Breaking Somebody's Heart - John Fetto

Hawley got to the house by three a.m. and walked quietly along the driveway to Johanna’s window, and set down his duffle bag. It was open half an inch. He didn’t want to scare her, so he pushed open a bit more and looked inside. The room was dark. Of course she would be asleep. She would be shocked to see him. She wouldn’t believe it at first. He’d have to explain. He’d have to ease into it, tell her not to scream, not to wake her mother. He’d explain, he had to go, and now he had come back. Not for one second of one minute did he ever think that she wouldn’t be happy to see him back, but when he stuck his face close to the window, and called her name, shadows along the bed didn’t move. No one turned toward him. He called her name again, a bit louder. Still nothing, so he pushed open the window and pulled himself up. First one knee, then ducking his head and he was inside, crouching by the window as he looked at the folds of the blankets on the bed, waiting for them to move, for her to see them. Nothing happened. He stood up and walked to the side of the bed, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the light. The white sheets were thrown back. The bed was empty. She wasn’t home. At three a.m. She was sleeping, somewhere else. Sleeping with someone else.

He didn’t remember crawling out. He barely remember going to the garage, and finding the box he left, opening the lock removing what was inside and stuffing it in his duffle. He was almost a mile a way walking through the trees towards Gil’s trailer when his hand reached back and felt the stock of the rifle in his duffle, and started thinking again. It didn’t matter that she was gone. Of course she was gone. She thought he was dead. Why should she have waited for a dead man. It was better this way. After he got done using what was inside the duffle, he’d likely be really dead. So it was all the same, he told himself, over and over again.