Today is a new bloody day, though. I have a wife that I’d move thefeckin’world over for, and I’m breaking her heart. She doesn’t even know it. I look at myself through the rearview mirror of my Audi convertible. My blue-green eyes bug.
“Feck!” I reach into the glove compartment to grab the baby wipes Chevelle stashed there. I rub the specks of blood from my jaw. My lovely wife will have so many words for me if she saw the faintest indication of blood. What happened,she’d ask.You’re not bleeding, she’d observe.Where’d the blood come from? Why aren’t you bleeding?I’d make a joke of my response, ask her why she’d want me to be bloodyfeckin’bleeding? The attempt to see her smile would fall short, and in the end, I’d befecked!
Last Sunday, I woke up with my wife, kissed my three-year-old on the forehead, traveled to Silicon Valley for the workweek, and I wasn’t a murderer.
Today. I glance down at my hands. Nae matter how much I washed them, red taints my nail beds and stains the grooves of my calloused fingers.
“Breathe,” I warn myself, rubbing a baby wipe over the flecks. At least, I’d tossed the suit I was wearing.
I pull up to our home. Getting out of my Audi, I slam the door, edging around our muscle car, a Chevelle SS. If it’s not an import, I’m a Chevy guy.
I head through the garage into our one-level home. A glass wall offers a view of the Southern California coast of Laguna Niguel. On the balcony, a flight of stairs leads down to the beach. We had a fence put in the day Mia scoot-crawled across the deck. Another outdoor staircase leads above the house to a pool, jacuzzi, and an area where Chevelle gardens.
I climb up the steps to the roof and glance past the custom outdoor kitchen to an area of potted plants.
“Go back inside, Leith.” I hear her voice before I can make out where Chevelle’s squatting down between the pots. Thick, spirals of hair rustle in the wind. All I see is the top of my wife’s head.
“Chevelle, ye said as soon as I got home to—”
“Leith, get!”
I told myself to exhale in the car. In this precise second, I do so. I breathefeckin’easy.
“Glad to see someone’s happy to see me,” I mutter, though her moment of genius has secured my safety. Chevelle will either beg me to come running when she’s crossbreeding various herbs or shoo me away if she’s too engrossed in something new like she is now. Like I once was about computers and coding.
“You know I love you, baby. I’ll make it up to you later. Bye!” A slender hand with manicured fingers pops up between green foliage, pointing to a baby monitor. “Check on your minion.”
Though our Mia is now a wee tot, she’s a very busywean.
Over my shoulder, I call out, “When I get out of the shower, I expect me a frothy pint.”Make it five pints, enough kick to drink me under the bloody table.
With nothing but the sound of Chevelle’s snickering, I head back down the stairs, reproaching myself for the life we made for ourselves. The lifeImade for us. I step back into the house.
Chevelle has always been content in my arms. From what she’s shared about her parents in the past, they had some money. Sometimes, she gets skittish around too much money, though.
I lean against the door to Mia’s room. The entire area is filled with princess furniture. In the center of the bed, my lassie sleeps. Her deep chestnut hair has muted fiery red highlights. Her chubby arms are raised over a humongous head I often tease her about.
I lean down, kiss the big forehead her mom gave her, and murmur per the norm, “I’d die for ye, Mia.”
I stop from heading back to the garage where there’s blood and more DNA evidence in the trunk of my Audi.
“Dinnapush it, Leith.” The deid lad will have to wait until later.
I head into my room for the shower. We live in a smart house with all the luxury we never needed. As an application and software developer, I can buy pretty much anything my family wants. My hen rarely asks for much. When Chevelle got pregnant, I got greedy, sought nothing but the best for our wee bairn.
It feels like hot rain spilling from the massive showerhead, but I’m numb to it.
“Incoming call from Leith MacKenzies’ cellphone. Confirm action?” the virtual assistant announces through a speaker along the shower walls.
“Who’s ringing?”
“Unknown.”
“Where is Mrs. MacKenzie?” I inquire.
“Mrs. MacKenzies’ status is on the rooftop of the MacKenzie home.”
“Answer. Volume low. Cut call if Mrs. MacKenzie enters the house.”