Ginny
2002, Fort Lauderdale
I stood in his living room and just stared at him. I’d purposely let his calls go to voicemail and of course, he hadn’t left a message. Neither one of us spoke, a tactic he’d taught me. Who would be the first to break?
But I didn’t have time for this.
“You go first, Grizz. I have a feeling there’s a lot you want to tell me.”
“Sit down, Kit.” He gestured to his couch.
“No.”
“Okay, then. I’ll start by telling you the punk next door was hurting Rosa. I stopped him.”
I nodded condescendingly, trying to exude an expression that said, “Some things never change.” It must have worked because he immediately launched into an explanation.
“I know it wasn’t the smartest thing to do, especially with us being so close to leaving.”
“But?” There was usually a “but” when it came to Grizz.
“But I recognized his ink. I was in charge of them in prison. I just had to mention a code word that had clout and meant he would be dealt with. It scared him off. The last thing he’ll do is make trouble. More than likely, he’s packing.”
I didn’t say anything, and his expression pleaded with me to understand.
“He was hurting, Rosa, Ginny. Scaring her, and hurting her physically. There was a time once when you used to beg me to rescue people like her.”
He was right, and I felt an instant stab of guilt about my condescending attitude toward him. There had been too many times to count in our past when I'd used him to intervene on someone's behalf. I had no right to be upset that he was now doing it on his own, without my prompting. If anything, he was showing me that he could have compassion for someone in need. How he handled it might've been a bit misplaced, but the fact that he was feeling it warmed my heart. I couldn’t help but smile.
“Couldn’t you have just talked him out of bothering her?” I asked, already knowing the answer. His raised eyebrow was his only reply.
Just then, there was a knock at the door, and we both looked at each other. He went to the blinds and peeked out.
“It’s her parents.”
Please, God, don’t let them be here to make trouble. Grizz opened the front door, and I could hear two voices talking rapidly in Spanish. I could make out a few words. Thank you. Grateful. An angel from heaven. I doubt I heard that last one right. Grizz had been called a lot of things, and I’d bet my right arm an angel was never one of them. It sunk in—they weren’t here to cause trouble. They were here to thank him. I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.
Saying goodbye, he kicked the door closed behind him.
“Dinner,” was all he said as he carried plates of food, which had obviously been delivered out of gratitude, into the kitchen. The aroma of skirt steak, black beans and plantains was tantalizing, but eating wasn’t my immediate concern.
“Dinner can wait.” I followed him. “Tell me what you’ve done or have been doing to Sarah Jo. Tell me why she thinks Tommy’s spirit sent your ghost to haunt her?”
He laid the plates on the counter and turned to look at me. He leaned his back against the counter and crossed his arms.
“I haven’t done anything to her. I’ve watched her since around Christmas, though. I’ve kept an eye out to make sure she wasn’t doing anything to you. Maybe she thought she saw me once or twice. I can’t say for sure.”
“What?” I tapped my temple with my right hand and shook my head, trying to grasp what he was telling me. “Why in the world would you think she would do something to me?”
He glanced over at his kitchen table, and I followed his gaze. I didn’t recognize it at first, but when I did, I walked to it and picked it up, held it up to him.
“Is this what I think it is?”
He nodded.
“How did you get it? I watched Tommy throw it away, bag it up, and take it out to the garbage cans. Were you outside our house? Were you watching my home?”
My last comment came out in a high-pitched squeak. But he shook his head, confused.
“I don’t know about that. Likely they were listening then and sent someone to get it. They gave it to me the last time I met them.”
“And what could Moe’s journal possibly have to do with Sarah Jo, Grizz?”
He grabbed it from me and took my hand, walked me back out to the living room and insisted I sit down. I did. He thumbed through some pages as I watched him.
When he came to a certain page, he handed the journal back to me and said one word.
“Read.”
I did. And as I read, I could feel the color draining from my face as I learned about the guilt Moe felt for unwittingly participating in my rape and almost murder. I looked up at Grizz and he immediately sat down next to me, scooting closely so our bodies touched. His warmth was inviting as I relived the horror of that night.
“What does Moe’s guilt, about helping to set that night up, have to do with Jo?” I asked in a small voice.
“Keep reading.”
I looked down at the page and could feel his eyes as they watched me. He knew the second I read the line, the recognition obvious by my expression. He pulled me close then as I let the journal drop to the floor.
As if sensing a shift in the air, Rocky jumped up from his dog bed and padded over to me. I barely noticed him licking my knee or Grizz’s quiet reprimand to go back to his bed.
“I’m not exactly sure what this means. I get it. I mean, it’s obvious that Sarah Jo was the Wendy that did this, but...” I wasn’t talking to Grizz. I was talking to myself and staring at the wall. I glanced over at him. “Tommy read this journal, Grizz. I never did. I left it up to him to tell me if there was something I needed to know. And he never told me this.” My jaw clenched. “If he suspected this, I’m certain he would never have had the heart to tell me Sarah Jo had been behind it all.”
I told him what Stan had told me about Sarah Jo’s sudden insistence that they move away. It all seemed to make sense now. Sarah Jo’s distancing. The awkwardness between us.
“Do you think Tommy is the reason Jo was moving? Is it possible he figured out she was Wendy?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know, but you figured it out, and he knew her for years before you did. What did she tell you when you saw her?”
“She rambled, Grizz. She didn’t make sense at all. She admitted to doing us all wrong, but she never said what it was.”
Something struck me, and I felt the bile rise in my throat.
“Sarah Jo was with Tommy when he died. Oh my God, Grizz! No, no—please don’t let what I’m thinking be true.”
I was certain I was going to vomit, and I stood to run to the bathroom. But he grabbed me from behind, pulling me to him and cradling my face in his chest. My stomach still roiled, but the acid making its way up my throat receded.
“Quiet down, Ginny. There’s more. I have an answer for you. Carter and Bill gave me something today after you left. It will give you your answers. Sit back down, honey, okay?”
I was shaking, but there were no tears as he tugged me back to sit on the couch. I was pretty certain I’d cried enough in the last year to last me a lifetime. The well had finally dried up.
Grizz picked up a cassette tape player that had been sitting on one of his end tables. I hadn’t noticed it when I’d sat down.
“Bill had to put this on a cassette tape since I don’t know how to work the fucking CD player that’s in this house. Besides, I don’t think we want to hear this coming out in surround sound. It’s going to be hard to listen to, Ginny, but it will give you some answers.” He peered at me. “Can you handle this, baby?”
I sat up straight, determined not to lose my composure. “Yes,” I whispered.
Before he pressed play, he looked at me.
“Carter told me the day Tommy was shot, she watched Sarah Jo interact with you at the hospital. She knew how close you two were, and she felt something was off with Sarah Jo. She told me she tripped and purposely yanked Sarah Jo’s pendant off.”
I nodded, remembering the incident. “She sent it away with Bill to have it fixed. He returned it later that day, I think.”
“Yes, he had it fixed. But he also did something else.”
I waited.
“He put a bug in it. He and Carter were able to listen to everything Jo said when she was wearing that pendant.”
I felt an icy hand wrap itself around my heart.
“She was wearing the pendant in the hospital room when Tommy died,” he added in a soft voice.
“Play it.” My voice was firm.
“Are you sure you’re ready to hear—”
“Play it!” I braced myself for the pain that would come with reliving that day. I had no clue what I’d hear from Sarah Jo, but I knew I’d eventually hear my screams of anguish and grief in the background. “Play it, please.”
Grizz pressed the button.
I listened as the sounds of the hospital room brought back memories so painful I felt lightheaded and had to will myself not to faint. Hearing the steady hiss of the ventilator that Tommy had been hooked up to caused ice water to invade my arteries. I remembered how I’d made a CD of some of our favorite songs and always had them playing on a portable CD player I’d brought to his room. “Love Can Make You Happy” by Mercy could be softly heard in the background. I froze as the sound of my voice brought me back to the nightmare of that day.
“I’ll be right back. Do you want something?”
Then came Jo’s reply. “I want you to take a break and know that I won’t leave his side until you come back, okay?”
I remembered kissing the inside of Tommy’s palm, then walking out of the room. I left him. I turned my back on him and walked out. I was now biting the inside of my cheek so hard I could taste blood.
I listened as Jo’s words floated out of the old cassette player and hung in the air. The tone of her voice, a tone I’d never heard, sounded sickly sweet. I'd heard the words sickly sweet used before to describe the smell associated with dead bodies during decomposition. My stomach heaved at the thought.
“Stan and I had just returned from Sydney and were visiting friends in Atlanta when Mimi called me. I was doing what you said, Tommy. Pushing Stan to interview overseas. But circumstances change, don’t they?”
I looked at Grizz. I had my answer. So Tommy had figured out that Jo was Wendy, and he’d told her to leave, probably with the threat that he would tell me about her part in my attack.
“Tommy, do you know how easy this would be for me? All I’d have to do is squeeze one of the tubes on your ventilator and stop the air flow.” My breath caught. “Or I could slip a syringe out of my pocket and inject insulin right into your IV. I’d have my back to the nurses, and they wouldn’t know what I was doing. You’re already being given a certain amount of insulin, so if they ever did an autopsy, which I doubt they will because of the seriousness of your wounds, they’ll never look for an insulin overdose. It would be so easy. Too easy.”
The tears were back, and my hearing became muffled as my heartbeat quickened, causing the blood to pound in my head. Another tune had come on the CD player. The heartfelt love song, “Follow You, Follow Me” by Genesis, was in stark contrast to the sinister conversation.
“But I won’t. Do you know why? Because I’m sorry. And like I told you before, Tommy, I love you, and I love Ginny, and I want this to stop. I want for it all to end.”
I heard sniffling then and thought maybe Jo had started to cry.
“I could never hurt you, Tommy. You were my best friend before Ginny came along.”
She hiccupped then, and I heard what I thought was the sound of her taking a tissue from a box.
“I wouldn’t have told Ginny about the herbal pills you gave her. I never would’ve let her think you caused that miscarriage. I never gave them to you to give to her with the intent of using it against you. I just wanted to hurt Grizz. Not you and Ginny. I never wanted to hurt you and Ginny.” She sniffled loudly. “You have to believe me, Tommy! Seeing you here like this, so vulnerable and coming so close to death, is ripping my heart out. It’s not supposed to be like this. I want us to start over. I want to put all the bad memories behind us. You have to wake up, Tommy. I need you to wake up so you can forgive me. Please wake up...” There was a pause, and then she softly whispered, “Grunt. Please.”
She started crying harder now, and her sobs were becoming muffled. I could picture her leaning over the bed to hug him, the bug in her pendant pushing up against his body and muting her cries.
My shoulders sagged, partly from relief and partly from remembering the weight of the grief. I bolted upright when I heard the loud and shrill hum of Tommy’s heart monitor signaling distress. I asked Grizz to turn it off when I heard Jo’s cries for help and her efforts to revive him.
I didn’t need to hear any more.
“I remember when he gave me those pills for my morning sickness. I never took them, but I never told Tommy because I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.” I stared numbly at a piece of art hanging on the wall. It was a vivid abstract I’d not paid much attention to, but now, the loud colors screamed at me.
“I can forgive Sarah Jo for everything that was done to me, Grizz. The rape, the beating, Gwinny, maybe even her attempt to cause my miscarriage. But I don’t think I can forgive her for letting Tommy die thinking he caused it.”
He didn’t say anything.
“Why are Carter and Bill just now giving this to you?” I asked without looking at him. “Tommy’s been gone for over a year.”
“Carter and Bill never knew about Moe’s journal until after you left for the hospital this morning. When I told them, Bill let me listen to this. They didn’t say anything sooner because they figured that whatever had happened between Sarah Jo and Tommy died with him. She obviously wasn’t there to hurt him. Plus, they heard her grieving afterward and believed it to be sincere.”
I leaned into him then and welcomed the refuge his massive arms offered.
“How do you want me to handle it, baby?”
I knew what he meant, and my first thought was to lash out, but that wasn’t me. Besides, there was no way I’d ever use my grief as a segue for him to go back to his old ways. I needed to concern myself with seeking a way to find true forgiveness. I knew it would come one day, and I prayed that day would come sooner rather than later.
“She’s punishing herself,” I whispered. “I think that’s enough.”
I looked up at him and said five words I’d never meant more.
“Take me away from here.”