Page 4 of A Cursed Heart

Ryan

I didn’t mean to kill her. It just sorta… happened. I pushed the thought, and the article, away. There was no point in dwelling on my guilt. I did what I thought was best at the time.

“Freya, you’re gonna be late for school! Get a wriggle on,” I called down the hall towards her bedroom.

Little footsteps pounded down the hall of my apartment, signalling that at least she had her shoes on, like I asked. Maybe they were even matching today. Being on the right feet would also help.

“Ready, Daddy.” Freya flung her arms around my legs, jolting me.

My coffee, now a barely drinkable temperature, sloshed in the mug and splashed my hand with the lukewarm liquid.

It pooled on the little breakfast bar and ran towards some documents I had there, including the article I was torturing myself with.

I bit back a curse and grabbed some paper towels to wipe up the mess. Luckily, nothing important got wet.

“Careful,” I chided gently.

My daughter flinched, as if expecting a blow. I would never, but my ex’s now dead boyfriend… well, he had, may he rest in agony. Let’s just say he got off easy.

I got down to her level, crouching until I could meet her down-turned eyes.

“Hey, it’s fine, pumpkin. Just an accident, and it was too cold for Daddy to drink, okay?

No harm done.” I stroked her hair, wishing I didn’t have to tell her what today was.

At five, she was much too young to go. I’d discussed it with her therapist, CPS, my mom and sister, and they all agreed it was better to keep her away.

“Do you remember that Auntie Lydia is picking you up today?”

“Where are you going, Daddy?” Freya visibly drew into herself, her anxiety pushing for her to be a smaller target so she could feel safe.

Separation anxiety, apparently. While she was sometimes scared if I moved too fast or got too loud, I was still her world.

She hated being away from me aside from the hours she spent at pre-K.

“Remember, I told you Mommy went to heaven?” I wasn’t above lying to a child, okay?

Her mom had died, but getting into heaven?

Highly doubtful. Jasmine was cooked. So was I, but I hoped the good I did after made up for my part in her death.

Freya nodded. “Well, today is the day that the grown ups all come to say bye to her. It’s her funeral, pumpkin. ”

“But you said she isn’t there anymore, she’s in heaven.” Ah, kid logic.

“That’s right, I did,” I said as patiently as I could.

My feelings towards her mom, my ex, were complicated at the best of times.

According to everyone who mattered, she died of an OD, with her loser boyfriend leaving my little girl alone overnight.

My part in it? Well, no one would ever know what I’d done.

When Jasmine missed the drop off time the court had given us, I went storming over to her apartment and found the bodies and my little girl eating dry cereal alone.

Their cell phones were just as dead as they were, meaning Freya hadn’t been able to call for help when she couldn’t wake her mom.

“It’s just a thing adults do afterwards to get out their sadness. ”

“Are you sad Mommy went to heaven? Mommy said you were taking me away from her.”

Fuck. How dare Jasmine tell Freya that! She didn’t have to bring our drama to our kid, even if it was true.

I’d pleaded with the courts to let me have Freya full time.

I told them Jasmine was spiraling! They said no because Jasmine was “getting clean.” Sure she was.

That’s exactly why she ended up dying from the tainted batch of fentanyl I’d tracked down.

TNT was what the locals called it, and they were right, it blew them up from the inside, this batch just had an extra something in it, wreaking havoc on their bodies. Massive organ failure within hours.

“I wasn’t taking you away. I just wanted you to live with me all the time—”

My daughter didn’t need to know how sick her mother had been.

How addiction, first to painkillers, later to juice, as she called it, was slowly eating away at Jasmine as a mom and turning her into Jasmine the junkie.

The woman I once loved started selling herself when Freya wasn’t with her, just to fund her habit.

Then, Jasmine was leaving Freya with that dick to fund drugs for the both of them.

When I felt bad about my part in their deaths, I remembered seeing bruises on my precious baby girl, and soon that feeling melted away.

“Like now?”

“Exactly like now. I knew Mommy was sick and wanted to make sure you were looked after. If Mommy got better, you would’ve still seen her.” Probably. Maybe.

“Mommy went to heaven.”

“That’s right. I’m sorry, sweetheart, Mommy didn’t get better.” No. She let that asshole terrify our little girl because he was good at stealing shit to buy more drugs.

Changing the subject, I reached for her coat and put it on her while I explained how her day was going to go.

Her therapist said Freya needed routine and stability.

I hated upending it by getting my sister to pick Freya up instead of me, but I needed to be at the funeral since I was paying for it. Guilty conscience and all.

Jasmine’s family had cut her out of their lives before Freya was born, leaving me to deal with everything as her next of kin.

Our marriage had flamed out just after Freya was born, with the stress of a kid and an unstable relationship pushing us into breaking up before her first birthday.

We should never have gotten married, not that I regretted my kid.

I loved her to death. We were young. Far too young for something as serious as marriage.

I’d wanted to settle down and prove to the world that two barely nineteen-year-old kids could do it.

Jas, well, she said she wanted that too.

Until she got bored of being a mom and wanted to hang with her friends.

We did the co-parent thing well for the next few years.

It was easier to be around Jasmine when I didn’t feel responsible for her behavior, which had grown increasingly erratic in the last six months.

When I figured out she was using, I took Freya, but Jasmine fought me.

We were going through the process of getting the custody reviewed when she died.

The courts and CPS were buying her act, saying she was going through programs. They didn’t think it was right to keep Jasmine from seeing Freya.

I tried pointing out the abuse. Jasmine cried parental alienation.

That I was jealous she had moved on while I hadn’t.

She claimed Freya was being clumsy because she was just getting over an ear infection.

Basically, they’d ignored my pleas until I’d taken matters into my own hands.

How the police couldn’t figure out where the tainted TNT was coming from was ridiculous.

It had only taken me a couple weeks to trace it back to the suppliers.

They weren’t even hiding it all that well!

I got some, and when I dropped Freya off at that dump of an apartment, I hid it for the boyfriend to find later.

Jasmine was supposed to be getting clean, so it wasn’t like it was intended for her.

My target had been her pimp of a boyfriend.

Brushing off another wave of guilt, I focused on getting my little girl to school because I had somewhere I needed to be.

I adjusted my black tie and put my suit jacket on.

A quick glance in the hall mirror said I looked suitably somber in my funeral attire.

Jasmine’s funeral had been delayed because the cops wanted to investigate the TNT strain and needed her body.

Then her parents flat out refused to even attend, let alone pay, so I was stuck with it.

I’d only had Freya with me full time for a couple weeks, but it had been all good aside from dealing with CPS, finding a therapist, and planning the funeral. All while dealing with a grieving child and my own guilt over the situation.

Freya’s teacher greeted me with a kind smile. “Funeral today?”

“Yeah. My sister is picking Freya up today. She’s on the pick up list already.”

“That’s great. Just make sure the office knows, okay?”

I nodded, kissed Freya goodbye and made my way to the funeral home.

The service was brief. I spoke about my marriage to Jasmine and how we were co-parenting together while working out the issues around her addiction.

Because Jas had stolen from or lied to many of her friends, only a few of the people she hung around with in college attended.

Lydia, my sister, had a class she couldn’t miss and Mom was out of the country, so neither could attend.

We’d lit a candle for her before Mom went away.

So, yeah, hardly the best turnout for the funeral. Like they said they would, her family skipped it.

Really, they were to blame for how Jasmine’s life turned out.

We were kids who got pregnant at eighteen.

Married before we were nineteen and Freya’s arrival.

Two kids working, studying and trying to get by.

Then it all fell apart. We were barely twenty when we got divorced.

Her parents washed their hands of Jas when she told them she wanted to marry me and keep her baby.

An accident at work after our divorce introduced her to opioids.

Stressed, broke, with no support system outside of me, her ex-husband, she struggled to break the hold they had on her.

Took some time, and some help from me, my mom and sister, but she did it. I was so proud of her for doing it! She even finished college after deferring a semester. Jas had been sober for a couple years which was why I could never understand why she went back to drugs.