CARMENBoth Dave and Jasper were now staring at me after my accusation, one in utter shock and the other in feigned confusion.“What the hell are you talking about?” Jasper asked me, letting go of Dave’s shirt to allow himself to take a proper look at me. “How dare you accuse me of something so senseless and irrational?”“Carmen, what are you talking about? Kate couldn’t have possibly done that,” Dave said.“I saw the footage. I know what I saw. The police may have been confused by the woman in the video, but I knew her as soon as I saw her. What were you doing with Kate that night, and why did you two kill your mother?!” I asked again.“I didn’t kill her!” he screamed in response. “You, of all people, should know just how worried sick I was when I was searching for her! What is your fucking problem?”Slowly, he looked between Dave and I, and then he started to laugh.“Now I totally understand what’s going on here.” He pointed his index finger between us. “This was all a plan between
CARMEN“I know who those people are, in the footage,” I said to Detective Johnson as soon as he picked the phone, almost hearing the sigh of relief he gave to know that I was okay and ready to help him out with the investigation.“Mrs. Hayes, thank you for reaching out. You said you know these people. The video does not have the best quality, so I need you to be sure of what you’re going to be telling me, okay? If you need to watch the video one more time—”“I don’t,” I interrupted. “I know what I saw, and I can identify both the man and the woman.”“Would you like to come over to the station to answer our questions and tell us more, or do we have to come over?” he questioned.“I don’t think I can manage to come back there right now. I’ll send the address of the hotel where I’ll be staying for a little while,” I suggested, and he immediately agreed.When I texted the address, he assured me that they would be over in a few minutes. I could barely sit still, so I walked over to the balc
CARMEN“You want a divorce from me all of a sudden?” Jasper scoffed over the phone after I announced my intention of leaving him. “You know I didn’t do what you’re accusing me of doing, right? You’re using this as an opportunity to leave.”“Stop trying to manipulate the truth, Jasper. I know what I saw. I want a divorce, and I would really appreciate it if you didn’t disagree with me on this. If you think about it, you would also realize that this is not going to work out,” I lectured.“Draw up your papers if that’s what you want, Carmen,” he encouraged. “If you end up regretting it, that will be your cross to carry.”“I’ll send the papers to you when I get in contact with a lawyer,” I informed him, hanging up and collapsing on the bed as I wondered what would become of everyone when the autopsy reports were released.~I ran into my father’s arms at the airport where I went to pick him up, almost being drawn to tears at the fact that I was seeing him again and the reminder that he wa
CARMENI couldn’t give an accurate account of everything that had been happening for the past twenty-four hours. I had been in a total daze since the police arrived at the door of my hotel room and arrested me.“The video evidence we have against her is quite incriminating,” Detective Johnson said, arguing it out with Evan – the attorney that my father had pulled strings to get on my side.“As much as I would like to sit here and lecture you on how poorly developed that video and the story behind it is, I’d prefer that you and your team do an analysis on the phone to recover lost files. My client did not do this because she wanted to,” Evan explained.It was not a question of whether I was guilty or not, that much was obvious since the video my mother had submitted to the police had my face in it. It was now a matter of if I really did it in self-defense.“We’re doing just that. Carmen, can you explain your side of the story. You have been quiet since you were brought here yesterday.
CARMEN“Good morning, Mrs. Hayes,” Detective Johnson greeted as I sat in the room where they were about to play the new footage for me to identify the people in the video as who I thought they were.“Good morning,” I replied, not only anxious about what I was about to watch but abashed at the fact that he now knew that I was also involved in a murder case of my own.There was not much talking involved. He played the footage as soon as possible, and it was clearer this time and from a different angle.“Are these still the people you suspect them to be? We can see that Jasper Hayes really did push his mother off the bridge, but the woman. Is that Kate?” he asked me.“I have never been surer of anything else in my life. The woman who hit her on the head with a rock is Kate,” I confirmed, nodding my head.“Now, we want you to take another look at this footage of them that we got from a grocery store just down by the river,” he said, using a remote to switch the clip.My eyes almost popped
CARMEN“The results just came in, Carmen,” Dave informed me over the phone. “I don’t have the sickness. Now, can you tell me what the hell is going on and why everyone seems to be on their toes these days?”In that moment, I wished to be him – unknowing to everything that was going on around him and completely out of the loop instead of being the center of it.“When’s the last time you and Kate slept with each other? I know this is invasive of me, but I just need to know before I tell you what I just found out,” I inquired.“It’s been a while, honestly. I even think it’s been months,” he confessed.“Dave, Kate and Jasper have been seeing each other.”He wasn’t standing in front of me, so I could only imagine his thick eyebrows coming together in a frown of confusion as he tried to figure out what he had just heard me say.“What do you mean, seeing each other? You told me that they both killed Jasper’s mother, and now…” I could hear every bit of the understandable doubt in his tone.“I
CARMEN“She wants what?!” I narrowed my eyes when my father informed me of my mother’s condition for signing the divorce papers.“She wants a billion dollars in alimony for the things that she claims to have happened to her. She claims that Steve is abusive,” he explained.I scoffed and shook my head at how easy it was for her to lie about something that was so obvious in everyone’s faces. It made me wonder how both Steve and Dave would feel if they heard what she had to say in court.“If anything, she should be the one giving him an alimony for poisoning him. And seriously? One billion dollars in alimony when he didn’t abuse her the way she claims?” I asked, shaking my head. “That is nothing but insane.”“Steve wants his treatment to be hastened so that he can recover faster, but it can’t be faster than it’s going now. He’s planning to come back and fight the whole thing in court.”There were so many things that my mother would have to defend herself from in court, and it made me won
CARMEN“What do you mean? What can’t you do anymore?” I asked Dave as I stood up and headed to the door, getting ready to ask him to tell me where he was so that I would go to him to talk.“We need to meet up and talk about all of this. I’ll send my location to you. Can you meet me in a few minutes?” he asked, and I almost laughed at the question as even hearing from him over the phone was more than I could ever ask for.“Of course I can. I’ll take a taxi as soon as you send the your location,” I replied, running down the stairs and taking the car keys from my father when Dave hung up the phone.“What’s happening?” Dad asked.“Dave finally called. He wants to see me. I think he wants to call everything off between us. He said something about not wanting to do this anymore,” I relayed my worries to him.“It’s going to be fine, Carmen,” he assured. “I’m sure he wouldn’t want to do something that would hurt you. If he does want a break, though, you can always let him go. It’s been hard f
CARMEN“Are you sure about this? Maybe you heard him wrong the first time. Besides, I just got out of prison. I highly doubt that he’ll want to get to see me just yet,” I said to Dave as we slowly walked towards the front door of his father’s house.“You just have to relax for me, Carmen,” Dave said, placing a hand on my lower back. “I didn’t hear him wrong. He clearly said it after his divorce with your mom that he would feel better about giving us his blessing now that he’s not married to her.”We got into the living room, where Steve sat with his legs crossed as he took note of something from a piece of paper.“Dad, look who’s here,” Dave called for his attention, making him look up at us and stand up to give me a good look. I almost laughed at his reaction, but I was too consumed by nervousness to make a sound.“Carmen, what… Come here, my sweet child,” he said, walking towards me and meeting me halfway with a hug.“What happened to you?!” he asked as he pulled away from the hug a
CARMEN“How may I help you?” the woman who stood at the doorway asked me, and I had half a mind to apologize and tell her I had the wrong house before walking away, but I decided to stay instead.“Is Dave home?” I asked.“Mr. Wilmer is home, but he didn’t tell me he was expecting anyone,” she answered, looking down at my hands which held the small box where the wristwatch was. “You can tell me your name, so I can go tell him—”“You really don’t have to,” I said, stopping her from walking back in. “Just let me in, please. I have something important to talk to him about.”“I understand that you probably know him, but I don’t want to get into any trouble. It’s my first day at work, and I don’t want to mess this up.”“You won’t,” I assured her. “You just have to trust me.”It took a moment of hesitation before she finally sighed and stepped aside for me to walk in.I glanced at the little girl she had in her hand with a smile on my face as I got to see just how much she looked like Kate.
CARMEN“Did you tell anyone? I told you not to tell anyone. Did you tell anyone?” I blurted to Evan as I found him standing and waiting for me on the day of my release.“Relax, Carmen,” he laughed. “I only told them that I was coming to check up on you. Why don’t you want them to know that you’re being released, anyway? Are you planning to live as far away as possible without them knowing?”“No,” I answered. “I just… I didn’t want them standing out here and waiting for me to come out. I still need to prepare myself for everything. It’s been a long three years, and I don’t know how they’re going to react.”“I’m sure all this is not what they’re thinking about right now. Trust me when I say that those people will wait for ten years if they have to,” he informed me.As much as it was assurance enough to hear those words from Evan, it didn’t make my heart beat any slower than the speed at which it was going.“Thank you for going through the stress of picking me up, by the way,” I told him
CARMEN“Cartier!”I flinched when I heard my last name being called by the prison guard as she stopped in front of the cell I shared with two other women – Reese and Naomi.She chewed her gum aggressively, using her baton to hit the cell bars, as she watched me so intently that I almost started to dig a hole to hide myself in.“You have been here for a while now, Carmen. It’s time you took the bull by the horns. Don’t let people like her intimidate you,” Naomi said, giving me an encouraging pat on the back to approach the prison guard and ask her what her deal was and why she was calling me.“What…what’s the matter?” I questioned, looking down at my feet to avoid making eye contact with the woman.“Are you ready for your board hearing today?” she asked me, leaning against the bars with folded arms.“I think so,” I said with a nod.“Well, then.” She sighed and took out the key to the bars, opening it for me to step out.“Good luck, Carmen! I’ve had two board hearings so far that have n
CARMENEvan was now standing in front of me with a silent reminder for me to keep my chin up and that I would be fine after the trial, but it was getting harder to do so.After the prosecutor finished asking me questions, I started to feel as if every answer that I had given had dug me into a hole that I would not be able to come out of.“When the victim was making those moves towards you, you called out for your mother, didn’t you?” he asked.“I did.”“Well, to demonstrate just how far her voice must have reached when she called out to her mother, we tested it. I called out to different sound experts to the house, and I was asked to stay in the farthest room from the kitchen. At 70 decibels, I could hear someone calling out to me from that room.”“From the footages gotten from the security cameras around the house, Mrs. Wilmer was not even in the farthest room to the kitchen. In fact, at the same time that Ms. Cartier is seen shouting for her mother’s help in the kitchen, we can see
CARMENMy mother stared at Evan with a shocked expression on her face as he submitted a flash drive to the judge as evidence.“The house where you left after you got married to Mr. Wilmer had a lot of security cameras, which Mrs. Wilmer here may have forgotten about when she slipped into the kitchen and put about ten pills of aphrodisiac into the victim’s drink,” Evan explained as the video on the drive was played for the whole courtroom to see.I had not thought that Evan would work that hard and go that far to get evidence, but he did. Was that why he had been working with my father the whole time? Even I didn’t know about that.“If we watch further, we can see that there was no complete and direct contact between my client and the victim that they were involved in any sexual discussions with each other. To further prove that an aphrodisiac was used in this footage, we have receipts from the pharmacy that she bought them from that week.”“Do the prosecutors have anything to add to t
CARMENDave and I shared a look of disappointment, and I could see that he had made up his mind to be with me no matter what his father said, but that didn’t stop me from feeling bad.“This whole thing between Bianca and I is not close to being over, and I believe she’s going to raise hell before everything is finalized. I have all of that in mind, and I don’t want anything to distract me just yet. Perhaps, after the divorce, we can revisit this talk,” Steve explained.I completely understood why he didn’t agree to the whole thing, but that didn’t mean I was not hurt by it.“You can take all the time you need to think about it,” I encouraged. “We wouldn’t want to put you under any kind of pressure.”“Carmen and I have something important to discuss. Thank you for giving us your honesty, father,” Dave told him as he took my hand and led me out of the room as he asked me, “Which of the bedrooms is yours?”“Here.” I took the lead from him and opened the door to my room, slamming it shut
CARMENBefore Dave could take me into the room where his father was staying, I pulled him back. I tried my hardest to hide my annoyance from him, but I could feel it coming off in waves, and I was certain that he could tell as well.“Is something wrong?” he questioned, and I raised my brow at that.“I should be asking you that question, Dave. I know you’re mad at me, and you should be mad at me for what I hid from you, but you haven’t spoken to me in a week. We can’t just leave things hanging and go in there to tell your father about us.”“I know, Carmen. We have a lot of talking to do, and I do have a lot of apologies as well, but I don’t want to prolong this. The more we keep him the dark, the less likely he is to be happy about the news. We can talk about everything else that we haven’t talked about during the week after.”“Are you sure you want to do this?” I asked. “With everything that my mother must have planted in your mind against me—”“She planted nothing in my mind against
CÀRMEN“What…what are you doing here?” I asked, looking around to see if I could find out if someone else came with him – perhaps Kate or his father.“I wanted to talk to you about everything,” he said.“There’s nothing to talk about. We’re divorced,” I replied, wanting to turn around when he grabbed me by the wrist.“What are you doing?” Dad asked, finally bringing Jasper’s attention towards himself.“Who are…” Jasper trailed off as recognition grew in his eyes, and he took steps back as be looked between me and my father.“You’re… You’re her father,” he noted. “They said you were dead.”“If she doesn’t want to talk to you, don’t you think you should take a hint and leave her alone?” Dad asked him, ignoring his shock and refusing to give him any explanation.“I just wanted to have a short and important talk with her about something, that’s all,” Jasper defended.“Excuse us,” I told Dad, a little curious to know what Jasper wanted to say even after we had legally gone our separate way