When Paths Intertwine

Cold blooded murder is what most would call this term. Others would call it a woman gone crazy. Me? I would call it plain and simple self-defense. I was only protecting what was mine. There laying on the ground was Derrick. He had a hole in his forehead and his eyes were wide open. He forced me to do it. He had to die.

“You are one fucked up and crazy woman if you actually think you are leaving with my kids? You are a crazy bitch if you actually think I’m letting you do that. Nah. You can leave. But my kids stay,” Derrick sneered. We were in the bedroom where he sat on the bed with his arms crossed over his chest.

My eyes narrowed as my hands were on my hips. I pointed my finger at him. “You got me fucked up if you think I’m leaving what’s rightfully mine with you.” The inner woman in me was slowly rising as both my hands now rested on my hips. “Boy you crazy. I spent almost half of a day on each baby in labor before bringing them into this life. I’ll be damn if I’m giving them up now,” I argued back. He was lucky we had the space between us. Him on the bed and me standing in the doorway. Otherwise, I would have slapped him by now.

He snorted “Oh wow. So, what’s that plus the time you spend now with them? A month? Please.” He shook his head. “You may have given birth but you ain’t never around no way. You spend most your days not at home. You can’t spend more than an hour before complaining you need a break. That’s why we have a babysitter most the time. You know how much money we’d save if you kept your ass at home?”

I was itching to slap him. I held hand up in the air to show him he just needed to stop with the lies before crossing my arms. He wanted to play bad. I could too. “How dare you. I’m working to keep the good life. So, the fuck what? Stop trying to bad mouth me, Derek, cause you ain’t a price yourself. You spend just about as much time as I do with them girls.”

He chuckled leaning back on his hands now. “You are funny. I’m doing the part as the man and providing for my family. That’s besides the point and still doesn’t excuse you from leaving them kids.”

My arms slowly fell as his taunting sunk in and then I placed one hand on my hip again as I thought. He leaned forward resting his arms on his legs as he licked his lips. His words lingered as I thought about what he said knowing he was right. Then I remembered who would be the one to actually help me out. I smiled shifting my way to one side. “Ace would take me in so no worries. He’s kind like that and believes in second chances.”

Derrick smirked so evilly and I knew what was coming next wasn’t good. “No, he wouldn’t. Not if your secret somehow got out. And, even if he decided to give you that second chance, he would kick you out so fast once he learned that you planned on still going down that road.”

Ace was one of the few nice men left on the planet. I believed he would give me a second chance at life if it meant he would be helping me out. But, was I so certain he would overlook the idea of continuing down this path so I could live the easy good life? Was it really worth the risk that he wouldn’t turn me in for a while and to put our lives in his hands for a while?

No. I needed to make sure that my life wasn’t going down the toilet. But who else could I turn to, to help? Even if I went somewhere else, the risk was too great once my secret came out. I needed to make sure the secret didn’t get out. So, what could I do? Well, I could talk until I was blue in the face, but there was no getting him to let me leave with the girls without keeping my secret. And there was no way I was leaving the girls with him when they weren’t rightfully his in the first place.

So, I did what I needed to do. I pulled out my glock 19 from my purse in one quick move. It was already ready to go filled with 9mm ammo. I held it up ever so slightly to be threatening but not high enough I would kill him. My plan was to scare him into keeping my secret. He glared at me. “Where the hell did you get that thing Linda?”

I smirked remembering the day I had bought it because I was almost robbed. No more days without protection I had thought. It was time to defend myself then and now. “I bought it for protection. Never can be too careful ya know?”

Derrick narrowed his eyes and tried walking closer to me, but I held the gun up higher and actually pointed to kill this time. He chuckled. “You’re not going to shoot me Linda. I know you too well. This is just a scare tactic.”

I kept quiet and he looked at me. “Linda, I could easily snap your twig ass in two. Stop playing.”

I narrowed my eyes. I wasn’t that skinny. I still ignored his taunting though. The silence between us seemed to go on forever before he sighed. “Linda, I love you. You and the girls. I didn’t mean for it to sound as if I was threatening you. I just didn’t want you or the girls to leave me. You three are my everything. My whole world. You got to understand that.” He took another step and I took the safety off. He held his hands up in the air. “Linda, I know you don’t want to lose the girls. You want them in your life like I do. Just put the gun down and we can talk and work this out alright? We don’t need to argue or fight over this family when we can do this together. All I want is our family to stay together. Forever. Is that so bad?” My heart felt heavy and my weapon slowly lowered as I started to believe every word he was saying to me. Was he telling the truth.

Derrick slowly reached down to try to take the gun from me. For a minute, I almost let him until something flickered in his eyes. His expression had turned evil so quickly that it scared me. Just as he was about to grab the gun from me, I maneuvered the gun around his hand, aimed, and fired squeezing my eyes shut.
Tears trickled down my face. Not because I had never used a gun before. But because this was the father of my children. The love of my life. And I had just shot him and I didn’t even know if he was alive. Seconds past and I didn’t hear nothing. I slowly opened my eyes and looked down. There laying on our bedroom floor was Derrick. I didn’t feel bad just shocked at what I had to do. “You messed with the wrong one Derrick.” Good thing our girls were deep sleepers.

I had to think fast. If I stayed, they would question me on what happened. If I packed bags and ran with the girls, it would look as if I had something to hide.

There was only one solution: make it look like a suicide and hide at my mother’s until I could run. I dropped the gun on the floor before walking over to Derrick and struggled my hands under his body before dragging him across the floor. My heart raced and I was breathing heavily as I struggled to drag him over to the bedroom wall by our king-sized bed. Finally, when I made it across the room I leaned him against the wall. I raced back over to the gun and picked it up before placing it into Derrick’s dominant hand.

I was breathing heavily but I couldn’t stop and rest. It was risky being here if the neighbors heard gunshots. In the closet behind our clothes, I found our hidden safe. When I put in the combination and opened the door although, it was empty. I cursed and raised back over to the bed on Derrick’s usual side. Inside the nightstand, I found his wallet. There was only a couple hundred though so I groaned frustrated. Again, I realized I didn’t have time for this so I shoved the money in my pocket before putting the wallet back where I had found it.

I couldn’t help but flip Derrick off. Down the stairs I went and into the girls’ bedroom. I sat Izzy up. “Get up baby. We are going to grandma’s.”

“Why,” she asked. Her eyes remained closed but she somewhat sat up. “I’m sleepy.”

“Because I said so,” letting my mother’s words come out of my mouth. I use to hate that but I couldn’t tell her, her dad was dead. “And I know you are tired. You can go back to sleep in the car.”

She whimpered but slid out of bed with her doll. I went after her younger two-year-old sister, Jess and just scooped her up in my arms because I had already wasted a lot of time trying to get Izzy up. I grabbed Izzy’s hand and rushed across the floor.

“Mommy slow down,” Izzy whimpered trying to keep up. Usually she was a fast four-year-old girl but she was tired.

I went through the kitchen and into our connected garage. I opened the passenger back side. “Get in Izzy while I strap your sister in and then I will do you.” She nodded and stumbled to the door as I rounded the car and put Jess in the car. I quickly strapped her in and did the same to Izzy who had quickly fallen back to sleep. After pushing the garage door button to open it, I quickly jumped in the car and drove out as quickly as possible making sure to close the garage door back and make sure that we were never here.

_____________________________________________________

The girls slept soundly in the guest bed in my mother’s home. I was peeking at them through the crack of the doorway and I smiled. For a minute, I thought everything was going to be okay. Then, my mother huffed and puffed and ruined it.

“What did you want to talk about? Or are you going to stand there and watch them while they sleep for once?” I sighed and closed the doorway and narrowed my eyes at the woman I called a mother. She didn’t exactly deserve the title though because it was her fault I was the way I was and that I was in this mess.

“I had a favor to ask you mother.” She glared before pointing a finger at me.

“You know I hate you calling me mother. It’s too close to calling me mother fucker.” She then went back to smoking her cigarette. I sighed taking a breath so I wouldn’t yell at her so she would do me this solid.

“You’re a grown woman. You’re supposed to be able to support yourself and your kids. I did it. I did anything and everything to support you ungrateful little brats,” she said waving her finger at me when she said ungrateful little brats so I knew she was talking about my sister and me. “And what do I get? A few new moves on the pole and you and your sister bitching about how horrible your life was or how I was a terrible mother,” she said with a mocking whining voice using her hand as if it were a mouth.

I frowned. Seeing my mother on the pole was the last thing I wanted to imagine. I got the shivers and she raised a questionable eyebrow. “Did you have to make me imagine you on a pole.”

“Listen here. I was hot back then.” She posed. “Still am.”

“Well since you won’t help me,” I said changing the subject not wanting any more disturbing pictures in my head. “Will you give me my sister’s phone number so I can at least ask her for help?” She scoffed. “What?”

“You’re very funny. You know that little cry baby whines more than you. You know I don’t have her number so I don’t even know why you would ask.”

“I figured she at least talked to you. If it makes you feel better. She doesn’t talk to me.” She shrugged as if not to care finishing off the cigarette she had finished smoking while leaning against the wall. She hadn’t even offered me a smoke.

“Mom, please. I need your help. You’re the only person I can ask.”
“I don’t know she pandering shrugged. I sighed. She always wanted a bribe from me.

“I’ll buy you a box of cigarettes in exchange if you let us stay for a couple days.”

I watched her as she looked everywhere but at me before finding my eyes. “Okay you little snot. Here’s the deal,” she hissed pointing her finger at me. I don’t know why she thought this would make me take her seriously. “I will on one more condition.” I waited for her to answer me. She crossed her arms and stated, “You have to find a job and be out of here in a week. A month’s top. I don’t need your little ones running around here naked. The only one running around here naked is me.” I nearly threw up in my mouth getting another image in my head I didn’t want to see.

“Got to go mom,” I yelled running down the hall.

“I was hot and still am!” I heard her yell before I slammed the door.

I dropped my handful on the counter. The clerk looked at me and then the stuff chewing her gum. As she rung up the brown hair dye, clothes, scissors, nonprescription glasses, and make up I looked at her name tag and realized it said Randy. “Twenty dollars even.”

“Could I get a box of decade one hundreds please?” Randy shrugged and turned around and started looking for a box. As she was busy, my eyes wandered up to the muted television and started reading the captions. Forty-year-old Derrick was found at the scene after the neighbors called and reported the gunshots last night. Doctors don’t believe he will make it though. The police say it looks like a suicide, but haven’t ruled out homicide yet. They are looking for his girlfriend, thirty-five-year-old, Linda, and their two girls, Jess and Izzy to ask further questions. If you have any leads please call us at–

A slam on the counter caught my attention as the clerk threw the box on the counter. I glared which she didn’t catch because she was ringing up my items. I don’t think she would care anyway. After all, she didn’t get paid to care. She finally looked back up at me before saying “that will be forty-five dollars and fifty cents”.

“Do you have nonprescription contacts?”

“What color?”

“Blue. I’m just bored of my brown eyes,” I lied. She shrugged not really showing any interest on why I wanted them.

“Ok sixty-five dollars and forty-eight cents.”

I fished out the hundred and gave it to her. She looked at the money and then me before pulling out her money marker. She marked it before opening her drawer and giving my change. Then she pushed it all in a plastic bag before giving it to me without even as much as a “good day”. Instead, she pulled her magazine from underneath the register and leaned against the counter to start reading. Before she could though, I cleared my throat. She groaned and looked up at me. “Yes?”
I wanted to slap her and tell her to have some manners, but instead, I didn’t. “Do you guys have a bathroom? I ain’t feeling too well.”

She reached under her register again. This time pulling out a key hooked to a pole as if we wanted to steal their key. “Make sure you clean up after yourself and bring back the key.”

I snatched the key from her. “No one wants your dumb ass key,” I stated before stomping off to the bathroom. Once inside, I got to work quickly. First, I changed my clothes. Next, I started dying my hair. The process was simple and somewhat time consuming but not as long as if I had chosen a lighter color.

Twenty minutes in, just as I was about to wash my hair, someone knocks on the door. My heart races as I think they have found me. Instead the clerk's voice comes from the other side. “Hey you aren’t making a mess in there, are you?”

I rolled my eyes flipping her off forgetting she can’t technically see me. “No.”
Pause. “Are you smoking in there?”

I gritted my teeth. I was at the end of my ropes with this girl. “No. I just ain’t feeling good. Give me a few and I’ll be out.” No response. A few seconds later, she walked away from the door. I sighed and washed my hair out. It was now wet, but completely brown. I smiled and cut my hair as I thought my new name would be: Kira. I liked it and to me it suited my new look. I dumbed the hair in the trash before adding the finishing touches which was the make-up, contacts, and glasses. I smiled at the new me before ducking out of the bathroom. I quickly walked to the front keeping my head down so the only camera near the register didn’t catch my new look making sure to drop off the key.

The clerk wasn’t luckily not paying me any attention so she didn’t see my new appearance. Neither did she see me snatch a lighter off the counter.

I went around back and decided it was best for me to disappear. After all, they were looking for long haired blonde with green eyes named Linda. Not a short haired brunette with blue eyes wearing glasses. Making sure the coast was clear first, I threw my clothes down and flicked the lighter. I slowly but surely made sure the clothes caught fire before running and jumping in the car. Linda Anderson was now out of sight and maybe even would be ruled dead.

I stopped by my mother’s house and dumped the carton out in her mailbox before getting on the road. When I finally had hit the highway, I called her house phone. “Where are you with my cigarettes girl?”

“No how you doing? Are you okay? Nothing. Just worried about your cigarettes. I see how it is mom,” I said rolling my eyes while holding the phone with one hand and driving with the other.
“Stop playing with me girl.”

I sighed. Same old mother. “There at the door. I’m not coming back right now. You will be watching the girls.”

“No! That wasn’t part of the deal you little slick bitch. Get your ass back home and take care of these kids or come get them.”

“Can’t. I have something to do first. So, watch my kids for me will you. Do me this one favor since you’ve never done anything else for me in my life but cause trouble.”

“No. You come get these kids or else. I’m warning you, Linda.”

“I’ll be home when I can. Thanks.” I hung up and rolled down my window. It started ringing as I threw it out the window. Now she had no choice but to hold them away from DFS. That and if Derrick survived he wouldn’t look for them there. She would hold them just until I got back onto my feet and was living the good life. But who knew how long that would take. Until then I was Kira Carter Jones.