There is no fucking possibility. If Ashley wanted to kill herself, she’d use pills. Not only because there’s a good chance she would fail and just get a fuck load of sympathy and attention out of it, but because it’s more dignified and glamorous than blowing a motherfucking hole in her head.
I can’t even imagine it. My stomach feels sick. I don’t like Ashley at this point, let alone love her, but I didn’t want her dead. Sure, in moments of anger I might have thought that, but…
Fuck.
“You did this!” her sister suddenly screams, drawing me out of my thoughts. I wince and pull the phone away from my ear.
“I didn’t do anything,” I state. “Look, I’m sorry to hear this, Sara. Obviously. This is… Jesus. But this is not my fault.”
“Yes, it is! You took everything from her! You divorced her—left her for another woman!”
This is an impressive revisionist history, but since the woman is clearly mourning and in pain, I don’t bother setting her straight.
“Look, I’m at work. I have to go. When you’ve had a chance to calm down, call me and we’ll talk about…” I want to say ‘funeral arrangements’ but the words get stuck on my tongue. Funeral arrangements? I can’t be talking about funeral arrangements. Ashley’s a year shy of thirty fucking years old. I can’t be planning her funeral.
Visions of white roses spring to mind, clustered around a casket. I don’t know what she’d want to be buried in. Can there even be an open casket?
My stomach rolls over.
“Sara, I can’t do this. I have to… I have to go.”
She vents a few more muffled, obscenity-laced insults at me before I give up and disconnect the call. I can’t breathe right and I need to get out of this office.
Shoving my phone in my pocket, I push up out of my seat and make a beeline out of the building. I tug at my tie, trying to pull air into my lungs.
A cold burst of winter air hits me, reminding me I left my jacket inside. I’m outside in a thin dress shirt, my sleeves rolled up to the elbow, and somehow I still feel hot under the collar.
Dead.
Ashley is dead.
The words keep playing and replaying in my he
ad. No matter how hard I struggle against them, no matter how impossible they feel, there has to be some truth to it. This can’t just be a mistake. You can’t think someone is dead and go so far as to notify people and then it turns out to be a mistake.
No, this is permanent.
The woman I married is dead, and the circumstances are fishy as fuck.
I don’t even think Ashley would know how to fire a gun. I lived with her for years; I would know if she ever went to lessons. She would’ve made me buy her some pink, rhinestone-encrusted fucking thing so she could go to a range once and get bored.
I should have asked what kind of gun was used.
Why would I think to fucking ask that? Sara wouldn’t even know. I don’t even know where it happened. Couldn’t have been our house; I took her key.
Holy fuck.
Nothing about this feels right. Ashley would never in a million years go quietly. She would need a complete fucking lobotomy for any of this to add up. Even if she somehow overcame her self-obsession enough to decide to end her life—and she was not in that headspace last time I saw her, which was not long ago—she would call me first. I’m the one who resisted her tricks and pissed her off, so she would have reached out to me. Not for any nice reason, of course, but to punish me. She might’ve emotionally blackmailed me with threats of hurting herself, or maybe sent some well thought-out, heartfelt text, backhandedly explaining all the ways I made her miserable, all the reasons it’s my fault she has come to this—without using that verbiage, of course.
Dread moves through me at the thought of it, but it’s perhaps worse that she can’t do any of that shit to me ever again.
Because that means she’s gone—not just from my life, but from the world.
Was she dead when Gwen left late last night and Seb and I took Moira up to bed? Was Ashley dead when I was buried balls deep inside Moira, getting off on her moans, the feel of her body, the visual of Seb right across from me fucking her mouth?
Before that? Was she dead when Moira shuttled her baby niece between me and Seb, bursting with maternal love? When baby Layla played with my face and slobbered all over me? When I slipped away to clean the baby drool off and Moira subtly followed, pushed me in the bathroom, and made out with me for a few minutes? She winked at me and slipped back out to attend to her sister and niece, but fuck, I felt good.
Everything felt good, and now I know this was happening.