"And? What happened the next day?" Marie whispered. Her eyes were wide and she'd leant forward during Elsa's narrative, her elbows on the table and her attention directed completely to the story. The cheerful waitress had brought the lemonade a while ago, and it sat next to Marie's arm, untouched and now flat.
"He couldn't bring himself to do it. He developed a… 'defeatist' attitude; I told him to get a hold of himself but he would not listen. He just kept saying how it was hopeless, how he knew you would not listen and how he did not blame you. He said he missed his children, felt guilty for leaving them in such a position…" Elsa's voice had gone quiet, and her throat hurt as she drew her mind back to the pathetic Cole who had perched on her couch and rocked himself, struggling to stay calm as tears rolled silently down his cheeks. She breathed in heavily before she continued. "He stayed at mine, trying to work his way back up the ranks as a detective. He got hold of a lead that led to something much bigger, and he… used me for information. He started acting more than kind towards me, and I have to admit I did not attempt to stop him."
"Ha! You little bitch, he used you and you let him? How desperate were you?" Marie sneered, a cruel smirk playing on her face. Elsa didn't take it to heart. She could see well enough the tears that were struggling to stay back behind the cold and aggressive exterior by which Marie covered her sadness.
"You knew the man. He had a certain charm, a certain something about him that was extremely desirable, and although he was using me I did not mind. I enjoyed being with him, and he was looking into a case that involved a dear friend of mine. I wanted the information as much as he did himself."
"Why didn't that stupid man try harder to explain to me, someone, anyone except you if he was accused so wrongly? He just accepted losing everything and resorted to… to you?" Marie had gripped tightly to the side of the plastic table with her fingers, her knuckles turning a brilliant white, and her eyes were alive with livid anger and desperation, her cool exterior quickly melting away in favour of her enraged melancholy.
"Marie, I only know what he had told me. Maybe if you had acted kinder to him the first time he tried to explain to you, even just five minutes of listening to his story, we would not be in such a god forsaken position. But Cole Phelps was a good man. If you need someone to blame, do not think ill of the dead, of your husband, father of your children. Blame me." Finally, the tears Elsa had already keenly spotted within Marie's eyes were starting to well and were threatening to spill over.
Tears are pointless, and too late now for anyone who cares, Elsa thought bitterly. She had cried for Phelps at his funeral, she felt them start to appear when she thought of Phelps in her apartment, shattered, a shell of his former self. Yet she never let those tears control her, and had vowed not to shed a single one over him again. What has been lost cannot come back.
"Don't you ever call me 'Marie'," Marie spat through gritted teeth, standing up slowly, and the chair scraping the floor with an unpleasant noise as she moved it. "I came here, listened to your story-"
"Phelps. What I have just told you is Phelps' story. Not mine."
"Fine," Marie said, her voice dangerously low. She leaned over the table, barely avoiding knocking over her drink as she peered into Elsa's face. "I listened to his story, and I have accepted it. It is entirely your fault, so I will gladly take your offer up of blaming you. I wish never to see or hear from you again." The tears were rolling down Marie's cheeks, but she didn't seem to notice, even when they fell and splashed onto the table.
"I do not care for you," Elsa replied, staring Marie back and not flinching an inch as Marie had come closer. "The only people I care for who are affected by this ordeal are your children. Please, do your best to raise them well, and make sure you tell them how brilliant and intelligent their father was. Do not let Cole Phelps die in your mind."
With that said, Elsa also stood up, clutching her purse at the bottom as she opened it up. She pulled out a five dollar note without glancing away from Marie, and placed it on the table before staring straight ahead of her, her head held high as she walked past Marie and out of the café. She had delivered the story, she had said her part.
She knew that the man Cole Phelps was now just another closed chapter in the book of the story of her ever changing life.
