WHILE SLUMPED ON the floor, I slithered around in search of my cell phone. My first call was to a locksmith. I looked at the glass stuck in the bottom of my feet and the shards implanted in my palm. I began to wonder if I should’ve taken pictures for the restraining order I would have to file very shortly against Eric.
On the verge of hanging up, Kifo began to bark in time with the doorbell chime. I looked around for Kifo with a sour face, wondering where Eric had kept her during the entire ordeal. The sun rising over the horizon poured through the glass surrounding the front door and nearly blinded me. When I heard Kifo’s bark change in pitch, I knew the visitor had to be with someone familiar.
Taking special care not to touch the scattered piles of glass partially blocking the hall leading to the foyer, I crawled down the corridor.
With her face pressed to the glass, Janet peered into the window alongside the front door. “Nikki? Are you all right?” Her muffled voice reverberated from the other side of the door.
Wincing, I stood and walked on the heels of my feet down the hall. Upon opening the door, Janet rushed in and cupped my face. “You look like you’ve been crying all night and…” She glanced behind me. “What happened in here?” She gazed down the length of my body, noting my bloody hand and the awkward way my feet were positioned.
After wrestling with an overexcited Kifo, who wouldn’t cease her attempts to jump up and lick her face, Janet cut through the kitchen, sending her outside. I sat down on the couch in the sitting room, waiting.
Janet quickly attended to the mess between the formal dining and sitting room areas.
“Be careful, he put some sort of acid on the floor,” I warned her.
She immediately stopped what she was doing to stare down at the ground. Nodding to me, she continued to clean.
When she was done, she found the first aid kit in the downstairs bathroom and cared for my feet and damaged hand. “How did this happen, Nikki? Did someone break in? Did you tell Eric? Oh, he’s going to be very upset. Did the intruder touch you? We have to call the police and get you to the hospital for a rape kit. Oh gosh, Nikki. I’m so, so sorry this happened to you. Is there—”
“Eric did this to me,” I blurted out, wincing as she removed the last piece of glass from my hand with a pair of tweezers.
The tormented look in her eyes told me she didn’t want to believe me. My elongated stare diminished the persistent shine in her eyes—it was always present whenever she spoke about Eric and me.
Closing her eyes, she began to sob. “We’re calling the police. This is not what your mother wanted.”
“My mother didn’t know who she was dealing with.”
“Oh, gosh, Nikki.” Her hands trembled as she wrapped my hand with gauze. “I never would’ve pulled for him if I knew he was a monster. I even—when she—I was so stupid.”
“Do yourself a favor and keep it to yourself,” I warned her. “People who find out who he really is, usually have their lives ruined by him.”
“Please, tell me you’re getting away from him,” she pressed, her voice trembling with emotion.
I never gave her an answer.
She shook her head as though something heavy weighed on her mind.
With widened eyes, I examined her, realizing something I missed in what she said earlier. “Wait a minute. What did you mean by ‘when she’? When she what, Janet?”
Unable to hold my gaze, she reached into the breast pocket of her multi-colored cat print scrubs and pulled out a folded up piece of paper.
I snatched the note from her hands upon noticing the handwriting. The penmanship was undeniable; it was a letter from my mother.
“It’s from your mother, Nikki,” Janet told me as though she didn’t see the glint of recognition in my face. “She made me promise to keep it with me at all times. She said…if Eric ever did anything to show he didn’t care for you, I was—am supposed give it to you.”
Slowly, I unfolded the paper and read my mother’s last words to me in silence.
With every single word I read, I became wretched. I wanted to hate her for keeping so much from me. I wanted to despise her for allowing me go into my relationship with Eric blindly. She’d hoped for the best but planned for the worst. Yet, she was still trying to manipulate my life from the grave.
She wasn’t going to have the one thing she wanted most in the world, but I was easily persuaded into completing a portion of her last wishes. She failed to correctly predict one thing; in order to have what she wanted, she would have to sacrifice her greatest wish for me.
I fingered the number written by her name with a very specific phrase written underneath it. The number had changed, but the phrase I knew very well didn’t. “I need some privacy, Janet.”
“I’ll…be just outside watching Kifo.”
I watched her leave out the back patio door before I picked up my phone and dialed the number. My hands trembled with the stroke of each digit.
“Sanderson Florists,” a man’s voice greeted me on the other end. “How can I help you?”
“My roses are dead,” I said quickly, “and I’d like a new delivery.”
“Please hold.”
After several minutes of elevator music, another, more familiar, male voice answered. “Diouana? What is it I can do for you?”
I couldn’t speak. There were many things I wanted to say to him—so many angry words that escaped me.
“If you don’t answer,” Agent Sanderson replied with impatience, “I will think in extremes.”
“I don’t want you to hurt him.” Shaking my head, I corrected my request, “I need for you to not hurt him. I need you to let him live, and I’m not telling you why. For now, he has to stay away from me. He’s not going to give up easily, and I will need your help. Can you do it? You should do it. You owe me so much more.”
“I have valid reasons for keeping you in the dark, Diouana,” he explained, lacking tenderness and empathy in his words. “Many I can’t convey over the phone.”
“You’ll excuse me if I don’t forgive you,” I remarked bitterly, “considering you fucked up my life once and are fucking it up again.”
“Need I remind you what brought your life into turmoil in the first place? As you’re now aware, your sentence was removed because of me.”
“Because of my mother, you—”
“I would prefer it if you didn’t continue that sentiment over the phone,” he interrupted me, chastising me with the tonality of his voice.
“Fine,” I relented. “I don’t want to see you. I might just murder you. I don't care if threatening an agent of the government means jail time. All I need is for you to help me keep Eric away from me until he does what you, and apparently my mother, wanted him to do.”
“Consider it done,” he agreed. “Very shortly, you will be in receipt of a package containing a few things you will need along with instructions. All things contained within the package will assist you going forward. If there is nothing else, I have to prepare for an unexpected flight.” I heard him swallow loudly over the phone. “One more thing, Diouana. No matter what he does to seek you out or lure you to him, stay clear of Victor Meíja. If he becomes relentless, you know how to contact me.”
I rubbed at my thigh as it began to burn. My freedom and my privacy were an illusion from the moment I was caught in an entangled web spun by my mother. “I never met with him, I—”
“No more needs to be said,” he interjected. “Have a blessed day, Diouana.”
He ended the call.
“Janet,” I called, settling into the seat at the head of the dining room table.
She returned inside from the patio with Kifo trailing snow, impacted in her short black mane, behind her. “Yes, Nikki?”
I pointed to the seat beside me and nodded to her.
With reluctance, she made herself comfortable and looked expectantly at me.
As I relayed my wishes to her, a revised version of my mother’s plan, she took it as well as I knew she would. Not very well. She resisted at first, but when I told her my belief and that there was no other way, she reluctantly conceded.
“Sometimes I wish I was never assigned to your mother, Nikki,” she said quietly while staring at her lap. “I feel horrible for feeling this way, but—” She looked up at me with tears spilling from her eyes. “I wish you’d reconsider,” she whispered. “You don’t know what could happen if he—if he could change.”
Gazing down at my stomach, I ran my palm over my barely there belly. Eric should’ve paid attention to the signs. As a doctor, he should’ve seen them. His rage and distrust for me blinded him so severely, he didn’t notice the obvious. “I wish it could be different. Wishing isn’t enough. There isn’t an easy fix for every problem. If I could wave a magic wand and make things instantly different, maybe I would. I can’t. This is my reality.” I added solemnly, “It always is.”
Her hand trembled as it covered mine. “If this is what you think has to happen, I’m with you, Nikki.”