The Body #3: Rogue and Euphemia

Chapter 12 (Effie): More Answers

"So, explain saving Angelica to me," I invited in what I knew was a chilly voice. 

I sat down on my couch and Rogue came over to me and sat near me but was smart enough not to sit too close.

"Since, you were never going to explain it if I hadn't seen what actually happened myself that day. Why is that, Rogue? If you had such a good reason for protecting her, one that would help me understand, why would you hide that from me?"

"Because it was a shit move on my part, Euphemia." His voice was humble, but I felt unmoved. "And I admit it -- I never would have told you what I'd done that day because it was that awful. I didn't want to hurt you. I was relieved you didn't remember and guilty as shit about what I'd done."

"You mean what you were guilty about what you didn't do. And I figured you were feeling responsible and that's why you were taking care of me like you did, refusing to leave my sight, never leaving the house, trying to get me therapy, waiting on me hand and foot."

"It doesn't seem that way from your point of view, but I was taking care of you because I love you, lady."

"Sure, Rogue."

His eyes closed slowly. "I know. I know you have every right to doubt me, but I'm telling you the truth."

"I'm still waiting for you to get to the part where it makes what you did OK, Rogue. You've had a year to come up with a good excuse."

"I chose wrong, Euphemia. That's the bottom line. I need to explain about my brother first to put the day in context."

"You mean the identical twin that you never told me about in a year and a half? That brother?"

"Dag was always the closest person in the world to me. There was no one on earth I shared a tighter bond with. What people say about the twin connection is true. Growing up, we always had each other's back and he'd do anything for me and I'd do anything for him."

"Including sharing Angelica, apparently," I pointed out.

"Never. I never even thought about Gel that way much less acted on it. She had a thing for me for a while when we were teenagers, but then she hooked up with my brother. He knew that she'd had a crush on me, joked about her getting confused about which of us she wanted but then she settled on the better looking twin. So they got together and it worked between them, and he made her his old lady. She needed someone like Dag, someone who worshipped her, catered to her. When she got pregnant with Winnie, they got married. Things were rough when they discovered Winnie had autism, but I have to say, Gel stepped up and learned everything she could about it, got Winnie all the help she needed, worked with her. Dag was supportive, but not to the obsessive degree Gel was. She was determined to do everything she could for Win, and she did."

"So there's one person Gel's decent to."

"There isn't anything I wouldn't do for my brother. I was working like a maniac on their case from the minute they were arrested, coming up with a plan, a backup plan, every fucking contingency you could think of. Our number one objective was to keep Gel, and therefore Winnie, out of it if we could. I was going through every fucking piece of evidence collected with a microscope to see if there was some i they didn't dot, some t they didn't cross when they made the arrest, collected the evidence. I was filing continuances, delaying in every way I could to keep this from going to trial before I found something. Because if it did go to trial, Gel would have to testify about what had prompted the murder and my brother refused. Said it would put an even bigger target on his wife's and daughter's backs."

"How?" I asked.

"The rival club wanted their president's killers to pay. They wouldn't hesitate to take out Gel or Winnie or both. I finally got Dag to agree that Gel would be our last resort, and I could use her if there was no other way around it, but that took months of arguing with Dag. He's a stubborn bastard but he said I could use her testimony about what the man they'd killed had ordered -- the kidnapping, the imprisonment of a special needs child and her mother in a small closet for two days, with no light, no food, no bathroom, no water. Winnie had lost her shit, fighting everything -- the door, Gel, herself. She was a fucking, bloody mess before she just shut down. That's something that'd be hard for a jury to ignore, and I took pictures -- of the closet, of Winnie, of Gel. I had affidavits from doctors attesting to Winnie's state when we found her. I would have spent days on that during the trial, hammering it home to the jury, making that the focus of the case, the facts they couldn't get out of their minds when deliberating."

The thought of Winnie in that closet made me sick.

"And the day of the shooting, they decided to make a preemptive strike, take Gel out. There were four snipers we determined."

"They must not have been very good ones if they got me instead of her."

"Because I knocked her out of the way. She got hit in the arm on the way down to the ground."

"Did you know I was there?" I asked.

"I did," he said, and I could tell he hated admitting that. "I won't lie to you, Euphemia. I'll tell you everything."

"Now."

"What?"

"You'll tell me everything now, now that you know that I know what happened."

"I never wanted you to find out because I knew it would hurt you." he said. "I was sick at what'd I'd done."

"What you did just about killed me," I told him, well aware of the double meaning, and he was, too, if the look on his face was anything to go by.

"Effie," he said. "I saw her near you, and my brother's life was on the line...I don't even think it was a conscious thought. I just took her to the floor. And when the shooting stopped, I saw all the blood on her arm and panicked."

"And you ran out of the clubhouse with her in your arms, not giving me a single thought."

His eyes were burning with so much remorse and pain I couldn't even look at him. 

"Yes. And while I was waiting for Gel to be cleaned up, I was thinking no news was good news, that Gel had been the only one hurt, and I was making lists of people I needed to call -- forensic experts, crime scene analysts, witnesses."

"And then the calls started coming in about me. I'm so sorry they intruded on your list making."

"Euphemia, I make my living using words to my advantage, but there's nothing I can say that will excuse my carelessness and thoughtlessness with you. If I had the chance to do it all over, I'd make different choices, but I can't change what I did. I wish I could because the way I acted that day was not a reflection of how I feel for you."

"Oh, I think it was."

"God, no, it fucking wasn't, Effie." He'd vaulted off the couch and was now pacing in front of me. "I'd been consumed with the case for eighteen months, my brother was facing a capital murder charge and that's what was running through my mind when that first bullet came through the window."

"So, I'm after the case as a whole, your brother, Angelica...am I missing anyone else or can I safely claim fourth place in your list of priorities?"

"I hate this," he said and his voice was hollow. "I hate this because I hurt you, you don't believe how I feel about you, how much you actually mean to me, and we lost a year together because of me."

"It's hard to lose something that was just an illusion, that was never really there."

His head swung slowly toward me. "What we had was real, and it was no illusion. You are everything to me, Euphemia. You are everything to me, and I'm going to do whatever I have to in order to prove that to you."

"Well, let's start with you answering some other questions that I've been wondering about for the last year."

His face suddenly looked wary.

As well it should because I wanted more answers to things that had been bothering me even before the shooting, and I was going to get them.