No Regrets

A good man is pushed beyond his breaking point and makes a decision that will change his life forever.

No Regrets

I was sitting at the theater with my kids. I take them out every Friday night. We do the whole bit. We get popcorn, candy, drinks, we find some cartoon or computer animated animal or group of animals, monsters, whatever the new movie is about. We find our seats and we watch a movie. About halfway through, just after the hero realizes his full potential my phone vibrates and freaks me out. I check it down at my side so as not to disturb anyone. It’s a picture text from Bobby, a long-time buddy. We play basketball together at the park in the summer while the kids play. There’s a caption beneath it, “Hey Clay, couldn’t decide whether or not to show you or tell you. Sorry.” The picture shows my wife and a man going into a bar on the other side of town and his hand is at the small of her back. I know him. He works at the Starbucks across the road from where she works. I stop in there with my partner every morning before we start our patrol. Cops get free coffee. My blood boils. I had no idea. I know the place. I’m quiet and I put the phone in my pocket and after the movie I tell the kids that instead of going for ice cream I’m going to drive them over to stay with Nanna tonight.

The kids are 4, 9 and 12 years old. The Jenny the oldest can tell something is off but doesn’t say anything. I try and keep a calm demeanor. No reason to freak them out too. Every step of the walk to the car, every second at every stoplight, every minute that it takes to walk up the stoop at my mother’s house seems like forever. I can’t stop picturing them together. I can’t stop imagining the possibilities and my heart feels like a tangled, stomping, bloody mass.

            When we get to my mom’s house I drop the kids and I do my very best not to show that anything is wrong. She seems to hint that she realizes something, her eyes trying to meet mine but I avert my gaze from hers and she doesn’t say anything. When I’m walking out the door I get another text. It’s the same friend. It is a picture of my front door. Another caption, this one reads, “They didn’t stay at the bar long. They’re at your place. Clay, Relax. Come to my place and have a beer.” I jog to my car.

It only took a minute to get to the apartment complex across town at that speed. I didn’t take time to think.  I took my pistol out from the trunk of my car and took the trigger lock off it. I stopped just for a second in the hallway. If I walk past my door, my friend’s apartment is just two doors down. I could drown my sorrows and take time to think this through. A moan leaks out from under the door of my apartment. I marched inside very quickly and caught my wife of 14 years half naked on my couch. I knew her body more intimate than my own. The betrayal tore through me even more then and hope left me. No more family outings, no more loving embraces. Two shots came and no screams. I didn’t give them time to think. They were dead before they really knew what was going on. My wife’s mouth had opened as if to scream or speak but I would never learn which. I will always wonder what she might have said. Probably something like, “It’s not what it looks like..”

 By the time the cops showed up I was sitting at the kitchen table staring at the gun. I was trying to make sense of it. That morning when I woke up I could not have been happier. I had had a beautiful wife, three adorable children, a good job, a house and a car. Tonight I killed a man and my wife. I won’t hug my kids again until I’m an old man. Why did it have to happen this way? Why did she have to do what she did? Why couldn’t I have just walked that extra 30 feet?

            Now none of you guys will talk to me. For years we’ve taken down criminals in this city, sat on the streets with bloody children while we waited for paramedics, searched vehicles for bombs, walked the March of Dimes together. Our kids go to the same school. They spend the night at each other’s houses. Our wives were in charge of the bake sale at church. Any time you called me I was there. Now you guys look at me and you see a criminal. You set me aside in your mind as someone who cannot go back, someone who has done something horribly evil. You seem to think you could never do what I’ve done, you could never kill someone. I’ve got one question for you. What if it happened to you?

Reviews

[Marie]

Good story. But of course this guy got what was coming to him. Murder is murder.