Red fox experiment in te.., p.15
The Whisper, page 15
On Wednesday, she prayed Owen wouldn’t break his schedule and would go gambling all night. Jane was afraid this time the sense of guilt might not be in her favor. To keep any suspicions away, she had to make it very clear to him that he deserved some time for himself but not be too insistent. It worked, and when Owen was gone, she was ready.
Jane had retrieved her bag from the attic and was now pacing around the living room, thinking if she should leave him a note. It was her turn to feel guilty. In the end, Owen was always good to her, not as good as she wanted him to be, but as good as the devil could be. After all the years they had spent together, no matter how hard she tried, Jane could not turn herself against him. Owen Arlington was a criminal, a murderer, a psychopath, but everything he had done for her overshadowed all those things.
Jane didn’t know what he was going to take her sudden disappearance as unless she gave it the right angle. She grabbed a piece of paper and scrawled one single sentence on it.
“I’m sorry for becoming the one you’re afraid to lose.”
One sentence that summarized their relationship. A substitute for thousands of words.
She left the note on the kitchen table and looked around the hallway before approaching the front door. She punched in the numbers on the panel to neutralize the home alarm system. Dale, their priceless, multitasking gatekeeper, had already made his nightly round and retreated to his cabin. Jane shot outside, ducked into the shadow along the fence, and hurried to the gate. It took her half a minute to reach it. She opened the gate, trying to make as little noise as possible.
Once she set foot out of the yard, an incredible sense of joy took over her. That was it—she was finally able to do whatever the hell she wanted in a variety of ways she could choose. All the doubts were pushed to the back of her mind, and she longed to run—run to her freedom, shouting with glee, feeling happier than ever. Jane hastily descended the driveway from the gate.
She felt grateful, probably for the first time in her life, that Pine Ridge Road was such a distant area. She felt safe away from all eyes of the world. She didn’t catch a single car on the road, and yet she preferred to make her way through the thicket of the adjacent woods. That route was much shorter.
Rosaline Park station was about forty minutes away from her house if she went on foot. The shortcut saved her about fifteen. It was an intermediate station that comprised a small head house, two platforms, and a few benches. The light of the only lamppost in there was weak and flickering, but it was enough for Jane to see from a distance that there wasn’t a hint of a living thing around the station. Her firm belief that she meant everything to Jasper made her think he simply had no other choice but to go along with her. She hadn’t called him since the night of the broken glass. Jane honestly saw no need, for she knew they both wanted the same thing. The five days she had given him were supposed to let this thought take root in his head and flourish. But maybe she didn’t know him as well as she thought.
Jane crossed the road alongside the railway and dropped her bag on the platform. The wool of her cardigan failed to resist the rising wind, and soon she began to shiver. Jane sat down on a bench and embraced herself. She checked her watch. There were nineteen more minutes before the train arrived.
You’d better hurry, Jasper.
As the minutes passed, her confidence in him was fading bit by bit. Fifteen minutes to one. Fourteen minutes to one. Thirteen minutes to one.
It can’t end like this. Am I really nothing to you?
She felt lonely, abandoned, but above all fooled. The bastard had made her believe they were equally valuable to each other. If a month apart could make him lose his feelings for her, then she had been stupid all along. When it was ten to one, Jane had already accepted that he would not come.
With or without you.
That was what she had said, wasn’t it? Now she wanted to live up to those words out of spite.
If Jane was intending to deprive him of choice, she had done a hell of a good job. Jasper could still hardly believe she was afraid of Arlington, but the rest of her speech crawled under his skin. That call was a scream for help, and if he turned it down and something went wrong, he knew he would never forgive himself.
Jane wasn’t someone he had used to know, a reckless woman who knew no boundaries and fear. She was someone on the edge of despair. After their phone talk, Jasper could not get back to sleep until the early morning. Jane was right; he had considered this outcome before, but he’d always imagined it to be something positive—getting far, far away, starting a new life, becoming a whole new person. If he really was going to run, Jasper certainly didn’t want to do it out of fear.
He tried to make the following days as routine as possible, but as the fifth day was coming up he was getting more anxious. The very idea of Jane leaving the city without him seemed surreal.
It’s okay, he thought. You only have to outlast this day—put a padlock on your door, throw the key out of the window, chain yourself to the bedposts, and do whatever it takes to let her go.
Somehow, all that seemed to be more reasonable than accepting Jane’s offer, and yet his instincts told him to do the opposite. The devil would be so proud. By the time Jasper had made up his mind, he was terribly, catastrophically limited in time. Unlike Jane, who had already tied up all loose ends, he wasn’t ready at all. He put the first clothes in sight into his backpack and dressed up. If his math was correct, he had a stash of approximately one hundred and sixty dollars. The only good thing about the lack of healthy personal life was the opportunity to save some cash. Now and then, Jasper could take a few dollars from the stash—Kenneth Blair had to be grateful for that—but mostly the sum kept increasing until he spent all the money at once.
Jasper looked around the apartment before he walked out. He couldn’t help thinking about Glen, who would probably be the first one to discover his absence. That was not fair to him, but Jasper knew even if he had made the decision a few days prior, he wouldn’t have told Glen about it. Glen would’ve never understood.
Jasper was restlessly watching the time passing on his watch as he rode in a cab to Acklestone. He hadn’t called Jane to let her know he was on his way. The fear of getting Arlington on the other end of the line was greater than the fear of being late. Although it was not a hallmark of Jane’s character, Jasper counted on her patience.
Jane had picked the closest station to her home, but for him it was a little problematic to get there. In the daytime, he could take any bus going from the city to the nearest towns. Now, he had two miles to cover on foot. The road he followed through Rosaline Park was deserted, and all he could hear was the rustling of the pine branches. Jasper kept his pace up, even though he was out of breath, even though the wind was pushing him back, even though he was sure he wouldn’t make it in time. He kept moving toward his destination, sometimes breaking into a run, because something told him Jane wouldn’t leave without him.
His lungs were failing by the time the weak light of the station’s lamppost diluted the dense darkness. He pulled the strap of his backpack and finished his way, barely feeling the ground under his feet.
Jane got in his sight right away. Her tiny figure had been wandering around the platform until she glimpsed him and froze. Her face was hard to make out from afar, but Jasper was pretty sure she was smiling her favorite sardonic smile at seeing him. She darted toward him, back across the rails.
“Oh, Lizzy!” She had to shout to get above the raging wind. “Do anything rather than marry without affection!”
Jasper couldn’t resist a smile.
“It’s like Jane Austen mined your biography to write her novels!” he shouted back, standing at the side of the road dividing them.
“Oh, fuck Jane Austen! I’m going to write my own novel about an ex-whore and a nut job breaking bad together!”
They were so enthralled by the sight of one another that neither paid attention to the muffled sound of the engine not far away. There was a moment when the sound surpassed the raging wind and became too loud to ignore, but it was too late. Jane was only halfway across the road when the car showed up out of nowhere and hurtled right into her.
Jasper heard a brief bang of the bumper, and in an instant blood spurted all over him.
10
SILENCE
“J-A-A-A-A-A-ANE!” Jasper screamed at the top of his lungs as the car sped away and the sudden realization of what had happened hit him.
Jane sprawled on the asphalt like a broken puppet, nearly every part of her body twisted at an unnatural angle. A scarlet puddle was forming around her. Jasper dropped his backpack and, with a cry of despair, rushed toward her. He felt as if a thousand thorns penetrated his heart once he saw a bare bone sticking out of her left ankle. The first drops of tears fell down his face and dissolved in the blood at his feet. Jasper put a shaking hand over his mouth and knelt down in front of Jane. He couldn’t believe that thing was her—the woman he loved.
“J-a-a-ane,” he moaned like a child looking for his mother in a crowd.
Jasper was trembling with sobs. He rested his hand on Jane’s shoulder. Her body heaved as she struggled to breathe, and it killed him realizing how torturous every breath was for her. He gently turned her onto her back and saw her face distorted with pain and tiredness, as if Jane wanted nothing more at the moment than to fall asleep. He put his palm on her cheek and bent over until their foreheads touched. Jane tasted the salt of his tears on her lips.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”
Jane twitched with her whole body in a desperate attempt to shift her right hand. She grabbed Jasper by his wrist and choked on her blood as she tried to say something. After letting out a raspy groan, she did her best to say the following words as distinctly as she could:
“You were r-r-right, Jasp…” She coughed suddenly, and a scarlet spatter from her mouth shot at his face. “I s-s-see it now, the…the moment I m-m-memorized. I s-s-see it.”
She stared up at the sky with blank eyes. A ghost of a smile, however, touched upon her face as that moment from Summerhold was getting more and more vivid in her head, the cool air on her bare legs, the warmth of Jasper’s embrace as he held the towel around her, the willow branches ruffling the lake’s surface, and the beams of the setting sun. She kept smiling as if that moment were playing on repeat.
Even when she gasped her last breath, the smile didn’t leave her face.
Jasper’s sobs grew into howls. The hopelessness hurt him no less than the sense of guilt. He was in one of the most distant places in Acheart, and there was nobody around to help. But even if there was, wouldn’t that make matters worse for him? After all, if somebody found out that he was at the crime scene, it would lead to plenty of undesirable questions and even more undesirable outcomes. The grief, the absurdity of the whole situation, its suddenness, all of that paralyzed his mind.
When his voice got hoarse from crying and cursing at himself, when the blood vessels in his eyes looked as if they were about to burst, Jasper got down next to Jane and put one arm around her. He didn’t know what he was supposed to do, but the thought of leaving her like that devastated him. Jasper nestled his head on her chest and closed his eyes.
A few minutes passed by, and although his limbs were tingled from the cold Jasper had no wish to stand up. There was even a moment he found himself on the verge of sleep, before the rattling of the passing train brought him back to Earth. He sat up and watched it hurtle past the station. At this particular station, trains stopped only on request.
The rattling echoed behind Pine Ridge when common sense prevailed over his emotions. Jasper gently freed his wrist from Jane’s lifeless grip. The blood, the evidence, was all over him. The knees of his pants were soaked through, his sweatshirt stained in a few spots, the part of his face that had rested on Jane’s chest smeared with blood. Jasper rebuked himself for being so careless, knowing how vicious it was of him to think about his own safety with Jane dead at his feet, but he couldn’t help it.
The car had appeared and disappeared so abruptly that it might have seemed like a powerful gust of wind had hit her. Whoever was in the car had been determined to kill her. Jasper couldn’t stop thinking about Arlington, particularly after everything Jane had told him on the phone. She had said she was afraid of Arlington, but why? Why now? Had the devil found out something about them? If so, why was Jasper still alive? He had many questions that needed answers. He pressed a goodbye kiss to Jane’s forehead.
“See you,” he said.
One day they would meet again, and they would finally get what they wanted: an eternity together. He didn’t know when this day would come, but he was ready to wait. Jasper rubbed his chest, as if trying to soothe the pain, picked up his backpack, and went to look for the answers.
At first, he’d been struggling to hold back his tears. Even then, Jasper didn’t want to appear pathetic. Not to Glen, at least. However, once they met, once Jasper sensed the opportunity to be pitied, keeping a straight face became impossible.
Quite frankly, he was out of options. Jasper knew he wouldn’t be able to make it through all this on his own. He needed the help of someone he could tell the whole truth from beginning to end. Now that Jane was gone, there was only one person he could rely on.
As he shambled through the park toward Lambert Lane, a lonely spot where he could use a payphone, Jasper could not stop imagining how Glen would react to his call. He expected plenty of lectures and exasperated sighs, but there were none. Glen came to pick him up immediately and realized how serious the situation was the moment he saw the blood and Jasper’s swollen face. Then, as they drove to Glen’s place, he relieved Jasper of the feeling of hopelessness by letting him speak out. Glen was flabbergasted to see all the lies he’d been told over the year crumble in front of him. Jasper told him everything, choking on his tears, and by the time they reached the house he managed to get a hold of himself.
They took their seats at the kitchen table. Glen poured whiskey into two glasses, and Jasper downed his right away. He gave Glen a few minutes to comprehend the story. Glen held his glass to his mouth, pondering, his face expressionless. Sometimes—only sometimes—Jasper envied his ability to turn off his emotions and think coldly. He needed that ability now more than ever.
Jasper was patiently waiting for Glen to say something. Whether it would be something good or bad, he wanted to hear something from him, as if Glen were some omniscient creature whose wisdom knew no boundaries. The silence dragged on, and in the end Jasper had to force him to speak.
“What am I supposed to do?”
Glen glared at him accusingly.
“How fucking classic,” he said.
“I know. Another bucket of shit dumped on your head, right?” A bitter smile flashed across Jasper’s face. “Another time I proved how pathetic I am. Fuck, I wish that car hit me instead of her.”
“You don’t mind if I save my condolences, do you?” Glen took a small sip, put the glass on the table, and lit a cigarette.
“Where was I supposed to go?” Jasper said. “You’re the only one in this goddamn city I can trust.”
“Bullshit,” Glen said. “You trust whoever you need something from. If you need someone to take care of the mess you make, you sure as hell trust me. If you need to keep your conscience clean, you’re willing to trust a crackhead you hardly know. If you need to fuck, you’re…”
“Don’t,” Jasper interrupted.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t say anything about her. You may know me better than anyone, but you don’t know shit about my relationship with her.”
“I guess I would if you had trusted me enough.”
Jasper took a deep breath.
“I didn’t tell you anything because your opinion matters to me, Glen. Don’t you get it? Things between her and me were as fragile as they could be. If I had told you about us, you would’ve condemned me for that. You would’ve told me to stop, and I didn’t want to.”
“And here we are. Now tell me, was it worth it, this illicit affair?”
“Illicit affair?” Jasper presented Glen with a smile that looked genuine even with glistening tracks under his eyes. “We were trying to give it a name all this time. How come we never considered something so simple?”
All of a sudden, the smile faded. Jasper lowered his eyes. He stood up from the table and came to the window, looking at the weak glow of the rising sun.
“Maybe a few months ago I could’ve called it an illicit affair, but considering that losing her turned out to be as painful as burning alive, I’m willing to say it was so much more than that.” Jasper closed his eyes for a moment. “Jesus, I feel like I’m begging you to feel sorry for me.”
Glen reluctantly rose from his chair and came up to him. He brought a bottle of charcoal lighter from under the sink and sprayed it all over Jasper’s clothes.
“What the hell are you doing?!” Jasper’s voice grew suddenly shrill.
He gazed warily at the lit cigarette Glen was holding in one hand.
“Want you to tell me what’s more painful, losing someone or burning alive.”
Jasper kept his eyes wide open, unable to let out a single sound. Although Glen found that kind of reaction quite amusing—even in the light of recent events—his face remained dispassionate.
“This time,” he said, “I’m not gonna deal with everything while you sit around and whine about how unfair life is. If you really want my help, for Christ’s sake pull your shit together. Sorry for the clothes, but we’ll have to burn them anyway. Go take a shower, change into something from my closet, and come out to the backyard. I’ll be waiting there.”
Glen stubbed the cigarette in the sink and left the kitchen. For the next half a minute, Jasper stood there alone, petrified.
“Tell me everything you know.”
