She would shoplift often and shot heroin into her veins. She smoked a pack of cigarettes a day and nearly always had alcohol at hand. She loved to boost cars from the rich and famous and go for joyrides. There were times, I am ashamed to admit, that I went with her. She nearly stole Nick’s car once before I realized whose home we were outside of, and I stopped her. I think she was amused by my loyalty to those I loved.
She would call my affections for my friends and loved ones silly and childish. Pointing out to me all the ways that having a wife and child were holding me back from what I could be or do, she convinced me that I was better off without them. I believed her.
Where once I had taken joy in all the little things that Baylee did as he grew, I quickly stopped caring. When he took his first steps, I shrugged at Leighanne’s joy and walked away. I would snap at both of them, even my beautiful baby boy, when they did anything that bothered me. At that time in my life, everything they did bothered me.
Baylee stopped wanting to go near me and screamed whenever I held him, which became increasingly less often. Because he became so upset, I stopped wanting to even be near him. Leighanne moved out of our bedroom and began to sleep in Baylee’s nursery with him. One night, I heard her weeping and begging God to bring the Brian she loved back to her. I just shook my head at her idiocy and went out to find the woman I needed. The woman whose very presence had become the sole object of worth in my world.
As the months passed and the other guys began talking about recording again, I didn’t want to participate in the talks. What did I care for that useless occupation? I’d already made all the money I needed to keep me well-fed and provided for the rest of my life. I didn’t want to go out on the road again and be away from the woman I’d become addicted to. The guys noticed my reluctance and quit calling.
It seemed that everyone in my life distanced themselves from me then. Except her. And, right then, I didn’t care who I was left with as long as she was beside me.
It wasn’t long before Leighanne decided to take matters into her own hands. She is far more intelligent than anyone gives her credit for, and she put those brains to use. She would give me forms to sign and say that they were just bills, and the companies needed the original signer’s signature for something or other. So caught up in my addiction, I didn’t notice nor did I care what I signed.
All of my mistakes quickly began to catch up to me.
The first time I watched the object of my addiction take another life, I was dumbfounded. Horrified. How could such a beautiful woman do something like that to another person? The poor teenager had only asked for an extension on his back payments, and she’d slit his throat. When she noticed my jaw hit the floor, she smiled and kicked the lifeless body aside.
“Don’t worry, babe. He’s in a better place now where he won’t need the drugs anymore. He’s better off now.”
Though I brushed it off at the time, my mind would often wander back to what I’d witnessed, and a part of me refused to let it go. I heard her kill three others after that incident, and, by that time, the seeds of doubt had planted themselves in my mind. Who was this woman that I’d been dallying with for the last several years?
When I realized I couldn’t come up with any information about her, except what I saw on the surface, I panicked. She sensed it and, with those seductively calming words, she soothed my fears. My misgivings were quickly forgotten.
The first time she threatened me with a giant butcher knife was when she needed money, and I had none to give her. Usually, I didn’t care how much I was handing over to her because I had more than enough to spread around. We stood next to the ATM machine and, when the machine told me I had nothing, she went wild. Her eyes were full of unspeakable furor, and the knife nicked my throat. Though I eventually managed to calm her down, it was the first time that I honest-to-God feared for my life.
I never put two and two together to realize that Leighanne had effectively transferred our funds into another account where they would be safe from my free hands. I don’t think I would ever forgive myself if I had squandered away my family’s future on dangerous games.
I knew things had to end the day she threatened Baylee. Leighanne had enough trust left in me to take care of our son while she ran errands, but she hadn’t realized that I would open our home up for a woman more lethal than the deadliest of poisons.
I had left Baylee playing in his playpen in order to get her something to drink. When I came back, she held my son in her arms, one hand clamped over his mouth. Her other hand held an army knife up to his innocent throat. She wanted the money that I could get for her, and she wanted it now, she screamed at me. Even as I pleaded with her to let Baylee go, every feeling that I’d ever had for her withered up and died inside me.
Leighanne came home in the midst of the incident, and she nearly had a heart attack. Instead of joining me in begging for our son’s safety, she slid a .45 out of her purse. The oddity of the fact that Leigh had a weapon at all never occurred to me at the time. I watched, my mouth moving in silent prayer, as Leighanne calmly demanded that Baylee be let go. Leigh was incredible and had the other woman scared down to her toes. Even as she let Bay go safely and walked out of the house, followed closely by my wife, who still had the gun trained on her, she shouted at us.
“This isn’t over! You think you’ve won, but you haven’t. I know you, Brian. You’ll come back to me, crawling this time. Then we’ll see who the winner is.”
After she’d left, Leighanne walked back into the house, ignoring me, and took care of Baylee. As she put away the groceries, she explained to me how things were going to be. I had two options, Leigh explained. One, I could file for divorce and let Leighanne have custody of Baylee as she was obviously a more fit parent than I was. Or, two, I had to rid myself of my addiction and the woman who was at the center of it. Obviously, Leigh continued, she wasn’t going to be easy to get rid of, but she was sure I’d think of something.
Faced with the idea of losing my family, I was suddenly struck by how stupid I’d been. For the first time, I realized that I really didn’t want to lose Leighanne and Baylee. I loved them, had always loved them, even when I’d been fooled into thinking I loved another. Standing there, in my kitchen, I knew what I had to do.
It wasn’t going to be easy, but it was the only way I could protect the ones I loved.
I did go back to her, but I refused to crawl.
When I walked through her door, I saw the knowing smirk light her face. Looking at her sitting in her beloved armchair, I finally saw what I’d been blinded to all those years.
“I’m not here for what you think. I’m here because I finally see you for what you are. You’re a dangerous, attention-seeking, psychopathic, thieving whore with delusions of grandeur and far too many addictions to count. It makes me sick to think that I betrayed God and my family to follow you around like a love-starved animal, but I’m done with that. I’m done with you.”
She just smiled, and then she laughed. She laughed and laughed. She laughed the laughter that I’d once thought so seductive but now thought of as maniacal.
“You’ll never be rid of me, Brian. You can think all you want of me, but you’ll never be rid of me.”
“She’s right.”
I spun around to see Leighanne standing in the doorway. In her hand, she held that Colt that she’d brandished just days before. What was she doing here? Why had she come?
“Because I knew you wouldn’t do what was necessary to make sure that we’d never have to deal with her again. Brian,” she continued, her eyes and gun aimed at our archnemesis. “You know what you have to do.”
I did, but I didn’t think I could do it. How could I? I became queasy at the sight of blood, was terrified of heights, and hated needles despite having been poked by them too many times to count.
It was when I looked away from my wife and over at her, that I saw her expression. She knew I wouldn’t have the guts to do anything. She knew, and it galled me that this parasitic creature could understand me so well.
“Brian,” Leighanne called me again. “You know you have to do this. You have to end all of this. You brought her into our lives, and we’ll never be free of her if you don’t end this right now.”
Leigh was right. I did know.
Though my hands were shaking and my palms sweaty, I took my wife’s gun and turned it on the woman I’d followed everywhere. The woman who I’d believed was the only one for me. The woman I now knew was a danger to my life and the lives of those I loved.
Even as she smirked at me, thinking me too weak, I pulled the trigger. Once. Twice. Three times.
Jodi Rose Blackwood.
October 1978-February 2004
I brushed my fingers lightly over the engravings in the slab of marble that adorned the grave. I’d given the woman who lay beneath far too much power in my life, and she’d nearly destroyed me.
Once upon a time, I thought I wanted freedom, passion, and the ability to do as I pleased. Jodi fulfilled all of my desires and left me wanting more. She preyed on my thoughts, beliefs, and loves. She came to know more of me than I realized, while I knew nothing of her.
I stand before her grave, now, and thank God that I’d had the strength to do what was right. While taking another’s life had seemed an abomination to me before, I realized that Jodi must have influenced me somehow. Ironically, it had caused her demise.
Leighanne, my beautiful, strong, smart wife, had never registered the gun I’d used to kill Jodi. She’d paid for it in cash and had done everything possible to protect her family—what I should’ve been doing.
No one will ever know of our crime nor do we ever speak of it with each other. Baylee is nearly five now, and I thank God everyday for the fact that he will grow up not wondering if his father loves him. That he will never have to wonder and worry where Daddy disappeared to this time and if he’s with that woman again.
Jodi once told me that tomorrow was never a guarantee. At the time, I’d been afraid of dying in surgery. Funny how, seven years later, her words came true. Only this time, she was the one six feet under.
