He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t hold a clear thought. Shock and pain had come forward to take center stage. From somewhere far away it seemed he heard a scream, a voice calling out his name, a sound that echoed in a vast chamber of nothingness, washing over him in waves.
Natalie sank down to kneel before him, her eyes welling. He felt her hand brush against his cheek, but couldn’t take in any warmth from her touch. Cold was rooted in his bones.
“Michael,” she said, sounding shocked. She cupped his head in her hands as she gently lowered him to the floor, down onto his back.
Natalie, he realized. This is my wife Natalie peering down at me. He felt weightless in his own body, rising up, drifting away, less anchored than a helium balloon.
“Michael, please, please hold on, help is coming. I called for help. I thought you were going to hurt me … I didn’t mean to, I didn’t.”
Her voice broke. She covered her mouth with her hands, but he could see her hot tears flowing like jeweled rivers down pale cheeks. He reached up to touch her face, wipe those tears away. It’s okay, he wanted to say, but couldn’t voice those words.
“You feel cold,” she said anxiously, rubbing his skin to warm him.
He should have been afraid. He was feeling colder by the second. It was getting harder to breathe too, but something kept him going, a notion he had that it wasn’t time to give up and fade to the black.
There was something he had to do.
Natalie continued pleading with him, urging him to hold on. Her voice grew fainter, until all he heard was a high-pitched whine.
He was dying. There was no question about it. Death was coming. It was near. But there was something he had to do before he let go. What was it? What?
He saw visions of light dancing before his eyes, the faces of Addie and Bryce coming in and out of focus. A flood of memories played about in his mind like a scattering of confetti, each piece containing a fragment of his story, a sensation, a feeling he had stored away for reasons unknown. A piercing pain radiated out across his body in all directions, the epicenter of it at his midsection, but even that couldn’t eclipse the anguish he felt at not being able to do that one thing he was supposed to do before the blackness came to get him.
I need to help her, he thought. I have to do what’s right.
Save her.
I’m dying.
“Michael, I’m so sorry…”
She was standing over him. People were entering the room in a frantic rush. They came to his side, kneeling down, pressing on his wound, saying things he didn’t need to hear, taking vital signs, calling out numbers. All the while, he continued to take stock of his fading life.
I should have done more with the time I had.
“Michael, please don’t go.”
He heard her voice, like the call of angels. Yes, of course. He owed her something, didn’t he? He could save her. He was glad there were people there. They’d bear witness to what he had to say, his final confession.
The truth doesn’t matter now.
He waved his hand weakly, beckoning for her to lean down, to come to him, get close, put her ear to his lips. He remembered the scent of her. Time was running out. Soon, he thought. Soon I’ll go. But first—
“Natalie,” he whispered in her ear, lifting himself up off the floor ever so slightly, wincing against the pain, his voice strained and weakened like his fading pulse. “Listen to me, listen carefully. I’ll help you.” Michael hissed out the words. “Kennett.” He remembered that name and then remembered another. “He has the wrong person. It’s not you. It’s me, Natalie. It’s me. I did it. I killed Audrey.”
There.
All better now.
He let go a breath as he collapsed onto the floor, but this time the ground didn’t meet his body. He kept on falling, falling into the black, into a great nothingness, where the pain vanished—and so did he.
CHAPTER 44
NATALIE
Natalie gazed in disbelief at the sea of tubes and wires strewn about Michael’s cramped room in the ICU. A ventilator pushed air into his lungs while an attached apparatus did the breathing for him. Tina was with her, holding Natalie’s hand, consoling her as only her dear friend could. The doctors had come and gone, providing brief updates on his critical condition. The penetrating abdominal wound he’d suffered—at her hand no less—had perforated the intra-abdominal vasculature as well as the small and large bowel.
His surgery had lasted almost eight hours. According to the surgeon, it had been a hell of a ride.
“He’s as stable as we can make him right now,” she said. “We’re worried about the liver, but we need to give him some time to rest before we do another MRI.”
Natalie lamented to Tina how there was no guarantee the tubes would ever come out, no timetable given for Michael’s recovery.
“None of us are given any guarantees,” Tina said darkly in response. “You just have to be there for him,” she added. “And hope for the best.”
Natalie sighed deeply as she thought over the implications.
“The best,” she said, almost capping that with a derisive laugh. “If he recovers, he’ll face murder charges. Meanwhile, Addie is refusing to go back to school. She’s too afraid of what the other kids might say now that the story is all over the news. And Bryce—thank goodness he’s too young to fully understand, but he knows something is very wrong.”
Natalie’s own feelings were mixed. While she didn’t wish any further harm to come to Michael, she was certain her love for him was gone, buried forever under the sediment of his lies and sickening crimes. How could she have loved someone so wholeheartedly without ever truly knowing him? This question, she imagined, would haunt the rest of her days.
“What are you going to do about … that stuff?” Tina asked, keeping her voice low even though nobody could hear them.
From the conversation they’d had on the drive to the hospital, Natalie knew the “stuff” to which she referred was the bag with the shirt and gym locker key in it.
“I’ll go clean out Michael’s locker myself, hand over anything incriminating to Kennett,” Natalie said.
“What if you find the murder weapon in there?” Tina asked. “God forbid John from accounting is doing curls and watches it fall onto the gym floor.”
“Good point,” Natalie admitted. “Maybe Michael got a replacement key after all. We have no idea what he did with the murder weapon. I doubt we’ll find it in there, but I have a feeling we’ll learn something, maybe about his affair. Can you go with me? I could just turn the key over to the police, but after all I’ve been through, I feel I need to face this myself first. We could go after hours. Don’t company directors have twenty-four-hour access?”
“That we do,” said Tina. “When would you want to go?”
Natalie didn’t need long to think especially because the kids were still with her parents, taking them out of the equation.
“Can you go tonight?” she asked.
* * *