On the Other Side (29 page)

“Why now? It's been almost a year since I got that promotion. Why would they be doing this now? That doesn't make any sense.”

“Do jealous, twisted people ever really make sense?”

“Thanks, Damita. I feel better already.”

“While we try to solve this mystery, what do you say if we leave this apartment? It's not healthy for you to be cooped up in here all alone.”

“I'm fine, Damita. Don't worry about me.”

“I have to worry. You're my best friend. Not only that, you're the sister of my boyfriend. I kind of like the sound of that.”

“You're probably sick of bowling, but Lester really wanted to take the two of us out dancing. He'll be so disappointed if you don't go.”

“He'll get over it,” Constance said.

“Yeah, I'm sure he will, but then I'll have to listen to him whine about it all night. Come on, Constance. Please?”

“Okay, okay, I'll go. But, please tell your
boyfriend
to dress less like a bullfighter and more like a regular person.”

“Was that hilarious or what? People were looking at him like he was the entertainment.”

“Not him, they were looking at
us
; him with those twirls and the dipping. I swear sometimes I think my brother was dropped on his head when he was little.”

Damita smiled in recognition of what she had. “There's nothing wrong with Lester. He thinks outside the box; that's all. He's teaching me how to do that. I like the idea of expanding my horizons and seeing things another way. I was locked inside of a box for so long it's good to finally feel like I have the opportunity to be free.”

“I remember what that felt like. That was the way I felt when I first came here. It was so nice not to have someone call me a bitch every five minutes or check my underwear to make sure I hadn't been having sex with someone. When you live a life like that long enough you forget what it's like to be normal.”

“So true,” Damita agreed.

“I'll go get dressed,” Constance said.

“Yeah, let's go out and be normal.”

“That's going to be kind of difficult with my brother along.”

“I've figured your brother out. He's not as crazy or different as
he makes himself out to be. He's a loving man. Both my life and yours have been so crazy, Lester just wants to maintain a little levity. You can't fault him for that. To reveal this would mean he has a soft side and he wouldn't be able to maintain his image as a sexist pig, so don't tell him I know his secret. It would devastate him.”

“I'll be sure to keep it to myself.”

Damita and Constance got dressed and put on makeup and waited for Lester to arrive. He was on time and very tastefully dressed.

“Wow,” he said when he arrived.

“You don't look too shabby yourself, there,” Damita said.

“I am going to have the two most gorgeous women in the place on my arm. I dare any of those losers to come near my girls.”

“Listen to you. Behave yourself, brother dear. Besides, it takes a special kind of man to come and ask me to dance.”

“What does that mean?” Damita asked.

“I'm pretty tall for a woman and a lot of men are intimated by my height.”

Once in the club, Lester took turns dancing with both Constance and Damita and a few times danced with both of them at the same time. At one point there was a very romantic, slow song playing and Constance encouraged Damita and Lester to go dance.

“You don't need to babysit me,” she said.

They were dancing close together, enjoying keeping time with the music, when suddenly the spell was broken by a scream.

Lester suddenly looked worried. “I think that was Constance,” Lester said.

They ran from the dance floor and found Constance sitting with her back up against a wall. She was drenched in a drink from her face to the middle of her dress.

“Constance, what happened?” Lester asked.

“It was him. He was here. This time, I saw him. He spoke to me.”

Lester looked around and ran toward the exit. He considered going outside and looking for Jack or whoever else might have frightened his sister, but he didn't want to leave either Constance or Damita alone. Inside the club someone was watching the two women, but it wasn't Jack.

“I know who you are.”

The first note was merely the beginning. Within weeks three more had been left. What Damita wasn't sure of was whether they were targeting her or Constance. She assumed the notes were for her since they seemed to be left close to where she would normally be; whether it was her desk, her locker or her computer. If the note had read anything else, she would have believed it was nothing more than someone playing a foolish prank, but she knew better than that. Constance's high anxiety and the notes together proved to Damita that there was more than simple paranoia going on.

Despite her initial desire to claim her independence, Damita had done a complete one-eighty and, instead, decided she might like living with Lester. They were happy and she was glad she had made the decision. She thought it was very funny when she moved in and he wrote a note in lipstick on the mirror that read
I told you so.
He had been saying all along that she didn't need to find an apartment because she was going to change her mind and come live with him.

Damita came home that night, note in hand, eager to convince Lester that his sister wasn't going crazy.

“Look what someone left on my computer today,” she said.

“If it was Jack, why would he leave it on your computer? Not
only that, how would Jack get access to the office in order to be able to leave a note on
anyone's
computer?”

“He could have gotten someone else to do it.”

“You're right. Jack was a very manipulative fellow. He was capable of anything.”

“Lester, how dangerous is this guy?”

“He's as dangerous as Neal was.”

“What are we going to do?”

“I know one thing, we're not going to run. I'm tired of my sister running. She deserves to have a normal life.”

“Maybe the two of you should go to the police. I can't go with you, but I'll be there in spirit.”

“You might be right. At this point, that might be the best thing.”

Lester considered going to the police, but eventually dismissed the idea. The police represented a potential threat to Damita and Constance refused to go to the police anyway. Not only that, he was sure they wouldn't have done anything. He knew they would have to handle the situation on their own.

The next day Damita went to work and was able to convince Constance to go as well. She was happy to see that she still had a job and they both tried their best to forget what had been going on with the notes and Constance's feeling of being watched.

At the end of the day, Damita and Constance left work together and decided a trip to the mall would be the thing to put both of them in a better mood. They visited multiple stores, and both promised each other they would make sure they stayed together. Suddenly, Damita too felt it. There was definitely someone following them. She attempted to use the multiple store windows to hopefully get a reflection of who was there. She saw nothing. Then, suddenly, a face appeared out of nowhere. To Damita's surprise, it
appeared to be the man that had helped her escape from the Towers. He was standing there, not moving, staring at both her and Constance. By the time she got Constance's attention to show her the man, staring at them both, he was gone. She didn't see him walk away. His reflection was simply no longer there.

Instead of going home, Damita stopped at Constance's house first. They unpacked some of the things they purchase and for a moment their little shopping spree seemed to help return things to normal. That is, until they were going through the bags of items and there was another Post-It note with the same message printed on it.
“I know who you are.”
The note could mean anything. It could be Jack or it could be someone who knew Damita had survived nine-eleven. It could also be someone who knew she had killed her husband.

The next day, Damita decided she was done hiding and being afraid.

Damita felt and looked strong and devoid of fear. “Constance, are you ready to fight back? We need to put all of this to an end right here and now. Aren't you done running and hiding? I know I am and you've certainly been at it a lot longer than I have. Instead of standing by waiting for them to find us, I say we go looking for them. Are you with me?”

“I'm with you,” Constance said reluctantly.

“First, we're going to find out where that bastard of an ex-husband of yours is.”

Damita combed the Internet looking for any information on Constance's ex-husband, Jack Somersby. She also searched Neal Westman, but found no reports of his murder. She then searched her own name, Damita Whitmore and Damita Westman. Finally, she searched Constance's maiden name, Sandra Jones, and her
married name, Sandra Somersby. The only thing she found of any significance was an address for Jack Somersby in Oakland, California. She decided she would turn the tables on him. She wrote a cryptic note of her own. Damita's note read
I know what you are.
She put the note in an envelope, sealed the enveloped, addressed it to Jack Somersby, and waited. Constance tried to stop her.

“Damita, I don't think you should do that. It will make things worse.”

“Constance, that's your fear talking. That is exactly what men like Jack Somersby count on. They want that fear to sink in and take hold because they know that even when those they victimize are far from their grasp, they can still have hold of their minds. You don't want to be one of those women. You're too smart for that. Don't let him win.”

“Okay,” Constance agreed quietly.

Damita watched as Constance dissolved from an energetic, vivacious woman into a frightened and withdrawn child. She was nineteen all over again and waiting for Jack Somersby to tell her what to do.

The next thing Damita decided to do was to find out about the mysterious man in the Towers. All along she had held him up as a hero and a savior. She wondered if there was more to him than she was aware of. She couldn't help but remember that Neal had gone to the great lengths of hiring someone to rape her, when she didn't do exactly what he wanted her to. Was is so far a stretch to believe that the man who
saved
her was actually there to do her harm and got caught up in the tragedy of the terrorist attack? Otherwise, why would he be keeping tabs on her from a distance? It didn't make any sense. She wondered if he was the one leaving the notes; but why? If he had been hired by Neal and Neal was
now dead, what need would he have to continue with what he was doing?

Even though Damita was talking strength and power and fighting back, she still didn't like the idea of a gun in the house. Once Lester heard all Damita had to say, he was convinced that having a gun around was a necessity.

Even though Damita had stopped working overtime, one night they were short-staffed and her supervisor explained to her that she basically had to do it. Damita was angry, but she needed the job and she didn't have the time or the energy to look for another. So, she worked late and dragged herself home sometime around ten o'clock. The late hours brought back memories; some good and some bad.

As soon as she walked in the apartment she knew something was wrong. It was nothing she could immediately put her finger on but she was apprehensive upon entering. When she was finally inside the apartment, she called the Lester.

“Lester, honey, it's Damita. I'm home!”

He didn't answer her. She wondered if he might have gone out, but knew that he would not have gone out without telling her, especially given everything that was going on. She went into the bedroom and Lester was laid out on the bed with a gunshot wound to his head.

Damita's face screwed up into a pained express. She screamed an agonizing cry.

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” she kept saying.

She tried to perform CPR but he was already dead. She held on to him, rocking his body back and forth, hoping it was all a bad dream. She would have to call Constance eventually but, for now, she had to figure out whether she should call the police or not.

“Constance, something bad has happened.”

“What's wrong with Lester? Tell me, Damita, what's wrong with Lester!”

“Constance, he was shot in the head. He's gone.”

“What do you mean, he's gone?”

“He's dead, Constance. He's dead.”

“I'm coming now. I'll be there in a few minutes. We have to take him to the hospital. He can't be dead. He can't be.”

Constance arrived, walked into the bedroom and collapsed on top of her brother's body. Damita watched as the tears and pain she was feeling convulsed her body. She jerked back and forth, having lost control of her movements.

Damita watched Constance, realizing she could never understand the bond between a brother and sister, let alone twins. She hoped that her presence in their lives hadn't caused the cycle of events that eventually led to Lester's death. Damita soon realized Constance must have been thinking the exact same thing.

“Y
ou did this! I told you not to! I told you not to send that note to Jack, but you did it anyway. You killed my brother. You killed Lester. Now I'm all alone because of you!”

Damita looked at Constance pleadingly. “Constance, I just sent the letter. It couldn't possibly have even gotten to California yet. This wasn't me. I promise you this was not me.”

That night, Damita removed all evidence that she had been living with Lester, and Constance called the police to report that he had been shot. They asked her dozens of questions that Constance was ill-equipped or plain afraid to answer. She was still angry with Damita, but she realized she needed her. She knew that Damita loved her brother and that she would have never intentionally hurt either of them so she tried her very best to rein in her anger and instead concentrate on figuring out who killed her brother. There was so much she didn't feel she could tell the police so the chance of them finding the killer was slim to none. She knew that instead of fighting Damita, she would have to work together toward their common goal.