Homewrecker

68 - 𝓱𝓸𝓷𝓮𝓼𝓽

From what I had been told the next morning, Andi had found the video I filmed for her on her computer sooner than I thought she would when she decided to upload her sponsored video to YouTube that night so she could have it scheduled for Saturday morning without waiting for it to render.

She called Ethan at Starbright after finding my note in the kitchen about picking up an extra shift and he confirmed that I wasn't there, that no one had called-in to work. She told Amy and David about the video and called the Shiloh police department while they left with Jason for the trailer park, and the police sent the patrol officer who knocked around Kingston's trailer for a few minutes then left when he got another call.

When I called Officer Porterfield, who had been off duty at the time, she didn't understand what was happening or where I was until she called David to ask what was going on. Within a few minutes of me passing out, she arrived in plain clothes with her issued weapon drawn.

Kingston had broken two of my ribs, fractured my collarbone, gave me a concussion and bone bruises over my back, stabbed me in the shoulder, and I managed to break my wrist in one of my falls and stab the blade of my pocketknife all the way though my palm.

But I had also broken his arm in three places and the weed killer I had sprayed in his face seriously damaged one of his eyes, also I stabbed his hands, not to mention nailed him for murdering my mother and for attempting to do the same to me.

So, I felt a little proud of myself, even though it was becoming clear to me that Amy and David were, decidedly, less so.

I knew that after how upset they seemed to be when I just talked to my mother's former drug dealer, with Amy especially incensed in particular, that meticulously planning and confronting her actual killer in order to obtain a recording of his confession would go over even worse, and the fact that it had landed me in the hospital probably didn't help matters.

The first few nights, when the painkillers dripping from my IVs kept my eyelids heavy and my thoughts hazy whenever I wasn't speaking to the police or telling nurses what hurt and what didn't, they were quiet and hovering in my room with concerned creases etched into their expressions. Amy kept her arms crossed around herself every time she spoke to the doctor about my snapped bones or the bruises she worried hinted at internal bleeding, and there had been a handful of times I woke up in the middle of the night and felt the warmth of her hand on my arm, careful of the tubes and the bandages stuck to my skin.

She had been staying in the hospital room with me, sleeping on the recliner and brushing her teeth in the adjoining bathroom, asking me what I wanted to eat or coaxing me to drink more. David went back at night, lingering in the room for a few moments after he said that he needed to head back, and once he reached out and gently grasped my ankle.

It was after I managed to convince Amy to tell the doctor to stop the sedative painkillers—informing them both that I preferred the pain to the mental numbness I associated all too well with my mother on our futon with hair obscuring her face from me but I didn't need to look to know that she had taken something—that Amy and David started to let their disappointment slip into their eyes and their lips pressed thin together.

Or maybe that was just when I started to notice it, how their hands were kept close to their mouths like they wanted to keep it from me, the sighs that woke me up and the stares that they held for a second after I noticed.

It wasn't until my wrist had been set with a cast when the swelling had gone down—the plaster wrapped in a peach-ish colored shell, unsigned although according to Amy, Danny was looking forward to writing his name down on it—and I was interviewed by the police again that the subtle looks started to really bother me.