The Three-Day Affair by Michael Kardos Read Free Book Online Page A

“We’re going to get you home really soon. In the meantime, try to warm up.” I clicked the door shut.

    When I returned to the control room, Jeffrey and Nolan were looking at me too expectantly. I didn’t like being looked to for answers . All I’d done was produce a lousy blanket. Yet I’d also made a discovery.
    “It’s because she looks like Sara, isn’t it?” I asked Jeffrey.
    “No, she doesn’t,” he said. “Why would you say that?”
    “She does,” I insisted. “She looks like your wife. And if Sara’s been cheating on you—”
    “She has?” Nolan said.
    Jeffrey shot me a look, but maintaining his confidence had dropped on my list of priorities.
    “And then you run into this cashier,” I said, “who happens to look like her….”
    “Wait a goddamn minute.” Nolan looked over toward Marie, but her head was buried in her arms. “Let me get this straight. So to get even with your wife for fucking some other guy, you kidnap an innocent teenager?”
    Jeffrey shook his head. “That isn’t why I did it.”
    “Okay, then why?” Nolan asked.
    “I already told you why, she was going to call the—”
    Nolan waved Jeffrey’s words away. “Why would you rob the fucking store in the first place?”
    “We’re all ears,” I said.
    Jeffrey sighed. “Maybe it’s like … you know, what we were talking about at dinner. Why guys go skydiving or whatever.”
    “Now
this
I don’t need to hear,” Nolan said.
    “Look, you’re the one who said, ‘Surprise yourself.’”
    Nolan stood there, shaking his head. Almost any explanation would’ve been better than that. But what did we expect to hear? Some secret chamber to Jeffrey’s heart revealed? No. People committed self-destructive acts every hour of every day. There had been days in my own not-too-distant past when I felt about as bad as a person could feel. The only difference was that Jeffrey had acted on those feelings and taken us along for the ride.
    “Well, has it worked?” Nolan forced a laugh. “Do you feel alive? We’d all sure like to know.”
    Jeffrey looked down at the floor. “I don’t—”
    “You don’t know, you don’t know
—we heard you!” Nolan lowered his voice. “But do you
know
that our lives are ruined because of you? Do you
know
that we’re all probably headed to prison because of this?” When Jeffrey didn’t answer, he murmured, “ Fucking lunatic.”
    “Okay, here’s an answer you might understand,” Jeffrey said. “Maybe I
was
feeling depressed, and she did look a little like Sara, okay? And so I panicked. And when we panic, we do stupid things.”
    Nolan’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, ‘
I
might understand?’”
    “Nothing. I don’t mean anything. Just that … as someone who has also
done things
that maybe you shouldn’t have—”
    “What things? Huh?”
    “Forget it. It doesn’t matter.”
    “No, I really want to know.”
    “I said forget it.”
    “All I know is, I never decided to fuck over my friends. Jesus. Next time you panic, do us all a favor and just kill yourself.”
    “Shut the fuck up, Nolan,” I said. My departure from Dr. Shelling and her prescriptions for Zoloft were too recent for that sort of crack.
    Marie shifted positions and seemed to be watching us now. Waiting for our next move.
    “She thinks we’re going to do something awful to her,” I said.
    We all looked at her. When Nolan spoke again, his voice was calmer. “Jeffrey. I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t mean that.”
    “Glad to hear it.”
    “All I’m saying is, you feel depressed, you deal with it. Like Will did. You get help. You don’t do …
this
.”
    Sensing the shift in mood, Jeffrey said, “I’ll take full responsibility.”
    My own anger flared. “What planet do you live on?”
    “I will. I’ll tell the police—”
    “You’ll tell them what? That you somehow forced Nolan and me to help you commit a felony? What could you possibly say that would make things any better?”
    “No, I