“Can you ever find it in your heart to forgive me for everything I’ve done? I love you. I love us. You, me, Addie, Bryce, you’re my heart. You give my life shape and purpose. I don’t know how I’ll function without you.”
“You’ll always have Addie and Bryce,” she said, peering down at Michael. “But I can’t think about us right now, Michael. I just can’t do it. Whatever is going to happen with you and me will take time to sort out. But tell me something, and tell me now, because I need to know. There’s no going forward without it. And I need to look you in the eyes when you say it.”
“What is it? Ask me anything.”
Natalie gazed at him fixedly, undaunted.
“Did you murder Brianna Sykes?”
Without hesitation, Michael said, “I swear to you, Nat. I didn’t kill Brianna.”
Natalie looked deeply into Michael’s eyes. She felt a shift take place within her as a powerful intuition took hold, and she knew with inexplicable certainty that this man, her husband, was telling her the truth.
“The kids,” Michael managed, tears in his eyes. “When can I see them?”
“How about now?” said Natalie with a gentle hand on his shoulder.
Natalie left the room and moments later Addie and Bryce came bounding in with their bright smiles on full display. They crawled on their father, despite the warnings from Natalie and a nurse who accompanied them, undeterred even when Michael made a slight groan of pain.
“I love you both so much,” Michael said, choking on emotion.
“I love you, Daddy,” said Bryce in his sweet little voice. Then Michael felt something soft and fuzzy brush against his face. A blur of motion crossed his vision as Bryce placed Teddy on his father’s chest. With the plush arms spread wide, Bryce play-acted his beloved bear giving Michael a hug, while he and his sister added hugs of their own that filled their father’s heart with an unimaginable joy.
EPILOGUE
Newspaper clippings papered his dining room table.
When the police came—and come they would, because his mother would find him eventually—they’d see the clippings and maybe a smart detective, someone like Amos Kennett, would figure it out. But he left the police a suicide note on his desk anyway, because he wanted there to be no doubt about what he’d done and why. He had no ego to protect anymore. No secret he planned to take with him to the grave. In fact, he wanted to purge himself of all his secrets. He was always too scared, too weak to do the right thing and own up to what he’d done.
He was weak no more. The time had come.
It was the constant news coverage of Audrey Adler (Sykes, to him) and Michael and Natalie Hart that had ripped open this old wound. He’d done so little with his life. He never married. Never had kids. Never did anything substantial except to screw everything up. Now, he’d make amends in a way for all of his wrongdoings.
He clutched a Bible in his hand. He planned to hold on to the book until he couldn’t, which wouldn’t be long once it all got started.
Inside the Bible, he had placed a picture of her at Deuteronomy 5:17 to mark the passage, “You shall not murder.”
Too late for that, he had mused, reading it over.
He entered his garage, where a thick rope hung from a pipe overhead. He’d tested the pipe plenty. It would hold him—not that he weighed all that much.
Skinny. Weak. Disgusting. Pathetic.
He wondered how his former students would memorialize him online. Mr. Oman, the cool teacher who could score weed. He could score other things too, including some of the students he managed to seduce, but only (always) after he got them high. He never loved the girls he slept with, but they made him feel desired, hot, and powerful. Even so, he didn’t care about them, didn’t care about much of anything—until she came along.
He cared for her all right. He cared too damn much.
He tried with her. It wasn’t a crush; it was an obsession. The more she rejected him, the more he wanted her. He followed her. Learned about her relationship with Joseph. Oh, how he hated Joseph! When they split up, he thought he had a chance with her. No dice.
He followed her to the park that day. She told him Joseph was coming to meet her, that he needed to go away, leave her alone. He said he couldn’t do that, told her he thought about her all the time. When he tried to force himself on her, she screamed. She threatened to tell everyone what he did, what he had done for years.
I know about the other students, she snarled at him. She called him a predator. Threatened to tell her mother about him, to tell the school. If she did that, he’d be done for. He’d go to prison. He couldn’t survive in prison, he was too weak for that.
He didn’t know what came over him. Maybe it was the hurt of rejection compounded with the pain of losing her, of losing everything.
One minute they were arguing in the park, and the next thing he knew he had his hands wrapped around her throat, choking her. He felt nothing, nothing but pure rage, when he reached in his back pocket for the knife he always carried.
He’d never killed anyone before, never killed anyone since—and in a way, he died that day, too. He’d been nothing since then, a pointless, useless person, and his self-hatred had only grown with the years. Couldn’t hold a teaching job. Couldn’t hold any job. A weed burnout, they called him when he went on disability.
If only they knew … if only.
Mr. Oman climbed the stepladder six steps high, holding the Bible in his right hand. He only needed one hand to slip the rope around his neck. He swayed back and forth on the ladder. The rope groaned creakily as it pulled taut before going slack again. Back and forth he rocked until the ladder rested on only two legs. One more shove and it went over with a crash. The rope immediately pulled tight as he dropped. His neck and head went up while the rest of his body went down. As with everything else in his life, he had misjudged, and badly at that. His neck didn’t break—this was going to be a long, slow, painful death.
Mr. Oman’s feet kicked out wildly, his legs bicycling in midair, desperate to find purchase. The pain against his throat was unlike anything he could imagine, and he had imagined the worst. He regretted his decision, regretted every damn thing about his life, but there was no turning back now.
His feet barely grazing the side of the only thing of value he owned: a beautiful, still shiny, red Ford Mustang Cobra. A common car back then was a collectible now, but he’d kept it parked in the garage at his mother’s house since the day that boy, Joseph, saw him driving it away. Nobody ever came looking for that car, or for him. They had their person. They had Joseph.
Constriction reduced his windpipe to the size of a pea. He couldn’t take in any air. Blackness soon filled his eyes. His feet stopped kicking.
As the Bible fell from his lifeless grasp, a picture within slipped out from the pages. It floated in the air, hovering it seemed, light as a feather, wafting its way downward, the face of Brianna Sykes gazing up to the heavens, beautiful, glorious, youthful, resplendent.
Forever sixteen.