After She Died Read online

  After She Died

  Riley Clarke

  www.rileyclarkeauthor.com

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  FROM THE AUTHOR

  Copyright © 2020 Riley Clarke

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  1

  After

  I’ve never felt more alone in my entire life than I do in this empty room. So much so that I know every square inch of the space. Room isn’t the right word for it. How about cell? Or cage? It doesn’t matter what I call it. This half-box only holds three main features: four walls, a single door, and a single window that can’t be opened.

  “What happened to you?” I whisper. I don’t know if I’m speaking low enough to avoid being overheard by anyone who might be listening. Either way, I won’t get an answer.

  The walls are bare. All the same color. There’s no desk. No wardrobe or chest of drawers. Nothing but a thin bed I’m lying on that’s been placed into the corner opposite the door. At the ends of my feet on the grimy floor sits a small, cheap storage unit with no door. There’s no need for privacy in here.

  This is my world between the hours of nine at night and roughly seven in the morning. What are you supposed to do when you’ve seen everything a room can provide? You think about things. Obsess over them.

  I’ve been thrown into a desolate space with a head overflowing with thoughts I can’t manage. Despite the mess in there, one image dominates the rest.

  I don’t know how long I’ve been here or where here is. All I understand is the building’s name and purpose. Little Lake State Hospital: a place for the mentally ill.

  When the muddle of noise in my head takes control, I wash it out the only way I can.

  “My name is Kayleen Jordan. I’m twenty-eight years old. I have a B.A. in Political Science and work for the LA Metro. My boyfriend’s name is Scott Peterson. He’s an A&P at LAX.” I chant these things like a mantra multiple times per day. It sounds crazy, but it’s the only thing I can do to forget the torment within and remember my life outside these walls. With every hour that passes in here, everything about who I am fades another shade.

  It’s early. At least, I think it is, based on the light coming in through the filthy window over my bed. There isn’t a clock on the wall or a watch on my wrist to tell me the time. All I understand for certain is that someone will be by any moment now. I’ve got it timed out internally.

  After a few seconds of waiting, my thoughts overlap. Each one competes with the other, but the same one comes out on top. I can’t let it in.

  “My name is Kayleen Jordan. I’m twenty-eight years—”

  A knock at the door interrupts me. It’s unlocked, not that I can stop anyone from coming in. Still, every person who visits my room always raps their knuckles against the wooden surface as if to grant me a sliver of control. In reality, they’re mocking me. I hold no power.

  “Hello. How are you this morning?” Elsie Morgan asks. She’s my psychotherapist. She asks me the same question she spat out yesterday and the day before.

  “Okay,” I answer.

  Elsie is a late thirty-something woman who dresses like a sales rep. Her tired eyes always look concerned. Every time I look into her pupils, I see a piece of knowledge buried in there she needs to tell me, something her mind is begging to dislodge. I doubt I’ll ever find out what it is.

  “They say it should be a beautiful day. About eighty.”

  It’s the end of summer, not that I care. For me the sky has never before looked so dull and lifeless, despite the sunny weather.

  Elsie looks to me for some kind of acknowledgment to her words. I flash a polite smile I know isn’t enough of a response to keep her quiet. All she ever wants to do is talk.

  “So, how did you sleep?”

  She knows what I’ll say. “Not great. I think I only got two hours. The pain is still—”

  “We can’t up the dosage.”

  “I know, but are you giving me enough? I’m only lasting a short time at the start of the night before I wake up and it all throbs again.”

  “I promise you, we are keeping you medically cleared to be here. Yes, the amount is on the lighter side, but it is still within the bounds of your treatment plan to manage the pain.”

  My eyes drop to the bandages wrapped tight around my forearms. Third-degree burns are hidden beneath the gauze and dressings. My left arm hurts the most.

  “Speaking of, it’s time for your bandages to be changed. A nurse will be by soon. In the meantime, I think we need to discuss a few things.”

  I inhale a sharp breath as my eyes flick to Elsie’s. I think I already know what she wants to ‘discuss,’ and I doubt I’m ready to hear it.

  “Are you okay to talk yet?”

  “I guess.” I’m not. Why can’t I tell her what I really think?

  “Good,” Elsie says as she approaches my bed. I sit up. Caution shines in my eyes. She takes a seat at the end of the mattress on its edge and smiles at me. It’s not a happy smile. It’s best described as one infested with pity and nerves.

  “You’ve been in here for quite some time. Possibly longer than you expected.”

  I shrug and let my eyes fall away. Am I supposed to know exactly how long my stay has been? If she wants to hear me say how many days I’ve been in this place, I don’t know the answer.

  “And while you are displaying some progress, there is still a major concern we believe is holding you back from ever making a breakthrough.”

  I remain motionless, silently hoping if I stay quiet and still long enough, she might
not continue with this thought.

  “I think it’s time we pushed through this barrier and fight off the strain this problem is causing you. If we can do that, then maybe you can heal. What do you think?”

  I lift my head and bring my eyes back to her level. “What do I think?”

  “Yes. We can only help you if you are on board and willing. Otherwise, there’s little point in trying. Tell me what’s going through your head right now.”

  My eyes close as I lean back against the cold concrete wall behind me. Does she know what I know? She couldn’t.

  One audible inhale later, I refocus on Elsie. “Every day we talk and talk and talk, and now you want me to try to open up to you as if everything I’ve said has been a lie.”

  “Yes. I couldn’t have put it better myself. I want you to stop holding back when we speak.”

  My arms cross over my chest. Pain instantly stabs into my left forearm. I push through it. I have to. “What if this is all I can offer you?”

  Elsie purses her lips. “Then you may never recover from your wounds, whether physical or otherwise. Don’t you want to get better?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with me,” I blurt.

  She doesn’t react. Her eyes, the ones with the secret behind them, stare. “A nurse will be in soon. I guess I’ll see you later. Please give some thought to what I am asking of you. I realize it’s easier to keep fighting me, but if you can work through this and come out the other side, we can get your life back on track.”

  I don’t respond. Instead, I wait for her to get the hint and leave. A cramp in my stomach overtakes the throbbing in my arms. I hate having to be like this, but I don’t have a choice.

  Elsie quietly leaves my room. Before the nurse arrives to redress my bandages, I think back to something I overheard yesterday, a conversation between Elsie and the other psychotherapist I see in group therapy, Geoffrey Stone. It was something they never meant me to hear—I’m positive—but I haven’t been able to scrub it from my mind ever since.

  “She’s not ready yet,” Stone said outside my room. My door was open a crack, so I crept over and knelt behind it. They had no idea I could hear them.

  “I believe she is,” Elsie countered. “She’s improving every day. It’s slow going, but it’s progress nonetheless.”

  “We both know it’s not enough, considering . . .”

  “Considering what?”

  Stone exhaled through his nostrils. “That the truth will break her. If she ever finds out about her sister, we’ll have bigger problems on our hands.”

  2

  Before

  “You got everything?” I asked Scott as I checked over our bags for the tenth time.

  “It’s just a weekend trip. I’m sure we can buy whatever we forget,” Scott said with his head buried in his phone. He was lying on my bed with his shoes on while I rushed around my room making sure I’d gotten everything ready.

  “It’s a long weekend,” I said.

  “Same thing.”

  I shook my head. “Can you get off your damn cell for a second and lend me a hand?”

  A sigh popped out of his mouth. “All right.” He shoved his phone into his jeans pocket and swung his feet around to the floor. “What do you need?”

  “For you to do something,” I said, stomping closer to him. “We’ve got more than a two-hour drive ahead of us to the lake, so it’d be great if you could double-check everything with me instead of lying there like a bag of crap.”

  Scott grabbed me around the waist and pulled me in. “Hey, come on. Why so feisty? I thought this was supposed to be a fun little vacation for us.”

  I ran my hands down my sides and broke his grip. “It won’t be if you keep pissing me off.”

  He chuckled as I turned away. He knew I wasn’t mad at him. I got stressed out whenever we went away for more than a day. Even if it was to my mom’s cabin on Big Bear Lake, I freaked out and assumed the worst would happen. The only way I could curb the feeling was to be over prepared.

  “As long as we bring enough cash to rent a jet ski, I’m happy,” Scott said.

  I tilted my head. “That’s all you ever think about.”

  “What?”

  “Fun. Never mind making sure we have everything we’ll need for the next three days.”

  Scott stood and headed for the door. “You stress too much, babe. You need to relax. Everything will work out. It always does.”

  “We’ll see,” I said as he walked out of my bedroom. No doubt he was heading for the sofa.

  I hadn’t always been like this. I got through most my twenty-eight years of life carefree. That was before my dad died of a heart attack.

  I’d just graduated with a B.A. in Political Science from Cal State San Bernardino and was excited to go out into the world after bumbling my way through my studies. The same day I secured a position as an assistant administrative analyst for the LA Metro, my mom called and told me the news. She barely got the words out through a jumble of tears and sobs, but I understood something horrible had happened. The finer details came later.

  “Don’t forget my charger,” Scott yelled out from the living room, snapping me from my thoughts.

  “Of course you remember that,” I muttered.

  My dad died two months after his fifty-third birthday, a mere three days after one of his closest friends was killed in a car crash. Dad was probably contemplating his mortality in those last few moments without knowing what was around the corner.

  As if dying decades before your time wasn’t bad enough, my father unintentionally left my mom in a financial bind. My parents hadn’t prepared for the possibility that one of them might die so young.

  With a mortgage she could no longer afford, Mom had to sell the house I grew up in to survive. The only thing that didn’t get sold off was the cabin up on Big Bear Lake, partially because she could rent it out for some extra cash throughout the year.

  “Scott. Can you come back in here and go through everything with me? We need to double-check that—”

  My phone buzzed on silent in my pocket, cutting me off. Scott popped his head in the door as I answered. He waited for a moment to see who it was.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  Scott teased me with a smile, knowing that a call from my mother was the last thing I needed while I was getting everything ready. With a shove, I pushed him and closed the door to my bedroom. I pictured his face on the other side of the wall as he chuckled all the way back to the sofa.

  I put Mom on speaker. “What’s up?” I still had to check over everything and didn’t have much time to chat.

  “I was hoping to catch you before you and Scott hit the road.”

  “We haven’t left yet.”

  “Good. So, how are you? How is work going?”

  “You know, same as always.” My eyes flicked around in my head. “Is everything all right?”

  “Of course, dear.”

  “Okay . . .”

  Silence gripped the line. Something was definitely up with Mom. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you sound a little off.”

  “Off? No, dear. It’s just . . .”

  “What’s going on? Has something bad happened?”

  “No, nothing. I have a favor to ask you.”

  I stopped checking the luggage and picked up my phone. “What is it?”

  “It’s about your sister.”

  “What about her?”

  Mom paused, long enough for me to realize I wouldn’t like the next thing out of her mouth.

  “I need you to take her with you this weekend.”

  “You need me to what?”

  “Give me a chance to explain. I know this is not what you want to hear minutes before leaving for the cabin.”

  “You’re damn straight it’s not.”

  “Please listen, Kayleen. You know Faith has been going through a tough time the last few months, and—”

  “Years more like it,” I interrupted.

  “Kayleen, p
lease. Let me say what I need to say. Then you can come back at me.”

  I shook my head as a dozen comebacks filled my mind. Using any of them wouldn’t help, though. “Fine. I’m listening.”

  “Thank you. As I was saying, you know Faith’s been going through a bit of a rough patch lately. I would like you to take her and her boyfriend with you this weekend to the cabin. She needs to get away from all the drama that’s been going on, and a trip up to the lake with her sister is just the thing to help.”

  I closed my eyes and threw my head back. Why me? Why did I have to be the one to support Faith through another self-inflicted crisis?

  “It would mean a lot to me if you took her. Plus, Faith would love to spend some time with you.”

  “Are you serious?” I blurted. “I hate to be the one to tell you this, Mom, but we’re not little kids anymore. Things have changed. There’s a reason we hardly talk.”

  “I know that. You think I haven’t noticed my daughters drifting apart in front of my eyes?”

  I heard her getting choked up on the phone. “Okay, okay. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell. This is a little unexpected is all. I’ll offer to take her, but it’s not my fault if she says no. I can’t magically make us friends.”