Brian Freeman - The Voice Inside

If Phil hadn’t been late to pick him up for the game, Rudy would be dead at the bottom of the bay.

If he’d chosen another coffee shop in the Ferry Building, he’d be dead at the bottom of the bay.

If he’d picked a different day, not April 1, he’d be dead at the bottom of the bay.

Instead, he’d gone to that coffee shop to wait for Phil and met Nina Flores on her twenty-first birthday.

He remembered sitting on the stool at the coffee bar, with an iced latte in front of him getting watery and warm because he could barely summon any interest in taking a sip. That had been Rudy’s life at that moment, sucked clean of purpose. The stool next to him had been vacant, but Hope was there in his mind, as she always was, immortal and inextinguishable. He’d felt numb. He’d wanted nothing more than to die, if it meant it would finally drive her away.

Meanwhile, Nina Flores talked.

He’d never met anyone who could talk so much. He didn’t know how she found the time to breathe, because she filled every second with chatter. She talked. She sang. She laughed. She danced. She called out to people passing in the Ferry Building: “Hey, come wish me a happy birthday!”

Rudy had done his best to ignore her. When you are getting ready to throw yourself off a bridge, the last thing you need is a chirpy barista telling you how wonderful her life is. And it was impossible not to do the math. This girl was twenty-one years old. Wren, if she’d lived, would have been turning twenty-one in November.

Until Hope snuffed out her life. Until 3:42 a.m. came.

He’d found himself staring at Nina and thinking what Wren would have looked like at this point in her life. He’d tried to imagine her face, all grown up. He’d thought about the things they would have done together, father and daughter. The things he’d missed. The Giants game tonight? He’d be going with Wren.

The longer he’d stayed at the coffee shop, the more oppressive it had felt to be there. He’d wanted to get up and leave, but something had kept him glued to the seat, listening to this young girl babble about her life. Again, fate had conspired. If he’d left, if he’d walked away, nothing would have changed. He would have gone to the bridge. He would have gone through with his plan.

Instead, he stayed.

The less attention he’d paid to Nina Flores, the more she’d made it her mission to draw him out. After half an hour, that meant shoving her body halfway over the counter to point out the buttons she wore on her T-shirt.

“And this is my high school grad photo. Can you believe that hair? Look at all of it! I was heavier then, too. That was twenty pounds ago. These days, no carbs! Or at least, not very many. Of course, everybody has to have cake on their birthday, so I’ll make an exception tonight. Plus, I have to have a drink. What do you think? Beer? I was thinking of something stronger. Maybe tequila shots.

“This photo here, these are all of my brothers! Three brothers, no sisters. Tabby here is as close to a sister as I’ll ever have. Do you have sisters? It can be a struggle, brothers and sisters, but I’m the oldest, so they know they can’t get away with much around me. I love them, but don’t tell them I said that.

“And this is me and Tabby! Aren’t we cute? This was just like a week ago. We were heading out to a party, pretty hot stuff, huh? Look at those smiles. See — like sisters! People talk about BFFs and don’t really mean it, but that’s me and her, for sure. Right, Tabby?”

Rudy didn’t listen to what the other barista said.

He’d found himself staring at the oversized button pinned below the collar of Nina’s T-shirt. Leaning closer to get a better look. At first, he’d thought he was imagining things. It was a vision, brought on by what he planned to do, a last little joke played on his brain by Hope’s ghost.

But it wasn’t. It was real.

Right there on the bedroom wall behind the photograph of these two girls was a sketch of a mother and child. He knew those sketches. He had dozens of them in a box in the garage at home. Hope had made them of new mothers and new babies ever since she’d started her work as an ER nurse.

The awful reality of it had gathered like a storm in Rudy’s brain. Hope had been in a hospital room with this girl on the day she’d been born. Hope had talked to her mother. Laughed with her. She’d probably held this child in her arms. She’d sketched her face and captured her forever. Hope had seen the beauty in this girl and the love her mother had for her. This girl had grown up in a family and lived with her parents and her siblings.

This girl was alive. Wren was dead.

It couldn’t be an accident that Rudy had found her. On that day of all days.

Something about the intersection of Nina and Hope had stirred a fury in Rudy where there had previously been nothing but hollow grief. This girl was a direct connection to Hope. It was like Hope lived on in Nina Flores. She was a perennial coming back year after year — a flower that needed to be yanked out of the ground and destroyed once and for all. Maybe, if he could do that, he could be free.

Rudy had walked out of that coffee shop a different man.

He’d still gone to the Giants game with Phil. He’d had his burger and his beer. But afterward, he hadn’t gone to the Golden Gate Bridge to throw himself to the hard surface of the water. Instead, he’d spent the night in the garage with a box from his past that he hadn’t opened in twenty-one years. The box was filled with the memories of his life with Hope. He’d tried for two decades to crush those memories, but now he realized that was a mistake. He wanted to remember. He wanted to strike back. He wanted Hope to feel what he felt, to have her know that he could kill, too. He could strip away someone else’s future, someone else’s dreams, just the way she’d done to him.

He’d found the copies of the sketches. All of them. Dozens of them.

Going through them, he’d found the one he was looking for. Gilda and Nina. Staring at it, he’d finally had a plan. For years, he’d had no way of taking revenge on Hope for what she’d done. Until that moment.

Gilda and Nina.

Two weeks later, when it was done, he’d come home and taken a match and burned the sketch into ash. That night, he’d slept all the way through from dark to dawn, not waking up at 3:42 a.m.

And he’d known that he wasn’t done.

The next year, he’d taken Rae Hart away from Hope. The year after that, he’d done the same with Natasha Lubin. He’d burned more sketches and watched the flames. It was as if Hope could feel the pain of what he’d done. As if she were on the other side of a window, silently screaming at him. It was the battle that never ended. Not while he was alive.

Rudy shivered.

Behind him, a wet finger of fog caressed his neck and passed in front of his eyes like a cataract. He didn’t have much time. Night was coming soon. There was barely an hour of daytime left, and the fog was already stealing it away. He lifted the binoculars and studied the house at the base of the hill. Lights shined behind the windows, and he could see clearly into Maria’s bedroom. She read a book as she lay on the bed, but her face was grim with tension. She showed no indication of getting ready to leave the house before dark.

Why wasn’t she running?

She always ran. She ran every day. And then he knew: Frost Easton had warned her. Scared her. She was staying home, changing her routine, because of him.

Rudy didn’t think he’d get a second chance with Maria. Everything would be different tomorrow. It was now or never, and he had to do something. He reached into his backpack and booted up his phone, and he dialed her number. Through the lenses of his binoculars, he could see her get up to answer the call. In his ear, he heard the mellow sound of Maria’s voice.