Love Amber.

I was shocked. The heartless bitch had a heart after all. Her spending the night was her version of a fond farewell. The ass raping she had given me was not the kindest send-off I could have hoped for, but she was planning to set me free. I suddenly felt guilty for feeling glee at her demise.

I restored the letter to the envelope and slipped it into my shirt pocket and I reached into Amber’s purse and found her cell phone. I removed it and put it into my pants pocket. I would need to destroy it (it contained my phone number). Then I shoved her purse into the garbage bag and I hurried back to the kitchen and tended the skillet.

I was in the midst of cooking breakfast, the realization that Amber’s body lay cold and stiff no more than thirty feet from where I stood no longer the arduous burden it once seemed, when Melanie came trundling up the kitchen stairs.

“Good morning.” I turned and smiled at her and then returned to my cooking but in the flash glance that I had taken I realized instantly that Melanie didn’t look at all herself. Why should she? She had killed someone and it was playing on her mind as it would any sane person. I turned off the burner on the stove and I slid the last few pieces of French-toast onto the serving plate and I sat it on the table; then I removed my apron, a full-length white chef’s smock that Melanie had brought from home at some point over the recent months, and I turned back to Melanie to give her my full attention. Her eyes had bags under them from lack of sleep. She wore no makeup. Her hair was disheveled as were her clothes, the very same clothes she had worn on the previous night. Despite the horrible act she had committed, an act of love as far as I was concerned, I saw nothing but her beauty.

She spoke in a low almost inaudible baritone growl, “Where is that cunt?”

“What?” My head involuntarily twitched to the side. Her words did not register but her anger was pervasive.

“Where is she?”

“She’s…” I turned my head toward the bedroom, and then I looked back at her as I swallowed hard and felt the swell of my Adams apple rise like a grating lump of dung being forced from a rectum, “in the bedroom, where you… left her.” I stuttered. I was confused. What a ridiculous question, I thought. My brain was having trouble deciphering the meaning of her words.

I took a long hard look at Melanie as I tried to elucidate her disposition. She looked absolutely miserable and full of rage and anger and hate. Her eyes were narrow and focused and her brow was wrinkled in a stressed pattern of ripples as though she had used an eyebrow pencil to stencil multiple lines of musical notes across her forehead. But despite the fact that she still wore the same clothes as she had the day before there was no indication that she had stabbed someone to death; no blood splatters or ripped seams. She stormed past me, breathing through her nostrils like a bull seeing red, and stomped through the living room and into the hallway. I trailed behind her and watched like a spectator at a bullfight as she forcefully thrust the bedroom door open and then turned back to face me.

“Don’t fuck with me.” She growled, “Where is she?”

I was beginning to get the impression that Melanie hadn’t killed Amber after all. She didn’t appear to have a clue that Amber was dead. I didn’t know whether or not I should explain to her that Amber had been murdered; that she lay cold and hard and grey and wrapped neatly in a blue blanket just a few feet in front of her. My mind was racing, trying to figure out what exactly was happening. It was at that moment that my stomach wrenched in pain as I realized that Sarah had done the murder. She had killed Amber in her sleep. Her words from the night before echoed in my hollowed head “What if she dies?” I wondered, should I tell Melanie? Or would she freak? And even if, in the midst of her tempest, she rejoiced in Amber’s demise, would she, upon recapitulation, freak? Would she wonder if I hadn’t killed both Amber and my wife and was shamefully trying to blame those barbaric acts on sweet innocent Sarah? And if I told her the truth, that Sarah was a sociopath, and she believed me; would she be able to look at Sarah lovingly as she so often had?

“She must have…left.” My words fumbled from my lips like the wobbly footfalls of a toddler taking its first steps.

“Her…car…is…still…parked…outside

!” Her words were deliberate and spaced in a steady, angry, impatient rising pitch.

I could feel my brow furrow in fear and shame at having been caught in an obvious lie. I scanned my brain for a sequential and logical fabrication. “She…was waiting for her sister to pick her up…her…car wouldn’t start. She’s going to have it towed.” I finished with conviction. “She must have left while I was in the bathroom.”

Melanie’s face melted, “I can’t take this anymore.” She started to sob and I watched as her knees began to wobble and I was sure that they would collapse beneath her weight.

“It’s okay.” I stepped forward to catch her before she melted into the floor. Her face was now filled with anguish and despair. She was experiencing actual physical pain. I wanted to waive a magic wand and rid her of her agony. I wanted to take her in my arms, like an infant, and comfort her and let her know that it would all work out.

“No, I can’t do this anymore.” She sobbed; but even as she said this she wrapped her arms around my neck and collapsed her face into my chest. “I can’t go on like this…with you fucking her and I pretending like nothing is happening. I just can’t be with you anymore.”

“It’s okay.” I whispered, “You don’t have to worry about Amber any longer.” I slipped my hand beneath her shirt and I gently stroked the baby-soft skin of her back, “I told her that it was over.”

“Really?” Her sobish tone hinted at hope and relief.”

“She said she understood. That she was sorry for having treated you so badly and for forcing me to…sleep with her. We didn’t even sleep together last night.” Melanie hugged me tight. “She slept in my bed and I slept on the couch.” I looked at the couch. Sarah had apparently gone to her bed after she had finished her evenings work and had abandoned the pillow and blanket I had used to make her comfortable. It looked as if I had actually slept on the couch.

“I love you Mathew. I love you so much.” She wrapped her arms around me and buried her head in my chest once again.

“And I love you.” I said to her for the first time. And I did love her; perhaps not with the totality that I had loved Catherine or the unconditional component with which I loved

Sarah, but then I had only known her for a short while relatively. But she was the only living person besides Sarah that I cared about. What I felt for her can only be described as love. She responded with an enormous hug. “Why don’t you lie on the couch and take a nap. After Sarah and I have breakfast I’ll watch television and sit with you and rub you feet while you sleep.”

I helped her to the couch and laid her down and kissed her cheek and tucked her in and waited until she fell asleep before I started the process of moving Amber’s body down to her car. I checked on Sarah, who was still asleep, and then I went to the coat closet where Amber had hung her coat and I retrieved her car keys before I crept down the rear stairway and opened the garage and pulled my car out onto the street; then I climbed into Amber’s car. The seat was pushed forward to its furthest setting and I racked my knees on the steering wheel and I winced in pain. I slid the seat back to a comfortable setting while I cursed under my breath and started the car and backed it up into the driveway to just outside the rear door. I got out and opened the rear driver’s side door and then I climbed the rear staircase and slipped into my bedroom and I grabbed the rolled parcel of dead-weight that lay beside my bed. At my bedroom door I peaked out to be sure that all was still quiet and then I hauled Amber’s body, which I had slung over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes, out to her waiting car. I heaved her into the back seat head first and tried to close the door but her feet, stiff with Rigor mortis and completely extended, were sticking out too far. I opened the trunk and mentally measured the compartment but aside from the work of removing the spare tire and many other miscellaneous items, I could tell that no matter how I positioned her lifeless body she would never fit without bending and possibly breaking. I could have closed the door by thrusting my body-weight at it but that would have caused trauma to the corpse that would later be the subject of curiosity for the police. I wanted to arrange things so that it looked as if she had died at home. I walked around to the passenger door and opened it and rolled down the window and then closed the door. Reaching in through the window I lifted up on Amber’s head and I pulled her up until her skull was resting on the armrest. I had hoped to make quick work of my effort but I realized that I had consumed an extraordinary amount of time loading Amber into her car so I looked around to be sure that no one was spying on me. When I looked up at Sarah’s bedroom window I almost fell over from the shock of seeing her staring down at me. She didn’t flinch. She didn’t seem at all phased. It was if she had sent me a message not to bring anyone into her life without her tacit approval. And Sarah’s emotional detachment was her exclamation point. Thank God she had an affinity for Melanie, I thought, or I might have had a second corpse to dispose of once I ascended the stairs.