The memories whirled around in my brain like autumn leaves stirred by a gust of wind. They were given fresh life after the encounter earlier in the day. They grew in strength despite my best efforts to distract them and eventually I gave in to their clamouring and allowed my mind to drift back. My first real conversation with her was in the ladies room at my sisters wedding. I had met her once before, briefly in her office, of course I knew who she was. I had seen her pictures in the press and watched her on the tv. Those past experiences were like weak strands of morning light compared to the blinding glare of the sun when you are directly in front of it. It is easy to be dazzled, to be overwhelmed by its power. She is like the sun, nothing short of a force of nature. I was not expecting her to be so attractive. She should not be so attractive. Her eyes are small and too close together. Her jaw is too strong, her lips are too thin, her brow too prominent. She is breathtakingly beautiful. She is shorter than I despite her heels, her frame is slight and dainty, yet due to the strength of her aura she appears to tower over everyone. She fills the room, any room from a closet to a dance hall, she is a giant, a goddess, a regal presence in any setting, she is a legend in her field, the most brilliant, twisted, charismatic, egomaniac to set foot along the halls of the justice system. She is Patty Hewes.
Patty. Even the name is designed to throw people off balance. It sounds friendly and approachable, the name of someone you already know, the girl you grew up with, a neighbour, a distant relative. Familiar, comfortable, unthreatening. To the casual observer she is all those things. A larger than life character, one who wears her heart on her sleeve. Her laugh is loud and infectious, she is easily driven to bitter tears of anger and frustration. She feels deeply, her temper is incendiary. Her outbursts of anger can be matched by her frequent bouts of extreme generosity. She hates, she loves, she laughs, she cries, she is a walking contradiction. She is a complete fraud.
As the years progressed I came to believe Patty would not recognise a genuine emotion if it came and bit her on the ass. Everything about her is fake, apart from the packaging of course. She does love her labels and she wears them so well. Her whole persona and reactions are manufactured and tailored to any given situation. She is a chameleon, a shape shifter, a changeling. She has more faces than the town hall clock. There is no real 'Patty' anymore, she has been buried under the layers of lies and misdeeds. Crushed by the weight of vanity and ambition. She has been sold for the price of victory and ultimately destroyed by the monster she created.
Apart from the occasional truce and mutually agreed ceasefires negotiated with expensive liquor and cheap promises, we engaged in years of open warfare. If her opening attack had been successful I would have been dead before I hit thirty. I hate some of the things she has done, I hate some of the things she drove me to do, but most of all I hate knowing the truth. The truth that took me five years to unravel, the truth that she would never acknowledge, the truth I continue to shy away from. That this woman who's legend I grew up admiring, who's success I aspired to emulate, who's legacy was mine to inherit was complicit in an attempt on my life. She hired a man to silence a threat that never existed. I would never have betrayed Patty. Not then, not now, not ever. I was not a danger to her, her rampant ego and bourbon fuelled paranoia proved to be far greater enemies than I ever was. The woman I left on the dock that day had lost everything but she was unbowed and unbroken. The blows from the past few years were piling up. She was punch drunk from the loss of her marriage, shocked by the death of her trusty lieutenant, bereft from the murder of her son. During that last awful conversation she still managed to spew her vitriol and give a final cruel twist of the knife. In my quest to be recognised as her equal I was turning into a pale imposter of the woman herself. Everything I despised about her had taken root and was growing insidiously inside me. She could see it, she had planted the seeds and tended them judiciously herself. I did not walk away from her then as I previously had. I ran.
I ran and threw myself headlong into a life of mundane domesticity. Five years passed, five years with a good man and a daughter I adore. Today our paths crossed once more. We met quite by chance in a pharmacy, she walked in as I was walking out, our eyes met. She looked haughty and older. Years of secrets and lies had left their mark and weighed heavily in her eyes, but she was no less beautiful for the passage of time. She took my breath away, she always did. I was never able to hang on to my hatred of Patty, she is like an uncontrollable fire, she consumed me as she consumed everything in her path. I saw that fire still smouldering in her countenance, I had no urge to stir up the embers. We left without exchanging a word, there was nothing left to say. Patty Hewes had taken five years of my life, if she had only asked I would have gladly given her all of it, because I loved her inspite of what she was, not because of it. Admitting that finally allowed me to break free of her. She would never want me for myself, right from the beginning she never wanted Ellen Parsons, she wanted a way to Katie Connor, I was only along for the ride, but what a ride it turned out to be.
The house is quiet now, Chris is working in the home office, Sophie is sleeping safe in her bed. I allow myself a single glass of bourbon and twenty minutes of time to dwell on the most remarkable woman I have ever met. I tip my glass in a silent solitary toast. To Patty Hewes, the legend, the woman, the love of my life.
Fin.