Open Heart

49: Lifetime Behind Bars

AS I NEARED THE mobile home, the thumping of my heart became deafening. I never liked coming here. It was a rather sad reminder of the life Luna had chosen.

Luna did anything that involved spending money on necessities around here. It was the main reason why she never started her business earlier in the first place. Pablo hadn't worked for years, as he lived off of Luna. He used her money for drugs and gambling.

I physically shook myself to build my nerves before knocking on the door.

Nobody opened the door for me, so I did it myself. Those uncomfortably vivid images I saw in my head earlier were now a reality before me. There was blood. Blood on the floor. Blood on Luna. On her face, her clothes, her hands.

On the gun?

I closed my eyes, but when I opened them again, a gun was still in Luna's hand. She was shaking her head at me as if to deny it.

The blood was too much to be hers. Anyone who had bled that much should be dead or not standing, at least.

I held my hands out to her as if dealing with a toddler. "It's okay, Luna."

It wasn't okay. Nothing about this was OK. Luna looked like she came straight out of a horror movie. The blood splattered on her face, and her hair riled up spoke for itself. Luna kept the gun up, her head shaking wildly and eyes wide. Her left eye was severely swollen, with marks around her neck.

Oh my gosh! He tried to strangle her.

As I came to this realization, I wept for my friend, all while trying to hold a strong composure for her.

I always sucked at that.

"It's okay," I continuously urged until she dropped the gun and ran into my arms.

"Where is he?" My voice was strained with anger. Right now, I held no judgment against my friend who chose to love someone who almost killed her. But I was angry at him.

I was angry at Pablo for taking advantage of Luna's love for him. I hated that he took advantage of the fact that he was stronger. He was a narcissistic, misogynistic, low-life bastard.

He deserved a lifetime behind bars!

Luna lifted a bloody finger and pointed towards the couch to answer my question.

"Over there," she croaked.

My mind had already come to a conclusion when I saw Luna with the gun, but seeing the confirmation of Pablo's lifeless body shook me.

This battle of domestic violence ended how the majority of them did. With someone dead, a sentence far worse than prison. Except this time, it wasn't the abused but the abuser who ended with that unfortunate fate.

The gunshot splattered the side of Pablo's head. This is what she was trying to deny; that she killed her husband.

Brushing Luna's hair out of her face, I stared her straight in the eyes. "It was self-defense. The law is on your side here."

Luna shook her head in agreement and began crying in my arms. We fell to the ground, and I tried to soothe her until she had calmed down to see how to move forward from this.

But how does one move forward from a situation like this?

It was a blessing that after all these years together, no baby had come out of Pablo's and Luna's relationship. It would've been tragic for a child to be raised in such a toxic environment and to experience such trauma.

I don't know how long we stayed on that floor, but it was long enough for someone to burst through the door.

"N'kem."

It was Samuel. Not amnesiac Samuel, but my Samuel.

His eyes were wild as he looked around, taking in the surrounding. Behind him was Kunle, who was as equally bewildered. As I tried to process what exactly was happening, Samuel pulled me up and protectively placed me behind him.

"Why'd you do it?" he asked Luna, who now had the gun pointed at us. "You caused the accident. Why?"

SHIT!

Until we manage to get the gun out of her hands, we have to mince our words.

"It was supposed to be me!" Luna yelled out furiously. "You met me first, Sam!"

I looked up at Samuel, but he didn't know what Luna was going on about. But that's when it clicked about Luna's story about the guy she bumped into last year at work. The guy who was polite enough to help her pick up the items and even smiled at her. The guy she had fallen in love with but loved another woman.

Samuel was that guy all along.

It made sense now why she was so against Samuel being with me. She loved him first.

"Luna-" I started, not saying anything I'd regret. This woman had already gone to great lengths to be with Samuel, so I did not doubt she would use the gun on me. "When I first introduced you to Sam, why didn't you say he was the man you met at work"?"

Samuel, clearly clueless, looked at us as if we had spoken a foreign language.

Luna clicked her tongue. "Took you long enough to figure it out." She tapped the gun to her temple. My breath hitched. "It wasn't like you were going to leave him."

So you rather resent me for it, I wanted to say, but instead, I said, "You still should've said something."

"Oluwa mi o," Kunle exclaimed, and then he said something else I couldn't comprehend. I believe what he had said was also in Yoruba because he couldn't speak Igbo. Samuel, fortunate enough to understand Yoruba as much as Igbo, didn't look at Kunle, but whatever Kunle said was enough to relax Samuel.

Although lost, I chose to trust that exchange as Samuel began to move away from me and toward Luna, who was now pointing the gun toward Kunle.

"English! Speak English!"

Still inching closer to her, Samuel carefully held his hand out. "I remember everything now."

Swiftly she pointed the gun at Samuel. "You're just saying that."

"No, my memories came back to me when I got here. I saw a car tag. 938 XQZ. I don't know why but it triggered my memory."

I remember telling Samuel about seeing that tag number before but not remembering where.

Luna rolled her eyes. "Oh, that's Callum's car. What is he doing here?" Her annoyance held some familiarity, as if this wasn't her first time being annoyed by Callum. I didn't know that they knew each other.

"Callum?" I voiced.

"Yeah, he was supposed to be the reason Sam breaks up with you."

"What made you believe that we'd break up?"

"You were in a vulnerable situation which makes it easy for a man to make his move. Angered with his cheating girlfriend, Sam should've left you. It's too bad that idiot couldn't do the job correctly." She looked at me when she said that, so Samuel used this as an advantage to knock the gun out of her hand.

Luna and I made a lunge for it at the same time, but Samuel quickly held her back. The second my fingertips made contact with the gun, there was a hard smack to my head.

I immediately fell to the ground and heard someone say, "Who's the idiot now?"

As I faded to unconsciousness, what followed after the person spoke was a thud to the ground next to me. Just as I lost my will to stay awake, I saw those amber eyes looking right at me, and I already knew they were Callum's.