Just Fall by Nina Sadowsky

owners who frequent St. Lucia’s ports.

    He consults with the techs. No good fingerprints as of yet. A few smudges, but that’s it. Given the amount of traffic a hotel room has as a matter of course, this means someone has been careful to eradicate them.
    Lucien’s phone buzzes. He glances at it. Agathe again. He sighs, knowing that if he doesn’t answer, he is only going to create more trouble for himself. He steps through the billowing curtains and out onto the room’s balcony to take the call. For a moment before hitting the “talk” button he contemplates the beautiful natural vista of sand and ocean and sky.
    “Hello?”
    She is in full throttle the instant she hears his voice. An invective-laced assault pours out at him. He is insensitive, he is cold, he doesn’t love her—he pulls the phone away from his ear. He does love her, of course he does, but some days he can understand why people have the urge to kill.

The first time Rob killed someone, he was sixteen years old. Of course his name wasn’t Rob then, but the name of that sixteen-year-old boy is as deeply buried as the man he killed.
    But let’s start earlier. Rob was raised by a single mother until she remarried; Rob was eight then and accustomed to the rhythm of their lives together as a pair. The big house in Devon, Pennsylvania, with the apple trees; the Sunday visits to his formal and stiff grandparents; the school uniforms and rigorously scheduled activities. Horseback riding, of course (his mother rode), tennis lessons, piano.
    Rob never knew his “real” father, his “birth” father, the sperm donor—call him what you please. The man wasn’t spoken about much either, at least in Rob’s presence. There were the occasional weepy mutterings he overheard when his mother’s best friend came over and the two women poured multiple vodka tonics. The muted but angry conversations between his mother and grandfather. And that endless three weeks the summer he was six, when he was left at his grandparents’ estate, feeling like an ungainly interloper: too loud, too fast, too messy, too much. His mother came back red-eyed but resolute. His grandfather seemed pleased, somehow, as if he had “won.” Won what, Rob wasn’t sure.

    But then there was a new man in his mother’s life. A big, jovial presence, full of bonhomie and gin. The newcomer was talked about constantly and openly. Welcomed into the extended circle of family and friends. A lavish wedding was planned and executed. Rob was the ring bearer and included in the vows. Rob and his mother moved from the big house with the apple trees to an even larger house closer to the city. Rob didn’t mind his stepfather, really, at least not at first.
    Rob was nine when he saw his stepfather hit his mother for the first time. He froze, unable to process what he was seeing, even as her head slammed into the kitchen wall and blood erupted from her nose and mouth.
    It was the sound even more than the blood. The whomp of her soft skin, hard bone, and pliable cartilage smacking into the tiled wall, a sickening tearing crack that he would never forget. She had been running, his mom. Running to get away from the man she believed loved her, but who revealed himself as a monster. She was nearly out of the room too, had a good long lead, but the bastard caught up with her in three furious strides, seized her hair, and shoved her face into the tile. Rob, drawn from his bedroom by the commotion, stopped in his tracks and his sleepy eyes popped wide with terror. His mom saw him, and laid a gentle hand on her husband’s arm, turning him slightly so he could also see Rob was observing them.
    “Go back to bed, baby.”
    Rob stared at the smear of blood on the rectangular tiles, garish against their cool mint green. Rob’s fingers worried the edge of his penguin T-shirt.
    “That’s right, kid. Go back to bed. This is just about your mom and me. Just a little fight. All grown-ups fight.”

    Still Rob