Some appointments can’t be avoided—The Appointment A Samantha Leary Short Story

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By J.E. Nickerson

“We think we can stop someone from exposing our mistakes. But as soon as we try to stop them, we reveal the truth of what we’ve done.”

~Samantha Leary  

The apartment didn’t feel like it ended anymore. It felt sealed.

Darren stood a few feet from the body without moving. Claire lay where she had fallen, hair spread across the hardwood, face turned slightly to the side. The wine had dried into the carpet beside her in a dark uneven stain. The television in the other room kept running, a steady unrelated voice filling space that didn’t belong to it anymore.

Darren swallowed once. His hands hung slightly away from his body. The silence didn’t feel empty anymore. It filled the room and pressed against him.

His mind kept trying to reassemble what had already broken.

Their last conversation. Her voice. The phone in her hand. 

“You recorded me? I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I’m not cheating on us.” Claire had waved her hand in the air. Her phone reflecting the light of the window as she moved it around. 

“You think you know me? You don’t know what I was doing.”

Claire’s voice continued but the words blurred. 

Everything fractured into pieces that wouldn’t stay still long enough to hold together. Claire stepped back. The door was there. She moved towards it. 

Everything in Darren had narrowed down to stopping her from leaving. His mind didn’t go beyond that. Just stopping her.

The moments didn’t sit in order. They folded into each other. Her turning. His hand reaching. The impact that followed like something that didn’t separate itself cleanly from intention, even as his mind kept trying to force separation after the fact.

The rug was there. Her foot caught in it, or it didn’t—his memory kept shifting it. The floor came up too fast. The sound wasn’t clean. It was sudden, filling the space without shape, leaving nothing to hold onto after it.

Darren looked down at the floor. He didn’t move.

The TV kept running in the other room, then dipped for a second before returning to the same low, indifferent sound. It didn’t matter. Nothing in the apartment reacted to it.

His chest moved unevenly as air struggled to settle into his lungs.

He moved closer to Claire.

She didn’t change. She stayed where she was, fixed in the same position the room had already accepted.

A knock hit the door. Once. Then again.

Darren remained in place.

Another knock. Controlled. Even. Not urgent. Measured.

The sound didn’t belong in the room, but it stayed.

He turned slowly toward it. He should not open it. The thought came fully formed.

But he moved anyway.

The lock clicked. The door opened. Cold air entered from the hallway.

Samantha Leary stood outside. The afternoon light reflected through her hair, deepened it’s golden color.  She shifted her position, her purse strap sliding down on her shoulder. She watched him. Her gaze still. Composed. Waiting.

Her eyes went past him immediately into the apartment and stopped. 

“I’m here to see Claire Dickson. She’s expecting me.”

Darren didn’t move. “I—she’s not here. She’s busy.”

Samantha’s eyes narrowed slightly. Her posture tightened, contained but immediate. She didn’t speak. 

“She made an appointment with me several weeks ago.” Samantha stepped forward. Not forcing her way in. But moving with a determination that would not be denied.

Darren paused then moved back.

She moved past him slowly, her eyes took in the room as she stepped across the threshold. She had been here once, weeks ago. At the time, Claire had said she was afraid Darren would try to kill her if he knew her secret. She hadn’t told Samantha. 

“I’m not ready. I’m still getting things together.” Claire’s words echoed through Samantha’s mind. 

The TV continued to play in the room. Then Samantha’s focus narrowed. The room went silent. The TV’s volume faded, not from anything Darren did though. 

Samantha’s eyes landed on Claire. Samantha did not move. Her muscles tensed. 

“I knew her,” Samantha said quietly.

Darren’s voice came rough. “What?”

“I worked with her,” she said. “A story a few weeks ago. She came to me.”

Silence held.

Samantha stepped closer to Claire. She did not touch Claire.

Darren stayed where he was, half turned toward her, still anchored to the space he had been in alone before she arrived.

Samantha finally turned her head toward him.

Her voice stayed level.

“Tell me what happened.”

Samantha Leary Psychological Thrillers

The moment doesn’t end here. It never does.

For Samantha, this is where it begins—where instinct starts to press against the surface, where something unresolved refuses to stay buried.

If you felt that shift—the quiet sense that something isn’t right—you’re already inside her world.

The story continues in the Samantha Leary series, beginning with the prequel.

Step into the series on Amazon