EVE
IT WAS Jay who hit Nate on the head with a rock and knocked him out. I wanted to do it, but logically, it made more sense for Jay to do it. He is taller than Nate and likely stronger. If I did it, I might not have knocked him out. I couldn’t risk that. Not after the things I did to ensure he would end up
in this very spot.
Jay and I have spent the last two days tormenting my husband. It was risky but worth it. I knew after he saw that raven in the kitchen, he would be convinced I was still alive and end up right here. Nobody else but me would torment him that way.
“The Raven”—his favorite poem of all time. I know it all too well.
Nate is unconscious on the ground, his handsome features slack. I want to take the rock from Jay and hit him again, but I need him to be able to wake up because we are far from done. He’ll regain consciousness soon, so we have to act quickly. Jay reaches into the pocket of his coat and pulls out a roll of duct tape. He holds it out to me.
“Want to do the honors?” he asks.
I certainly do. I bind my husband’s wrists together in front of him, and then I bind his ankles as well. As I finish tying his ankles together, he groans on the muddy ground. His eyes slowly crack open.
“He’s waking up,” I tell Jay. “Throw him in the hole.”
If Nate wasn’t awake before, dropping him into that shallow pool of freezing cold water does the trick. His eyelids flutter open, and he stares up at me, blinking against the droplets of rain. Jay stays carefully out of sight.
“Eve?” Nate croaks.
I don’t say anything. I allow him a moment to take stock of his situation. The fact that he is lying in a shallow grave, in a pool of muddy water, and his wrists and ankles are bound together. I watch the panic dawning on his face.
“Eve,” he gasps. “What are you doing? What’s going on?”
I stare down at my husband. When I stood before him in front of a judge on our wedding day—the happiest day of my life—I never imagined that I
could hate him as much as I do at this moment. “You tried to kill me. You buried me in this hole.”
“I…” Nate shifts, struggling to keep his face above the muddy water in the grave. “I’m so sorry I did that, Eve. I made a terrible mistake. That’s why I came back.”
“That’s not why you came back. You came back to make sure I was really dead.”
His Adam’s apple bobs. “Okay, fine. You’re right. I did a terrible thing. I’m a terrible person.” He blinks water out of his eyes again. “But you’re not. This isn’t you. I know you.”
“You don’t know me.” I bark out a laugh. “You haven’t known me in years. And you definitely don’t love me.”
“I admit, we’ve had our problems…” I laugh again. “Have we now?”
Nate is struggling to sit up, trying to keep his head above the shallow pool that has formed at the bottom of the grave. “Please, Eve. This isn’t you. You don’t want to do this. It won’t solve your problems.”
“Yes, you know all about my problems, don’t you? Considering you are the cause of all of them.”
“Fine, that’s fair.” When he speaks, some of the muddy water gets into his mouth, and he grimaces and spits it out. “Just get me out of here, and we can talk about this. I’ll do whatever you want me to do.”
“No,” I say quietly. “That’s not going to happen.”
“Eve!” The panic in his face has intensified. He starts struggling against his restraints. “You realize I’m going to drown in here, right? Please stop messing around! Whatever you want, I’ll give it to you. I’ll quit teaching, leave town. Whatever you want, okay?”
“Don’t worry,” I tell him. “I’m not going to let you drown.”
For a moment, his shoulders relax and he stops his struggle with the duct tape. “Good. Thank you. I know you wouldn’t.”
I pick up the shovel lying on the ground beside me. “I’m going to bury you first.”
With those words, I scoop up a shovelful of dirt, and I throw it on top of him.
“Eve!” he screams. “Jesus Christ, what is wrong with you? Have you lost your mind?”
I scoop up more dirt and throw it into the hole.
“Eve!” His face is bright red. “Eve, sweetheart, I’m so sorry for everything! I love you! You have to know that! You can’t do this to me!”
And another scoop of dirt goes into the hole.
“Eve!” he gasps. “Don’t do this to me! Eve! Eve!”
Nate is thrashing now in the grave, trying to get free. But he isn’t going to. I tied him up much too tightly. I’m about to scoop in more dirt when Jay grabs my arm. He tugs me away, out of the earshot of my husband.
“Eve,” he says. “You’re going to kill him.” I lift my chin. “I know.”
Jay glances over at the grave, where my husband is screaming his lungs out, even though nobody can hear him but us. “He’s right. It won’t solve your problems to kill him.”
“You’d be surprised.”
His brows bunch together. “Are you sure you want to do this?” “I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life.”
Jay stares at me for a moment, then he picks up his own shovel. He walks back with me to the grave. And when I scoop up some dirt and throw it in the hole, he does the same.
“Eve!” Nate screams. “For the love of God, Eve, don’t do this! You can’t do this!”
I can and I will. Two more scoops of dirt go into the hole.
“You’ll go to jail. You know that, right? You’re going to spend the rest of your life rotting in jail, you crazy bitch!”
Two more scoops of dirt. One of them hits him in the face, and he starts to sob.
“Please, Eve.” His left eye is obscured by mud as he stares up at me. “Please don’t do this, Evie. I’m begging you. Please…”
Nate once said to me that he thinks death is like being on the precipice of an abyss, or some pretentious garbage like that. He was terrified of death, more than anything else in the world. I don’t know if I believe in an afterlife, but if I do, I am certain that my husband will spend the rest of it burning in hell.
He alternates between begging us to stop and screaming threats until the mud completely covers his face. Shortly after that, he goes blessedly silent. We keep shoveling in dirt until the hole is completely filled. And as I put the finishing touches on my husband’s grave in the woods, I recite to myself the poem he once wrote for me many years ago, back when I was fifteen
years old and he was my English teacher fresh out of college who swore to me I was his soulmate:
Life nearly passed me by Then she
Young and alive With smooth hands And pink cheeks Showed me myself
Took away my breath With cherry-red lips
Gave me life once again
