Originally published by Drunken Pen Writing on March 30th, 2019.
An icy gust of wind stung Jameson’s face as she leaned out of the 12th-story window of her apartment. Large snowflakes fell in silence to the drab gray concrete below, dampening the sounds of the city. It was a calm Sunday afternoon. The kind of day Jameson’s husband used to love.
With the cold air blowing through, she slackened her grip on the window sill and leaned a little farther out. While the wind was gentle below, she was high enough that it howled like a vengeful winter spirit as it rushed past her face and through her wavy chestnut hair.
How easy it would be to just let go, she thought.
Jameson has often had these thoughts since Tim’s passing a few weeks ago. She could always count on him, and he always talked about how they were meant to spend their lives together. But as with most things in life, fate had other plans. What fate had planned for her future now, she didn’t know. With the pain she carried in her heart every day, she no longer cared.
The winter chill attacked her skin with a harsh numbness but it didn’t bother her. She had been numb for a long time.
“It shouldn’t have been you,” she whispered. The white plume of her breath mingled with the snow and fell gently to the Earth. The tears in her eyes started to freeze into tiny, salty ice crystals. “What have I done?”
With the wind’s sudden upward rush, Jameson’s body became unusually light. For a second it was as if she was weightless, and in that moment nothing else mattered. She was free. Free of guilt. Free of regret. But it only lasted a moment.
When the gravity returned she wasn’t prepared for the abrupt shift. Her waist slid against the window sill and her toes clung in desperation to the carpet. An immediate sense of regret set in as she barely managed to pull herself back into the safety of the apartment.
She fell to the floor in a heap as her skin grew hot with the flush of adrenaline-fueled blood. Her heart pounded in her ears and her throat was a desert. She wanted to jump—dreamt of how others would take the news of her suicide—but falling accidentally wasn’t in the plans. This grounded her back in reality and she felt stupid for being so careless.
“I need a drink,” Jameson said as if someone was there to hear.
She closed the window and pulled the curtains shut, casting the room into an all too familiar darkness. As she walked into her compact kitchen, she flicked on the light that bathed it in a sterile whiteness like that of a hospital room. She proceeded to open the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of wine from the bottom shelf.
“Dammit,” she muttered as she sloshed the liquid around inside the bottle. There were only one or two mouthfuls left.
Taking what was left of the wine, she slammed the refrigerator door shut and stormed toward the living room. That’s when she caught a figure out of the corner of her eye. She almost dropped the bottle as she whipped around to see her own tired face staring back at her. Jameson’s fingers throbbed from gripping the glass bottle so tightly. It was only her reflection in the blank television screen, but it was more than enough to play on her already frayed nerves.
She studied her reflection for a long time, and then walked over and placed a gentle finger on the screen. Her face stared back at her with unblinking eyes. “When did I get so old?”
The phone rang, snapping her out of her hypnotized state. “Hello,” she answered after the second ring.
“Jamie?”
The voice was familiar but the tone held a nervousness that made her uneasy. “Dad?”
“Honey,” he paused. The stillness filled the air with tense energy. She knew what he was going to say before he said it. “It’s about Tim?”
“They found his body,” she said without hesitation or any inflection of a question.
There was another long pause on the other end. Then slowly, as if he was choosing his words carefully, “Yes. They’ll be coming for you soon.” He paused again, this time to clear his throat. “If they aren’t on their way already.”
“Okay.”
Her father continued talking—giving advice and reassuring her—but she’d stopped listening and hung up without saying another word. “They’ll be coming for you soon,” she whispered to herself.
Jameson walked over and opened the curtains, letting the light pour in. The sun’s rays pierced the dense cloud cover in a remarkable feat of stubbornness. She resumed her place on the sill once more but left the window closed this time. In the distance, she could make out the silvery flashes of sunlight bouncing off the slow-moving cars on the highway. The snow was falling quicker now, but the sun warmed it enough so it formed an icy blanket over the city. It was a perfect day to stay inside and cuddle up with someone. Something she’d only recently longed for.
As she sat there—lost in her thoughts—two police cars made their way up the snowy street and parked right in front of her building. She watched with indifference as four officers exited the cars and entered through the lobby door.
It would take only a few minutes for them to reach her floor. She could pretend she wasn’t home, but it was more than likely they had a warrant. After all, she was a top suspect in her husband’s disappearance. She was the sole benefactor of his hefty life insurance policy and the last person to see him alive. Now that they had his body, they’d test it for poison. The same poison the head detective spotted—sitting so carelessly on her kitchen counter—during a routine visit after Tim first went missing.
It seemed like such a foolproof plan at the time. She had convinced Tim to go on a fun winter hike in the woods. Then they set up for a romantic picnic at the end of Dresden Lake Pier. And to cap things off, they enjoyed a bottle of Tim’s favorite Merlot while watching the sunset together. Though, Tim’s glass had a little something extra in it. And once his body began to convulse and his mouth started foaming, it didn’t take long for his nervous system to shut down. After he died, all she had to do was tie concrete blocks around his legs and dump his body off the end of the pier.
Yes, it all went according to plan, until Jameson did the one thing she told herself she wouldn’t do; she watched him sink. She watched as his vacant eyes looked up at her from beneath the water. The sunset reflected a deep orange glow off of his dull brown irises until the black depths of the lake pulled him down to the murky bottom. It was in that final moment, as his body dipped out of sight, that she realized what she’d done.
While she never truly loved Tim, she always acknowledged what a good person he was. He visited his parents often. He bought gifts for his friends and family members for no other reason than because he loved them. And he even volunteered at the local homeless shelter twice a month. At some point during their two years of marriage, his goodness must’ve rubbed off on her a bit, though. Because even though she only saw dollar signs when she’d first met him, the gravity of the life she took hit her hard in that one moment. She murdered one of God’s best creations and she knew it. The guilt from that wasn’t something she had prepared to live with.
That day she’d stayed on the pier long after the sun had set and the snow began to fall.
Jameson gazed out the window, wishing she were as light as a snowflake so she could float away from all this. That’s when the knock came at her door. It was a hard, rapid knock. An unmistakable knock.
Ten seconds of silence passed. Deadly silence. The kind of suffocating silence that one would find in a locked tomb. Then a second harder knock echoed throughout the living room.
“Police, open up!” Jameson didn’t move. “We have a warrant.”
Another ten seconds went by, then she heard whispering. It was time. They were coming in by force. They would storm in, rush her with guns drawn, and slam her to the floor.
She looked out the window, back at the door, then out the window again. Far below, the snow-covered concrete shimmered under the now blazing sun. She squinted her eyes from the harsh brightness until they were almost closed. With only a gentle glimmer of light making its way through her long eyelashes, she saw Tim’s face looking up from the deep well of her memory. His vacant eyes asked her why she did what she did. Is human life less valuable than money? Wasn’t he loving her good enough?
Sadly, she only learned the answers after it was too late. And it was too late. The door exploded from its hinges with a violent crash, but Jameson had already opened the window before the police could get to her.
Caleb James K. 