Chapter 39

2nd October 2015: 1:57 am.

I’d shot him, the one man that I’d ever loved and I held him in my arms. I regretted my decision from the moment that I did it.

“Ted, Ted,” I whispered as I tried to gather his blood. His lifeless body didn’t move, and I’d knew what I had done, but I wondered if Ted would have protected me. Told them that we’d done it together. He looked different, sad like when he went down as if this was too much. I thought that he knew how I felt about him, that I wanted to be with him, but it was as if after all this time, he still didn’t get it. He still thought that I wanted to fix things, but all I ever wanted was him.

That was all that meant anything to me.

Nothing else.

Not even Elizabeth.

Everything that I’d ever done was to win his heart and the way that he looked at me before he dropped to the floor. I know that I’d lost him. Ted had thought that I was mad, nearly insane. I knew that look too well. It was the same one he gave when he spoke about Emma, before her relapse. He had this thing about hating his mom, the woman who didn’t have a heart; he used to joke about her.

But then he hated weak women, and the moment that Emma became that, he was running out of the door into my arms. The same thing that he did with me. The moment he felt that I was too much for him, he ran again.

I shouldn’t have even wanted him. Loved him. Cared for him, but I found myself trapped and now I was going to face possible murder charges, fraud, and kidnapping and be thrown away in jail for a long time.

Will was nowhere to be seen; he was probably rushing back to take her to her mom. Elizabeth would hopefully be adopted by a nice family, or maybe the Rogers would take her in. It was clear that I was no mother to her from the very start. In the midst of everything, she’d never really entered my thoughts; it was always about him. Ted. That was my only goal in having a child. The birth was painful, something that I’d regretted from the moment I’d conceived and vowed never to go back down that road again.

There was only one way out of this, and as I heard the sirens approaching closer, I knew that I had to end my life. I hated the idea of it, to be the weak woman that Ted detested so much, but maybe we would meet on the other side. Maybe he’ll love me the way that I thought he did here.

Either way, I closed my eyes and held the gun up to my temple. I wanted to be in his arms even to death, so I blew the gun and then knew that my body would lay on top of his, the man that I would do anything for, including giving up my own life.

***

2nd October 2015: 1:42 am.

I was sitting down, sobbing and thinking to myself that somewhere along the line I had brought this all on myself. I was sitting down alone and I was lost in my thoughts which allowed me to reassess my life. I was being locked up like some kind of animal. Something that I thought I deserved in the past, but now I didn’t. Now, I wanted to get out of here, so fucking badly as memories of my time in rehab flowed through my mind, the withdrawal symptoms and the tales that I would tell myself about my fate.

This was different.

Back then the only thing I had to deal with was my own reality. I didn’t think that this would go on any longer. I thought that whoever had taken Barbara would’ve brought her back. The only person that could have done it was Li. She had been sleeping with Ted all this time, and I wondered for a split second if she knew that Ted wasn’t exclusive. That he had other women. She must have believed that Ted had been faithful to her, because they had a child together.

The man wasn’t capable of keeping his cock in his pants. Anything that moved seemed to be a victim of his cock. Will had photos. Dozens of them, with different women. There was a time that things like that would have bothered me. They would have sent me into a shell, thinking that the failure of my marriage was due to my insecurities, my refusal to be a perfect Rogers woman. The one that would turn a blind eye to their husband’s infidelities and stand in social circles with a smile on their face.

I wasn’t that type of woman.

Never had been and never could be.

I had married a man out of love, but it was clear that after a while, he had married me just because he had wanted something for a while. Maybe in hindsight he had married me because Will had wanted to be with me, but had never been brave enough to voice his feelings.

Why had I been so foolish?

Maybe it was Ted’s seductive smile that had lured me into an addiction which was far worse than my heroin addiction. I tried to think back to how he was and how he was now and there was no distinction between them. They are one and the same. But it doesn’t take away the fact that I had a child for him.

One that is lost.

“Dear Lord, I asked you to find her. Just make sure that she’s safe. Li can have everything that I possess, but not my daughter. Not her life. She doesn’t deserve it. I already lost my mom. Please don’t take my little girl away from me too.”

I kneeled on the floor and sobbed into the bed covers. I didn’t care if the other inmates told me to be quiet. I didn’t care if they threw me into a mental asylum. I just wanted my little girl to no longer be lost, but to be found.