The Suicide Princess (18 page)

Stephanie sniffled, “You are, Jacob. I don
’t even deserve that.”

Jacob coldly snapped, “You
’re right, you don’t,” before telling Stephanie to get ready for work so he can finish moving.

Jacob told Stephanie that he would be keeping the Volvo and she could have his car. He then said he wanted to go for a drive, and he asked her to not be there when he returned. Jacob didn’t want Stephanie to be there while he finished moving due to his trepidation that she may convince him to stay. Stephanie reluctantly agreed, but only because she knew she had no room for argument. She knew her marriage was beyond salvage
able, and she walked away from the car as Jacob drove off.

Stephanie looked at Jacob
’s soft, gentle face as she got out of what was once her car. His face showed the pain which she had caused him, and it broke her heart to know she had so badly hurt the man who loved her so much. As she looked at Jacob’s face, she knew beyond any shadow of a doubt, she just lost the very best thing that would ever happen to her.

Stephanie took a shower and did her best to get ready for her day, but the sound of Derrick
’s voice on the recorder saying,
I just have two stringing along right now. One is a little blonde that I’ve been tapping for a while
, resonated over and over within her head. At that moment, Stephanie was not only dealing with the loss of Jacob, she was also facing the reality that Derrick was not the man she had thought he was.

She stood before the mirror as she got dressed, and she stopped to just look at herself. Making decisions is easy; it’s living with the consequences of our decisions that
is hard. This lesson was like a punch to Stephanie’s gut as she had to look at herself in the mirror and try to accept what she had done.

She slid on a pair of cute jeans, a pink hoodie, and a pair of Converse low-top chucks, and Stephanie left the house to face her day.

Stephanie called Bill Webber, and much to her relief, his line went to voicemail. “Hi, Bill. It’s me Stephanie,” she started. “I’m not feeling well at all today, so I’m going to stay home and try to get some rest. I’ll be in tomorrow, and I hope you’re not mad.”

Stephanie never liked driving Jacob’s Jeep, but now, she didn’t have a choice.

Stephanie drove aimlessly for a short time before she convinced herself to indulge in a bit of retail therapy. Jacob was moving out, and she now had the house all to herself. This meant there was no longer the need to compromise on decorating, and she could do whatever she wanted.

For as long as she could remember, Stephanie was the “half glass full” kind of girl who always tried to make the best out of any situation. This quality likely rose from her being raised in a broken home by a highly irresponsible mother. She often considered herself to be raised more by her grandmother than her actual mother
, but the fact of the matter is, Stephanie primarily raised herself from a very young age. Her neglected childhood taught her several lessons: she learned quite early on that she and only she was responsible for her actions, she learned that only hard work and perseverance would lead to her success, and most importantly, she learned to always try to find something positive in even the worst situations.

Stephanie aimed her car for the nearest Ikea, and she pressed her foot on the accelerator. Before long, she walked through the entrance and s
elected a large cart. She opened her purse and removed a credit card from her wallet. Stephanie was never the most responsible person with credit, and Jacob allowed her to have only one card to be used for emergencies only.
Jacob’s gone now,
she thought,
and I can use this card for anything I want
.

Four hours later, Stephanie returned home with a Jeep full of home decorations and
a freshly maxed out credit card.

Stephanie walked into the house to find Jacob was already gone. She walked into her now half-empty home, and the bareness of the rooms reminded her of when she and Jacob first moved in. She reminisced of her and her husband running through the home, playing together like children, and being so excited to start a life together. This was supposed to be the home where they would have started a family, made memories, and grown old together. Now, however, it was just an empty house filled with shattered dreams.

Stephanie saw that Jacob had cleaned out the Volvo before leaving with it, and the contents from the car were thrown across the living room floor. Stephanie crouched down to the items, and she could only imagine Jacob’s pain as she looked at the plaid skirt, heels, and perhaps worst of all, Derrick’s belt. She picked them, rolling everything in a single ball, and dropped them in the corner of the room.

She spent the rest of the day re-organizing her home and
hanging the new pictures, knick-knacks, and other wall art she purchased. She basically tried to fill her day with anything that would help keep her mind off of everything she had going on in her life. For just one day, Stephanie wanted to be free.

As the day turned into night, Stephanie was winding down and preparing to get ready for bed. From the master bathroom, she looked to her bedroom as she brushed her teeth, and she saw her empty bed. To look
at the bed, and not see Jacob reading while he waited for her to join him, completely negated any value her retail therapy may have added to her day.

Stephanie heard her phone chime to the tone of an incoming text message. She trotted to her phone and found the message to be from Derrick.

“Able to sneak out tonight, bad girl?”
he asked.

What an asshole
, Stephanie thought as she powered down her phone without responding. She was surprised by how little hurt she was feeling for her inevitable loss of someone who she thought meant so much to her. After hearing the recording of Derrick over and over in her head, Stephanie knew she was finished with him. The only uncertainty she had was whether to sit down and discuss it with him like an adult, or just let him figure it out by changing her number and completely avoiding him.

Regardless of what was to come, Stephanie was forced to deal with her life in the moment she was currently in. She pulled back the covers and crawled into bed. Even though she was all alone, she still stayed on her side of the mattress, curled up in the blankets as she drifted off to sleep.

Stephanie shot up to a seated position and instantly woke up, from the deepest sleep, to a brightly lit room. She looked to see what time it was, and as she saw the alarm clock was missing from Jacob’s nightstand she thought,
really Jacob? Even the alarm clock?

She began a mad dash to get ready for work as her phone powered on. With her hair quickly pulled back in a ponytail, she slid into a pair of gray dress slacks, a light blue, short sleeved button down, and a pair of comfortable black flats. After getting ready in just eleven minutes, she was out the door in record time.

Stephanie arrived to work, and although she was more than an hour late, given the events of the past couple of days, she was grateful to have even made it at all. After everything that had happened, the last thing she wanted to do was face Bill Webber, but her thought process was so irrational and disorganized, she was more concerned about being late to work than dealing with her arrest.

People looked at her strangely as she ran through the lob
by of her building trying to make it to her office as quickly as possible. She boarded the elevator and pressed the button for her floor, but the elevator car felt like someone had purposely slowed it down just to screw with her. Of course, the elevator was filled with riders getting off on nearly every floor, and the ascent was slowed even more. When the doors finally slid open on her floor, Stephanie was terrified to go to her office.

She walked briskly past Webber's office on the way to her own, and she was relieved to see he wasn't there.
Maybe he's not in yet
, she thought, but unfortunately this hope was dashed when she saw Webber standing in her office as she approached.

She saw two interns with him,
and together they were packing her files from the Hutchinson case into a cardboard box. She rudely asked, “What do you guys think you’re doing?” as she entered the small room.

Webber exploded, “Who the hell
do you think you are asking me a question like that?” He directed the interns out of the office, and as he closed the door behind them, he continued, “Bradford, I put my reputation on the line for you. I put my God damned name on the line to put you as lead on this case, and every step of the way, you’ve gone and done whatever you could to screw it up. A few months ago, I thought you were the future of this office, but now, I don't know what the hell your future even is.”

“You already know
what happened the other night, don’t you?” Stephanie timidly asked.

“One of my attorneys gets arrested for DUI and possession of hydrocodone and then identifies herself as a District Att
orney to the arresting Trooper -- yes, Bradford, I tend to hear about this kind of thing very quickly.”

“Mr. Webber, I know this looks bad, and I know I can't be
directly on the case anymore, but please don't pull me off completely. This case means so much to me; please, let me see it through.”

Webber looked at Stephanie with a look of complete disbelief on his face. “Are you serious? Do you truly believe I would let you
anywhere near this case? Do you think I would let you prosecute a DUI homicide, after you got a DUI yourself?” Webber paused before continuing, “Is that what you think this is about, pulling you from the case? Do you think that’s what I’m doing?”

“Yes
, well that’s what I thought. Do you mean you’re not pulling me off?”

“Bradford,
it’s always something, and it’s just getting to be too much. You’re either leaving work without telling anyone, calling in sick, not showing up for court, and now this. Stephanie, I’m not pulling you off the case. I don’t know how to say this, but…” Webber paused before finishing, “Bradford, I’m terminating you. I'm sorry, but your fired.”

“No, Bill, please
don't fire me,” she pleaded. “I'm begging you, please. I can't lose this job, it means everything to me.”

“Bradford,
I’m sorry, but there’s just nothing more I can do for you. It's over. I'll give you ten minutes to gather your personal items from your desk and say goodbye. If you don't leave after that, I'm going to have you escorted out by security.”

“Bill, please
don’t do this to me! You don’t understand, you can’t do this to me!”

“
Don’t you dare put this on me,” Webber scorned. “I’m not doing anything
to
you. You damn well did this to yourself. Now get your things and go.”

Stephanie watched
with sorrow as Webber walked away. He was once her mentor, and he looked at her as his protégé of sorts, but now he couldn’t even look at her. She grabbed her purse and ran to Karen's office. At that moment, she needed Karen more than anything, but she found Karen's office empty. “Where's Karen?” Stephanie yelled to Karen's assistant.

“She called in s
ick, Stephanie. Are you alright?” answered Karen's assistant from her desk right outside Karen’s office.

“No! No! No!” Stephanie cried as she ran towards the elevators with ne
arly the entire office watching in horror as the events were unfolding before them.

Stephanie tried to call Karen multiple times as she rode the elevator toward the lobby, but each call went to
voicemail. “Where are you, Karen? I need you, please call me back,” she said in the voicemail as she reached the lobby and exited to the street.

Stephanie stood on the
bustling city sidewalk in the heart of downtown Boston, and she looked around, almost in a daze, as her world was inexplicably crashing down all around her. She needed someone to turn to – she needed anyone who could be there for her, but for the first time in her life, she felt as though she had no one. In her moment of immense suffering and vulnerability, she decided to reach for the only person she could, and she opted to disregard the recording of Derrick which she had heard.

I don’t care what was on that recording, I know Derrick loves me
, Stephanie irrationally thought as she placed a call to his phone. The call went straight to voicemail without ringing, and she knew he had turned his phone off.
Why, Derrick, why today?

Stephanie assumed Derrick was at work, and she drove to the coffee shop to wait for him. She
quickly snatched up the only empty seat by the window where she had a clear view to the front of Derrick's building. As the day drew on, she impatiently waited and waited. Each time the doorman would open the door, she would only be disappointed to see someone other than Derrick walking from within. That was until the door opened, and Stephanie saw not Derrick, but another familiar face leave the building.

Dressed in a seductively short
denim skirt, tall heels, and a snug-fitting, dark blue tee, Karen walked from Derrick’s apartment building, and she quickly rounded the corner and strutted out of Stephanie's sight.

Stephanie wanted to run to confront Karen, but her bo
dy was paralyzed with shock. She felt numb, and it took more than a minute before she could move, much less think of what she would possibly say to Karen. When she snapped out of her fog of shock and back to reality, Stephanie marched straight to the front door of Derrick's building.

The doorman had become used to seeing Stephanie, and he greeted her with a smile; however,
he kindly reminded her he was not able to allow her into the building.

“Look
,” said Stephanie with anger. “I just saw my friend, my best friend, walk out of here, and you know exactly what the fuck is going on. You do whatever you have to do, but I'm going in there and confronting him right now.”

“I feel for you, believe me, I do. However, it doesn’t change the fact that I’m not authorized to let anyone in without a resident being present,” he reminded Stephanie for a second time.

“Imagine if it were you standing here, having your life shattered. Even worse, imagine it was your daughter or your sister standing here instead of me. What would you do if it was someone you loved?”

The doorman stood silent for a short moment before
gently nodding his head and stepping to the side while opening the door.

Bam! Bam! Bam!
Stephanie slammed on the door of Derrick’s apartment. The knock echoed down the long industrial-style hallway, and she had no idea what she would even say to Derrick when he answered. She kept banging.

Derrick
opened the door, shirtless and wearing only a pair of workout pants, and he said, “Oh fuck… What are you doing here?”

Stephanie asked, “What the fuck am I doing here?
Seriously? That’s what you have to say to me right now?”

“How did you get up here?”

“The doorman let me up.”

“He’s fired,”
Derrick calmly replied. “You’re obviously pissed, and I'm not stupid. I know you must have seen her, so now you know.”

“Now I know what Derrick? I don't know anything,
other than the fact that I just saw my best friend walk out of here. How the hell did Karen even meet you?”

“Look, it's just whatever now.” Derrick coldly said. He held the door barely open and positioned himself in a manner which indicated Stephanie was not invited in. He folded his arms and continued, “What do you want from me?”

“Derrick, what the hell is going on? I thought you were falling in love with me?”

“I don't know what to say. You caught me,
and it's over. If you want to forget about what you saw, I’m cool with that. But if not, then it just is what it is.”

“It is what it is? I thought you loved me. I lost everything for you!”

As Stephanie was losing Jacob, and then losing her job, she thought her life couldn't get any lower. She thought she had hit rock bottom. Now that she was standing at Derrick's door, listening to what he had to say, she knew she had thrown it all away for nothing. The realization that it was all a lie was the proverbial salt in Stephanie’s wound which made her emotional pain agonizing.

She broke down and begged Derrick, “Please,
tell me why. Why did you do this to me?”

Derrick, completely unfazed by Stephanie's intense emotion, cruelly said, “You were for fun. I'm sorry, but it was nothing more. If you got the wrong idea and thought there was something more
between us, that's your problem and not mine.”

Stephanie started to remind Derrick of the things he had said to her, and the emotions he shared, but Derrick
just closed the door without offering even the slightest hint of an explanation. Everything Derrick said was a lie. She heard him lock the deadbolt on the other side of the door, and she fell to the ground crying.

While lying on the cold, hard concrete floor, Stephanie cried and screamed, “I fucking hate you, Derrick! I fucking hate you!”

***

Stephanie walked to her car, and
before long, her phone began ringing. She looked at the display and saw the incoming call was from Karen. She knew Karen was either calling because she had just heard Stephanie had been fired or because Karen just heard from Derrick. Regardless of the reason for the call, Stephanie had no desire to even speak with Karen, and she ignored the call. Karen called repeatedly, but Stephanie knew there was nothing Karen could say that could even begin to fix Stephanie’s situation, and she ignored each subsequent call just as she had done the first.

As Stephanie sat in the car,
trying to calm herself enough to safely drive, her phone alerted to an incoming text from Karen which read,
“Steph, please answer. Derrick told me what happened, but you need to let me explain. It's not what you think.”

Stephanie replied,
“It's exactly what I think. Stop calling me.”

“No, Stephanie, it's not what you think. You need to let me explain this to you. You need to know what is happening.”

“My life is over, Karen,”
typed Stephanie.
“In one day, my whole entire world just disappeared...that's what is happening.”

Stephanie's phone began ringing with another call from Karen. Stephanie ignored this call as well, and Karen followed w
ith the text message,
“Stephanie, please answer.”

“Stop calling me!”
messaged Stephanie.

Suddenly, Step
hanie's phone began receiving a stream of incoming text messages from Karen, and she gathered it was actually one very long text message arriving in pieces. She began reading the extensive message as it arrived,

“Stephanie, you need to know this. Derrick isn't who you think he is. I've known him for more than two years, and it's not a coincidence that he met you. I met him and I had a very short affair with him, but I broke it off after I started seeing the real him. He became so angry over me breaking up with him, and he refused to let me go. While I was with him, he took pictures of me doing things, sometimes very humiliating things, and he held those pictures over me. I basically became his fucking sex slave with him threatening to send the pictures to my husband, my family, my neighbors, and my co-workers if I didn't do every last thing he said. Then he used those pictures to make me take even more pictures and videos, and it formed a cycle where I feel like he owns me. He does own me, and he knows it.”