CARMENI couldn’t give an accurate account of everything that had been happening for the past twenty-four hours. I had been in a total daze since the police arrived at the door of my hotel room and arrested me.“The video evidence we have against her is quite incriminating,” Detective Johnson said, arguing it out with Evan – the attorney that my father had pulled strings to get on my side.“As much as I would like to sit here and lecture you on how poorly developed that video and the story behind it is, I’d prefer that you and your team do an analysis on the phone to recover lost files. My client did not do this because she wanted to,” Evan explained.It was not a question of whether I was guilty or not, that much was obvious since the video my mother had submitted to the police had my face in it. It was now a matter of if I really did it in self-defense.“We’re doing just that. Carmen, can you explain your side of the story. You have been quiet since you were brought here yesterday.
CARMEN“Good morning, Mrs. Hayes,” Detective Johnson greeted as I sat in the room where they were about to play the new footage for me to identify the people in the video as who I thought they were.“Good morning,” I replied, not only anxious about what I was about to watch but abashed at the fact that he now knew that I was also involved in a murder case of my own.There was not much talking involved. He played the footage as soon as possible, and it was clearer this time and from a different angle.“Are these still the people you suspect them to be? We can see that Jasper Hayes really did push his mother off the bridge, but the woman. Is that Kate?” he asked me.“I have never been surer of anything else in my life. The woman who hit her on the head with a rock is Kate,” I confirmed, nodding my head.“Now, we want you to take another look at this footage of them that we got from a grocery store just down by the river,” he said, using a remote to switch the clip.My eyes almost popped
CARMEN“The results just came in, Carmen,” Dave informed me over the phone. “I don’t have the sickness. Now, can you tell me what the hell is going on and why everyone seems to be on their toes these days?”In that moment, I wished to be him – unknowing to everything that was going on around him and completely out of the loop instead of being the center of it.“When’s the last time you and Kate slept with each other? I know this is invasive of me, but I just need to know before I tell you what I just found out,” I inquired.“It’s been a while, honestly. I even think it’s been months,” he confessed.“Dave, Kate and Jasper have been seeing each other.”He wasn’t standing in front of me, so I could only imagine his thick eyebrows coming together in a frown of confusion as he tried to figure out what he had just heard me say.“What do you mean, seeing each other? You told me that they both killed Jasper’s mother, and now…” I could hear every bit of the understandable doubt in his tone.“I
CARMEN“She wants what?!” I narrowed my eyes when my father informed me of my mother’s condition for signing the divorce papers.“She wants a billion dollars in alimony for the things that she claims to have happened to her. She claims that Steve is abusive,” he explained.I scoffed and shook my head at how easy it was for her to lie about something that was so obvious in everyone’s faces. It made me wonder how both Steve and Dave would feel if they heard what she had to say in court.“If anything, she should be the one giving him an alimony for poisoning him. And seriously? One billion dollars in alimony when he didn’t abuse her the way she claims?” I asked, shaking my head. “That is nothing but insane.”“Steve wants his treatment to be hastened so that he can recover faster, but it can’t be faster than it’s going now. He’s planning to come back and fight the whole thing in court.”There were so many things that my mother would have to defend herself from in court, and it made me won
CARMEN“What do you mean? What can’t you do anymore?” I asked Dave as I stood up and headed to the door, getting ready to ask him to tell me where he was so that I would go to him to talk.“We need to meet up and talk about all of this. I’ll send my location to you. Can you meet me in a few minutes?” he asked, and I almost laughed at the question as even hearing from him over the phone was more than I could ever ask for.“Of course I can. I’ll take a taxi as soon as you send the your location,” I replied, running down the stairs and taking the car keys from my father when Dave hung up the phone.“What’s happening?” Dad asked.“Dave finally called. He wants to see me. I think he wants to call everything off between us. He said something about not wanting to do this anymore,” I relayed my worries to him.“It’s going to be fine, Carmen,” he assured. “I’m sure he wouldn’t want to do something that would hurt you. If he does want a break, though, you can always let him go. It’s been hard f
CARMENMy hands flew to cover my mouth as I read the question that all the lights on the ground had formed, over and over until my eyes watered and everything was too blurry to read.“Dave…” I whispered.“I know, I know,” he laughed nervously as he reached up to his neck and started to rub it. “This isn’t me rushing you into anything that you might not feel like doing, anyway. I just wanted to wait for you to get the divorce finalized before making any move on this.”That was why he had not been picking up my calls or replying to my texts – he had been planning this the whole time.“You’re very quiet,” he added. “I don’t think I’ve ever met you this quiet over something like this. You’re starting to scare me.”“No, no,” I said, shaking my head and wiping my fallen tears. “I was just surprised, that’s all. You… I didn’t think you would do this. When you called me and told me to come, I thought you wanted to end everything with me.”“That’s the last thing I would do,” he laughed at me a
CARMEN“No,” I heard my mother whisper into the air as her legs took her backwards and her body limply fell into the couch at the sight of my father.“You seem extremely surprised,” I commented, looking over at my father, who was now walking towards her.“Don’t come any closer!” she immediately warned, putting her hands forward to signal for him to stop where he was, which he did. “Who are you? What do you think you’re doing? How much did she pay you to do something this horrible?”“What are you talking about?” I couldn’t help but laugh as I asked the question. “You really believe that I paid some random man off the street who looks like my father to come to you and act like him?”“I want you to cut the crap right now, Carmen,” she said, now regaining the strength to stand up as she looked at Dad with a sneer in her eyes.“This is ridiculous,” she scoffed to herself. “Just because the divorce is some days away, you’re trying to scare me with this?”I looked at Dad, and he looked back
CARMENHe knew. He knew what my mother had done to his father, and he knew that I had knowledge about it the whole time but had been hiding it from him.“Dave, I know you’re disappointed. I didn’t want you to freak out over it—”“Freak out?” I heard him scoff. “What did you think would make me freak out, Carmen? The fact that your mother has been trying to kill my father or the fact that the one person in that house that I trusted enough to tell me things did not see this as something to tell me.”“That’s not what’s happening at all,” I denied with a shake of my head. “Of course I wanted you to know about it. I wanted you to know everything, but there was already so much going on. You were overly stressed, and telling you about it would bring nothing but more stress—”“And now? Does finding out about it now and in this manner make it any better?” he questioned, and I was filled with the sudden urge to ask him how he had found out about it.“If you knew that I was going to find out abo