The Bad Jokes #1: The Redhead

Chapter 17: Live Your Life

With Xane's confession ringing in my ears, I looked at him carefully. Whatever this man was, he was no killer. I knew that. There was something else going on here.

"I don't believe you," I challenged him.

"It's true," he assured me, his voice hard. "My mother died giving birth to me. She was the first woman I killed. My father blamed me, never missed a chance to remind me that he hated me because I killed her."

"Xane, you were a baby -- that's ridiculous! Your father's a horrible man to try to pin her death on you."

"Technically, it's true," he said, and I could hear in his voice that he believed what he was saying. "She had an undiagnosed aortic aneurysm, and the strain of giving birth to me caused it to burst and she died as I was born. Had she not had a child, she might still be alive."

"Xane, that is still not on you," I told him gently. "Your parents decided to have a child, just like millions of other couples in the world. And sometimes, horrible things happen in child birth, but it is never the baby's fault."

"It's still me coming into the world under horrible circumstances. It's me being the cause of my mother's death. My father never forgave me for that; if it wasn't my fault, why would my own father blame me for it? To the point that he never recognized my birthday or allowed anyone to recognize it. On my fifth birthday, the staff had a cake for me that the cook made -- Father was supposed to be out of town -- and when he came home unexpectedly and saw what was going on, he fired every one of the staff on the spot and told them we don't celebrate the birthdays of killers."

I could feel my face drain of color. What kind of man would do that to a child? Say something like that to him at a young, impressionable age, something so horrible he would carry it with him all of his life.

I reached for Xane's face, but he stepped back. "The second woman I killed was my stepmother, Aline. My father didn't love her like my mother, but he'd gotten her pregnant when I was a senior in high school and so he married her. I suspect he met her at a strip club, but he never said. She and her fourteen-year-old son moved in the day they got married. I wasn't sure if she was actually ever pregnant, but she never had a baby and it was never mentioned again. Maybe she'd been trying to escape a shit situation and pretended she was pregnant to trap my father. Her boyfriend had been horribly abusive to her and their son for years, and my father had money and a life completely removed from the run-down neighborhood she lived in, so I wouldn't have blamed her for wanting to get away from that."

For a minute, I didn't think he was going to keep going, but he did.

"Father pretty much ignored them. Aline was kind to me, but she was careful never to be nice to me in front of my father. He seemed to tolerate Rixson better than me, though, and celebrated his birthdays. The kid was a total fuck up in school, got in trouble, and I didn't like him. Something about him was off, and he and I never clicked. So I still kept trying to be the perfect son, thinking my father might notice me -- perfect student, president of the senior class, star quarterback for our football team, center for the basketball team, valedictorian of my class, accepted into every Ivy League school I applied to...nothing I did was good enough to make him see me as anything but the reason his wife was dead."

"You don't have to tell me any more if you don't want to," I told him when he stopped again.

"Better you know now," he said with determination. "So I went away to college and when I was earning my MBA, my dad introduced me to a girl he said would make a great daughter-in-law. Her family had business interests that were as successful as my father's business, but they also had political connections that he wanted. I knew what that meant, and I was stupid enough to still want his approval, so I began dating her. Nola was beautiful, smart and elegant...and she didn't do a damn thing for me. But I still forged ahead, and after I earned my MBA, I proposed to her. Fast forward a few months, and Aline, Rixson and I were at a weekend party being hosted at a family friend's estate in the country. My dad couldn't make it, so the three of us had driven there together. Aline was drinking a lot at the party, and when I realized she'd disappeared, I went looking for her...and found her fucking one of my father's friends in her room."