TILL DEATH DO US PART | JENLISA

TWENTY-SEVEN

JENNIE

***

Forced Hands

February 18th, 2030

***

The house is quiet; deep darkness, pulled like a cape over us. The girls are sleeping, dreaming beautiful dreams.

I hope.

I hope for so many things to come in the next few hours.

My fingers move slowly over the pages of writing before me. I’ve written this story as long as I can remember. Our life. I’ve lived it and then committed it to the innocent lines of paper that bear the weight of a world so heavy, I’m surprised the table doesn’t collapse under it.

I’m surprised I haven’t either.

I’ve bled my heart, bore the wreck of my choices from clumsy hands; yet, somehow I’ve found a gift greater than I ever thought I would. It’s in the woman standing in the kitchen right now stirring sugar into our coffee mugs. Well, my coffee mug, hers is tea. My eyes hang on her in the dark, her hand moving, her outline superimposed against the rest of our home. She is the mother of my children and my salvation.

My hope.

Lisa quietly carries the cups to the table and sets them down. Her hands are trembling, and the coffee spills a little, peppering the page before me in brown. I smooth it away with my fingertips.

“I’m so sorry, Jennie.” Her voice sounds broken, like spilling the coffee and wetting my page will somehow end everything. Her fingers drag a piece of paper towel over where I am writing. She looks down at me, and in her eyes I see such fear.

“Don’t be afraid.”

Her gaze goes to the digital clock in the kitchen, to where it announces the time in blinding green.

11:48 p.m

“How can I not be?”

She takes her seat beside me, the seat she has always sat in. Every dinner, every day. It’s her place, to my right. Lisa has always been my right-hand girl and always will be. I think it as her shoulders crumble and she cups her hands over her face, pressing shaken elbows to the wood of our kitchen table.

“I think I’m gonna be sick. I have such a shitty feeling right now.” She sniffs behind the shield of her hands until they find their way into her hair and ruffle through it. “I can’t get over the twisting ache in my stomach.”

When she looks at me, I fix my gaze on the papers.

“We have our plan.”

She nods. “Yes, but just in case, tell me everything about what happened tomorrow again.”

Only in our world could we use past tense about a day that hasn’t come yet.

I push the page I’ve been writing on toward her. “I outlined everything that happened, here. I got up at five, left the house for work at six.”

“You were working downtown, in the high-rise medical suites on Madison Avenue, right?”

“Yes.” I point to the page. “I made it there at about quarter to seven. I had patients from seven to nine, then went to Saint James for an hour to fix some records for a resident.”

“And then you went back and had more patients from what? Eleven to noon?” She pulls the list closer so she can see it in the non-existent light. “Twelve thirty.”