Noah sat in a hospital chair, surrounded by his closest friends. After what he had said to Jolly, they had all decided to accompany him on this heart-wrenching journey.
They wouldn't leave him alone.
The police officer he had spoken to on the phone had instructed him to go to the hospital, where Lisa's body was being held. They wouldn't start the autopsy until they were certain it was her. They had already checked her phone and social media and had identified her, but in these cases, it is always better to be sure.
Noah thought that, despite everything, he was still her emergency contact.
She had been found in the woods on the outskirts of the city, not far from her apartment. A jogger had discovered her. Noah found himself pondering what Lisa had endured in the final moments of her life. She had been left alone, at the mercy of the elements and animals, like an object without value.
When he entered the anatomy department, he almost vomited. A police officer opened the door for him, and when he came face to face with Lisa’s lifeless body, he couldn’t help but cry.
He covered his mouth with his hand as he looked at the girl he loved, now devoid of life. He would have recognized those sweet features, that little hump in her nose, those curls he loved to caress, and the owl tattooed on the right side of her wrist anywhere. She was still wearing the party dress, and the realization that she had been dead for so long hit him like a slap in the face.
He had searched the entire city for her, and she had always been just a few meters from her home.
It was her. There was no doubt.
His Lisa was gone.
Now he just had to wait for some police officers to question them. They were the last people known to have seen Lisa alive. He glanced sideways at Nicholas and thought he must have the same expression on his face: agony, pure physical pain from losing the woman they loved. Even though each of them was grieving a different version of the same person, the pain was real.
"Was it you?”
Nicholas turned to him, his eyes swollen with tears. "What are you saying, Noah?"
"I asked you a question: was it you?"
"Do you really think I could have done something like that?"
Noah scoffed and wiped a rebellious tear from his face. "I don't know. Lisa said you two used to go to that forest often for your secret picnics. You were the last person to see her alive yesterday, right?"
Nicholas gave him a questioning look. "I've never set foot in that forest, and I won't allow you to accuse me of being a murderer."
"You're already a traitor, why not think the worst of you?"
Now they were both standing, face to face. Noah clenched his fists with so much rage that he could feel his nails digging painfully into his palms.
Nick and Jolly pulled them apart, lifting them bodily. They would have torn each other apart if the two guys hadn't dragged them far enough away from each other.
Jolly had taken Noah to another room, holding him by the shoulders to prevent him from escaping his grasp. "You need to calm down, Noah."
"How can I calm down? You didn’t see her, Jolly. She’s... She-"
Noah broke down in desperate sobs, and the guitarist hugged him tightly. "Fighting with Nicholas won’t bring her back. Nothing can."
"When I woke up this morning, she was already gone. And the last memory I have of her is blurry and filled with anger." Noah pulled away from the hug. "I’ll never be able to tell her I'm sorry."
When he faced the two detectives handling the case, he burst into tears again. He remembered almost nothing from that evening. After his argument with Lisa, he had continued drinking until he collapsed on a couch. In the following days, everyone present at the party confirmed this version of the story. They also questioned the other guys, and Nicholas had fared the worst. The police had read Lisa’s diary, and during the various interrogations, it came out that he was the mysterious man.
“I swear, I would never have hurt her.”
"And what about the forest? We’ve learned you used to go there."
"I’ve never been to those woods. It’s true, Lisa and I slept together. Just one night, and after that, we never saw each other again except in the presence of other people.”
By now, darkness had given way to daylight. A whole day had passed since Lisa’s disappearance. One of the detectives came out of the interrogation room and returned with a file full of papers.
“Alright, Ruffilo. We have a few things to discuss.”
The two detectives looked over the documents released by the hospital and began laying out the situation to the devastated young man.
"Lisa sustained a head injury that led to subsequent hemorrhaging. But that’s not the worst part—Lisa didn’t die instantly. She was disoriented, she lost consciousness. And maybe you thought that she was already dead" the detective shook his head "She was killed by the cold. Your friend died in pain. She was terrified."
Nicholas couldn’t believe what he was hearing. If someone had found her earlier, she might still be alive.
"I don’t know how to tell you this. It’s true, I went to her house. We argued, and she kicked me out, so I left. Ask anyone. By that time, I was already in bed, crying like an idiot because she would never love me."
"That doesn’t exactly paint you in a good light, buddy," one of the detectives said.
"Yeah, and neither does this," the other added, sliding a document related to the autopsy in front of him.
Nicholas put his hands over his face, in disbelief. From the expressions on the detectives’ faces, he could tell they were surprised by his reaction.
He had no idea about what they had just revealed, and all he could manage to whisper was, "Shit."
Nicholas cried all the tears he had left. Not only had he lost the woman he loved, but now he risked being imprisoned for her murder. He would never have harmed her, but no one believed him. They kept him in that room for what felt like an eternity; no one was willing to let him go. A policewoman called the two detectives outside the door, and when they returned, they removed the handcuffs from his wrists.
“You’re lucky. Service cameras saw you return home during the time of the murder.”
“I’ve told you all day that I came home immediately.”
“Of course, that’s how a murder investigation works: you tell us one thing, and we believe you. Go on, kid, and try not to be seen again.”
All four of them returned home. The little house no longer seemed like the one they had left the previous evening. Now those walls were filled with regrets, with memories overlaid with a veil of anguish that made them fade. Lisa would never walk through that door again. She would never take a beer from their fridge, listen to them play, talk late into the night, lying on Noah’s shoulder.
Her chance to make amends or to leave forever had been taken from her. Her life had been taken from her.
Noah locked himself in his room, determined never to leave it again. Nicholas sat on the porch couch, and Jolly and Nick joined him.
“I’m so sorry, buddy. I really am,” Folio said, hugging him.
“She would never have been mine, but she didn’t deserve such a terrible end.” He broke down in tears once more. “She had told me she would leave. I thought she meant leaving the city. I didn’t believe...”
“No one could have imagined it, Nick,” Jolly comforted him.
“She was pregnant,” he let slip as a sigh. “The two detectives told me while they were questioning me. It was only a few weeks along; she probably didn’t even know herself.”
Nick and Davis starred at the guy in disbelief. This couldn't be possible, they were living a nightmare except for the fact that they were awake and totally incapable of dealing with such a situation.
Jolly looked at everyone in the eye. “Noah must never find out.”
___________________________________________
Months passed inexorably. Life resumed its normal course—or so to speak. Noah had moved out and taken an apartment in a central area of the city. He needed to rebuild his life, to become a better person—the person he would have wanted to be beside Lisa.
He hadn’t cut ties with his old life. Paradoxically, the story had brought them even closer. He still saw Nancy often. Sometimes they would have coffee together at the café where his love story with Lisa had begun. They often remembered her, sharing anecdotes and memories they had of her. At first, doing so would lead them to inconsolable tears, but gradually it became a way to keep her memory alive through their stories.
The case had stalled. The police found nothing—no plausible suspects. The theory was that Lisa had gone out alone to clear her mind and encountered a malevolent individual on her path.
The classic story of a murder in a country where such events were all too common.
He visited her grave often. Her resting place was always adorned with roses, and he was always the one to bring them.
How could he have been so foolish? If he hadn’t acted like a complete idiot that evening, Lisa would still be in his arms. They would have made amends; perhaps he would have even discovered the betrayal and their paths might have diverged forever, but anything would have been better than visiting her in a cemetery.
He sat on the grass and placed a rose on the cold stone, and a tear warmed his face. “I’m so sorry, Liz. If only I had been a better man... I want you to know how important you were to me. I'm truly sorry and sometimes memories are not enough to handle with life. Despite everything, you will always have a place in my heart” he wiped the tear with the back of his hand. “I hope it’s nice where you are”
He stood up from the ground and walked out through the gate, casting one last glance at the photo on the headstone.
He just knew that his life would never be the same.