Bound to the Tracks of the Train (part 5/5) | Community | Jeff/Britta
Bound to the Tracks of the Train
Jeff/Britta
~26,400 words total
Jeff struggles with life post-grad. Britta feels suffocated by Greendale. Just because they're good-looking doesn't make them villains. Until it does.
Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V
The murder is on the news a few days later, but the media isn’t very sympathetic when a convicted child molester is killed, even in a violent and vicious way. The police have no leads and almost no evidence, they say, a few things they need to investigate further before releasing any details, but for the moment, anyway, it looks like Jeff and Britta are safe.
Britta has nightmares for the first week or so, wakes up at three in the morning in cold sweats and blankets tangled around her to the point of near-suffocation. Jeff takes sleeping pills before going to bed every night; he sleeps heavy and deep and dreamless. He doesn’t wake up when she does so sometimes she’ll shake him until he starts awake and he’ll look at her, bleary-eyed, and he’ll know; he rearranges the blankets for her and laces his fingers with hers and waits until she falls back asleep before closing his eyes.
Jeff follows the investigation through the news so she doesn’t have to. She doesn’t want to know any of the details so he fills her in on the bigger picture over dinner each night.
“We were careful,” he reassures over and over.
“But what if we weren’t?” she asks. “How do we protect ourselves?”
He shrugs. “We get married.”
She scrunches her face in disgust. “Very funny.”
“I’m serious. A husband and wife can’t legally testify against each other. So unless they’ve got some amazing evidence or a stellar witness, we’d be safe. For everything.”
Britta pushes her stir fry around her plate. They’ve eaten stir fry six times in the last two weeks. They had drinks at the Red Door four times. Britta brought Shirley a homemade cherry pie and Shirley accepted it with a tight smile on her face. They had pizza with Troy and Abed and Troy stared sadly at Britta the entire time. Annie hasn’t called or texted or emailed or Facebooked from Colorado Springs. Britta feels suffocated again.
“I’m not asking you to have a big wedding where you wear a white dress and we pick some Etta James song to dance to. I’m saying that we go to the courthouse and we get a marriage license and we keep ourselves safe.”
“I want to leave,” she decides. “We get married and we do one more thing and then we go.”
“Where?”
“Anywhere.”
They stare at each other across the table and Jeff nods, resignation in his eyes. “What’s the one more thing?” But he knows, just as she knows.
Thanksgiving is coming, only two weeks away. Shirley invited them to dinner at her house with her family-no in-laws this year-and Britta had given a noncommittal shrug. When Britta first brought up Fort Collins she had seen the look in Jeff’s eye, the look that said that if this was possible what else could be? Because it’s been almost a year and no word, no phone call or anything, and Christmas and Father’s Day and Jeff’s birthday have all come and gone.
“One for me and one for you,” she says.
“And then we go?”
“And then we go. New York, Chicago, the Arizona desert. We can leave the country. Anywhere but Colorado.”
He nods again. “But I don’t want to do it like... like that. It needs to look natural. He’s older now, it wouldn’t be unheard of.”
“However you want.”
“I’ll have to do some research.”
“Take your time.”
“We can be married by the end of the week. And we’ll probably have to stick around for the funeral.”
“Okay.” She watches as his hand disappears underneath the table and she knows it’s on his scar. His fingers drift there almost subconsciously more often than they used to, or maybe it’s just that now she knows what the scar is she notices it. It’s not a motion she understands because she doesn’t have a scar; hers are all internal and cause her to get the urge to do things like rip the hair out of her head or dig her nails into her arms and thighs until they bleed. She meant what she said, though, when she told him she’d be okay-the urges will go away and she will be faded lines of tissue, maybe white, maybe only visible when the light hits a certain way.
He chews his dinner slowly, jaw tight and working methodically. His face is ashen and there are dark circles underneath his eyes. Being a villain is not for the weak of heart. Jeff’s heart isn’t weak, it is strong, it pumps blood throughout his body and it allows him to love and to hate in equally fierce ways. But this is the time he needs for her to put his weight on her shoulders again, and she will, because it’s what she does, it’s what they do.
“I think,” she says, nudging his foot under the table, “that I want you to properly propose to me. Just for fun. Just to see how you’d do it.”
“I don’t have a ring,” he says, a slight smile appearing at the corner of his mouth.
“Doesn’t matter. You’d probably buy me a blood diamond or something.”
He rolls his eyes but stands up anyway. “Okay, so if it were anyone but you, I’d get down on one knee and say something about true love and forever.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means,” he says, dropping down to his knees in front of her, “that you would see through that in a heartbeat. You’re more of a pain in the ass than any other woman I’ve ever known.”
“Stellar proposal, really,” she drawls. “What I’ve been dreaming of all my life.”
“Shush. Now, as I was saying. With you. It would have to be something simple. No kiss cams, no asking the waiter to bring the ring to the table.” He presses a long kiss to her left knee and trails up, higher, higher, his mouth dragging along her jeans to her upper thigh. “Marry me.”
She swallows thickly. “You’ve thought about this?”
“No. I just… I know you.” He says it so simply that she knows it’s not a lie.
“Well,” she says, reaching out to run a hand through his hair. “Under normal circumstances, I’d say no. But I don’t really have a choice now, do I?”
“Hey.” His eyebrows furrow and he frowns. “You have a choice. You’ve always had a choice.”
“I know,” she says softly. “I know.”
She’s not sure how to articulate it, that it was never a choice for her, not really, because he was never a choice: just something that happened to her without her even realizing, something that happened over and over again until it was impossible for her to turn away.
She takes his hand and nudges him softly so they can both stand up. “Come on.”
“Where are we going?”
“To celebrate.”
She leads him to the bedroom and as he pulls her shirt over her head he asks, “So that’s a yes?” She can’t help but laugh, long and hard.
They buy two wedding bands, plain and white gold, to keep up appearances. They have more to lose than before. So they go to the courthouse in nice enough clothes: Jeff wears dress pants and a dress shirt with no jacket or tie and Britta wears the blue dress she wore to his graduation. But she insists they both wear sneakers because there’s a thin line between taking this very seriously and taking this as a joke and Britta wants to stay firmly on the joke side of the line. She never thought she’d be getting married and even though it doesn’t mean anything, she needs to keep reminding herself of that because there are words like vows and bride that are throwing her off her game.
They convince two secretaries to give up their lunch breaks to serve as witnesses with a sob story of how their friends and families don’t approve of their relationship and with a baby on the way, it’s very important for them to get married as soon as possible. Britta adds this last part in with a sheepish smile and hand on her stomach and Jeff’s mouth opens and closes a few times before nodding. The secretaries oooh and aaah over the two of them and Jeff and Britta exchange a discrete eye roll on the way to the judge.
It’s a short and impersonal ceremony, just how Britta wants it, and the band on her finger feels heavy with secrets and lies and choices. When they kiss Jeff traces the letters ok into her hip and when she pulls back she nods, smiling. The secretaries cheer and insist on taking a picture of them.
“Something we can give the kids,” Jeff says, a hand on the small of her back.
Britta smiles the fakest, cheesiest grin she can and when they bound down the steps back to the parking lot, she feels like they already got away with something.
Jeff does the research again, downloading IP-rerouting software to mask his searches and running ideas by Britta as she starts packing up the essentials. She finds an old atlas in the back of her closet and runs her fingers along lines of highways and rivers and she makes lists of places and routes.
“Have you ever been to London?” she asks. “What about Amsterdam?”
He shakes his head and listens with a small smile on his face as she prattles on about the countries and cities she’s been to, far away from Greendale and Colorado and even America. “We have the money,” she reminds him. “There’s so much more out there than this.”
They spend three weeks trailing William Winger and Willy Jr. so they can scope out patterns. Willy works at a Best Buy in Riverside Falls and William is apparently retired; he doesn’t leave the house in any sort of discernible regularity.
(“You never asked him what he did for a living?” Britta asks as they crouch low in the front seats of her car, parked in the back corner of William’s parking lot.
“When I was a kid his job was drinking scotch and hitting my mom, so no, I didn’t ask him how his career worked out for him,” Jeff snaps back.)
Eventually they learn Willy’s work schedule, but it takes a lot of hanging out in the car drinking sodas out of fast food cups and sharing large fries to get there. Each time William steps outside Jeff’s knuckles clench white and the car goes silent until William is out of sight.
“What’s it like?” Jeff asks one day as William gets in his car and drives away. “What’s it like when you kill them? Do you feel better?”
Britta thinks carefully as she crews a French fry. “You do and you don’t. I feel better because I’m the one who did it, you know? I got him before he could get me again. But I still had to do it. It’s not necessarily a good feeling.”
“I don’t know what’s worse: that he left me as a kid or that he met me as an adult and still didn’t want anything to do with me.”
“He’s an asshole,” Britta says with a sneer. “I know I pushed you to confront him, but that was only because I thought it would help. I would have told him to fuck off if I were you. Although, what you did was probably more effective than that.”
“How did your dad die?”
“Heart attack. My mother likes to tell me he died of grief after I dropped out of high school and ran away. I’m sure the alcohol and cigars and constant yelling had nothing to do with it.”
“Do you talk to her?”
“Nah. She calls me every once in a while to tell remind me what a disappointment I am and how my brothers are doing so much more with their lives.”
“Hmm. My mom still thinks I’m a lawyer.”
“Did you tell her about meeting your dad?”
“I gave her some vague details.”
“She’s my mother-in-law now. Is that weird to you? It’s weird to me. Are you going to introduce me to her as your wife?”
“I guess.”
“It’ll be good to see her at least once before we leave, right?”
“Yeah. She’ll come to the funeral. Stroke is how I want to do it, I think.”
“Okay,” she says gently. “Do you know how-?”
“Air embolism,” he interrupts. “You inject a syringe full of air into a vein and the air bubble blocks blood from traveling to the heart.”
“And it’s undetectable?”
“Should be. Just gotta find the right place to stick the syringe.”
She looks at the spot where William’s car was parked. “Pick a day and I’m there.”
He’s staring at the spot, too, even when his hand moves to rest on her knee. “Next Wednesday.”
Doing it the day before Thanksgiving ensures a few things: one, they won’t have to go to Shirley’s for dinner and suffer more of the group’s disappointed looks; two, there is a sense of symmetry and neatness about doing it a year after that first day; three, Willy will be at work late, preparing for Black Friday madness.
Their clothes and important things are already packed and ready to go if necessary. They’ve unearthed all the hidden money and there’s enough to get them through for a while, maybe buy them some false identification if it comes to that. Britta spends a long time piling it all in a duffel bag, making sure it’s all there, every last dollar, because it is important, it is their lifeline, it is what will get them out.
They wake up early on Wednesday morning out of nerves, and Jeff is quiet and resolute as they lay in bed and the sunrise shoots weakly through the blinds.
“Let’s go somewhere warm,” Britta says. She pulls the blankets up over both of their heads so they’re cocooned underneath. Somewhere, some long time ago, Troy and Abed built blanket fort after blanket fort, lived in a blanket fort, turned the entire school into a blanket fort. “Somewhere there’s a beach and warm sand and we can sit by the ocean.”
“Only if you wear a bikini,” he says with a smirk, his fingers coming up to touch her face.
She rolls her eyes. “We’re not having beach sex, though. Sand takes forever to get out of places and it’s never comfortable.”
“What about now?” he asks. His eyes are wide and there’s something hiding behind them. He’s scared, she knows this, but he’ll never tell her.
“We’re not on a beach yet.” She reaches down to stroke his cock and he closes his eyes and presses his face into the crook of her neck.
“Please,” he gasps and Jeff Winger does not beg, does not say please, does not ask for anything. He gives and he takes but he’ll be damned if he ever looks even the littlest bit desperate.
But today is different, today is his day, today is the day they eliminate the source of his Jeffness. The first step to repair, as Britta learned in her psych class, is self-direction: optimizing autonomy and independence and control over yourself and your resources. According to Britta, that means destroying what made you broken in the first place, preferably in a manner of your own choosing. Britta will never be a psychologist.
She kisses him and then climbs over him and fucks him, soft and a little sweet. He gasps and moans and chants her name over and over like a prayer. His nails dig into her sides as if he’s trying to anchor himself to her. He comes with his mouth on hers, his tongue against hers, his wedding ring searing her like hot coal.
He flips them over and hovers over her body, kisses from her mouth to her hipbones with a look of determined concentration. He sucks on her clit and strokes the skin of her stomach as she bucks up and her legs shake with her orgasm. He kisses his way back up and she holds him against her, his head over her heart, as she regains her breath. She feels her heart slow and she wipes sweat from his forehead and for a few more minutes she lets them just be.
Willy’s working the 11-7 shift. He leaves the house at 10:42 and won’t be home until at least 7:25. They have plenty of time. Jeff can’t stomach breakfast so Britta makes a smoothie for herself and brews him a cup of strong coffee. “You need something,” she says, handing him the mug.
He wraps his hands around it and nods. He drinks the whole thing too fast.
Britta drives and when they pull into the parking lot-not the back corner spot they usually occupy, but a regular, close spot-she turns to Jeff. “You don’t have to do this, you know. We can go home and get all the stuff and leave now. Or, we don’t even have to leave, we can stay and have dinner at Shirley’s tomorrow. Whatever you want to do.”
“Stop,” he says. “I appreciate this but we both know this is what I have to do. This is the plan and this is the way it has to be.”
“Okay,” she says. She thinks there’s something else she should tell him but she’s not sure what it is. She’s worried that he’s going to back out while they’re in there, and she has no right or reason to think this because she should trust him completely (“This only works if we’re a team,” he told her) but this is his dad, not some stranger who hurt him one time twenty years ago.
“You’re my best friend,” she says finally. “Just... know that. Before we go in there.”
“Gettin’ sappy on me, huh, Perry?” he smirks, a silent thank you in his words.
William answers the door with a look of surprise. “Jeff. What are you doing here?”
“Can we come in?” Jeff asks. His voice is even and calm.
“Sure. Have a seat.” William notices the rings on their fingers and he looks at Britta, who’s wearing the purple wig again, but doesn’t say anything.
“Actually, you sit. We’re going to stand,” Jeff says.
“What’s this about?”
Jeff nods at Britta and she takes the gun out of her purse and holds it on William. “It’s about a lot of things,” Jeff says.
William makes a move to stand up but Britta shakes her head. “Don’t.”
“This is ridiculous. You’re going to kill me?”
“Not her,” Jeff says. “Me.” He takes the syringe out of his jacket pocket and holds it up to the light as if inspecting it. “Just a simple stroke. And who won’t believe it? All those years of drinking probably haven’t been good on the ticker. You’re up there in age, Dad.”
William lets out a strangled laugh. “Jesus, Jeff. I was a shit dad to you. We already established that. But don’t you think this is taking it a little far?”
Jeff shrugs. “Maybe.”
Britta stays quiet and lets Jeff handle the situation. This is Jeff in control, in his element. It’s like at the bank, when she froze up and he knew exactly what to do. He’s good at this, this composed and cold method of crime. She keeps her finger on the trigger knowing she won’t need it. It’s a precaution only. William won’t go quietly, but she has no doubt Jeff can overpower him if it comes to that.
“So you’re going to kill me and then what? What happens when your brother gets home?”
“Luckily you won’t have to worry about that.”
Jeff pins his father to the couch, his thighs holding down William’s arms. Jeff is strong, Britta knows this, but he must be stronger than he lets on because William thrashes and struggles but he cannot get free. Jeff pushes his head back into the couch and injects the syringe into his neck.
William starts gasping for air and trying to form words and Britta closes her eyes because she can’t watch. This is how her father died, not in the same situation, not by the hand of his child or anyone, a heart attack instead of a stroke, but it’s similar enough. Britta had been in Paris at the time, sleeping on some guy’s couch with her ex-boyfriend Jean and she got a series of confusing phone calls from her mother and brothers trying to track her down. She hadn’t asked for the details because she didn’t want them but now they’re all there in front of her and she can’t bear to see them after all these years.
Finally, the noises stop and Britta opens one eye. Jeff is standing now, too, staring at William’s lifeless body. “Okay,” he says. “Let’s get out of here.”
Britta uses her jacket sleeve to open and close the door. They get in the car and she starts to drive away, neither of them saying anything. The silence is a bit deafening but she decides to let him be the one to speak; if he wants to talk he will and if he doesn’t that’s fine, too.
“Liquor store,” he says when they’re halfway home.
She nods and goes to the one a few blocks from her apartment. He reaches in his pocket for his wallet and pulls some bills out. “Here... eighty bucks. Get anything you can. Something strong and then whatever you want. Please.”
Britta has seen Jeff in various states of drunkenness. But after he’s polished off half the bottle of whiskey and he’s slurring his words so badly she can barely understand him, she’s positive this is the drunkest she’s ever seen him.
She had two shots of vodka to calm her nerves but now she’s sitting with him on the couch as he drinks. He’s slumped into her and she’s stroking his hair. He keeps talking about his dad, about what it was like before and after he left. She’s never heard him say so much about himself in all the years she’s known him.
“Do you regret it?” Britta asks.
“No,” he says. “I fucking hate him, Britta. I hate him so much. I’m glad he’s dead. I’m glad I killed him.”
She kisses the top of his head. “Jeff, I think you should go to bed. We’re going to have a lot to do tomorrow.”
He tries to sit up but can’t so she gently lays him down on the couch. “I’ll get you a glass of water and then I’ll help you to bed, okay?”
“Mmmhmm,” he murmurs.
She sets the glass of water on the nightstand and goes back to the living room. It’s a struggle, but she manages to get him to bed where she takes off his jeans and shirt and tucks him under the covers. She helps him drink some water and wipes up what doesn’t make it into his mouth.
“Go to sleep, okay?”
“Britta,” he says as he pulls the blanket up to his chin, “you’re the only one who’s never left. They all leave, Britta. You don’t.”
She smiles sadly and leans down to kiss his cheek. “I know, Jeff. Because you’re the only one who’s never left me.”
She goes back to the living room to wait for the call. It comes in at almost ten-thirty, Willy’s name flashing on the screen of Jeff’s phone. He’s hysterical, of course, just like she knew he would be. He’s a sweet kid who doesn’t really deserve to be caught up in this mess. “They say a stroke,” he manages to get out. “Where’s Jeff?”
“He’s sleeping,” Britta says. “He wasn’t feeling well, so he took some sleeping pills. I’ll tell him, Willy.”
He promises to call again in the morning and Britta texts Shirley, Jeff’s dad died. We’re going to spend tomorrow with his brother. Then she crawls into bed and wraps Jeff’s arms around her and counts to five hundred before she falls asleep, William Winger’s dead face behind her eyelids.
The wake is on Saturday. There aren’t a lot of people there at all: a few of Willy’s co-workers, some of his teachers and classmates from high school, a handful of neighbors, and the study group. Jeff and Britta did most of the planning because Willy was crying too hard to make any decisions himself. Britta remembers psychoanalyzing him a year ago; she gets the urge for about a second but then just hugs him instead.
Britta’s talking to the elderly woman who lives next door to William when she sees the group. They walk into the funeral home together like one big mass: ShirleyAnnieAbedTroy. Britta catches Shirley’s eye and excuses herself from Mrs. Henson to go meet them.
“How’s Jeff?” Shirley asks as she hugs Britta.
“He’s okay,” Britta replies solemnly. She hugs each of them in turn and by the time she pulls away from Abed, Jeff is behind her, being enveloped by Shirley.
“Oh, Jeffrey, I’m so sorry.”
It’s when Jeff turns to hug Annie does Shirley notice the ring on his finger. She turns immediately to Britta and grabs her left hand. “What’s this?”
“It’s uh...” Britta stammers.
“Are you guys married?” Troy exclaims.
Even Abed’s eyes are wide and Annie breaks away from Jeff to stare at their hands. “What? When?” she asks.
“This is not the time or the place to talk about this,” Jeff says lowly. “It’s not a big deal. It was a courthouse wedding and it’s none of your business. So either drop it or leave.”
“But-” Annie starts.
“This is my father’s wake. We are not having this conversation here. Drop it.” He looks sort of scary and deranged and Annie visibly shrinks back. Troy moves forward, just an inch, and Britta steps in and places a hand on Jeff’s arm.
“Come on,” she says.
With one final look to their rings, Annie leads the group up to the front of the room to the casket. It’s closed, mostly because Jeff insisted and Willy wasn’t in any sort of state to argue, and Britta is glad because she’s had enough of William’s dead face for her lifetime.
Jeff stares at the carpet and takes a few deep breaths. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. This is… not an easy situation. I should have remembered the rings, we should have taken them off.”
“Look, I’m going to talk to my mom alone when she gets here. Hopefully it’ll go better than that did.”
She nods. “Okay. You should probably go make the rounds. You need to thanks all these people for coming. And make sure your brother’s okay, if you get a chance?”
“Yeah. Be here in case I need you?”
“Of course. I’m just going to run to the bathroom real quick.”
He squeezes her hand before he walks away. She locks herself in the bathroom and sits on the counter for a few minutes, inhaling the overpowering scent of flowers; it’s enough to make her nauseous, even though she’s already feeling slightly so. She knew this would happen but Jeff had been right when he said it would look a thousand times more suspicious if there was a record of their wedding but no one else knew.
With a deep breath and a splash of cold water on her face, she yanks the bathroom door open and runs straight into someone. “Oh, sorry,” she says absently, but two hands grip her arms and she looks up and it’s Abed.
“Hi, Britta,” he says.
“Where’s everyone else?” she asks.
He points down the hall to the main room. “I told them I had to go to the bathroom. I’ve been looking for you.”
She raises a hand tiredly. “You can spare me the lecture, Abed. I’ve heard it all before but I’m a big girl and I can take care of myself.”
“You got married for protection, didn’t you?” he asks.
She freezes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“It makes sense. You and Jeff don’t believe in marriage but you did it anyway, and it wasn’t to prove a point because no one else was around and you two like to make spectacles of yourselves. Also you didn’t invite us, which I think is kind of rude, and you didn’t prepare Troy and Annie for the news at all. They’re both going to be upset because they say they’re over you and Jeff respectively, but I don’t think they really are.”
Britta doesn’t say anything, just folds her arms over her chest and looks down at her shoes.
“I won’t tell anyone,” Abed continues. “But I know I’m right and I hope that whatever you two did, you don’t get caught. It’s probably better if you don’t tell me, because anyone who knows you is going to come to us first for answers. If I don’t know anything then I can’t say anything.”
His face is neutral as always but when Britta looks up at him she feels a knot in her throat and she swallows it down. “Abed, I need you to do something for me, okay?” She takes his hands in hers. “If Jeff and I aren’t around, you have to keep everyone together. And you have to make sure they know we love them. And you need to tell Annie and Troy... tell them that we’re sorry and we didn’t mean to hurt them. And Shirley, tell Shirley, too. Please, Abed.”
He nods and she leans into him, wraps her arms around his middle. His hand comes up to pat her on the back reassuringly. “I love you,” she says as she pulls away. “You should probably go back before they come looking for you.”
“Okay.” He gives her a small smile and walks back to the main room. She reaches into her purse and pulls out a pack of nicotine gum and chews two pieces at once.
There are eight people at the funeral. It’s sort of sad and pathetic but Britta looks between Jeff and Willy and sees what horrible, awful things William Winger did to both of his sons and isn’t too surprised. It’s a quick graveside service with a reverend saying generic things about death and loss. Jeff holds Britta’s hand during the entire thing, his thumb stroking the round edges of her wedding ring. Shirley watches.
Jeff’s mother is a tough but sweet woman who is no taller than Britta. She pulls Britta in close and thanks her for being good to Jeff. She doesn’t seem upset by their marriage; it seems that she’s used to Jeff keeping things from her, and she admires the band on Britta’s finger with delight. It’s the first time Britta feels guilty about the things she’s done, because Doreen Winger loves her son in a way Britta’s own mother never loved her. Britta feels responsible, like she’s somehow led Jeff on this wrong path, that if she had told Jeff he was being stupid and pushed him to get a job, he would have been fine.
“He doesn’t call or visit much,” Doreen tells Britta as Jeff thanks the reverend for the service. “I know he’s busy with work and the two of you are probably enjoying your time together as newlyweds. But you’ll remind him not to forget about his mother, won’t you? And when this all settles a bit we can celebrate you joining the family.”
Britta nods and forces a smile. “Of course.”
Doreen pats Britta’s arm before she walks away, over to her son. Britta watches as she frames Jeff’s face with her hands and says something quietly. Jeff nods solemnly and hugs his mother, pressing a kiss to the top of her head.
“He’ll be okay.” Britta turns around to find Shirley behind her. “It’ll be hard, but he’ll make it.”
“Yeah. Thanks for being here for him.”
Shirley nods. “I hope you know we just want what’s best for you.”
“I know. I appreciate it.”
With a smile, Shirley leans in for a hug. “You take care of yourself, okay? Him, too.”
“We should stay,” Britta says in the car on the way home, “for a few more weeks. Have dinner with your mother. Maybe Christmas.”
“She likes you,” Jeff says.
“She shouldn’t,” Britta mutters, facing the window.
It’s a week and a half later when it happens.
Jeff is on laundry duty and he left with a basket to take the towels out of the dryer in the basement. Britta’s making lunch, flipping grilled cheese sandwiches and mixing lemonade from a can. She hears Jeff’s phone vibrate in the living room but she ignores it until her own phone rings from its place on the kitchen table. She doesn’t recognize the number but she answers anyway.
“Britta Winger?” It’s a man’s voice, deep and unfamiliar.
“Perry,” she corrects automatically. “Uh, I mean, Perry-Winger. Britta Perry-Winger.”
“Ms. Perry-Winger, my name is Detective Willick with the Riverside Falls Police Department. I’m calling about your father-in-law, William Winger?”
Britta’s tongue is stuck to the roof of her mouth but she manages to choke out a “Yes?”
“We’re reevaluating his death. Your brother-in-law seemed to find some evidence in the house that makes us suspect foul play.”
“Evidence?”
“We can’t disclose that information at the moment, but we have linked it to two other crimes in the area. Do you know if your father-in-law had any connection to a man named Dennis Portsmith? He lived in Fort Collins.”
“No. We’re not-my husband wasn’t close with his father.”
It’s in the middle of this sentence that Jeff comes back. He freezes in the doorway and Britta motions wildly with her free hand. He takes the basket of clean, folded towels straight into the bedroom and Britta can hear him opening drawers.
“Noted. We just wanted to contact you to let you know this is an ongoing investigation and we’ll be in touch if we have any more information.”
“Yes. Okay. Thank you.”
They leave in a flurry, throwing bags and the cat carrier into the back of the Lexus. Britta carefully wraps the wig in a plastic bag and shoves it to the bottom of the trunk. They’re supposed to have dinner that night with Doreen but Jeff calls to cancel, tells her Britta has the flu. Before he hangs up he tells her he loves her and it’s with a heavy voice.
“Give me your phone,” he tells Britta. She obliges and he tosses them both out the window, into the parking lot of a convenience store.
Britta watches as they drive through town, sees the buildings and the streets and the people she used to pass every day on her way to school. She tries to memorize them, their color and their shape and their faces, because she knows that she very well may never see them again. The car in front of them has a Colorado license plate, as does the one behind them, and in a few hours, the familiar outlines of the Rockies will be an anomaly.
She punches the button to roll down the window, letting in frigid and dry December air. It instantly smacks her across the face, makes the hairs inside her nose feel funny, and she closes her eyes and turns to greet it.
“What the hell are you doing? It’s freezing outside,” Jeff says over the noise.
She looks at him. Her hair whips around her head and she tries in vain to tuck it neatly behind her ears. “Just give me a minute, okay?” She takes off her boots and shrugs out of her jacket. Goosebumps begin to break out over her skin and her teeth begin to chatter. But it feels good because it feels; the fact that she is still affected by such a thing as the cold comforts her.
Jeff stops the car at a red light and Britta closes the window. He watches as she combs out the knots in her hair. “You good?”
She leans up to kiss his cheek and then rests her chin on his shoulder. “I’m good. Are you good?”
“Yeah.” The light turns green and he starts to drive and Britta pulls away. “I love you, you know. I know I said I didn’t and that I couldn’t, but I do. The last few months, I…”
“I know,” she says with a smile. “I know.”
It’s quiet now, now that the windows are closed. The radio isn’t on and the hum of the engine and the cat scratching at the sides of the carrying case are the only noises Britta can hear. It’s a nice silence though, a comfortable silence, and she thinks she can go a thousand miles like this.
“So where to?” Jeff asks. They’re a block away from the highway on-ramp: they can go up, down, left, or right.
“South,” Britta says, propping her feet up on the dashboard. “Let’s go get drunk on margaritas.”
“South it is.” He gets on the highway and Britta watches in the mirror as Greendale gets farther and farther away.
“Hey,” he says seriously. “It’s going to be a long time before we can go back, if we can ever go back. It’s me and you from here on out. You’re okay with that, right?”
His eyes are on the road but she reaches over to tug his right hand off the steering wheel. She wraps both of hers around it; his hands are two, three times the size of hers and that’s always made her feel safe somehow, and then bad for feeling safe, and then bad for feeling bad. It’s a good metaphor for her entire relationship with him, she thinks.
Their friends are out there, going about their days. Shirley is at the sandwich shop, fresh off the lunchtime rush. She’s wiping counters or baking cookies. She checks her phone every so often to make sure her family is safe and sound. At the end of the day, she’ll close up shop and go home and kiss them all before tucking them into bed and falling asleep next to her husband, content. Annie is in class, or studying in the library. She has a cup of coffee in front of her, probably, books spread open and highlighters lined up neatly. Her notes are color-coded and she’ll pass whatever test she’s studying for no problem. Tonight, she’ll Skype with Troy and Abed while in her pajamas. Troy is at afternoon football practice, one more semester of play in before he graduates. He calls out plays and tells his teammates they’re nailing every move. His job is to boost morale, something he does so very well, and after practice he’ll down a Gatorade (purple, of course) and stop by Shirley’s for a quick dinner and catch-up. Abed is also in class but he knows. He gets a feeling, an inkling, and when class is over he’ll call one of their cell phones but there will be no answer. But for now he makes a timeline of the incidents and he strings everything together. He uses the third-to-last page of his notebook. He’ll keep the secret even from Troy. Pierce beat them to someplace warm. He lays in a lounge chair with zinc oxide on his nose, calling out to female passers-by. Gilbert is there, maybe for the stretch between Thanksgiving and Christmas. They drink tall, smooth cocktails that go down like juice and Pierce introduces the bartender to his brother at least five times. Jeff’s mother is thinking about them, her son and her daughter-in-law, and she loves them both. Britta’s mother is not thinking about her daughter and doesn’t know she even has a son-in-law. Maybe she loves Britta in her own way, but it’s never been the way that Britta needed to be loved.
Britta will miss them, will feel their absence every day. But she is now something that they are not because she has seen and done things that they have not seen or done. And it’s okay to love people of whom we need to let go, she decides. It’s okay to love people from afar, to love people who will never quite understand the things that make us tick.
“Me and you from here on out,” Britta repeats, squeezing Jeff’s hand between her own. “I’m more than okay with that.”
Jeff smiles and speeds up a little. The car flies down the highway and they’re gone.
Jeff/Britta
~26,400 words total
Jeff struggles with life post-grad. Britta feels suffocated by Greendale. Just because they're good-looking doesn't make them villains. Until it does.
Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V
The murder is on the news a few days later, but the media isn’t very sympathetic when a convicted child molester is killed, even in a violent and vicious way. The police have no leads and almost no evidence, they say, a few things they need to investigate further before releasing any details, but for the moment, anyway, it looks like Jeff and Britta are safe.
Britta has nightmares for the first week or so, wakes up at three in the morning in cold sweats and blankets tangled around her to the point of near-suffocation. Jeff takes sleeping pills before going to bed every night; he sleeps heavy and deep and dreamless. He doesn’t wake up when she does so sometimes she’ll shake him until he starts awake and he’ll look at her, bleary-eyed, and he’ll know; he rearranges the blankets for her and laces his fingers with hers and waits until she falls back asleep before closing his eyes.
Jeff follows the investigation through the news so she doesn’t have to. She doesn’t want to know any of the details so he fills her in on the bigger picture over dinner each night.
“We were careful,” he reassures over and over.
“But what if we weren’t?” she asks. “How do we protect ourselves?”
He shrugs. “We get married.”
She scrunches her face in disgust. “Very funny.”
“I’m serious. A husband and wife can’t legally testify against each other. So unless they’ve got some amazing evidence or a stellar witness, we’d be safe. For everything.”
Britta pushes her stir fry around her plate. They’ve eaten stir fry six times in the last two weeks. They had drinks at the Red Door four times. Britta brought Shirley a homemade cherry pie and Shirley accepted it with a tight smile on her face. They had pizza with Troy and Abed and Troy stared sadly at Britta the entire time. Annie hasn’t called or texted or emailed or Facebooked from Colorado Springs. Britta feels suffocated again.
“I’m not asking you to have a big wedding where you wear a white dress and we pick some Etta James song to dance to. I’m saying that we go to the courthouse and we get a marriage license and we keep ourselves safe.”
“I want to leave,” she decides. “We get married and we do one more thing and then we go.”
“Where?”
“Anywhere.”
They stare at each other across the table and Jeff nods, resignation in his eyes. “What’s the one more thing?” But he knows, just as she knows.
Thanksgiving is coming, only two weeks away. Shirley invited them to dinner at her house with her family-no in-laws this year-and Britta had given a noncommittal shrug. When Britta first brought up Fort Collins she had seen the look in Jeff’s eye, the look that said that if this was possible what else could be? Because it’s been almost a year and no word, no phone call or anything, and Christmas and Father’s Day and Jeff’s birthday have all come and gone.
“One for me and one for you,” she says.
“And then we go?”
“And then we go. New York, Chicago, the Arizona desert. We can leave the country. Anywhere but Colorado.”
He nods again. “But I don’t want to do it like... like that. It needs to look natural. He’s older now, it wouldn’t be unheard of.”
“However you want.”
“I’ll have to do some research.”
“Take your time.”
“We can be married by the end of the week. And we’ll probably have to stick around for the funeral.”
“Okay.” She watches as his hand disappears underneath the table and she knows it’s on his scar. His fingers drift there almost subconsciously more often than they used to, or maybe it’s just that now she knows what the scar is she notices it. It’s not a motion she understands because she doesn’t have a scar; hers are all internal and cause her to get the urge to do things like rip the hair out of her head or dig her nails into her arms and thighs until they bleed. She meant what she said, though, when she told him she’d be okay-the urges will go away and she will be faded lines of tissue, maybe white, maybe only visible when the light hits a certain way.
He chews his dinner slowly, jaw tight and working methodically. His face is ashen and there are dark circles underneath his eyes. Being a villain is not for the weak of heart. Jeff’s heart isn’t weak, it is strong, it pumps blood throughout his body and it allows him to love and to hate in equally fierce ways. But this is the time he needs for her to put his weight on her shoulders again, and she will, because it’s what she does, it’s what they do.
“I think,” she says, nudging his foot under the table, “that I want you to properly propose to me. Just for fun. Just to see how you’d do it.”
“I don’t have a ring,” he says, a slight smile appearing at the corner of his mouth.
“Doesn’t matter. You’d probably buy me a blood diamond or something.”
He rolls his eyes but stands up anyway. “Okay, so if it were anyone but you, I’d get down on one knee and say something about true love and forever.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means,” he says, dropping down to his knees in front of her, “that you would see through that in a heartbeat. You’re more of a pain in the ass than any other woman I’ve ever known.”
“Stellar proposal, really,” she drawls. “What I’ve been dreaming of all my life.”
“Shush. Now, as I was saying. With you. It would have to be something simple. No kiss cams, no asking the waiter to bring the ring to the table.” He presses a long kiss to her left knee and trails up, higher, higher, his mouth dragging along her jeans to her upper thigh. “Marry me.”
She swallows thickly. “You’ve thought about this?”
“No. I just… I know you.” He says it so simply that she knows it’s not a lie.
“Well,” she says, reaching out to run a hand through his hair. “Under normal circumstances, I’d say no. But I don’t really have a choice now, do I?”
“Hey.” His eyebrows furrow and he frowns. “You have a choice. You’ve always had a choice.”
“I know,” she says softly. “I know.”
She’s not sure how to articulate it, that it was never a choice for her, not really, because he was never a choice: just something that happened to her without her even realizing, something that happened over and over again until it was impossible for her to turn away.
She takes his hand and nudges him softly so they can both stand up. “Come on.”
“Where are we going?”
“To celebrate.”
She leads him to the bedroom and as he pulls her shirt over her head he asks, “So that’s a yes?” She can’t help but laugh, long and hard.
They buy two wedding bands, plain and white gold, to keep up appearances. They have more to lose than before. So they go to the courthouse in nice enough clothes: Jeff wears dress pants and a dress shirt with no jacket or tie and Britta wears the blue dress she wore to his graduation. But she insists they both wear sneakers because there’s a thin line between taking this very seriously and taking this as a joke and Britta wants to stay firmly on the joke side of the line. She never thought she’d be getting married and even though it doesn’t mean anything, she needs to keep reminding herself of that because there are words like vows and bride that are throwing her off her game.
They convince two secretaries to give up their lunch breaks to serve as witnesses with a sob story of how their friends and families don’t approve of their relationship and with a baby on the way, it’s very important for them to get married as soon as possible. Britta adds this last part in with a sheepish smile and hand on her stomach and Jeff’s mouth opens and closes a few times before nodding. The secretaries oooh and aaah over the two of them and Jeff and Britta exchange a discrete eye roll on the way to the judge.
It’s a short and impersonal ceremony, just how Britta wants it, and the band on her finger feels heavy with secrets and lies and choices. When they kiss Jeff traces the letters ok into her hip and when she pulls back she nods, smiling. The secretaries cheer and insist on taking a picture of them.
“Something we can give the kids,” Jeff says, a hand on the small of her back.
Britta smiles the fakest, cheesiest grin she can and when they bound down the steps back to the parking lot, she feels like they already got away with something.
Jeff does the research again, downloading IP-rerouting software to mask his searches and running ideas by Britta as she starts packing up the essentials. She finds an old atlas in the back of her closet and runs her fingers along lines of highways and rivers and she makes lists of places and routes.
“Have you ever been to London?” she asks. “What about Amsterdam?”
He shakes his head and listens with a small smile on his face as she prattles on about the countries and cities she’s been to, far away from Greendale and Colorado and even America. “We have the money,” she reminds him. “There’s so much more out there than this.”
They spend three weeks trailing William Winger and Willy Jr. so they can scope out patterns. Willy works at a Best Buy in Riverside Falls and William is apparently retired; he doesn’t leave the house in any sort of discernible regularity.
(“You never asked him what he did for a living?” Britta asks as they crouch low in the front seats of her car, parked in the back corner of William’s parking lot.
“When I was a kid his job was drinking scotch and hitting my mom, so no, I didn’t ask him how his career worked out for him,” Jeff snaps back.)
Eventually they learn Willy’s work schedule, but it takes a lot of hanging out in the car drinking sodas out of fast food cups and sharing large fries to get there. Each time William steps outside Jeff’s knuckles clench white and the car goes silent until William is out of sight.
“What’s it like?” Jeff asks one day as William gets in his car and drives away. “What’s it like when you kill them? Do you feel better?”
Britta thinks carefully as she crews a French fry. “You do and you don’t. I feel better because I’m the one who did it, you know? I got him before he could get me again. But I still had to do it. It’s not necessarily a good feeling.”
“I don’t know what’s worse: that he left me as a kid or that he met me as an adult and still didn’t want anything to do with me.”
“He’s an asshole,” Britta says with a sneer. “I know I pushed you to confront him, but that was only because I thought it would help. I would have told him to fuck off if I were you. Although, what you did was probably more effective than that.”
“How did your dad die?”
“Heart attack. My mother likes to tell me he died of grief after I dropped out of high school and ran away. I’m sure the alcohol and cigars and constant yelling had nothing to do with it.”
“Do you talk to her?”
“Nah. She calls me every once in a while to tell remind me what a disappointment I am and how my brothers are doing so much more with their lives.”
“Hmm. My mom still thinks I’m a lawyer.”
“Did you tell her about meeting your dad?”
“I gave her some vague details.”
“She’s my mother-in-law now. Is that weird to you? It’s weird to me. Are you going to introduce me to her as your wife?”
“I guess.”
“It’ll be good to see her at least once before we leave, right?”
“Yeah. She’ll come to the funeral. Stroke is how I want to do it, I think.”
“Okay,” she says gently. “Do you know how-?”
“Air embolism,” he interrupts. “You inject a syringe full of air into a vein and the air bubble blocks blood from traveling to the heart.”
“And it’s undetectable?”
“Should be. Just gotta find the right place to stick the syringe.”
She looks at the spot where William’s car was parked. “Pick a day and I’m there.”
He’s staring at the spot, too, even when his hand moves to rest on her knee. “Next Wednesday.”
Doing it the day before Thanksgiving ensures a few things: one, they won’t have to go to Shirley’s for dinner and suffer more of the group’s disappointed looks; two, there is a sense of symmetry and neatness about doing it a year after that first day; three, Willy will be at work late, preparing for Black Friday madness.
Their clothes and important things are already packed and ready to go if necessary. They’ve unearthed all the hidden money and there’s enough to get them through for a while, maybe buy them some false identification if it comes to that. Britta spends a long time piling it all in a duffel bag, making sure it’s all there, every last dollar, because it is important, it is their lifeline, it is what will get them out.
They wake up early on Wednesday morning out of nerves, and Jeff is quiet and resolute as they lay in bed and the sunrise shoots weakly through the blinds.
“Let’s go somewhere warm,” Britta says. She pulls the blankets up over both of their heads so they’re cocooned underneath. Somewhere, some long time ago, Troy and Abed built blanket fort after blanket fort, lived in a blanket fort, turned the entire school into a blanket fort. “Somewhere there’s a beach and warm sand and we can sit by the ocean.”
“Only if you wear a bikini,” he says with a smirk, his fingers coming up to touch her face.
She rolls her eyes. “We’re not having beach sex, though. Sand takes forever to get out of places and it’s never comfortable.”
“What about now?” he asks. His eyes are wide and there’s something hiding behind them. He’s scared, she knows this, but he’ll never tell her.
“We’re not on a beach yet.” She reaches down to stroke his cock and he closes his eyes and presses his face into the crook of her neck.
“Please,” he gasps and Jeff Winger does not beg, does not say please, does not ask for anything. He gives and he takes but he’ll be damned if he ever looks even the littlest bit desperate.
But today is different, today is his day, today is the day they eliminate the source of his Jeffness. The first step to repair, as Britta learned in her psych class, is self-direction: optimizing autonomy and independence and control over yourself and your resources. According to Britta, that means destroying what made you broken in the first place, preferably in a manner of your own choosing. Britta will never be a psychologist.
She kisses him and then climbs over him and fucks him, soft and a little sweet. He gasps and moans and chants her name over and over like a prayer. His nails dig into her sides as if he’s trying to anchor himself to her. He comes with his mouth on hers, his tongue against hers, his wedding ring searing her like hot coal.
He flips them over and hovers over her body, kisses from her mouth to her hipbones with a look of determined concentration. He sucks on her clit and strokes the skin of her stomach as she bucks up and her legs shake with her orgasm. He kisses his way back up and she holds him against her, his head over her heart, as she regains her breath. She feels her heart slow and she wipes sweat from his forehead and for a few more minutes she lets them just be.
Willy’s working the 11-7 shift. He leaves the house at 10:42 and won’t be home until at least 7:25. They have plenty of time. Jeff can’t stomach breakfast so Britta makes a smoothie for herself and brews him a cup of strong coffee. “You need something,” she says, handing him the mug.
He wraps his hands around it and nods. He drinks the whole thing too fast.
Britta drives and when they pull into the parking lot-not the back corner spot they usually occupy, but a regular, close spot-she turns to Jeff. “You don’t have to do this, you know. We can go home and get all the stuff and leave now. Or, we don’t even have to leave, we can stay and have dinner at Shirley’s tomorrow. Whatever you want to do.”
“Stop,” he says. “I appreciate this but we both know this is what I have to do. This is the plan and this is the way it has to be.”
“Okay,” she says. She thinks there’s something else she should tell him but she’s not sure what it is. She’s worried that he’s going to back out while they’re in there, and she has no right or reason to think this because she should trust him completely (“This only works if we’re a team,” he told her) but this is his dad, not some stranger who hurt him one time twenty years ago.
“You’re my best friend,” she says finally. “Just... know that. Before we go in there.”
“Gettin’ sappy on me, huh, Perry?” he smirks, a silent thank you in his words.
William answers the door with a look of surprise. “Jeff. What are you doing here?”
“Can we come in?” Jeff asks. His voice is even and calm.
“Sure. Have a seat.” William notices the rings on their fingers and he looks at Britta, who’s wearing the purple wig again, but doesn’t say anything.
“Actually, you sit. We’re going to stand,” Jeff says.
“What’s this about?”
Jeff nods at Britta and she takes the gun out of her purse and holds it on William. “It’s about a lot of things,” Jeff says.
William makes a move to stand up but Britta shakes her head. “Don’t.”
“This is ridiculous. You’re going to kill me?”
“Not her,” Jeff says. “Me.” He takes the syringe out of his jacket pocket and holds it up to the light as if inspecting it. “Just a simple stroke. And who won’t believe it? All those years of drinking probably haven’t been good on the ticker. You’re up there in age, Dad.”
William lets out a strangled laugh. “Jesus, Jeff. I was a shit dad to you. We already established that. But don’t you think this is taking it a little far?”
Jeff shrugs. “Maybe.”
Britta stays quiet and lets Jeff handle the situation. This is Jeff in control, in his element. It’s like at the bank, when she froze up and he knew exactly what to do. He’s good at this, this composed and cold method of crime. She keeps her finger on the trigger knowing she won’t need it. It’s a precaution only. William won’t go quietly, but she has no doubt Jeff can overpower him if it comes to that.
“So you’re going to kill me and then what? What happens when your brother gets home?”
“Luckily you won’t have to worry about that.”
Jeff pins his father to the couch, his thighs holding down William’s arms. Jeff is strong, Britta knows this, but he must be stronger than he lets on because William thrashes and struggles but he cannot get free. Jeff pushes his head back into the couch and injects the syringe into his neck.
William starts gasping for air and trying to form words and Britta closes her eyes because she can’t watch. This is how her father died, not in the same situation, not by the hand of his child or anyone, a heart attack instead of a stroke, but it’s similar enough. Britta had been in Paris at the time, sleeping on some guy’s couch with her ex-boyfriend Jean and she got a series of confusing phone calls from her mother and brothers trying to track her down. She hadn’t asked for the details because she didn’t want them but now they’re all there in front of her and she can’t bear to see them after all these years.
Finally, the noises stop and Britta opens one eye. Jeff is standing now, too, staring at William’s lifeless body. “Okay,” he says. “Let’s get out of here.”
Britta uses her jacket sleeve to open and close the door. They get in the car and she starts to drive away, neither of them saying anything. The silence is a bit deafening but she decides to let him be the one to speak; if he wants to talk he will and if he doesn’t that’s fine, too.
“Liquor store,” he says when they’re halfway home.
She nods and goes to the one a few blocks from her apartment. He reaches in his pocket for his wallet and pulls some bills out. “Here... eighty bucks. Get anything you can. Something strong and then whatever you want. Please.”
Britta has seen Jeff in various states of drunkenness. But after he’s polished off half the bottle of whiskey and he’s slurring his words so badly she can barely understand him, she’s positive this is the drunkest she’s ever seen him.
She had two shots of vodka to calm her nerves but now she’s sitting with him on the couch as he drinks. He’s slumped into her and she’s stroking his hair. He keeps talking about his dad, about what it was like before and after he left. She’s never heard him say so much about himself in all the years she’s known him.
“Do you regret it?” Britta asks.
“No,” he says. “I fucking hate him, Britta. I hate him so much. I’m glad he’s dead. I’m glad I killed him.”
She kisses the top of his head. “Jeff, I think you should go to bed. We’re going to have a lot to do tomorrow.”
He tries to sit up but can’t so she gently lays him down on the couch. “I’ll get you a glass of water and then I’ll help you to bed, okay?”
“Mmmhmm,” he murmurs.
She sets the glass of water on the nightstand and goes back to the living room. It’s a struggle, but she manages to get him to bed where she takes off his jeans and shirt and tucks him under the covers. She helps him drink some water and wipes up what doesn’t make it into his mouth.
“Go to sleep, okay?”
“Britta,” he says as he pulls the blanket up to his chin, “you’re the only one who’s never left. They all leave, Britta. You don’t.”
She smiles sadly and leans down to kiss his cheek. “I know, Jeff. Because you’re the only one who’s never left me.”
She goes back to the living room to wait for the call. It comes in at almost ten-thirty, Willy’s name flashing on the screen of Jeff’s phone. He’s hysterical, of course, just like she knew he would be. He’s a sweet kid who doesn’t really deserve to be caught up in this mess. “They say a stroke,” he manages to get out. “Where’s Jeff?”
“He’s sleeping,” Britta says. “He wasn’t feeling well, so he took some sleeping pills. I’ll tell him, Willy.”
He promises to call again in the morning and Britta texts Shirley, Jeff’s dad died. We’re going to spend tomorrow with his brother. Then she crawls into bed and wraps Jeff’s arms around her and counts to five hundred before she falls asleep, William Winger’s dead face behind her eyelids.
The wake is on Saturday. There aren’t a lot of people there at all: a few of Willy’s co-workers, some of his teachers and classmates from high school, a handful of neighbors, and the study group. Jeff and Britta did most of the planning because Willy was crying too hard to make any decisions himself. Britta remembers psychoanalyzing him a year ago; she gets the urge for about a second but then just hugs him instead.
Britta’s talking to the elderly woman who lives next door to William when she sees the group. They walk into the funeral home together like one big mass: ShirleyAnnieAbedTroy. Britta catches Shirley’s eye and excuses herself from Mrs. Henson to go meet them.
“How’s Jeff?” Shirley asks as she hugs Britta.
“He’s okay,” Britta replies solemnly. She hugs each of them in turn and by the time she pulls away from Abed, Jeff is behind her, being enveloped by Shirley.
“Oh, Jeffrey, I’m so sorry.”
It’s when Jeff turns to hug Annie does Shirley notice the ring on his finger. She turns immediately to Britta and grabs her left hand. “What’s this?”
“It’s uh...” Britta stammers.
“Are you guys married?” Troy exclaims.
Even Abed’s eyes are wide and Annie breaks away from Jeff to stare at their hands. “What? When?” she asks.
“This is not the time or the place to talk about this,” Jeff says lowly. “It’s not a big deal. It was a courthouse wedding and it’s none of your business. So either drop it or leave.”
“But-” Annie starts.
“This is my father’s wake. We are not having this conversation here. Drop it.” He looks sort of scary and deranged and Annie visibly shrinks back. Troy moves forward, just an inch, and Britta steps in and places a hand on Jeff’s arm.
“Come on,” she says.
With one final look to their rings, Annie leads the group up to the front of the room to the casket. It’s closed, mostly because Jeff insisted and Willy wasn’t in any sort of state to argue, and Britta is glad because she’s had enough of William’s dead face for her lifetime.
Jeff stares at the carpet and takes a few deep breaths. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. This is… not an easy situation. I should have remembered the rings, we should have taken them off.”
“Look, I’m going to talk to my mom alone when she gets here. Hopefully it’ll go better than that did.”
She nods. “Okay. You should probably go make the rounds. You need to thanks all these people for coming. And make sure your brother’s okay, if you get a chance?”
“Yeah. Be here in case I need you?”
“Of course. I’m just going to run to the bathroom real quick.”
He squeezes her hand before he walks away. She locks herself in the bathroom and sits on the counter for a few minutes, inhaling the overpowering scent of flowers; it’s enough to make her nauseous, even though she’s already feeling slightly so. She knew this would happen but Jeff had been right when he said it would look a thousand times more suspicious if there was a record of their wedding but no one else knew.
With a deep breath and a splash of cold water on her face, she yanks the bathroom door open and runs straight into someone. “Oh, sorry,” she says absently, but two hands grip her arms and she looks up and it’s Abed.
“Hi, Britta,” he says.
“Where’s everyone else?” she asks.
He points down the hall to the main room. “I told them I had to go to the bathroom. I’ve been looking for you.”
She raises a hand tiredly. “You can spare me the lecture, Abed. I’ve heard it all before but I’m a big girl and I can take care of myself.”
“You got married for protection, didn’t you?” he asks.
She freezes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“It makes sense. You and Jeff don’t believe in marriage but you did it anyway, and it wasn’t to prove a point because no one else was around and you two like to make spectacles of yourselves. Also you didn’t invite us, which I think is kind of rude, and you didn’t prepare Troy and Annie for the news at all. They’re both going to be upset because they say they’re over you and Jeff respectively, but I don’t think they really are.”
Britta doesn’t say anything, just folds her arms over her chest and looks down at her shoes.
“I won’t tell anyone,” Abed continues. “But I know I’m right and I hope that whatever you two did, you don’t get caught. It’s probably better if you don’t tell me, because anyone who knows you is going to come to us first for answers. If I don’t know anything then I can’t say anything.”
His face is neutral as always but when Britta looks up at him she feels a knot in her throat and she swallows it down. “Abed, I need you to do something for me, okay?” She takes his hands in hers. “If Jeff and I aren’t around, you have to keep everyone together. And you have to make sure they know we love them. And you need to tell Annie and Troy... tell them that we’re sorry and we didn’t mean to hurt them. And Shirley, tell Shirley, too. Please, Abed.”
He nods and she leans into him, wraps her arms around his middle. His hand comes up to pat her on the back reassuringly. “I love you,” she says as she pulls away. “You should probably go back before they come looking for you.”
“Okay.” He gives her a small smile and walks back to the main room. She reaches into her purse and pulls out a pack of nicotine gum and chews two pieces at once.
There are eight people at the funeral. It’s sort of sad and pathetic but Britta looks between Jeff and Willy and sees what horrible, awful things William Winger did to both of his sons and isn’t too surprised. It’s a quick graveside service with a reverend saying generic things about death and loss. Jeff holds Britta’s hand during the entire thing, his thumb stroking the round edges of her wedding ring. Shirley watches.
Jeff’s mother is a tough but sweet woman who is no taller than Britta. She pulls Britta in close and thanks her for being good to Jeff. She doesn’t seem upset by their marriage; it seems that she’s used to Jeff keeping things from her, and she admires the band on Britta’s finger with delight. It’s the first time Britta feels guilty about the things she’s done, because Doreen Winger loves her son in a way Britta’s own mother never loved her. Britta feels responsible, like she’s somehow led Jeff on this wrong path, that if she had told Jeff he was being stupid and pushed him to get a job, he would have been fine.
“He doesn’t call or visit much,” Doreen tells Britta as Jeff thanks the reverend for the service. “I know he’s busy with work and the two of you are probably enjoying your time together as newlyweds. But you’ll remind him not to forget about his mother, won’t you? And when this all settles a bit we can celebrate you joining the family.”
Britta nods and forces a smile. “Of course.”
Doreen pats Britta’s arm before she walks away, over to her son. Britta watches as she frames Jeff’s face with her hands and says something quietly. Jeff nods solemnly and hugs his mother, pressing a kiss to the top of her head.
“He’ll be okay.” Britta turns around to find Shirley behind her. “It’ll be hard, but he’ll make it.”
“Yeah. Thanks for being here for him.”
Shirley nods. “I hope you know we just want what’s best for you.”
“I know. I appreciate it.”
With a smile, Shirley leans in for a hug. “You take care of yourself, okay? Him, too.”
“We should stay,” Britta says in the car on the way home, “for a few more weeks. Have dinner with your mother. Maybe Christmas.”
“She likes you,” Jeff says.
“She shouldn’t,” Britta mutters, facing the window.
It’s a week and a half later when it happens.
Jeff is on laundry duty and he left with a basket to take the towels out of the dryer in the basement. Britta’s making lunch, flipping grilled cheese sandwiches and mixing lemonade from a can. She hears Jeff’s phone vibrate in the living room but she ignores it until her own phone rings from its place on the kitchen table. She doesn’t recognize the number but she answers anyway.
“Britta Winger?” It’s a man’s voice, deep and unfamiliar.
“Perry,” she corrects automatically. “Uh, I mean, Perry-Winger. Britta Perry-Winger.”
“Ms. Perry-Winger, my name is Detective Willick with the Riverside Falls Police Department. I’m calling about your father-in-law, William Winger?”
Britta’s tongue is stuck to the roof of her mouth but she manages to choke out a “Yes?”
“We’re reevaluating his death. Your brother-in-law seemed to find some evidence in the house that makes us suspect foul play.”
“Evidence?”
“We can’t disclose that information at the moment, but we have linked it to two other crimes in the area. Do you know if your father-in-law had any connection to a man named Dennis Portsmith? He lived in Fort Collins.”
“No. We’re not-my husband wasn’t close with his father.”
It’s in the middle of this sentence that Jeff comes back. He freezes in the doorway and Britta motions wildly with her free hand. He takes the basket of clean, folded towels straight into the bedroom and Britta can hear him opening drawers.
“Noted. We just wanted to contact you to let you know this is an ongoing investigation and we’ll be in touch if we have any more information.”
“Yes. Okay. Thank you.”
They leave in a flurry, throwing bags and the cat carrier into the back of the Lexus. Britta carefully wraps the wig in a plastic bag and shoves it to the bottom of the trunk. They’re supposed to have dinner that night with Doreen but Jeff calls to cancel, tells her Britta has the flu. Before he hangs up he tells her he loves her and it’s with a heavy voice.
“Give me your phone,” he tells Britta. She obliges and he tosses them both out the window, into the parking lot of a convenience store.
Britta watches as they drive through town, sees the buildings and the streets and the people she used to pass every day on her way to school. She tries to memorize them, their color and their shape and their faces, because she knows that she very well may never see them again. The car in front of them has a Colorado license plate, as does the one behind them, and in a few hours, the familiar outlines of the Rockies will be an anomaly.
She punches the button to roll down the window, letting in frigid and dry December air. It instantly smacks her across the face, makes the hairs inside her nose feel funny, and she closes her eyes and turns to greet it.
“What the hell are you doing? It’s freezing outside,” Jeff says over the noise.
She looks at him. Her hair whips around her head and she tries in vain to tuck it neatly behind her ears. “Just give me a minute, okay?” She takes off her boots and shrugs out of her jacket. Goosebumps begin to break out over her skin and her teeth begin to chatter. But it feels good because it feels; the fact that she is still affected by such a thing as the cold comforts her.
Jeff stops the car at a red light and Britta closes the window. He watches as she combs out the knots in her hair. “You good?”
She leans up to kiss his cheek and then rests her chin on his shoulder. “I’m good. Are you good?”
“Yeah.” The light turns green and he starts to drive and Britta pulls away. “I love you, you know. I know I said I didn’t and that I couldn’t, but I do. The last few months, I…”
“I know,” she says with a smile. “I know.”
It’s quiet now, now that the windows are closed. The radio isn’t on and the hum of the engine and the cat scratching at the sides of the carrying case are the only noises Britta can hear. It’s a nice silence though, a comfortable silence, and she thinks she can go a thousand miles like this.
“So where to?” Jeff asks. They’re a block away from the highway on-ramp: they can go up, down, left, or right.
“South,” Britta says, propping her feet up on the dashboard. “Let’s go get drunk on margaritas.”
“South it is.” He gets on the highway and Britta watches in the mirror as Greendale gets farther and farther away.
“Hey,” he says seriously. “It’s going to be a long time before we can go back, if we can ever go back. It’s me and you from here on out. You’re okay with that, right?”
His eyes are on the road but she reaches over to tug his right hand off the steering wheel. She wraps both of hers around it; his hands are two, three times the size of hers and that’s always made her feel safe somehow, and then bad for feeling safe, and then bad for feeling bad. It’s a good metaphor for her entire relationship with him, she thinks.
Their friends are out there, going about their days. Shirley is at the sandwich shop, fresh off the lunchtime rush. She’s wiping counters or baking cookies. She checks her phone every so often to make sure her family is safe and sound. At the end of the day, she’ll close up shop and go home and kiss them all before tucking them into bed and falling asleep next to her husband, content. Annie is in class, or studying in the library. She has a cup of coffee in front of her, probably, books spread open and highlighters lined up neatly. Her notes are color-coded and she’ll pass whatever test she’s studying for no problem. Tonight, she’ll Skype with Troy and Abed while in her pajamas. Troy is at afternoon football practice, one more semester of play in before he graduates. He calls out plays and tells his teammates they’re nailing every move. His job is to boost morale, something he does so very well, and after practice he’ll down a Gatorade (purple, of course) and stop by Shirley’s for a quick dinner and catch-up. Abed is also in class but he knows. He gets a feeling, an inkling, and when class is over he’ll call one of their cell phones but there will be no answer. But for now he makes a timeline of the incidents and he strings everything together. He uses the third-to-last page of his notebook. He’ll keep the secret even from Troy. Pierce beat them to someplace warm. He lays in a lounge chair with zinc oxide on his nose, calling out to female passers-by. Gilbert is there, maybe for the stretch between Thanksgiving and Christmas. They drink tall, smooth cocktails that go down like juice and Pierce introduces the bartender to his brother at least five times. Jeff’s mother is thinking about them, her son and her daughter-in-law, and she loves them both. Britta’s mother is not thinking about her daughter and doesn’t know she even has a son-in-law. Maybe she loves Britta in her own way, but it’s never been the way that Britta needed to be loved.
Britta will miss them, will feel their absence every day. But she is now something that they are not because she has seen and done things that they have not seen or done. And it’s okay to love people of whom we need to let go, she decides. It’s okay to love people from afar, to love people who will never quite understand the things that make us tick.
“Me and you from here on out,” Britta repeats, squeezing Jeff’s hand between her own. “I’m more than okay with that.”
Jeff smiles and speeds up a little. The car flies down the highway and they’re gone.