AT THE SOUND OF THE front door clicking closed, Richmond picked up the glass on the counter and threw it at the wall. Glass shattered to the floor with a clinking sound. Salina asked Russell to kill her. She wouldn’t dare do that to me.
“Liar! Liar!” Outraged, Richmond picked up the letter on the counter. Tempted to rip it in half, he broke the seal and slid the letter from the envelope. Clenching the letter in his hands, his eyes skimmed over the cursive writing on the fancy paper. This is Salina’s handwriting.
Heart wrenching, his heart beat fast inside his chest as he read the letter.
My Dearest Richmond.
My one and only true love.
As I sit here writing this letter on this dark, humid evening, the joints of my fingers throb. My lungs hurt. Pain grinds deep into the bones of my legs. And my arms. Every day, as I struggle to breathe, struggle to move, I want to die.
Yes, darling, I want to die. No medicine is going to make me get better or save me. I’ve accepted that. And now that I have, I’m ready to go home and be with the Lord. As much as I love you and Isabelle, I don’t want to live anymore. I’m alive, but I’m not living.
Sitting here crying as I write this letter, I miss walking. I miss running. Planting flowers in my garden. I miss holding Isabelle. Hugging you. Kissing you. Making love to you.
Every time I look into your sad eyes as you watch me die, a piece of me dies, too. Seeing the somber look on your face hurts worse than this terrible disease taking my life inside me. Although I know you don’t mind taking care of me, a once extremely vibrant person, I don’t like feeling like I’m a burden on you.
After I’m dead and gone, I hope and pray you’ll find some beautiful woman, inside and out, to love you and our precious little girl, Isabelle. Because of the kind of man you are, it gives me peace to know you’ll select your next wife wisely. You’ll know the woman is right for you by the way Isabelle loves and adores her.
If you’re reading this letter, then it means you know that my wish to die was granted. It also means you know Russell granted me my dying wish and assisted me with my death.
Crumbling the letter over his heart, Richmond refused to cry, although his heart did turn to stone. With his back to the kitchen sink, he slid to the floor while clenching the letter in his hand. Fighting back his tears, his nose burned. So did his eyes. He continued reading.
Richmond, I know I had no right to ask your father to kill me, but I did, and he agreed. As you know, Russell never treated me like an in- law. He always treated me like the daughter he never had. Like you, he hated seeing me suffer. Unlike you, he understood my dying need to walk and run and play with my daughter and live life to the fullest.
Lying in a bed, slowly dying, is not living, my sweet love. That being said, I’m glad Russell was brave enough to grant me my dying wish and help me commit suicide.
As hard as I know it’ll be for you to forgive both of us, you must. If you begrudge your father and me, you’ll only be hurting yourself.
You’ll end up like me…alive…but not living.
Forgive, Richmond. Forgive. Forgive.
Loving you forever and ever,
Salina
P.S. Thank you for the wonderful years of happy marriage. You were the best husband a girl could ever ask for.
Richmond balled up the letter and threw it across the room. Banging the back of his head on the cabinet, he hollered, “How could they do this to me? How! How!”
Russell and Salina had stolen her life from him. Right now, he couldn’t stand either one of them. Yeah, Salina was dying. And yeah, she didn’t have much time on Earth left, but what little time she did have left belonged to him. Call him selfish, but he’d wanted every single minute of whatever time God would’ve allowed. He didn’t care if she’d had two weeks left to live. Or two days. Hell, or two minutes. He’d wanted to spend every second of her last living days with her.
His eyes strained as he kept his tears from failing. There wasn’t any way in hell he was going to let Russell and Salina make him cry. He might be crying on the inside, but he’d be damned if he shed a single tear on the outside. He swiped his face hard. Russell’s going to pay for killing Salina. I’m going to make sure of it. I’m going to make sure he rots in prison.
Regaining his composure, he pulled his cell from his pocket and dialed 911. “911 operator. How may I help you?”
“I’d like to report a mur—”
Squeezing the phone tight in his grip, Richmond threw the phone across the room and grabbed his hot face. If Salina killed herself, then so be it. Stumbling to his feet, he flung open the refrigerator, grabbed a beer, then popped the cap.
Chugging the beer, leaning against the refrigerator, his mind hopped to Kayla. Ah, Kay, you should’ve never kept something so drastic from me. I can’t trust you. You and I are done. For good. Finishing off the beer, he grabbed another one. And then another. Another. And another.