WHY? — Curious To Death

“You are blaming me for her death!” Angel screamed at Jesse’s mother as she entered her office.

“Yes!” Mrs. Miles cried, wiping tears from her eyes.

“I didn’t raise her,” Angel defends, getting up to close the door.

“You were her friend! You could have stopped her!” Mrs. Miles fired back, sitting in one of two armchairs facing Angel’s desk.

“She is an adult. You don’t tell adults what to do!” Angel throws back, going back to her desk.

“She looked up to you! She did everything you did and told her to do. She would have followed you to hell!”

“You raised her for twenty years and knew nothing about your daughter. Jesse does what she wants. When she wants to, with whomever she felt like doing, whatever with!” Angel reminds her.

“You could have still stopped her from going. You knew Rachel was unstable!”

“You think I could stop death!” Angel shouts, her hands pointing to her chest.

“You could have demanded that she don’t go!”

Taking a deep breath, Angel paused, fighting to control her rage, then said, ‘What the heck, I am assumed guilty anyway.’

“Dana and I tried to convince her not to go,” Angel eased back to that fateful day. “But your daughter didn’t leave her curiosity behind as a child, nor did she learn how to add common sense to it!”

“Now you are blaming me!” Mrs. Miles shouted. “My baby was always curious. What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing, but I am sure that kitten’s mother wished she had taught her baby the dangers of being too curious after it died!”

“Curiosity killed my daughter?” She questioned.

“The three of us created Rachel and invested our last dollar in her modeling career,” Angel reminds her, her eyes on Dana sitting quietly behind her on the sofa near the door. “The moment she started making money because she didn’t want to pay us back, she threw us in the trash. She wanted nothing to do with us. She had no time to speak or accommodate us. I accepted my fate and loss, then moved on. So did Dana. Your daughter couldn’t.”

Silence held Mrs. Miles and Angel pour out more, “My grandfather always says, ‘when certain humans in your life refuse to give you a second out of their minute, then out of the blue they want to give you an hour out of their day. You need to ask, ‘WHY?’”

“I don’t understand,” Mrs. Miles said wiping away tears, leaning closer to Angel.

“When Rachel signed her ten-million-dollar contract, she changed her number and told us to leave her alone. We did as she asked,” Angel informs.

“Jesse said nothing to me about that,” Mrs. Miles searched her memory.

“Because you would blame and criticize her. Plus, we made a pact to let it go.”

Nodding in confusion, Angel elaborates, “Ten years later she buys our ticket to meet her on the perfect Caribbean Island, where it’s warm and beautiful. While it’s biting and cruelly cold in New York. I wanted to know why?”

“Did you ask her?”

“Oh yes,” Angel said. “She said I should come to find out.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I am not that curious,” Angel stated.

“Did any of you think that she might be reaching out to reconnect,” Mrs. Miles said in wonderment.

“Why?” Angel stressed. “For ten years, she blacklisted us. She burned that bridge after crossing it. Then out of the blue, she is giving us our dream vacation. I still wanted to know why?”

“You knew she was on drugs?”

“We noticed the change in her because we grew up together,” Angel recalls. “But her taking drugs, no, we couldn’t imagine that. She was a supermodel. Everything is hidden behind heavy make-up.”

“You could see that something was off?”

“We could see that something was different,” Angel explained.

“She intended to kill all three of you. Did you know that?”

“All I wanted to know, was ‘WHY. Why is she reaching out now and handing us our wish on a platter? That’s it!”

Turning to Dana who was too silent, Mrs. Miles asked, “Why didn’t you go?”

“Your daughter and I went to the airport,” Dana explained. “We checked in. But like Angel said, the ‘why’ was stuck in my brain. So, I just walked out.”

“She didn’t call me often, because I was always telling her that she was too curious,” regrets burned Mrs. Miles’s heart as tears flowed. “She wanted to know too much, and she refused to learn from a distance like you two,” her regrets spoke.

Dana and Angel nodded in agreement.

“Couldn’t you have knocked her out? Tied her up. Laced her food with something to put her to sleep?” Guilt and regrets asked.

Angel’s eyes met Dana’s and Angel said, “I didn’t to go to jail when I was young and had body parts that stood still. I refuse to go now that I am a tiny bit unyoung with body parts that need crutches to stand up!”

“What body parts you got that need crutches to stand up!” Dana demands easing towards her from the sofa behind Mrs. Miles.

Glaring at her Angel demands, “Focus on what’s going on now.”

“I am nine months older than you.” Dana went on. “If you have body parts that need crutches to stand up, what do I have?”

In frustration, Angel demands, “Right now, you need to focus on the rope around our necks!”

“I don’t have any body parts that need crutches to stand up,” Dana disputes looking down on herself while walking back to the sofa complaining.

Angel went on, eyeing Dana, “You had her for twenty years. You should have done something about that when she was a child. Yes, she was too damn curious, and we had to save her many times. Her curiosity almost got us killed too. More than once. If Dana and I didn’t have a reputation to, ‘see and blind, and hear and deaf,” your daughter’s curiosity would have ended our lives. Our friendship sat on the edge many times over the years because of her not minding her own damn business!”

“But why would Rachel want to murder all three of you?”

“I don’t know,” Angel said as pain touched her heart realizing that her lack of curiosity saved her life. “I still wanted to know why she was being nice to us suddenly. I guess I am curious too.

“Yeah,” Mrs. Miles said wiping away tears. “Curious enough to stay alive!”

“Damn right you are,” Angel said as Mrs. Miles got up to leave.

Halfway through the door she turned, wiped her eyes, blew her nose, and then asked, “What body parts do you have that need crutches to stand up?”

“I will leave that one to your imagination,” Angel said.

Mrs. Miles nods, walking away with regret and pain in her heart.

I am weird, but when someone doesn’t have the time to give me a second out of their minute, and then suddenly wants to give me an hour out of their day. I want to know ‘WHY?’

If your heart could speak, what would it say?

What My Heart Said . . . .

Thank you for reading this piece. I hope you enjoy it.