my mother-in-law in her own home and I barely remember doing it at all. All those last events took place in the course of an hour. Oh, I nearly forgot: shortly after being booked into the Delta County Jail for murder, I found out I was pregnant. If this were a Lifetime movie, I think I’d laugh and change the channel because it was all a little too unbelievable. Alas, it’s now life as I know it.
The key to my survival has been trying my best to see the silver lining in any situation. Although I gave birth with two armed guards next to my bed, I’m now fortunate enough to be home with my beautiful, healthy daughter every night. She will have no memory of how her life started, only of the love we will give her every minute after. I had to miss the funeral of my Uncle Rick while I was incarcerated, but I was able to convince his widow, my Aunt Meryl, to move in with me when I was released. Yes, I’m still somehow living in my dream house on Ogden Avenue – just Meryl, Evie, and I. Ryan and I are officially divorced and – gasps from the crowd – he has moved in with Julie and their son. I’ve been out for six months, and I’m not sure how, but the co-parenting has been a lot smoother than expected. I have learned to view the man I once loved more than anything as the father of my child and nothing more. Of course, I still carry a sometimes unbearable hostility toward this man who broke my heart into a million pieces, but I’ve also learned that carrying anger doesn’t lead to anything good in my life. As much as it hurts, I swallow it and have learned to live this life without Ryan as a partner.
In addition to the court-ordered sessions with my therapist, Vicki, we also have group counseling sessions. That’s right; myself, Ryan, and Julie are in the same room for an hour, once every other week. I know this may seem implausible to an outsider looking in, but it has somehow begun to heal the once-irreparable damage between the three of us. Vicki’s office is a safe space, and I feel at ease speaking my truth to Ryan and Julie. In the months after “the incident” (it’s just much easier to say than the homicide I committed), Ryan was in too much shock to speak to me or Julie. He felt betrayed by us both. I felt betrayed by them both. It was a small, dysfunctional circle of betrayal. Julie was a not-so-innocent bystander, caught in the middle. After months of hearing the uncomfortable truths about his mother, acceptance began to set in. He has since discovered it’s possible to love and miss your mother while also accepting the fact that she was a complete monster who ruined a lot of lives. Surprisingly, Mitzi’s name isn’t brought up much in group counseling. Vicki challenges us to work on our current situation and set attainable goals for the future, instead of focusing too much on the past. This has proven difficult for all three of us. I have despised Julie for as long as I remember and now, she is part of my life, whether I like it or not. Her statements at sentencing very well may have contributed to the leniency the judge showed me and that fact is not lost on me.
I have not seen their son since “the incident” and I don’t think I’ll be ready for a while. The resemblance to my husband I saw in that child’s face was undeniable and constantly makes me wonder just how many people knew the truth and kept it from me.
I’m not convinced that Ryan is in love with Julie, and I realize that makes it seem like I’m in denial. I don’t see any chemistry between them, and he doesn’t look at her the way he used to look at me. When he holds her hand during difficult conversations in therapy, it looks obligatory. I choose to believe them when they say it was a one-time, intoxicated transgression that resulted in a pregnancy. Ryan had been annoyed by all the accusations I threw at him over the years of a secret relationship with Julie. He said the level of grief and regret he felt after that night nearly brought him to his knees. I expected this admission to offend Julie, but she agreed. I flinched when she detailed the reaction from her then-husband, Marc, when she confessed to him. I had my own experiences with Marc Sanders and knew he was a creep, but I never imagined he was capable of violence. She described how she had to wear heavy makeup for weeks to cover the bruises, and as crazy as this sounds, it comforted me to know she has Ryan around now. He may be an adulterous bastard, but he’d never hit a woman – of that, I’m certain. I’m still in contact with Marc’s mother, Cindy, but I don’t dare mention that during our sessions.
Something that I discuss a lot in my solo therapy appointments is the guilt I carry for the light sentence I received. I get to live my life in the free world while there are men and women incarcerated for years for far lesser crimes. Thousands of them are locked up over a drug that’s now legal in most states. Vicki says it’s admirable of me to be enraged over injustice when I’m the one it benefits. For most of my life, I’ve been disgusted by the “good old boys club” that seemingly exists in every small town. Punishment for crimes committed are directly related to your social status, that is if you even get punished at all. The very system that has disappointed me for so long in this town was the one that quietly gave me what amounts to a slap on the wrist for taking a life. Because my family was well-loved and people came out of the woodwork to describe the unspeakable acts of Mitzi Matthews, no doubt combined with the fact that Frank has connections with everyone in the court system, I received years less than I should have. I don’t agree with what Vicki says – it’s not admirable of me to feel guilty. Any person that receives preferential treatment in a judicial system that unfairly punishes others should feel an unbearable weight of responsibility to do something about it. I just haven’t yet figured out what it is that I can do.
We are leaving a group session on an overcast Thursday in late summer when Ryan stops me in the gravel lot adjacent to the medical building that houses Vicki’s office. Julie has already left in her luxury sedan to return to their McMansion on the water and wait for Dr. Ryan to return while raising their illegitimate child on recyclable packets of organic fruited nonsense. Not that I still harbor any animosity toward her.
“Yes?” I ask as he holds the driver’s door of my car open and stares intently.
“We’d like to take a trip down to see Julie’s aunt and uncle in Wisconsin over Labor Day weekend and bring Evie.”
I nod.
“Ry, you know that’s never a problem. I’ll pump a little extra and freeze it. Just promise to Facetime me before bed and in the morning?”
“Great, I know I have Evie for the three-day weekend, but we’ll only be gone a night or two. I don’t want to spend the whole weekend away from home,” he says, before lingering silently and kicking around a few small rocks with his brown dress shoes.
I squint my eyes as they meet his and shake my head slightly. I know him well enough to realize the Labor Day trip was a ploy to start a conversation so he could slip in what he’d really like to say.
“Heath, I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For everything. For not being present enough. For sleeping with Julie. For ignoring all the signs that my mother was destroying you mentally. For also ignoring the signs that she was capable of...everything she did. The list goes on. I’m just sorry. I can’t help but wonder how my life would look, had I made different decisions.”
I give him a weak smile.
“Take it from me, if you keep wondering what life could be like, you’ll drive yourself crazy. I’m just so relieved that after everything that has happened between us, we are still on speaking terms and apparently nailing this whole coparenting thing,” I say.
“You’re damn right we’re nailing it,” he replies with a smile.
A smile that unfortunately brings out that tragic dimple of his. I don’t care how many years have passed or how much we’ve done to hurt each other; there will never be a day that dimple doesn’t send a jolt through my entire body.
It’s so easy to tell someone not to wonder about what might have been, but I’m finding it nearly impossible to do it myself.