I looked at the clock.
8:58 PM.
Two minutes to go.
I closed the front door and walked to Susan’s room.
The small bedside lamp was glowing.
Susan was waiting for me.
I pulled the old wooden chair beside her bed.
The clock turned to 9:00.
She looked at me.
“You have to finish it tonight, Jake.”
My hands began to tremble.
“I don’t know if I can.”
“You’ve been running from it for five years. Enough.”
I sat down.
Outside, her relatives believed I wanted Susan’s house.
The neighbors thought we were having some kind of secret romance.
But none of them could possibly imagine what was really happening inside that room every night, hidden from everyone else.
Want to know what happened next? The continuation is in the first comment
But nobody could have imagined that every night at 9 PM, we were actually talking about a man who had died five years earlier.
A man whose side I had been by on the final night of his life.
A man whose death I had blamed myself for every single day for five years.
I could barely say his name.
“Mark…”
Susan’s eyes filled with tears.
Mark was her only son.
And my best friend.
Then Susan took my hand and said something that made everything inside me go cold.
“Jake, you’ve believed the wrong thing for five years. There’s something about the night Mark died that I never told you.”
I lifted my head.
“What?”
She opened her mouth to answer, but at that exact moment, the sound of a police car came from outside.
Susan looked toward the door.
Then back at me.
“Let them come in. Maybe it’s time everyone heard the truth.”
There were three hard knocks on the door.
Loud.
Clear.
“Police.”
I stood up, but Susan didn’t let go of my hand.
“Jake.”
I turned toward her.
“Before you go, remember one thing. Whatever you hear tonight, you’ve stolen five years from yourself over something that was never your fault.”
I didn’t understand.
I walked into the hallway and opened the front door.
Tom and Lisa were standing behind two police officers.
Tom already had a victorious expression on his face.
“There he is,” he said. “I told you. He wouldn’t even let us inside.”
One of the officers calmly introduced himself.
