The Alleged Falcon Massacre

I crept into the house, afraid to wake my wife and kids. It was half ten. I had been working late, like I did every Friday night for the past six months.

As I crossed the threshold, before I could even close the door, my wife, Angela, ran into my arms, her eyes red…she had obviously been crying.

‘Are you ok? Are you hurt?’ She started to pat my body, as if she was checking to see that I was all there.

‘I’m fine, I’m fine!’ I answered grabbing her hands and holding them against my chest. ‘What’s brought all this on?’ I asked as she buried her face in my shoulder and sobbed her heart out. I carefully manoeuvred until I was able to shut the front door so as not to let out all the heat.

‘Where have you been?’ she asked after she composed herself a little bit.

‘I told you I was working late tonight!’ I answered and brushed a piece of hair from her face and repositioned it behind her ear. I took her face in my hands, one hand on each cheek and kissed her forehead. She wrapper her arms around me, not letting go until she was sure I was really there.

I was confused as to why my wife was acting so out of character. I hardly got a kiss when I came home on a normal night. I was worried something had happened. Was it the kids? I began to panic.

‘What’s this all about?’ I asked my wife, prising her head from my body. She resisted but I forced her to look at me. ‘What has happened? Are the kids ok?’

Angela looked at me quizzically. ‘You said you were in the falcon hotel…right?’

‘Yea,’ I answered without batting an eyelid.

‘What happened? Did you see anything? Was there blood everywhere?’ she asked in quick succession, waiting for me to fill her in on what, I had no idea.

‘I’ve been worried sick since the news broke on the TV two hours ago!’ It was quite apparent she was very distressed.

‘See anything interesting?’ she repeated. I had no idea what Angela was banging on about. There she stood in front of me, my wife of seven years, the mother to my three kids…...was she having a breakdown of some sort?

She took me by the hand and dragged me into the family room where the news of the ‘massacre’ that happed in the falcon hotel that night was on a continuous loop. My heart sank. Was my cover blown?

As I was introduced to the news for the first time, my jaw dropped. ‘How am I going to talk my way out of this one?’ I asked himself. I tried to plaster over my lie by telling my wife that the meeting was in another part of the hotel and that they ushered us out of a side entrance, so as not to disturb any potential evidence.

I was caught in a lie by a reporter:

Its been four continuous hours of searching for the perpetrator to the massacre. The hotel is in lockdown since the first bullet was shot. No one knows where in the hotel he is right now. SWAT are on a mission to check every room and take anyone remotely matching the description of the gunman into a side office for questioning………

‘Oh that’s old news,’ I lied through my teeth when Angela pointed towards the TV again:

This is Margaret Burne, reporting live at the scene.

 

I could feel the blood drain from my face. I couldn’t disregard live news!

I moved over towards the couch and sat, muting the TV as I went.

‘You weren’t at the falcon, were you?’ she said, her voice an octave lower than that of the woman who leapt into my arms a minute ago.  

‘No’, I bowed my head in shame.

‘But you said that’s where you were every Friday night, schmoozing clients!’ she wiped the tears from her eyes and blew her nose on an already saturated tissue.

‘I…I…’ I was searching for a way out of my lie, a way out that would hurt her less than the truth. My eyes studied the room from left to right and back again.

‘I what?’ she said, her hands on her hips, her left foot tapping against the laminate floorboards.

I patted the seat beside me, signalling Angela to come and sit.

‘You were arrested for soliciting prostitutes again, weren’t you?’ she accused, abandoning the tissue and begin to wipe away her tears with the sleeve of her jumper.

I looked wide eyed into space. Angela knew my past better than anyone. She knew my being arrested for solicitation when Rebecca was a baby as she had had a c-section and was in no mood for sex for months on end. She knew about the cocaine habit I had when I was dating her that I promised I would give up. She had forgiven all of those awful things, but here she was now, throwing them back in my face, like ammunition she had collected along the course of our relationship.

‘I promised you I would never do that again!’ I said sternly, horrified that she could bring up something as awful when we had tried so hard to work through it.

‘What then?’ she screamed, ‘what aren’t you telling me Michael?’ She started to pace the old, grey rug in front of the fire that the kids had destroyed. A single tear escaped her already raw eyes. She brushed it away with such force that I became anxious.

I bowed my head shamefully, ‘I’ve been…’ I gathered my thoughts, ‘I’ve been taking a class in the local community college.’

I let out a big sigh of relief as my wife started to relax. I think she bought the cover to my cover. She looked me up and down but I couldn’t in good conscience meet her eye. She knew straight away I was lying. This woman could read me like a book.

I closed my eyes and took in some deep breaths. Was I going to do it? Was I about to tell her my greatest secret, my greatest betrayal?

‘Where were you really Michael?’ she looked at me as if I was about to break her heart, and I was.

‘I was at a hotel…’ I started. I looked up at the TV and wished it was the falcon, that way my alibi would have been tight. ‘…. but I was with someone else!’ I closed my eyes and felt the tears roll down my cheeks into my beard.

‘With who?’ she asked tentatively.

I looked up at her. This was the woman I loved more than any other woman in the whole world. She was my rock, my angel, my best friend. How could I break her heart?

She saw that I was struggling and bent down onto her honkers in front of me. She put one hand on each of my knees.

‘Who were you with Michael?’ she repeated. She was talking to me as if she was talking to my eldest.

‘I was with Marian’s….’ She gasped ‘…. husband Mark.’ Angela looked at me.

‘Why would you go to a hotel with Marian’s husband?’ she asked confused. She wasn’t getting the gravity of the situation.

‘Me and Mark have been…’ but before I could finish my sentence she finished it for me, ‘…working on a project! I know!’

‘No pet, me and Mark are…well…were in love!’

She let out a loud laugh. ‘Don’t be silly Michael!’ She swatted me with her hand.

It wasn’t until she realised that I wasn’t laughing that she stopped. Her eyes opened as wide as saucers, her pupils constricted. She was finally starting to understand.

She lifted her hands from my knees and looked at them like she had something sticky and disgusting on them. Her expression matched the feeling I felt when I thought about how conniving and sneaky the whole horrid affair was, but the heart wants what the heart wants.

As Angela got up from her honkers and perched herself on the arm of the chair in front of the window, her expression was one of disdain.

‘So you and Mark then!’ she gulped, I could see her turning green. She quickly ran into the kitchen and vomited into the sink. I followed her, leaning against the island and handing her the paper towels. After she washed her mouth out with water, she retreated to cold, tiled floor of the kitchen, unable to stand. I joined her, crossing my legs like a buddha.

‘Are you mad?’ I asked before I thought about what I was saying. Of course she was mad! She was just finding out now that the man she had vowed to spend the rest of her life with was actually gay.

She just held up a finger and resisted the urge to vomit again.

Eventually she got to her feet and backing away from me slowly, as if I was a grenade ready to explode, she left the room. I heard her feet as they pounded to the beat of my heart up the stairs. I hung my head in shame and cried hysterically.

When I eventually felt I could cry no more, I rose to my feet, my head spinning and rubbed my balding hair not knowing what to do next.

I heard Angela’s feet pounding on the stairs once more. She reappeared holding a black duffel bag that looked as though it was full. She handed to me. I took it from her outstretched hand as she explained that all my toiletries were in it, alongside a change of clothes and informed me that she had texted Marian.

‘The pair of ye are welcome for each other!’ she spat and pointed to the front door. I slowly moved into the hall. ‘Your key!’ she barked, the palm of her hand open.

I knew more than anyone that I couldn’t have kept up the charade of being with a woman any longer. I loved my kids, and wondered what was going to happen regarding them, but that was something to worry about another day. Right now all I had to do was hand over my key and leave the house I had helped make a home for the last time. I didn’t know where I was going or what I was going to do, but I did know that I couldn’t continue in ‘wedded bliss’ any longer.

Before I closed the door, I looked back at my Angela and tried to promise to remember the good times we had together. I closed the door like I would close a book with a cliff hanger ending, awaiting to start a new chapter.