by Ella Fields
Thomas winced, pulling his hand away and frowning at the blood. He rubbed it between his fingers, and my stomach heaved at the action. “Afraid so.”
“And the status of the plate?”
My eyes zigzagged from Murry to Thomas.
“Don’t worry about my head or anything, will you?” He rolled his eyes when Murry continued to wait for confirmation. “Dead.”
Murry cursed up a violent storm beside me, and I slowly backed away, my ass connecting sharply with the countertop.
“They were vintage,” he said, bending and tugging out a tray of cookies from one of two ovens. He tossed them to the stovetop with a clatter.
“Never mind the plates. I might need a stitch or two.”
Murry sighed, then walked over to inspect Thomas’s head. “Downstairs.”
Dazed as hell by them just leaving me there, I watched as they walked into the dark.
The large door shut and locked behind them, and I noticed another panel beside it, high up on the wall. Intercom and a keypad. I assumed the door could only be unlocked with a code.
Fueled by the fact the hardest obstacle had been hurdled, I turned for the window at the sink. Outside of it, all I saw was dead grass, wildflowers, and an old dam surrounded by weeds. I checked but found it locked, then caught sight of my reflection as a cloud moved over the sun.
My hair stood at every angle imaginable. My eyes were smudged with old mascara and exhaustion, and as I looked down at my dress, I found it crinkled and ripped in places.
I looked like a wild animal, but Lou Lou didn’t care, returning and thumping a book onto the counter. “Are you better now?”
“Um.” I walked closer, smoothing down my hair as much as I could. “Much better, yes.”
Her eyes were bright, unfettered happiness shining back at me. “Want a cookie?”
I glanced over at the tray, and the memory of the man who’d made them, his face, and the anger he no doubt felt toward me for breaking one of his plates had me saying, “I think we should wait. They might be a bit hot.”
“Okay, come on then.” She came and took my hand.
“Where are we going?” I asked as she dragged me from the kitchen. This was good, I told myself. I’d be able to explore a little and maybe find out where I was.
“Back to your room, silly.” She peeked up at me, her tiny nose scrunched. “You really must’ve been sick.”
“My room?” We entered a sprawling dining room, complete with a never-ending dark oak table, matching chairs, old artwork, and giant crystal chandelier.
“Yeah, Daddy said you’re staying with us for a little while until you’re all better, ’cause your daddy is old, and you don’t want him to get sick.” We exited the dining room and moved into what looked like a foyer. Lou Lou lowered her voice at the base of a gigantic, winged staircase. “’Cause old people can get sick easier and maybe die.”
I smiled, somehow, and glanced behind me at the large front double doors. Another security panel was on the wall beside them, and there were numerous locks on the doors. I’d bet that every single one of them was latched into place.
Sighing, I let Lou Lou lead me upstairs.
She stopped where the stairs reached the second floor, and my eyes traveled up the remaining stairs as we walked away from them, wondering where they led.
We continued down a wide hall with polished marble floors, Lou Lou filling me in on all the fishing, coloring, and cooking she’d already done over the first three weeks of summer break.
Weeks. It was hard to believe life could change that drastically in such a short space of time. But I knew it to be true. I’d already discovered the hard way that, in an instant, your entire world might cease to exist, and you were left to traverse a new foreign one where nothing was ever the same.
Vases of wildflowers decorated mid-century styled hall tables. Faded oriental rugs ran the length of each hall. The place was like a museum. An old, classic home that was either restored to much of its vintage origins or had been expertly kept.
“Here it is,” Lou Lou said, pushing open a door at the end of the hall.
The door opened to reveal a queen-size white bed, matching white linen, and matching armoire. Hesitantly, I walked in and spied my bags at the foot of the bed, zipped shut and taunting.
He’d taken my bags.
Someone had been to my father’s house.
Lou Lou’s comment about my dad had the rising nerves settling. He wouldn’t. I didn’t know why, but I knew he wouldn’t have hurt my dad.
An arched window with vines covering half the panes was the only source of light. A small window seat sat below, and I ran my palm over the gray fabric covering it, longing for the one I had at home.
“You can see the woods from here,” Lou Lou said, jolting me out of my musings and stabbing a finger at the glass as she climbed onto the seat.
“So you can,” I said, taking in the treetops and the flock of birds that shot into the sky above them.
What I wouldn’t give to be among those birds, taking flight, leaving all of this behind.
“Will you read my new book to me? Daddy said you like to read a lot.” Lou Lou tugged at her ponytail, a small giggle drifting past rosy little lips. “And I said I already knew that, which made him smile.”
“Oh, yeah?” I sat beside her, my sore muscles grateful for the reprieve.
“Yup. Daddy’s usually always right, so when I’m right first, it makes him smile.”
Smiling again myself, I reached over and tweaked her nose. “Grab me that book of yours, and we’ll read.”
She jumped up. “Okay.”
I stood after she’d left, knowing my phone wouldn’t be in my bag but wanting to check anyway.
I sank back down when she returned to the doorway with her hands on her hips. “Don’t leave.”
“I won’t,” I lied.
Lou Lou frowned as if able to sniff it out. “Promise?”
Surrender loosened my limbs, and I nodded solemnly. “I promise.”
With a smile, she left, and I shifted my gaze to the window, my forehead meeting the cool glass.
For as many questions as Thomas had answered, new ones sprouted in their wake.
What kind of monster kills and tortures people, yet gives a little girl a much-needed home?
A complicated one.
Thomas
“Honestly, Murry. How long does it take to glue two bits of skin together?”
“About one hundred and fifty times longer than it does to sever them,” he shot back. “Be grateful you don’t need stitches.”
“Grateful,” I grumbled beneath my breath, tension coiling tight in every muscle as Murry kept dabbing at the back of my damn scalp. The urge to shove away his none too gentle touch held strong, but the need to make sure I didn’t have a gaping head wound won out.
I suppose I was grateful.
She was here.
In my house.
And she’d tried to kill me twice.
I smiled, and Murry, ever the perceptive, sensed it. “That kitten has claws.”
“Much sharper than I thought,” I surmised, inspecting the plate that was in pieces on the floor. My head pounded, but the volcanic blood coursing through my veins when I thought of her and that violent fear in her eyes distracted me.
“You want me to wake you tonight?”
“I’m not concussed.”
“Done.” Murry’s hands disappeared, finally. “Let me look at your eyes, just to be sure.”
“No.” I stepped away and removed my jacket, which was covered in specks of blood.
Nothing new there. Except for it being mine instead of someone else’s. “Any updates about the dad?”
After locking the first-aid cabinet, Murry walked into the bathroom, his voice rising over the sound of running water as he washed his hands. “He read the text sent from her phone about her road trip to Indiana to see an old high school friend. Judy received the phone this morning and is p
repped in case he calls or texts her.”
Judy worked for me and a few of my friends. She liked expensive things and loved the fact she only had to work simple jobs that sometimes only lasted ten minutes and didn’t require her to open her legs to get paid handsomely.
“Is he worried?”
A pause preceded his return down the small hall. “Not overly. Delov said his guy tapped into a phone conversation that her dad made to the grocer and, apparently, to her ex, but he soon settled after that.”
“The fed?” I asked, rage curling my fingers. My thumbs cracked my knuckles at the thought of the undeserving idiot. At the violence my hands longed to do to his smug face.
“He didn’t answer the call, and I doubt her dad will try again now that he’s not all that concerned. He apparently loathes the guy.”
“Excellent. Make sure Judy returns the phone in a week.” I took my jacket with me upstairs, Murry following a second later and marching straight to his cookies to inspect them. “And we need to replace the phones.”
“I just did two weeks ago.”
“Again. Order more, and have Sage and Beau do the same.” I draped my jacket over the back of a stool. “They must’ve tapped in when I was discussing the Claytons with Beau. Even though it was last year, we can’t afford to get sloppy.” It had to be the calls as I’d done the rest of my digging in private, unfollowed, and over the span of the past several years. Never quite sure what to do with the family that took everything from me.
Murry’s eyes shot to mine, and he nodded. “Makes more sense now, how she winded up playing house with him.”
Humming, I took a cookie, chewing as I glanced around the kitchen, looking for any sign of my Dove.
“Do you think she’s searching for another way out?” I asked as I opened the two-door fridge and yanked a bottle of water out.
“Doubtful with Miss Lou keeping her busy.”
I drained half the drink bottle, the plastic crinkling. Giggling, faint but audible, sounded through the house, and my heart swelled.
“Besides,” Murry said, eating a cookie as he placed several onto a plate. A disposable one this time. “There’s no other way out. The only reason the kitchen door was unlocked was because I took the trash out.” He put the disposable plates back inside a drawer. We kept them to feed visitors that needed to stay alive, and who most definitely couldn’t be trusted with porcelain. “I’ll be sure to lock it and take keys next time.”
“Ensure you do.” I had faith in my Little Dove, but I’d failed to remember she didn’t do well locked in a cage. “Let’s hope she knocks it off soon.” I set the bottle down on the counter.
Murry snorted, halting my journey out of the kitchen to the sound that was tugging me toward the stairs. “You’re overly optimistic about this situation.”
“Your point?” My tone was cold.
Murry was used to it by now and continued as he placed the rest of the cookies inside a weird looking glass jar. “I’m not trying to upset you. I’m just being honest when I say I think it’d be wise to remember what you are.” His eyes rose, three fingers falling to the countertop as he leveled me with the full effect of what I’d done to him. “Remember that not everyone, in fact, hardly anyone, will be accepting of that.”
Backtracking, I took the cookies from the counter and tried to leave his words behind.
I was unsuccessful. They haunted my every step, plagued my mind with terrible what-ifs, and threatened to darken the spark that resided in my chest.
The one she’d placed there.
She couldn’t extinguish it. It wasn’t in her nature, claws or not. But I knew all too well that she could leave, sooner rather than later, and that might be the last I ever saw of her.
My thoughts fled at the sight of the two girls curled up together on the window seat, Lou Lou smiling and pointing at the page of a book they were reading.
I didn’t want to disturb them.
I wanted to join them.
And though I knew Jemima wouldn’t like it, I still tapped on the open door.
She looked over, and the smile that’d transformed the beauty of her face into perfection wilted as she ducked her head.
It hurt worse than having a plate slammed over my head. “I have a delivery for you.”
“Cookies!” Lou rushed me, almost sending them to the rug covered floor with her excitement.
“One minute. Have you washed your hands?”
Lou scowled but didn’t even try to lie. She left the room to use the bathroom down the hall. “Do it twice,” I called.
She groaned.
“Twice?” my Dove spoke.
Moving into the room, I set the plate down on the white armoire, then took a seat on the bed. “She’s got a hamster. Too many germs.”
“Clinkers,” Jemima said. “She brought him in for show and tell once.”
“That one is dead,” I said before thinking, then rushed to add, “but I replaced it before she noticed. And he is actually a she, but Lou hasn’t figured that out either.”
Jemima smiled. Then, as if reminded she shouldn’t, she turned her attention out the window.
Sitting in the silence, I listened for the patter of little feet, but heard none.
“Is your head okay?” Her voice was strained as though she didn’t want to ask but something had compelled her to.
“Nothing Murry couldn’t fix with a little glue.”
She looked back at me. The sunlight highlighted the tangles in her usually glossy hair, the smudges beneath her eyes, and put her turbulent emotions on full display.
And still, she was the most beautiful thing my eyes ever had the pleasure of viewing.
“If you’re not going to hurt me, why am I here?”
“Because I wanted you to be here.” I struggled to keep her gaze as I admitted, “I needed you to know more and to see you before your fed took you away.”
Her brows puckered, pink lips parting. Questions arose in her dark eyes. Questions she visibly casted aside with a shake of her head, then asked, “When can I leave?”
The sound of Lou’s feet thundering down the hall made me shut my mouth, hide my disappointment, and rise from the bed. “Whenever you like. My only request is that you come find me before you do.”
Her eyes shot up to mine, confusion darkening them.
“Lou.” Catching her as she tried to barrel past me to the cookies, I tilted her chin and ran my palm over the silken curls of her hair. “Make sure you share and don’t pester. Miss Clayton needs lots of rest and food after being unwell.”
“Of course, Daddy.”
With one last look at Jemima, who was biting her nail as she stared at me, I forced myself from the room. It was the last thing I wanted to do, but too much at once was never good when someone was acclimating to a new environment.
Come find me before you do.
It was a trick. A carefully veiled trick.
He knew I would struggle to willingly seek him out after all that’d happened. He also knew that I was more confused than ever before.
And that was how I spent the next day holed up in my room, showered, changed, fed, and somewhat rested.
Lou had joined me whenever she could but was called away every few hours to help Murry, practice piano with her dad, or do regular things like take a bath, eat lunch, and get ready for bed.
Such normal things in such bizarre company.
It was as though Thomas didn’t want her presence overwhelming me too much but couldn’t exactly stop her from seeing me. I was glad for it. To see her and to have time alone. Even if both only further complicated everything I was feeling.
Lou brought puzzles, coloring books, and even Clinkers to my room.
But by eight thirty, any proof that she was still this side up of dreamland vanished, the house turning eerily quiet as nightfall descended.
He came to me then.
Clad in his suit and with his hair swept back in its usual perfection without a strand out o
f place, he strolled in, shut the door, and sat on the bed.
Watching from my preferred perch by the window, I tracked his every move as he leaned forward, his hands clasping together between his knees, and his eyes lowered to his slippers. His jacket was undone, gaping open to reveal what looked like a small notebook tucked inside one of the inner pockets.
Was that some fucked-up ledger? I snorted at the thought and returned my attention to the moonlit trees.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
The silence that’d arrived with his presence was one so violent that the ticking of the old grandfather clock in the hall could be heard through the thick wood of the bedroom door. “Fine.”
“Little Dove,” he started.
“Don’t call me that.”
Silence again. Then a few ticks later, “But that’s what you are.”
My gaze swung to him, sharp and accusing.
He didn’t even flinch, but his eyes lifted, and the honest shine to them almost blinded me as much as his next words. “That’s what you are to me.”
“I don’t want to be,” I said, not knowing if it was exactly true but wanting it to be. Desperately.
He did flinch then. “You’ve tasted my lips, and I yours. You can lie with your words, but what will it cost your heart?”
“My heart has nothing to do with this fucked-up bullshit,” I seethed.
His lip curled. “But doesn’t it? How else have you ended up precisely here?”
He was right, and I wasn’t in the mood to argue.
After untold minutes had passed, I dragged my finger over the cool glass of the window and asked something that’d been eating at me. “How did you end up like this?”
When he didn’t answer, I glanced over at him, trying again. “How can you do the things that you do and not feel ashamed for it?”
“Shame is personal, Little Dove. I feel shame just like any other person would, depending on what I’ve done. But I won’t lie to you. I don’t lose any sleep over what I do. It’s just”—his hands spread—“what I do.”
“You must like it then,” I stated.
He scrubbed his chin. “Yes, I do. I’m good at it, and it’s good money.”