The Good Listener (28 page)

My lawyer and the doctor looked at him with disgust.

“Where is Joel?”

“I don’t know. I called him once the police informed me that you were here because they couldn’t reach him either. He hasn’t picked up his cell. I left him a message. Why? Why would you do something like this Hannah?”

I shook my head.

“Do you even have to ask? I can’t go to prison for something that I didn’t do. I just can’t.”

“There are other options, Hannah. Killing yourself isn’t the answer.”

“It’s the only answer that I have.”

Being that I was a psychologist, I would have never imagined that I would have done something so extreme.

But I had, and I didn’t regret it.

I just wished that I had succeeded.

“So, if you haven’t talked to him, how did I get here?”

“911 said that they got an anonymous call saying that you, specifically, needed help. They said that you were inside, about to kill yourself and gave your address. When the ambulance and police got there, they found the front door wide open, and they found you in the bathtub, passed out and bleeding.”

What?

The front door was wide open?

I was for certain that I had locked it.

I’d checked it just before going into the kitchen to get the knife, and I’d glanced at it again on my way to the bathroom after watching the news.

Who could have known that I was about to kill myself?

Had someone been there the whole time?

I didn’t say anything as Joel came running in the room.

“What happened? What happened Hannah?”

He looked concerned.

He smelled like a gallon of alcohol.

He had been drinking.             

That couldn’t be a good thing.

“Why would you try to kill yourself, Hannah? Why would you do that?”

“If I go to prison I may as well be dead.”

“That was so stupid of you to do.”

I glared at him.

“What would I do if I’d lost you, Hannah?”

“You’re about to lose me anyway. I lost you a long time ago.”

And after I said those words, I didn’t say anything else for the rest of the night.

I just laid there and ignored everything and everyone as I thought of ways that I could somehow make another attempt at death.

No matter what, I wasn’t going to prison.

Not now.

Not tomorrow.

Not ever.

And somehow I was going to make sure of that.

~***~

I was already crying because I already knew what the verdict was going to be.

Calvin had managed to get the court date pushed back few days, considering that the hospital wanted to put me on a suicide watch.

“Jury how do you find the defendant?”

I didn’t hear anything until she said…

“Guilty.”

My heart dropped, and I started to scream.

The courtroom grew loud and immediately I looked in the direction of Mr. Calvin and Joel.

I shook my head.

I didn’t do this!

I didn’t do anything!

I screamed louder and louder as the officer approached me to take me away at the judge’s request.

“I’m innocent! Please, I’m innocent!” I yelled as the officer tried to restrain me.

I fell to my knees, and he struggled to try to stand me back up.

This was insane!

They were about to put an innocent woman behind bars, and no one even cared.

“No! Please! I didn’t do anything. I didn’t kill anybody!”

Still, no one listened.

Everyone seemed to be talking, but no one seemed to be listening.

My life flashed before my eyes as I continued to try to fight off the officer, but after forcefully being pulled back up to stand on my own two feet, I gave up.

I stopped moving and stood still as he grabbed my arm.

I glanced at Calvin and then stared at Joel.

He was crying too and mouthing something to me that I couldn’t make out.

Not that I was even trying to.

He and Calvin didn’t even wait around to see them take me away.

Once they exited the doors, I looked at the prosecutors that had convinced my peers to put me away and then something caught my eye.

I closed my eyes and opened them again in a hurry.

She was still there.

It was her.

I knew her height.

I knew her walk.

She was headed for the door wearing a dress and a black, short wig, but I knew that it was her.

She stopped, pulled out sunglasses and turned around to face me.

She placed one hand on the door, pushed it open, and just before walking out, she pulled her sunglasses down, winked, and then smiled.

Summer.

It was Summer!

“That’s her! She’s not dead! Summer’s not dead! She just went out the door!”

I screamed and nodded my head towards the door.

Everyone in the courtroom seemed to run in that direction.

“She’s not dead! Please! I just saw her! I saw her! I’m innocent! She’s alive! She’s alive,” I yelled as the officer pulled me away.

Summer was alive?

All of this time, she was alive?

She had been there to watch me go down for her disappearance and her suspected murder, and she wasn’t going to say a word.

She’d wanted me to go to prison.

She’d left all of the evidence on purpose.

They put me in a cell and warned me to stop screaming but I couldn’t.

She was alive, and I’d seen her.

I’d seen her with my own two eyes, and they had to believe me.

Summer wasn’t dead.

Why would she do something this to me?

It wasn’t like I was sleeping with her husband…she had been sleeping with mine.

Was this a part of some kind of plan so that she could have Joel?

I would have given him to her.

We were headed for a divorce anyway at the time, so it just didn’t make sense.

I sat in the cell all night and waited for someone to come and say something, but no one did.

No one said anything about what I’d said and when I questioned them, no one had any answers.

I know what I’d saw, but still, no one seemed to believe me.

“Mrs. Lewis.”

I looked up at Officer Parks the next morning.

“She’s alive. I swear to you, I saw her.”

“A nearby camera has footage of her taking off the wig and getting into an unmarked car. We compared the footage from the camera to our facial recognition system. It was a match. Summer Waters is alive.”

Hallelujah!

Words couldn’t express what I felt inside.

The waterworks started, and Officer Parks allowed me to have a moment.

She was trying to ruin my life, but it didn’t work.

She had tried to set me up, but she didn’t succeed.

Why would a person do that to somebody?

As much as I wanted to say that if I ever saw her again, I would kill her, for real, I didn’t want to think about anything of that nature. I just wanted to be free. I just wanted to live.

“We haven’t located her. Every officer in town and in this state is looking for her to bring her in but we haven’t found her as of yet. We found the car that she was in parked behind an abandoned building, but she wasn’t inside of it. She’s probably long gone by now or hiding wherever she has been hiding all of this time. You are free to go. The department, the city, this state owes you one heck of an apology.”

Officer Parks opened the cell door, and I walked by him, out of the cell.

“An apology. A settlement. Your job and so much more. My lawyer will be in touch.”

I was free!

I didn’t call anyone to come and get me.

I didn’t want to talk to anyone.

I just wanted to celebrate.

Tears of joy streamed down my face as I signed for and collected my things and headed out of the doors to the jail

I was the happiest person in the whole world.

That was a close one.

My life was almost over.

I’d almost gone to prison.

Looking at the bandages on my arms, I’d almost killed myself.

I sat on the steps just to cry and laugh at the same time.

People stared at me.

Officers stopped to question me.

But I cried and laughed until I was finally able to stand to my feet and walk away.

I started walking down the street, not sure of where I was headed, but it just felt so good to be able to walk and be free.

I walked for a long time, enjoying the smell of the morning air.

By the time I’d come to a stop, I noticed that I had walked all the way to town and waited at Mr. Calvin’s office.

He arrived and looked at me as though he was seeing a ghost.

“Hannah? What are you doing here? Did you escape? Are they allowing you to be out until sentencing? Why didn’t they inform me of this?”

I forgot that he and Joel had walked out before I’d spotted Summer.

“Summer is alive, and I’m free!”

He embraced me.

“What? How? How do you know?”

“She was in the courtroom. Watching the whole thing. I don’t know how but she was there. Summer had been there the whole time.”

He looked at me as though he didn’t know what to say.

As though he hadn't believed in miracles until that very moment.

“I still can’t believe it. I still can’t believe that I saw her just in time. I screamed out once she smiled at me. She ran out of the courthouse, but a nearby camera captured footage of her face and confirmed that it was her. That she had been alive all along. They haven’t found her yet, but when they do, I hope that she gets what she deserves. I’m sure there’s some kind of charge that she should be held accountable for.”

“This was nothing shy of a miracle. I don’t know what to say, Hannah.”

“You don’t have to say anything, but I want to thank you. I can’t thank you enough for helping me and believing me when no one else did.”

“No problem. It was my pleasure.”

“And I take it that it will be your pleasure to help me take the state and the police department for everything that they are worth? I want to make them pay.”

“I’ll definitely see what we can do.”

We talked for a second more and then I asked him for a ride home.

We pulled up.

Joel’s car was there, right beside mine and the house and cars were all a mess.

Murderer, Dr. Killer, and so much more were spray painted on the cars and even on the house.

There was trash everywhere, cans, and eggs shells.

It was going to take forever to clean all of this mess up, and it was all for nothing.

I was innocent.

And soon the whole world was going to know it.

“I guess he was innocent after all,” Mr. Calvin said.

He had always had his suspicions about Joel, just as I had.

“I guess he was.”

“You owe him an apology you know?”

“Yeah. I know.”

I had said so many hurtful things to Joel and accused him of killing Summer and framing me so many times, that he would probably tell me to take my apology and shove it.

But still, his infidelity had been responsible for all of this I’m sure.

She had to have wanted me to go down for her disappearance for a reason, and I could only assume that whatever the reason was, it had something to do with Joel.

To think about it, despite all that I had done to Joel, he had been by my side the entire time.

Even when I didn’t want him around, and even though I called him names, and made his life a living Hell, he stayed around and never left my side.

But he had done his share of lying, and my actions were simply a reaction to everything that he’d done.

He couldn’t blame me or fault me for that.

Mr. Calvin promised to get started on my new case, and I headed to the front door.

Surprisingly turning the knob, it was unlocked.

Nothing looked like it was missing so I headed to the spare bedroom, but Joel wasn’t there so I went to check the master.

There he was, passed out.

A beer was on the bed beside of him, and the same photo that I had stabbed with the knife was beside him too.

Tissues were on the bed, so I assumed that he had been crying.