Melina awoke the next morning a few minutes before the alarm clock went off. The room was awash in bright sunlight as early as it was being that it was the peak of summer. She lay still, listening to the soothing drone of the air conditioner, and thought of the night before.
She and Lucia had read together in bed, chatted and then made love before they fell asleep, as had become their habit. She found it both cute and amusing how Lucia was determined to “go all the way” and do her with a strap-on, promising to give her the best bop ever. She seemed to really want her to be happy.
The woman’s strength and ability to pick up and carry on after devastating tragedies was amazing. Melina wished she was half as strong, but she still found that while her heart may now be with Lucia, her mind always found its way back to her Ari.
Ari.
What had become of Ari since she died? She wondered this so many times. Did she live on somehow? Or had death been the end?
The alarm beeped and Lucia stirred with a jolt. She then reached over to turn it off and stretched her arms overhead. She rubbed her eyes, looked over at Melina and smiled lovingly. “Hey, babe.”
“Hey, old lady. Time to rise and shine.”
Given their near thirty-year age difference, Melina loved to tease Lucia by referring to her as the “old lady.”
Lucia sat up with a yawn.
“I’ll go get our coffee ready after I pee,” Melina said, heading into the bathroom.
After they had shared coffee and donuts, Lucia dressed and left for the store. “Have fun cleaning,” she’d told her before she kissed her and walked out the door.
Cleaning was anything but “fun,” but someone needed to do it, and it may as well be her because she was home more often and Lucia had enough to do with the store. And so she set about cleaning after her shower.
A few hours later, she found she still had some energy left in her despite being four months pregnant, and so she decided to organize the bedroom closet. Initially, she’d basically thrown her stuff in with Lucia’s at random and hadn’t really put much thought into where things should go.
She went into the guest room that would soon become a nursery and emptied its closet of the few remaining things of hers she’d tossed into it after Ari died. Back in the master bedroom closet, she started pulling things off the shelves. It was mostly the shelves and shoes she wanted to rearrange. The clothing that was hanging had been simple enough. Lucia’s clothes were on the right, hers were on the left. It was all the junk piled haphazardly on the shelves and floor she was sick of having to sift through just to find things. Melina liked a clean, orderly house, even when it came to closets and drawers.
Lucia ought to be pleasantly surprised, she thought to herself as she sang along with the song that was blasting out of the stereo speakers downstairs in the living room. Lucia would probably be concerned about her disturbing the neighbors, but when it came to cleaning, she just didn’t give a damn about neighbors.
Once she’d cleared the shelves from the back wall of the closet, she noticed something she’d never noticed before. A safe was embedded in that wall. It was a fairly good size safe too, at perhaps twelve by fifteen inches.
“Hmm…” she wondered aloud. “What could Lucia be hiding in here?”
She figured it was just important papers and maybe a few pieces of jewelry. The usual stuff one stored in a safe. But Melina fingered the combination lock with curiosity just the same. She wondered if Lucia would give her the combination of numbers that would open its door if she asked for them.
“Let’s see if I can figure it out myself first. Then I’ll ask her,” she decided, as Carina came hopping into the bedroom.
“Hey, girl, I forgot about you,” she told the rat once she spotted her, momentarily distracted from the safe. She bent down to pick up the furry creature that nuzzled her cheek lovingly. “You sleepy?”
She brought the rat downstairs and secured her in her cage. Carina loved to run around loose, but Melina felt more comfortable with her tucked safely in her cage while she cleaned.
Since she was already downstairs, Melina fixed herself a tuna sandwich before heading back upstairs to deal with the safe. She doubted she could guess the safe’s combination, but if Lucia was as foolish as a lot of people were, she’d used something obvious like her date of birth. She tried that first but had no luck. Next, she tried the birth dates of Ari, Nara and Rena. No such luck there either. Lastly, she tried her own birth date as ridiculous as the idea seemed to her.
Yet to her utter amazement, the safe’s door opened!
This is almost spooky, she thought to herself as she pulled the black metal door open. Why in the world would Lucia use her date of birth? Yes, they were married, but it seemed a bit premature. She tried to tell herself that it would be too obvious had Lucia used her own or any of her daughters, but this still didn’t ease the creepy feeling that had come over her as soon as the door opened. Something weird was going on.
Melina sifted through the contents of the safe. She had been right. There were legal documents, some old photos, jewelry that almost looked like it was hundreds of years old, then something else in the back. Melina reached in for it and pulled out a small book with a plain black leather cover. Her first thought was that it was a photo album, but then she quickly realized it was a little small for photos. She opened its cover to find that it was actually a journal.
You mean Lucia kept a journal, too? But why write a journal by hand when you can do it on a computer these days? She figured the journal may have belonged to a late relative of Lucia’s or that Lucia had written in it before computers became a regular household thing.
But not according to the date that was written at the head of the entries in what was definitely Lucia’s familiar and elegant handwriting. The first entry was dated just last month. She sat on the foot of the bed and began to read the first page.
I know I could be writing this on the computer, but I have chosen not to so as to avoid any chance of Melina stumbling upon it as well as any thieves or hackers.
I had to make the toughest decision of my life recently. To kill or not to kill my own flesh and blood in the name of love.
Melina’s hands began to shake and her heart began to pound. A cold sweat broke out over her now goose-bumped speckled skin and her breathing quickened as well.
No!
Certainly, she wasn’t really reading what she was reading.
No!
Lucia wasn’t really confessing to what she appeared to be confessing to.
No!
The journal slid out of her hands and hit the floor just as the sound of a key being inserted in the door downstairs was heard.
Thank God the last song she’d queued up on the computer that was hooked to the stereo had ended so she could hear it!
Get that journal locked back up and keep calm! she quickly demanded of herself. Hurry!
“Melina!” she heard Lucia call out from down below. “Oh, Meli, dear. Where are you? You upstairs?”
“Yes!” Melina shouted. “I’m organizing things up here.”
She tossed the book inside the safe and started to close its door, but papers were sticking out of the sides.
Shit!
Maybe she should run downstairs and hope Lucia would get busy doing something down there or take off again soon so she could deal with the safe in a less hurried manner.
“Organizing what?” she heard Lucia ask, voice sounding closer.
She was coming upstairs!
She quickly opened the door and shoved the papers further inside the safe, then slammed the door shut, hearing the lock click into place.
“Just straightening up the closet,” she called out, trying to keep her voice steady.
Oh, my God! She’s going to know something’s up!
Lucia appeared a second later and stood in the center of the room. “Oh,” she simply said.
“I thought it was about time I rearranged things a little better,” Melina said, not wanting to look at Lucia, but not wanting to appear like she was avoiding her either.
“Oh, ok.”
“What brings you home now? Isn’t it barely after lunchtime?”
“Yeah, it is. But business has been so slow that I just didn’t see the point in sticking around.” Lucia eyed the contents she had scattered about. “Besides, I kind of missed you.”
Melina thought the older woman might find it odd if she didn’t at least question the safe, and so she said, “What’s in the safe, by the way? Birth certificates or something?”
“Yeah, that sort of thing along with some jewelry that belonged to my grandmother. Would you like to see it?”
Melina shrugged, trying to appear indifferent and relaxed. “If you’d like to show it to me. You know I’m no fan of old stuff, so it really doesn’t matter either way.”
“Ok, maybe some other time,” Lucia said. “For now I’ll let you finish up in here while I go fix myself something to eat.”
“Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to make something for you?”
“No, I’ll be fine on my own. You can make us dinner later on,” Lucia said as she turned to leave.
Had that been a hint of suspicion she’d seen in the woman’s dark brown eyes before she disappeared out of view?
Melina did her best to act as she usually did, though the thought of being alone in the house with Lucia Delgado suddenly sickened her. It was truly shocking just how terrified she now was of this woman whom she once admired so much and looked up to in so many ways. But now, how could she possibly sleep next to this woman tonight? And how the hell could she let her touch her?
Melina’s brain raced like crazy. She was trying to figure out what to do at the same time she was trying not to let her emotions show.
“You ok, babe?” Lucia asked later on in the evening.
Damn it!
“No, not really,” Melina said, unable to make eye contact with the woman. “Been getting dizzy spells again.”
“Why don’t you go on up and turn in early or come sit with me.”
“Nah. I want to check for email messages first and maybe play a few games.” Melina got up off the couch and forced herself to look at Lucia, but was unable to sit with Lucia in her chair.
She made her way over to the computer instead and took a chance on emailing Nara since she knew she wasn’t going to get any more time alone that day.
Need to talk, ASAP. Alone. Get sick on this weekend’s trip so that Lucia will leave us both alone in the hotel and we can get some alone time together. If that doesn’t work, you need to have me help you with more computer stuff, even if it’s only for an hour or two. Do NOT reply to this message and do NOT tell anyone about it! Do NOT call here either!!!
Melina deleted the message from her ‘sent mail’ folder immediately after sending it to Nara.
She felt Lucia’s eyes upon her and tried not to squirm. Should she try to cover herself by saying she heard something that reminded her of Ari and made her sad? Say she was confused, scared and filled with doubts about keeping the baby?
Would you pay attention to your fucking TV show and not me, you murderer!
As if Lucia could read her thoughts, she turned to focus on the scene playing itself out before her on TV.
Now all Melina had to hope for was that she could read more of the journal tomorrow and keep it together until she got Nara involved in what she’d learned.
And that Lucia wouldn’t come home early the next day as well.
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